Is your teenager one of those kids who struggles to look other people in the eyes? Do they blush and look away when someone they like talks to them? Are they having difficulty making friends simply because they don’t feel comfortable talking to people? Your child may be one of the many million who are shy. While no statistics have been published on childhood bashfulness, it’s a problem that impacts many young ones nationally and globally. Cognitive behavioral therapy can help.
Thankfully, our team at A Cognitive Connection can help you better understand your child’s shyness and find ways to help support them. Many children naturally break through that bashful period and walk away happy and confident. Others might stay in their shells well into adulthood without a bit of help. Here’s some information about childhood shyness, what might trigger it, how it impacts their maturity, and how we can help your child gain confidence.
What is Shyness?
As defined by Psychology Today, shyness is a self-isolating behavior that can make people struggle to interact with others easily. For example, shy people may not talk with their peers easily or feel uncomfortable meeting new people. Other shy people may stay home instead of going out after work and feel incredibly lonely. Unfortunately, shy teenagers often suffer the most because they’re at such a delicate part of their physical and emotional development.
It’s common for perfectly healthy and sociable preteens to develop extreme bashfulness as a teenager. The reasons for these issues often vary depending on the child’s personality and experiences. Teenagers sometimes develop shy behaviors slowly after negative interactions with their peers. These more sensitive children may fall into adverse patterns that reinforce their shyness and pull them even tighter into their shells. For instance, they may:
- Make unrealistic social comparisons and find themselves lacking compared to others
- Feel constantly judged by others and unable to interact with them as equals
- Suffer from low self-esteem that makes it even harder for them to talk with others
- Experience high fears of judgment and rejection that make them withdraw from society
- Abandon new social opportunities, including sporting events, clubs, and even parties
- Lose what social skills they had by refusing to interact with other people regularly
It’s important to note that, according to the BBC, only 30% of shyness is due to genetics. In other words, your shy teenager may have inherited some shy behaviors from you, but most of them develop through various social interactions. One identical twin might show signs of extreme shyness, while another is perfectly comfortable talking with others. So, what exactly is happening when a child experiences excessive shyness? A lot more than you might think.
Why Are Some Teens Naturally Shy?
We can’t ignore the genetic or learned influences on shyness. Many studies found that children of shy parents often show similar behaviors or attitudes as they mature. Some of this bashfulness might come from a child simply modeling their parent’s behaviors. For example, if they see you struggling to talk with new people or feeling uncomfortable at parties, they might feel similar emotions and behave just like that to mirror you.
As these reactions to new people and situations recur in a child’s life, they’ll continue to act shyly. Eventually, these bashful behavior patterns will solidify and make it harder for a teen to break them. By the time they reach adulthood, it will require concentrated effort to avoid these patterns of shyness. But is it that important for them to change who they are for society? Is it fair to make them adapt to others? Many parents have a hard time answering these questions.
Think of it this way. Shy teenagers are likelier to struggle to make new friends and build romantic connections. They’ll also have a hard time standing out compared to their peers. Often, shy people get passed over for promotions even if their work is strong. Socializing is so important to our world that it can’t be skipped. Fully understanding how heavily shyness can impact your child can help you better grasp the full scope of this issue and determine if cognitive behavioral therapy is a possible solution.
How Does Shyness Impact A Teen?
Shyness or sustained and severe struggles to interact with peers can severely impact a teenager’s development. A teen’s high school years prepare them to become adults and take on the world. If they spend those years ignoring others in their bedroom, they’ll have a more challenging time emerging from their cocoon as a radiant butterfly. Tragically, shyness is also connected with many different emotional concerns, like:
- Personal Isolation: Shy children often have multiple emotional triggers that cause bashful behaviors. Unfortunately, these can drive them into severe personal isolation that can make it very hard to connect with others and even worsen their shyness severely.
- Depression: Very isolated and shy teenagers are likely to develop some symptoms of depression, particularly as they get older. These feelings can worsen other struggles, such as ADHD procrastination, and make a child’s life that much harder.
- Increased Social Anxiety: It’s important to remember that shyness and social anxiety are not the same thing. However, some shyness is caused by severe cases of this fear and may lead to other problems as well, such as concentration and memory concerns.
- Career Struggles: While teenagers might get through high school without interacting with others, it doesn’t work that way in the real world. Few jobs let them just sit in a corner and ignore people, and severe shyness may limit their career opportunities.
- Cynicism/Misanthropy: Unfortunately, shy children may see their poor interactions with others as “proof” that those individuals are cruel or mean. Such misanthropy and cynicism can lead to other behavioral issues that might severely trouble a teenager.
Thankfully, your child doesn’t have to let shyness rule their lives and dictate their development. A Cognitive Connection deeply understands how heavily bashfulness can change a child’s life and make it hard for them to mature properly. Thankfully, we’ve researched multiple therapeutic methods, including cognitive behavioral therapy, that may work well for your teenager. Our team of behavioral specialists can help El Paso County teenagers break from the bonds of shyness and emerge happy and healthy.
Are There Treatments for Shyness?
Now, shyness isn’t considered an emotional or behavioral disability. As a result, there aren’t specialized therapies, per se, focused on managing bashfulness. That said, therapists can easily adjust various treatment options to help teenagers overcome their shyness and feel happier in their day-to-day lives. Just a few ways psychologists help shy teenagers include:
- Schedule Events In Advance: Shy teenagers can often break through this behavior pattern by setting up their parties and other events well in advance. This step gives them a better feeling of control over their environment and can help them overcome serious fears.
- Exposure Therapy: Let’s be frank: sometimes, teenagers need to get out and spend time with people to break their shyness. Regularly interacting and talking with people makes it far easier to do so later, so it’s essential for teens to get out and chat.
- Mindfulness Therapy: Teaching children about their moment-to-moment reality (including their unconscious thoughts) can help them better understand their shyness. Knowing how to adjust on the fly can help them engage even more successfully.
- Talk Therapy: If your child’s shyness is true social anxiety, they may need to talk with a counselor to find ways to overcome it. In some cases, medications might help reduce anxiety behaviors and make it easier for teenagers to live happily.
- Role Creation: During our teen years, we’re typically defining who we are as people. Shy children may lack that sense of identity. By teaching them to craft a unique role in each conversation, a child can feel more confident in their personality.
- Curiosity: Often, shy people interact more easily with others simply by engaging their curiosity. Therapists boosting curiosity focus on teaching a child to ask questions and show genuine interest in what other peoples do to feel more confiden.
The only way to help a teenager manage their bashful behavior patterns is to talk with a therapist team in Colorado that you can trust. Well, A Cognitive Connection in Colorado Springs is one of the most highly rated behavioral counseling teams in El Paso County! If your teenager is fighting through shyness, social anxiety, depression, or other problems, our team is more than ready to help you through this process using our specialized and hands-on treatment methods.
Can Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Help?
At A Cognitive Connection, we’ll sit down with you and your teenager and develop ways of helping them through their shyness and bashful behaviors. We must get to know them first and then identify the best types of cognitive behavioral therapy for their needs. Often, these will vary based on their personality and other factors. Just a few options that we can provide for your child include:
- Specialized one-on-one counseling sessions to help your teen feel more comfortable
- V.I.B.E.S. and Mind’s Eye therapies to help teens relax and understand themselves
- H.E.R.O.E.S. Program to teach them even better coping behaviors for bashfulness
- Behavior counseling focuses on helping your child avoid shyness with others
- Question and answer sessions that can help teenagers better understand shyness
These useful therapies will get to the root of your teenager’s bashfulness and eliminate it entirely. While your child may always have a core shyness (there’s nothing wrong with that), teaching them how to overcome extreme cases can help them thrive in life. Many naturally shy people learn to become confident and social people utilizing therapeutic methods like these.
We’re Ready to Help Your Colorado Springs Teen!
Your El Paso County teenager deserves a great social life in high school! It’s one of the few times in life they’ll have the opportunity to spend time with their peers without having to work hard in a job. In fact, the skills they master during these years are often hard to learn later, meaning it’s more important than you might think to help them overcome bashfulness. Even a naturally timid child can become a big kid on campus with a bit of help from us and cognitive behavioral therapy.
So please don’t hesitate to contact us today at A Cognitive Connection to learn more about our therapeutic sessions! While we can’t promise that we’ll make your child a fully confident and dominant teenager, we will do our best to identify why your child is shy and help them work their way out of it. There’s no shame in being shy, but gaining confidence can take them to better places later. Call us at (719) 358-6637 to get them the help they deserve to thrive.
