Shyness and Other Fears

I once read a book about the five Chinese elements—fire, earth, water, wood, metal—and how they map onto human personalities. As a disclaimer, I don’t go in for the signs of the zodiac or predicting personality by birth year, etc. This book wasn’t that, but instead took the angle of using the elements to categorize different human types, similar to the Greeks’ “four humours” or the modern Myers-Briggs personality types. After reading the book, I decided I was a water person, partly because I was always questing for truth, but mostly because I’ve always battled fear.

What I remember about myself as a child—sweet as many of my memories are—is feeling vulnerable and afraid.

Still today I feel this.

Not all the time. But a significant enough amount of the time that I can say fear and selfishness are the two greatest battles I knowingly face.

Every Sunday we go to church. Many days I am not afraid in church, but some days I am. Not a bad afraid, where my heart beats and I must get out of the door. Just a shy afraid. I do not want to talk to people, not really, though I smile very brightly and say hello. But I do not settle down to a conversation—except with the grandmas and grandpas who are familiar and comfortable and old and who I know genuinely want to talk to me. With the others I make my hands busy, make my head busy, do not open and settle. Not because I do not like them, but because I am afraid.

I don’t know what I’m afraid of, exactly.

Of being seen, maybe? Of being noticed? It is a fear I’ve dealt with all my life. We call it being “shy.”

My tiny daughter has the shy fear. Not quite two years old, and she talks only to the familiar people, the ones she sees often. The ones she sees seldom or who overwhelm her in some way, she turns her head from. “No.”

She puts it in a word that seems so unfriendly. Trained to welcome, to cover our uneasiness with small talk, we as adults don’t do that, don’t turn from someone and say, “No.”

And really, I would not want to. As shy as I feel sometimes, I genuinely like people. They are all so interesting to me. I can spend a lot of time speculating on how this person feels and that person thinks. I sense things. Maybe not always right things, but things that guide my actions and interactions. No, I won’t say that word in that way; I might hurt his feelings. If I lean forward, like this, I will look more interested. I want her to feel she is listened to.

At church this past Sunday, I wanted to talk to the pretty red-haired visitor whom I know slightly through social media and tell her I enjoy her Instagram posts, but I did not. I told myself she was busy talking to someone else, and if I got an opportunity, I would say hello. But of course, the opportunity did not come. Those kinds of opportunities never do.

I wanted to talk to the young mom who has attended several Sundays now, and tell her “Welcome,” and “I’m glad you’re here,” and “I hope to get to know you.” But I did not. Because I am shy.

A small church helps to obliterate shyness, because in a small church, you are needed. You must talk to newcomers, because there is no one else, and you crowd around them, tag team making them feel welcome.

In a large church there are always other people to do the talking. Ivan tells me that in a large church, there may be more people, but there are only a few who will be in the newcomer’s vicinity, only a few who will have an opportunity or inclination to make them feel welcome. I think he is right, but my instincts will not absorb it. In a large church, you do not feel necessary.

On the way home from church, I said to Ivan, “Why don’t you tip me upside down and shake me. Dump the salt out of me. Like a saltshaker.”

It didn’t make sense, but Ivan didn’t say it was silly. That’s one thing I like about Ivan. He doesn’t seem to think anything is too nonsensical, too emotional, too gross, for normal human consumption. Whether it makes sense to him or not, he accepts that what I am or act is a part of human experience, and valid. What is, is.

I think what I was saying, really, is that I wanted to shake the feeling of uneasiness out of me, the fear. Expectations I think others have of me I am afraid I can’t live up to. A multitude of small decisions that must be made, that pile up in my mind and overwhelm me. A feeling of vulnerability, of wanting to get everything just right and not knowing how.

I remembered, later, the Bible verse that says, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” (2 Tim. 1:7 KJV) And I wondered how often I parent out of a spirit of fear. Maybe sometimes I discipline Annalise, not because I think doing so will be effective and genuinely helpful to her, but because I have this inner guiding panic she will “turn out wrong.”

Another word for power—not from the Greek, just from my own thinking—might be authority. Instead of having a fear reaction when my daughter doesn’t listen—a big puffing out of chest to teach her I am boss—I can pull my mind back, pause it, and lean into a gentle, clear-headed, loving authority God promises is mine.

When I was giving birth and writhing with pain my body didn’t know how to respond to, the doctor told me, sternly, to “take control.”

“Anyone can give birth, but you have to take control to do it well,” he said (or at least that’s the concept I remember from what he said).

Ivan reminds me of that sometimes. When I’m scared of bidding at an auction, say, because I don’t know the “right price” and when I should stop bidding. When I can’t make myself say hello to someone I really would have liked to talk to.

“Take control.”

The phrase is so simple and so direct, it always makes me feel empowered.

Water people, the book said, always battle fear, but this does not mean they are cowards. A water person might spend a life-time scaling mountains and sky diving and bungee jumping, because fear is a thing that will not hold him back.  

Figuratively, like my daughter Annalise, sometimes I turn my face to the wall. Inside me dwells a small vulnerable thing called a soul. I want it to be seen and known. I want it to see and know others. And maybe tomorrow—yes, I know that tomorrow—I will again find the courage to step forward, to make eye contact. To say hello.

Fear never leaves completely. It is like waves, with always a new one coming in. But a water person cannot watch the waves forever. He picks up his surfboard, shakes off the sand, and faces them.