Were you shy as a child?

[Mad Doug Biker]

Yes really shy and still am to a certain degree. My brother was always the clever, funny, good at sports and music child whilst I had to take a backseat.

My big brother was always the clever one and my big sister was always bossy and oppressive one who had to know and control everything. They both seemed to be closer to each other than to me, so I couldn't win. I was ALWAYS the odd one out. Even now.

I never ever listened to music or did anything largely out of the ordinary for fear of being laughed at by my Sister, and boy did she do it! - there is nothing worse than being bullied at school and not being able to express yourself properly at home. There were things I would have LOVED to have done, but because I was made to feel stupid by my sister, I never did them (the toxic BITCH!, if murder was legal, etc etc). I even felt uneasy doing anything round my parents (and my Dad could be just as bad, or so it seemed).

As a result, I quite honestly couldn't give a flying f**k about her or the rest of my family except for the pets and my Mum, in that order. That might sound harsh, but quite honestly, they are all strangers to me, and if they weren't my family, I doubt I would know them at all.

I pretend to care, but really, I don't - I love the dog more than I do my siblings. In fact, the dog seems to be the only remotely sane member of my family!

The day my sister moved out, my stress levels went through the floor, and what is worse, she doesn't seem to have changed much from when we were kids, she is as awful as ever (apparently my Gran had the same personality).

With all that, I apologise if some of the venom has been translated into any of my posts in the past.

What makes me even more shy is when people claim to enjoy my company; that's one way to get rid of me for good.

I don't take compliments very easily and always feel suspicious about them, but at the same time, I can, up to a point, identify when people are being truthful.

I abhor silence.

I need silence as otherwise I cannot concentrate properly. Oddly enough though, I find that Jazz helps quite a lot and is also quite calming.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

My wife works with severely disabled kids, with a whole range of disabilities. The reluctance to look at a face is a typical Aspbergers, and Autistic actually, feature. there's other features she describes...and i think, yeah, i do that to a degree.
Its made me think that perhaps you can be mildly autistic/aspergers without even knowing it. Does that make sense.

Yes, we have a family friend who is a psychologist, and she suggested I was, but nothing was ever done about it, so I don't really know. I seem able to speak normally and not take things literally though.

I find that as well. I sometimes suspect why I've never been good at conversations is that I won't/cannot do the "How's your mum these days? Did you see Eastenders last night?" type questions that forms the basis of most conversations as I am rarely interested in that sort of general chit chat.

Smalltalk bores me silly, I'll admit.

On the subject of faces, I find it difficult to look people in the face. I've always been a keen photographer and even develop my own black and white film but if you look at the countless photographs and negatives I have around the house, you will rarely see a single person in any of them. If I go to some natural beauty spot with a camera to take a photo and find other people there, I will be cursing them upside down as I don't want people in my photos.

I am sort of the same, but also realise that sometimes people make a picture, and I always enjoyed doing Candid, reportage and documentary photography.

When I did photography at College, I utterly despised having to do portraiture and fashion photography, mainly because I couldn't speak to, and make a stranger comfortable.
I have nothing but the highest respect for the Mario Testinos' and David Baileys' of this world, because it is a job that I KNOW I could never do.

What made me hate it even more was that, in the prospectus, it said that the HND was a 2 year course, and in the second year, you could choose to do either portraiture and fashion, or the more scientific and wildlife based side of photography (Applied photography it was called), so, I picked to do Applied photography and that was that.

Come the start of the next year, there were only 4 of us who wanted to do Applied, so it was cancelled, and the 4 of us just drifted along doing the part of the course we didn't want to do.
Come the next year, we were told that if there was a minimum of 12 people, then they would do Applied, so we got enough people together (13 or 14), but the college then said that we needed at least 20!

So, seeing that they were just taking the piss, I did the same, picked up what I wanted to know, discarded the rest and never finished the course (which I sort of regret now, but I absolutely hated the work I was being asked to do).

The moral of the story??

NEVER, EVER trust College Prospectuses.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Oh, and Colin, if I had been in your class, I would have been curious and tried to speak to you/ask why you always sit up the back.

How you would have reacted, I don't know, but I wouldn't have ignored you.

 

[ColinJ]

Oh, and Colin, if I had been in your class, I would have been curious and tried to speak to you/ask why you always sit up the back.

How you would have reacted, I don't know, but I wouldn't have ignored you.

Well, if somebody like you had asked "Do you like it up there?" I'd have answered "Not really, but I don't know anybody to sit with." If they had then invited me to join them, I probably would have done.

I find that a lot of super-confident people are pretty poor at tuning in to how other people feel. I hate parties, but got dragged along to one once and quickly scanned the room to see what was going on. There were loads of people flirting, dancing and chatting but my eyes were drawn immediately to one lad on the far side of the room who was being ignored by everyone.

I could see that he wasn't really enjoying himself and seemed somehow disconnected from the merriment. I found out later that he was profoundly deaf. No - I didn't go over to try and communicate with him! Until I started organising forum rides, I'd never initiated any contact with other people.

 

[Kirstie]

What do you do as a job if you don't mind me asking by the way?

Thanks for asking, i'm a senior-ish academic, so all that performancy stuff is around day in day out, and alongside performance, reputation is everything...universities love it if you do stuff in the public eye/get public or media exposure because it reflects well on them. So you tend to find yourself shoved in front of cameras/have your stuff reported on if it has public relevance.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Thanks for asking, i'm a senior-ish academic, so all that performancy stuff is around day in day out, and alongside performance, reputation is everything...universities love it if you do stuff in the public eye/get public or media exposure because it reflects well on them. So you tend to find yourself shoved in front of cameras/have your stuff reported on if it has public relevance.

Is that all? I thought you were a TV personality and could have helped advocate cycling to the masses a lot more!

Seriously though, that sounds interesting, if somewhat scary! I doth my hat to you.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Well, if somebody like you had asked "Do you like it up there?" I'd have answered "Not really, but I don't know anybody to sit with." If they had then invited me to join them, I probably would have done.

I'd have. University might be different, but at College (the one I went to anyway), even the lecturer probably have said something along the lines of

'why are you sat at the back by yourself, come down, we wont bite you know'

You might have felt stupid, but that would have been that.

I find that a lot of super-confident people are pretty poor at tuning in to how other people feel.

I think they assume that everyone is the same and if you aren't then you are some sort of weirdo.

I hate parties, but got dragged along to one once and quickly scanned the room to see what was going on. There were loads of people flirting, dancing and chatting but my eyes were drawn immediately to one lad on the far side of the room who was being ignored by everyone.
I could see that he wasn't really enjoying himself and seemed somehow disconnected from the merriment. I found out later that he was profoundly deaf. No - I didn't go over to try and communicate with him! Until I started organising forum rides, I'd never initiated any contact with other people.

Usually at parties I just get pissed to pass the time, seeing as my hearing can be pretty crap (although I am not deaf, everything just merges into the same sound, making it impossible for me to make things out properly).

I think I probably would have at least tried to speak to him, but what the result would have been, I don't know.

 

[colly]

I was shy as a teenager and in fact all through my 20's. Very self concious and lacked confidence when speaking to others. I was even reluctant to use the telephone at one stage although my job meant I had too.
That changed gradually when I became self employed and had no option but to go out and meet people and initiate conversation.
I have found that most people who appear to be stand offish and aloof are simply shy. Maybe unable to join in as they might want to just because they are afraid of being rejected.

I can still get introverted in certain situations but like most people as they get older I realise now that if I say something and someone doesn't like it or ignores me or they think what I have said is complete tosh ............then well so what? If they think I am an idiot they might well be right.

Now I'll speak to anyone when I am out in shops or walking or even when cycling and most people are happy to chat. Some aren't of course and if that's the case well I shut up.

I know a couple of people who are, or at least seem to be, the ones who make a party 'happen' . I'm not quite sure what it is about people like that. Some have it others don't

 

[Bayerd]

That actually sounds as if it could be cruel. I hope your not quite as manipulative as that!

I'm not, and did think when I wrote it how it might come across. The reality is that I'm only happy in certain sales roles. They're the ones where the buyer probably does have a genuine need for what I'm selling, rather than selling one of the many snake oils that are out there.

I don't do the silence thing on purpose to gain the sale per se, but I have realised that not talking can be a strenghth in certain situations. In my job role I can only be of help if I understand the other party. I understand them better if they do the talking rather than me do the assumpting.

Sounds just like me! It seems to be a perverse defense mechanism for overcoming the shyness - I can gabble on for hours to strangers. I think it's trying to avoid silences where I'd just sit and feel even more shy!!

Hey Goo, you sound like the kind of person I'd end up in a conversation with for hours at a party with both of us feeling shy as hell!

I know a couple of people who are, or at least seem to be, the ones who make a party 'happen' . I'm not quite sure what it is about people like that. Some have it others don't

That'll be that charisma thing, I'm not sure how it happens either, because they don't say anything special, but have learnt how to be assertive (I think). In fact I'm not even sure it's something they've learnt, they were probably born with it.


By the way, I see a few have aspergers type leanings, hands up if you count random things for no reason other than to find patterns of numbers etc. I know I do but I'm not sure why except my dad admitted to doing it as well a couple of years ago.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

nings, hands up if you count random things for no reason other than to find patterns of numbers etc. I know I do but I'm not sure why except my dad admitted to doing it as well a couple of years ago.

I did for a while and saw that there usually were certain numbers which seemed to be standard in the manufacture of just about anything. I don't do it now, but I remember counting the parts of a metal fence and it came to 1060.

To be fair, I was a trainspotter as a youth, so I guess I have got numbers out of my system as it were.

 

[Bayerd]

I did for a while and saw that there usually were certain numbers which seemed to be standard in the manufacture of just about anything. I don't do it now, but I remember counting the parts of a metal fence and it came to 1060.

To be fair, I was a trainspotter as a youth, so I guess I have got numbers out of my system as it were.

Lucky git......

 

[colly]

By the way, I see a few have aspergers type leanings, hands up if you count random things for no reason other than to find patterns of numbers etc. I know I do but I'm not sure why except my dad admitted to doing it as well a couple of years ago.

That's odd you should mention that. Generally I don't but if I am say waiting somewhere for a while, nothing to read, no one to chat to, (dentists, doctors etc) I do find myself working out say how many tiles there are on the walls or the rough volume of the room or some such. Or once, for the want of anything other to do working out how many hairs there would be on the door mat.

Funny that, I've done it for years but it's never occured to me to wonder why.

 

[Bayerd]

That's odd you should mention that. Generally I don't but if I am say waiting somewhere for a while, nothing to read, no one to chat to, (dentists, doctors etc) I do find myself working out say how many tiles there are on the walls or the rough volume of the room or some such. Or once, for the want of anything other to do working out how many hairs there would be on the door mat.

Funny that, I've done it for years but it's never occured to me to wonder why.

There's every chance everybody does it, but only us weirdos own up....