Psychological Means for Women’s Shyness Overcoming

Abstract

The article analyses psychological factors of women’s shyness and ways to overcome it. The research on shyness of 18–22-year old women has help us determine its causes; the most significant of them are insufficient self-confidence and fears of negative assessments. Women with heavy shyness are prone to solitude, have problems with their identification in the family; they evaluate, feel and experience acutely their own imperfections and take guidance from opinions of others and social acceptance; they expect usually criticism and negative assessments from other people, etc. To overcome women’s shyness, the training program was developed that covered the following aspects: the notion of shyness and the causes of its emergence, the peculiarities of shyness influence on women’s life, the methods to reduce shyness, the negative factors affecting shyness. The proposed training consisted of four units: the first block was aimed at familiarizing of its participants with the notion of shyness, its factors and possible ways of overcoming; the participants’ expectations from the training and discussion of the psychological peculiarities of shyness in women’s life were collected during the second block; the third one was aimed at development of knowledge and skills for shy behaviour regulation; the final survey, feedback and training conclusion were done during the fourth block. After the training program approbation, the participating women changed significantly to the way of improvement a number of their own assessments: shyness, introversion / extraversion, attitude to shyness as a desirable trait. Women re-evaluated their ability to overcome shyness and became more willing to work on themselves and apply efforts for changes. The following personal traits of women were also improved: openness, independence and courage, autonomy, social activity and social adaptability; such socializing institutions as school, informal organizations and the Internet have become more important for them.