Hey, it's new to me

This book by Christopher Lane, Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness was published by Yale University Press in 2008.

Amazon link which I used to write this thread.

I have a Scribd account, but this review seems to be readable, even if you don't have a membership. Review by Simon Wessely.

In essence:



This is pertinent to our interests as another example of how the distortions in our health care wind up hurting instead of helping. By medicalizing a completely normal variation in the human being, we have people taking drugs who don't need anything but understanding.

For people who do have a real mental illness which adversely affects their life, we have people taking drugs who would be better served by a change in diet.

Before you know it, this common condition; which I had in abundance until adulthood; is a crisis of public health and must be treated.

This is similar to how introversion has become weaponized as a "disorder." In APA Does Not Care about Weaponized Diagnosis, Dr Paula A Caplan relates:



I am extremely concerned about how the Corporatization of the world goes hand in hand with authoritarian regimes. Tyranny is good for profits, after all.

Since the rise of consumer culture, it's been a given that artificial problems demand artificial solutions. Now it's gone up a notch: it's actually taking human traits and deciding they aren't, after all, "normal." Buy this stuff to make it happen.

If this is science fiction: we're living in it now.

To offer a slightly different perspective...... helping children develop socially can be a real challenge. One child fits right in with a new crowd and another keeps to himself. Shy can be lack of practice, as some need more time to learn interaction. In my experience, other factors play a role ,too.

I have had to ask myself "why" is this and how can I help a "shy" child? My mother tells me of how shy she was. I remember the pain of shy myself. And I see my son struggle. We all are Aspergers. We process information differently.

My point is that for some of us, there is a real underlying cause. And while practice has helped, so has using food and targetted supplements.

Without Dr Amen's book, my family would still be in the dark and suffering.

Shyness is a symptom, imho.

Oh, you are right. After all, I moved to the New York Metro area and learned to be a social butterfly. While I wouldn't recommend Assert or Die, it did work

But in a way, you are proving my point: you didn't just medicalize yourself or your children. Instead, you provided training, good food, and whatever else they needed.

There's a very dark side to psychiatric drugs. Especially for those on the Spectrum. They don't work on me, for instance; but I might get stuffed with them anyway if I didn't get help.

And recent studies show that even for those they work on, that's only 1/3 of the population. Yet everyone gets them, for everything.

I'm not disagreeing about shyness. It can hold people back, both from jobs and other people. And some of it can be fixed by having a more accepting, diverse-supporting, and open society. I was raised in two horribly oppressive cultures that I did not fit into whatsoever, and I bear the scars today.

But that wasn't my fault. They were wrong.

Introversion is a thing, and a good thing, and I never want all of us forced into one mold. By labeling human personality traits pathologic, it's doing you and me and your kids a disservice and a singling-out treatment that isn't fair.

Im glad you realized its not your fault. That in itself released you from the burden of guilt and depression that grabs hold. It provides an avenue to move forward.

I would never have found answers without an ooen mind AND Dr Amen. He, too, recommends non- pharmaceutical options first. AND he puts all the infi in a book for ALL to read. A book that was tge price of my copay. It was priceless. Hee also covered all the drugs that could be beneficial too. The first step was to read the book and get a clear diagnosis.

I diagnosed my son Took him to a specialist who just knodded for an hour. Thank you Dr Amen !! Of course school refused to assist, and primary just gands out a prescription every month. My son is better due ti my efgorts but I also wonder how more developed ge could be if he had received support from school and the medical field. Seems like treatment of mental challenges is in the dark ages.

There is healthy introversion, shyness--and social anxiety disorder.

There being social anxiety disorder doesn't necessarily mean that being socially anxious, or tending towards that is an illness. People are sometimes sad within certain norms. There is the danger that somebody who is just legitimately grieving, or who needs to rearrange their lives to be happier will be mistaken for depressed. Or passion could be mistaken for mania. But these feelings, emotions, personality traits, can all be off. It might still be the "norm" for the individual, there might even be historical situations where they were advantageous--sometimes paranoia works, for instance.

Sometimes when I'm especially anxious, if I line up for groceries and somebody's behind be and ahead of me, I'll feel surrounded--it's all I can do not to just leave the store. When I was a teenager, sometimes my Dad would drive me to school, and I'd want to fling myselt out of the moving car. Too many people in the car, just me and him. Not recently--but there have been weeks when I haven't been able to leave my apartment. This isn't even when I'm having a psychotic episode--at least, not necessarily mania or depression.

I can't just call a family member to chat, sometimes ordering a coffee feels like a teenage boy trying to ask a girl out for a date for the first time--something I never managed to do.

Check out a social anxiety forum sometime. It's nice if you're enjoying being introverted. There are benefits sometimes, sometimes you don't feel like being around people. It can get lonely and painful when it's not a choice.

Which is why I have to stay as ketogenic as I can stand.

This is why I think it's important to be nice to people, really nice because we never know what they're going through.
Hence my salutation t the bottom of the page.
A smile is a language everybody understands. It costs nothing but creates much. It happens fast but its memory may last forever.

For instance, there is this realllllly nice lady at the Walgreens (drug store). I can go in there and she just exudes niceness and she always makes me and DH feel so happy when we go there. I always leave there smiling after talking to her. Sometimes people just don't think about how they're acting with strangers and it takes so little to just be nice and friendly which puts others at ease. Back in the day people like her were normal, for instance they took the time to talk to the elderly.
I saw one checker actually mock an older man when he left because she complained he wants to talk to much when he comes in. She had no empathy for the older one, maybe no respect either.

teaser, that's why I never get in people's space in line. I've noticed it's different for people from very populated places, they tend to want to pack together and in line it really doesn't make the line move faster, it just makes people feel like they're rushing/pushing them. It's a nervousness they have depending where they were raised. In the south we tend to give that space and are less aggressive I guess you could say. We take a pause to let others pass first. Some people see that as weakness, I see it as a virtue.

edited a little bit

Oh yes, I'm not saying it's never a problem, suck it up buttercup. And whatever works: works.

When I sought help for my anxiety/panic attacks, I tried two drugs without success, and one of them had a long and excruciating tapering off segment that my doctor estimated at 8 months. I cut that to three with chelated magnesium: but my patience was at an end with being experimented upon.

Yet that was all medical science had to offer. Low carb and supplements work so much better! But that's even less likely than someone with diabetes getting told about keto.



I found his book! I am going to read it soon.

And yes, it is likely that the mental health field was trying to figure out a way to get patients help. It's really the insurance companies who are the demon here: and I don't say that lightly.

I say it with conviction.

ummmmm, when you read the story about DrAmens nephew you might have a different opinion of the medical field. That experience caused Dr A to disreguard the medical norms and jump in two feet to help people, even if only thru a book. ( to get a full work up is $5k, no insurance accepted)

There are many good doctors. There are no good health insurance companies.

In fact, I just read about a man who had a head injury from a car accident in the winter. It broke the driver's side window and he was shivering as they loaded him into the ambulance.

His insurance company claimed that showed it was a seizure, which had to be a preexisting condition, and refused to pay. He and his family wound up living in the wife's parents' basement.

He still has total global amnesia of his life before the accident and had to teach himself a new set of job skills. With a brain injury. And on the hook for all the medical bills.

That's evil.

Great story and very important observation that is related to the following:
You can easily judge the character of a person by how she/he treats those who can do nothing for her/him.

The terms "extroverts" and "introverts" are broadly misunderstood. Susan Cain's book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking is an excellent treatment of this topic. I highly recommend it.

Here's an amazon.com link:
https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-...ps%2C158&sr=8-1

ETA link for book.

Which is why I like the self-checkout - no one close enough to feel like I'm trapped. I sit near the front at church for the same reason - most people prefer the back half of the church. But last night someone sat right in front of me, then a family sat behind me. It took some doing to calm down & not flee to another pew.

I'm so glad I found low carb. I changed my diet for my physical health, but it also did wonders for my mental health.

I have it, started it, then lost track. Thanks, I'm getting back to it.

I'm not disparaging anyone's mental health struggles: my anxiety scaled up to panic attacks as my illness challenges mounted up. Turns out, I was an introvert: people drained my batteries, not recharged them.

Turns out, all the relaxation advice I got was for extroverts, who are recharged by people. What, are they vampires!?!?

That's the analogy I used that finally got thru to my husband. He gets recharged by social contact, I get drained. It's difficult for both of us when we get home from something I haven't been able to avoid - he's bouncing off the walls & wants to talk, I just want to go to bed.

DH and I have a similar challenge: I work in an office and lately I'm filling in for public facing work. While he has a chronic illness and sometimes the cabin fever is fierce.

The Census work I've been doing for the last 3 months involved a lot of talking to people & groups - neither of which I'm very good at. I'm off for a week now & the next job will be talking with people, too. At least the pay is worth it - and it's temporary!