Shyness
Work with your child’s shyness and watch them thrive in social situations.
Make your child’s shyness disappear
A CBT programme that can help your child thrive in social situations and give you knowledge and advice on how to work with your child’s shyness
“I am boring, and I have nothing to offer!”
“I look weird!”
“The others don’t want to listen to me!”
These are the kind of thoughts your child can have if they suffer from shyness. And it’s not enough that you as a parent tell your son or daughter that they are good enough.
There may be many reasons for your child’s shyness. Maybe your child gets shy at school? Maybe it’s only at events where many people are together?
Some children and young people only experience shyness in certain situations. For others, though, the shyness affects them so much that they hold themselves back. Over time, the negative thoughts can amplify and cause the child to completely avoid saying anything in situations where other people are present.
However, it is difficult to avoid situations where other people are present completely, and it is neither a healthy nor sustainable way to deal with shyness.
The good news is that you and your child can work with social insecurity and shyness.
In MYiNNERME’s programme about shyness, you and your child get research-based psychological knowledge and advice to thrive in social situations. You’ll learn more about what shyness is and you will get some practical exercises to teach your child how to handle their shyness.
The programme may serve as a supplement to current treatment. It may also be for you who are on a waiting list for treatment for your child. Or for those who don’t want to see a psychologist but want to work with their child’s shyness with the flexibility and confidentiality a digital solution, such as MYiNNERME, can offer.
Shyness can take control over you
Your child is not alone in being shy. It’s a feeling everyone knows. Most people have experienced feeling insecure in a social context and get nervous about meeting new people. It’s a widespread reaction, especially in teenagers who are in the process of finding out who they are and how they want to be.
Some children and young adults are so affected by their shyness that they hold themselves back. They avoid meeting new people or speaking in larger groups to fear being judged or evaluated negatively by others. Many of these children and young people find that they cannot be part of the same social events as their peers. Then, shyness has taken the upper hand, and it can be challenging to take back control.
There may be feelings of significant discomfort for your child when they experience this.
It’s important to teach your child that they are not ill in any way. Shyness is not a disease. It is a mixture of many different emotions that you and your child can work with.
How to overcome shyness
When your child has challenges with social insecurity and shyness, they can benefit from what is called cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). It is a compelling psychological method to learn about your child’s problems and get help challenging them. Changing what the child thinks and how they act in social situations can overcome their shyness.
In MYiNNERME’s programme about shyness, you’ll find exercises from cognitive behavioural therapy. You will get practical tools to help you think other thoughts, and you learn ways of challenging the child’s shyness.
Whether the child’s shyness leads to minor or significant problems, you can find advice and guidance to help their progress.
Shyness can be a great hindrance to your child, affecting their desire to be with other people. It is difficult to avoid situations where other people are present completely, neither a healthy nor sustainable way to deal with shyness. Therefore, it is good to work with the child’s shyness and learn ways of feeling comfortable among other people.
Fortunately, there’s a lot you can do yourself. A subscription to MYiNNERME will give you access to a course of treatment about shyness. You also get access to many other treatments- and learning programmes containing knowledge and exercises to deal with grief, COVID concerns, and anger. There are exercises both for the child and for you, as an adult to a child with challenges. That way, you can learn how to support and help your child understand and deal with mental health problems in the best possible way.
Cope with the shyness and watch your child grow.
We have taken everything we know about child psychology, teaching and digital communication to design an effective and flexible programme for you and your child. The goal is to create a nice and safe place where your child, with your support, learns to understand themselves and address the root of their shyness instead of escaping from it.
The programme uses psychoeducation, cognitive behavioural exercises and diary writing.
Through psychoeducation, your child learns what shyness is, how it can feel and why it’s like that. With cognitive behavioural exercises, which is one of the most widely used psychological treatment methods worldwide, your child is guided to develop strategies to handle their shyness. And through diary writing, your child gets in touch with their inner world and gets to work on their thoughts and feelings
The programme is divided into 18 sessions based on psychological research results and several years of clinical experience from working with children and adolescents.
Through the programme you learn about issues such as:
- Why shyness can sometimes be a good thing.
- The difference between shyness and social anxiety and what level of challenges your child experiences.
- What may be the causes of your child’s shyness.
- Using the temperature monitor to learn how feelings change in intensity.
- The four most common thought errors your child can make in social contexts – and how to avoid them.
- How unconscious safety rituals are a trap that can make your child’s insecurity even greater.
- How shyness can set off a chain reaction that affects your child’s thoughts, feelings and actions – and how it becomes easier to think sensible thoughts when you can see through the reactions.
- To remove focus from the shyness by resetting your radio signal.
- How you can examine your own and your child’s negative thoughts with detective questions.
- Reformulating negative thoughts into constructive thoughts.
- How you can support your child in maintaining the good results you achieve in the programme.
The programme runs in two parallel tracks: One for your child and one for you, so you can support your child in their healthy development.
