[emsy]

Dear Benjamin,

I wanted to say how much I enjoyed your book. I really feel itís going to help me. Earlier in the year I had 25 sessions with a counsellor, and reading your book has made me see more clearly how she was trying to help. At first, I didnít really understand why she was focusing so much on my past because I didnít see how it was going to help me in the present. Reading your book has really enlightened me.

I did want to ask your advice though. Iíll give you a bit of my background. I was very shy as a child. I can remember hating going to nursery because I hated being around so many children. I remember my shyness always being commented on in a negative way by my teachers at primary school. I was always a target for bullies although never very bad bullying.

At secondary school I had to make new friends as my only true friend from primary school moved to a private school. I made friends with some girls who were very different to me, they came from a more ëworking classí background and to be honest, were not as clever as me. I was surprised by the way they spoke to each other ñ often very bitchily. They would fall out with me for no reason and I would be left alone at lunchtimes.

I started skiving off and not doing my homework. I hated every minute of school, firstly because I knew I wasnít fulfilling my potential, and secondly because I was always worried about whether my friends would be talking to me. Also, it was a rough school and there were often fights, which as a sensitive girl I used to hate. I felt it was more like being in a prison than a school. I started crying every night when I got home. This started was I was 14. By the time I was 16 and had left school my parents realised something was wrong and I ended up being put on antidepressants. I stayed on them until I was 23 ( I am now 29).

The antidepressants helped enormously and got me through my A-levels and my degree. The years since I came off the antidepressants have been a struggle. I went to a counsellor because I felt I needed to get to the bottom of why I became depressed in the first place. I was waking up in the middle of the night with acute anxiety, and always felt a sense of dread.

The counsellor helped a lot and I came to terms with the fact that what happened to me at school was a kind of trauma. She was the first person to use the word trauma. I had never thought of it as a trauma because I always assumed that was only used for something really bad.

The reason I want your advice is because I still feel anxious a lot of the time. I think one of the reasons for this is because I ëm not successful in my working life. have very good academic qualifcations but I have never had a career. I have been in a clerical, mindnumbing role for the last 4 years. I tend to decide on a profession and then change my mind a couple of weeks later. I wake up in the night and worry about the fact that I ëm not a success. Also, I donít feel much joy in my life. I feel my life consists of getting up, going to work, coming back and watching TV, with occasional exciting things like holidays. I watch people on TV, people like Jamie Oliver, who have a passion in life and I compare myself to them and wish that I was passionate about something.

My question is how can I start to feel more joy/meaning? Also, do you have opinion about what causes shyness in children? Is it genetic? I just feel that even as a very small child I never had any confidence and was wondering whether it would help me to delve deeper and find out why I was so shy?

[Benjamin Fry]

My view is that joy and meaning are automatic consequences of being alive. However trauma gets in the way. (Others will think Iím wrong and you should bear that in mind since I might be). That has been my personal experience and therefore informs my theoretical stance. The hard work of dissolving some of your trauma usually feels like it is making you feel worse, and then reveals even worse trauma to come. This is part of the process. In the end, though, joy and meaning begin to get an increasingly successful look-in.

There are two possible causes of shyness in children. One is that the child is born shy. The other is that they learn that it is safer to be shy. The later is likely to be the consequence of some very adverse treatment that leaves the child whishing not to get attention and afraid of others. The ìnature versus nurtureî argument is still very much wide open. However it is quite possible that you were sufficiently emotionally damaged before an age which you would remember to make you aware of always being shy. The fact of your present anxiety would tend to suggest an element of early damage in childhood, but that is just a theoretical speculation. No-one has a better chance of guessing the truth than yourself. The information is in there somewhere.

Deeper emotional work should help you to alleviate the symptoms of shyness and anxiety. It may also reveal reasons. However, sometimes the reasons are never found. That doesnít mean that the emotional intensity of the trauma can not be discharged. Life always seeks to take you deeper. If you help it along, then youíll get better more quickly and experience less resistance along the way.