Upsana Khan

September 22, 2010

Magnet Accelerated World Literature 4th period

Nonfiction success theme


Shyness Begone

A review of Painfully Shy by Barbara G. Markway, Ph. D & Gregory P. Markway Ph. D

Walls surrounding them, blocking them away from the outside world. These walls were created with their minds. My book Painfully shy is about how to overcome social anxiety and shyness. There are methods and stories that help the reader understand that there is a way to over their shyness. The book Painfully Shy teaches readers how to break away from their shyness and be a stronger person with its step-by-step structure that helps readers along with techniques and interesting facts.

In reality I am very shy, but not like the people in this book. My goal in life is to be a stronger as a person not let little things hurt me. I try very hard to get out of my “shell” and have courage to face the world without any fear. To achieve this, I have to interact with other people and break my shell and be comfortable with it. In this book, it says: “In fact, social anxiety typically shows up before the age of twenty, often during the teenage years”(Markway 19)., it makes me feel so much better that I'm not the only teenager that is shy, and it motivates me to actually be less shy. This was the most inspiring sentence, when reading that sentence the first time gave me hope, the book does not beguile you.

The book has two parts to it, where it talks about social anxiety and the methods to over come it. Along with it are appendix's that have tips, recognizing anxiety, and websites that can be useful. Each chapter is a step to overcoming shyness. The beginning of the book talks about anxiety itself, which is linked throughout the book which in other chapters and the last chapter give helpful methods to get rid of the anxiety. The strength of this book is that when you read it you feel as if you can get rid of all your trepidation. I don't find any weaknesses in the book except that it doesn't encourage people enough to be intrepid and try hard enough to be less shy. The connotation in “Change leads us to new territory, causing us to rethink who we are and what we believe”(Markway 80). Instead of using “unknown territory” the authors could have used “something new” or “something different” for a better understanding of what change meant. In the sentence “unknown territory” is just a new “place” people haven't been too or a change in perspective.

There are several methods to help people out of anxiety. However, the small facts were more interesting and even more helpful. The methods found in this book is also similar to the how in the Art of War has methods, the only difference is that in the book, it is giving methods to help people with shyness and the Article is giving methods to destroy your enemy. One method in the book Painfully Shy is writing down how you feel when you're anxious and picking a number between one to ten to rate how anxious your feeling. Along with that, you ask yourself questions, such as “Do I have evidence that it is true?”, “Does it really matter about what people say or does it matter at all?”, or “Is it the end of the world?”. With this it helps people calm down and feel better and lower their anxiety levels. Another method is the relaxation training which has six stages that help reduce anxiety. One of stages are progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) where the person tighten the muscles throughout the body to make the body feel relaxed. Also, there is a stage that people tell themselves to calm down and relax their bodies and only concentrate on their breathing for a short period of time. A fact that breathing through the mouth has a possibility to increase hyperventilation, which why it is preferred that you inhale and exhale through nose and breathing from the diaphragm; which is healthier breathing.

This book is really helpful for people who are really shy. I do recommend this to others too not just shy people, so they can understand shy reticent people and what abase them. I would love to read the other books by these authors because it is a book you can read and take full advantage of it and use it life, the . This book is a real shell breaker and it gives people to face their fears.
Ms. Miller
9/24/2010 04:22:26 am

Hey, the photo is too large for this page. It's distorting your writing.

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