In this piece for Medium, Jenny Karlsson makes the case for depathologizing shyness by removing “social anxiety disorder” from the DSM.
“Shyness, under the label of, ‘social anxiety disorder,’ has unnecessarily been built up as an ‘unhealthy,’ or ‘suspicious,’ state of mind for people living in modern Western societies. Its behavioral ‘symptoms’ suggest a failure to achieve an arbitrary set of Western cultural values, such as chattiness, individual expression, and assertiveness. Shyness is more and more defined as a problem for which people can, and should, be treated, usually with drugging.”
