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It's quite possible -- actually, it's quite likely -- that my own shyness is an inherited condition, passed on from my mother to me as directly as a physical trait, like fair skin or good teeth. Shyness appears to be among the most persistent and durable aspects of human personality, one with deep (and largely intractible) physiological roots. Social anxiety appears to run in families; the first signs of it can be detected even before birth (infants with fast fetal heart rates tend to be whiny and fidgety as kids, predisposed to anxiety and inhibition as adults). And if you're born with a shy personality (what Harvard psychiatrist Jerome Kagan calls a "behaviorally inhibited" temperament), you'll probably lug it around with you your whole life. Kagan, the grandfather of research on shyness, studied children who were classified as either inhibited or uninhibited at 2, then retested the same kids at age 7 and ages 12 to 14; more than 75 percent of the children initially assessed as shy turned into cautious, serious and quiet 7-year-olds; the same behavior patterns were evident in adolescence.

Kagan theorized that a part of the brain called the amygdala, which triggers physiological fear reactions, might be activated more easily in the behaviorally inhibited kids. Other researchers have singled out the right frontal lobe as responsible (that's the part of the brain that seems to be involved in controlling negative emotions; shy kids appear to have higher right frontal lobe activity than bold kids). More often than not these days, the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine are considered as culprits: the naturally inhibited appear to have lower levels of both, possibly because of a single gene -- the so-called shy gene -- that creates either elevated or depressed amounts.

If personality is a marriage of nature and nurture -- a product of what we're born with and what we're born into -- then I suspect I inherited more than my mother's shy physiology: I also picked up her style of coping with inhibition, her reliance on code and the expectation that others would be both willing and able to decipher me the same way I deciphered her.

Consider the parents of boyfriends, a category that's always ranked high on my list of shy-provoking personalities, always pushed the major fear buttons (fear of being judged badly, fear of failing to fit in, fear of being deemed an inadequate partner). I've tended to compensate for my discomfort and silence by acting the way I did as a shy kid at family gatherings, by reaching into my bag of good-girl tricks and expecting to be seen accordingly: I might not say a word during dinner, but I'll set the table, I'll leap up and clear the dishes when the meal is over, I'll work that smiling-shyly, eager-to-please affect for all it's worth. See how helpful I am? How good-hearted and eager to please?

Astonishingly, this hasn't always worked. In fact, it's almost never worked. Parents of boyfriends have typically found me aloof, standoffish, inscrutable. After a long weekend at his parents' house, a three-day family gathering in which I struggled to compensate for my mute discomfort by making beds, cooking breakfast, even chopping wood, one ex-boyfriend confessed that his mother thought I was downright rude.

The trouble with shyness -- for both the shy and the people they interact with -- is that it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's but one ingredient in the larger stew of human personality, one element that's blended with -- and often masked by -- other qualities, which is part of the reason it's confusing: Shyness might feel like the dominant and most motivating personality trait to the shy person herself, but it's not always so evident to outsiders. My friend Grace, for example, is deeply shy but also very warm and inquisitive: She's what's known as a "shy extrovert," which means that while she may feel tentative and fearful in new social situations, she covers it extremely well by exuding friendliness, asking questions, maintaining lots of eye contact. She's developed a front, in other words, that puts people at ease. Another friend, Beth, who is sweet and delicate, has a more classically shy affect: She blushes when uncomfortable, turns her gaze downward, comes across as bashful but genuinely nice. My shyness manifests very differently.

Shyness aside, I'm also an essentially composed person, which is to say I've learned how to appear poised even when I don't feel poised; I've learned to shut down the tongue-tied, shaking, quaking part of my shyness and hide behind a rather calm façade. But shyness and composure are a complicated marriage: Together, they create a certain blankness of affect, a stiffness that's easy to read as detachment. My friend Sandy -- very sensitive, very shy, but physically imposing and rather brusque in affect -- is similarly misread: People tend to find her aloof and scary, which drives her crazy. "The shyness is so obvious to me -- why this scary interpretation?"

Interpretation, of course, is the key here, the gateway to confusion. Hidden behind that cloak of reserve, the shy person becomes a blank screen upon whom others project whatever fears or biases or self-perceptions they themselves bring to connections. If the person you're with worries (as many of us do) about being liked, your self-consciousness can look a lot like disdain; if he or she worries about measuring up or being charming, your discomfort or reserve may come across as boredom. Shyness flings the door to misunderstanding wide open. As a shy friend sums it up, "Silence is a Rorschach."

N E X T_ P A G E: "Chronic emotional constipation"

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