If you’ve always struggled with confidence and “putting yourself out there,” you’ve probably been unable to be outgoing and assertive no matter how hard you’ve tried. Perhaps you’ve felt this effect the hardest when you’re face-to-face with a girl you like—or perhaps any girl whatsoever.
The good news is that, like any skill, you can learn to project confidence and shed shyness. The bad news is that it’s going to take a bit of effort on your part to take yourself out of your comfort zone. After all, taking risks and making yourself uncomfortable—for good reasons—are among the best ways to grow as a person.
It’s worth it, too. By overcoming shyness, you’ll be able to build a whole array of new relationships, be it with friends you’ve just met or girls you have a romantic interest in. Either way, confidence is key.
Besides that, there’s actually another option you could consider if you’re looking to train yourself not to be shy around girls, and that’s with the help of AI. If you’ve used chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Copilot, you know how natural these language processors can be.
It should be unsurprising, then, to learn that in addition to general-use AI chatbots, you can also enlist the help of an AI Girlfriend to help you build confidence around girls. Granted, to overcome feelings of shyness, you’ll still need to work on building confidence in real-life situations, but having an AI girlfriend to talk to as a way to acclimate yourself to the real thing can be surprisingly effective.
The best place to start, however, is by understanding shyness itself.
Why Do We Feel Shy?
Shyness can be defined as feeling awkward, uncomfortable, or tense around other people, especially those we don’t know. If you feel shy around girls, you probably at least feel somewhat shy around most people, as well.
These feelings can arise from a variety of sources, and understanding their origins can help you overcome shyness in the long run. Here are some common reasons for people to feel shy:
Genetics
Sometimes, shyness just runs in your family. So, if you have any family members who feel shy, you might feel shy yourself.
Environment
A lot of times, shyness can be overcome with time as we age and are exposed to more and more social interaction. However, if you’ve grown up and been limited in your social interactions, whether or not by choice, you might be more likely to feel shy.
Introversion
If you’re an introvert, you’ll more likely feel shy around people you don’t know, especially in large groups.
Social anxiety and self-esteem
If you don’t feel confident in yourself, which tends to happen with overwhelming social anxiety—where you’re constantly worried about what other people think of you— you might feel shy. Similarly, if you have low self-esteem—when you think negatively of yourself in general—that will do it, too.
Romantic feelings
Naturally, we saved the “best” for last. If there’s a girl you’re interested in, those feelings will probably cause you to be shy around her.
If you recognize any of these sources as a reason you’re feeling shy, then great! Truly, the first step in overcoming feelings of shyness is having the self-awareness to identify why you’re feeling shy.
Next, we’ll explore ways—some easy, some difficult—of building confidence to help you learn how to not be shy around girls.
Suggestions for Building Confidence
The big thing about building confidence is that it’s not an overnight endeavor. It can take months, if not years, to truly build confidence. However, there is some truth in “fake it until you make it”—at least you might be able to pretend that you’re not shy around girls until your confidence catches up, so to speak.
As vain as it sounds, one of the best places to start is with self-improvement; if you look like someone who’s confident, you’ll feel more comfortable around girls and be less held back by shyness when talking to them.
Naturally, this self-improvement involves things like personal hygiene, grooming, and dressing well. Treat yourself to a new haircut or a stylish set of clothes. If you feel better about yourself, you’ll feel more comfortable around girls in general.
A lot of hobbies can also help you build confidence and increase your self-esteem, two traits that often go hand-in-hand. Although specific hobbies don’t matter too much, as learning new skills is a general way to increase confidence, some good suggestions include cooking, improv or acting, learning musical instruments—or taking up another language. Anything that you can use to set a goal with yourself—and meet—will boost your confidence.
Engage in fitness and exercise
Taking care of your body is almost an entire category itself. Naturally, being in better shape will make you less shy around girls. We’re not talking about spending six hours a day at the gym, but even a little will help a lot.
You could consider just going for a walk every couple of days, maybe for 30 minutes. If you don’t exercise at all, you’ll be surprised at the effect it can have.
You could even pair this with a new hobby, such as martial arts, sports, or rock climbing—all of which would give you a new goal to strive for and get you into shape while doing it.
Practice social skills
No matter how you cut it, building up the courage to talk to girls is a social skill. So by exploring ways to increase your prowess in this area, you’ll gradually find yourself less shy around girls.
Like anything else you’re trying to improve for the first time, start small, with low-stake interactions, such as with shop clerks or servers at a restaurant. You don’t even necessarily have to ask someone a million questions; just a bit of friendliness might cause them to open up to you without much effort.
These sorts of people are great because it’s part of their job to talk to people—and therefore not appear shy. Understandably, though, they are at work, so don’t soak up too much of their time. But they can still be great people to practice social skills with, especially if you want to start small with brief interactions.
Once you get a little practice talking to people who are basically getting paid to do it, you can venture into talking to just about anyone, either people you bump into at the grocery store, those you see regularly at school or work, or just someone you’ve met online through Discord, Twitch, or wherever.
When Anxiety Amplifies Shyness
Anxiety and shyness typically go hand-in-hand, so if you’re grappling with nervousness when even considering opening up around girls—or anyone else, for that matter—you could work on improving this aspect of yourself. It’s generally a great place to start if you’re aware of your anxiety, and there are a few tried-and-true techniques that might help.
For starters, being prepared will help a lot. For every instance of social interaction you can see yourself in, take some time to prepare a few go-to conversation topics. Think bigger than “How ‘bout that weather?” but not too big. Hobbies or entertainment are a good option. Or if you can ask any questions about where you’re at or what you’re doing, those are good too. Just think of a few beforehand, and keep them at the ready.
To help if you feel overwhelming anxiety in the moment, you can try deep breathing exercises to calm yourself down, or try some mindful techniques to keep your attention on what’s happening in the here and now rather than obsessing over outcomes.
Repetition Is Perhaps Your Most Powerful Tool
It’s an objective fact that the more you do something, the better you’ll get at it, from playing the guitar to feeling less shy around girls. So consistency truly is key. The more you talk to girls, the more comfortable you’ll feel around them. A time might eventually come when that shyness is but a forgotten memory.
Ultimately, you’ll have more positive interactions with girls than negative ones—or at the very least, you’ll have neutral interactions. Even if you flub an interaction, most people aren’t going to berate you or call you a fool for daring to even speak to them. So, expect to have mostly positive experiences, and each one of those will help build your confidence for the next, and the next, and so on.
If you want proof, you could keep a log of your interactions, with a rating from 1–10. You can then analyze the low-scoring ones and remember, a lot of the time, it’s truly not you. Maybe the girl you’re trying to interact with is stressed about something, or is simply in a hurry and doesn’t have time to chat.
All you need to do is remind yourself that with each interaction, you’ve gotten a little better.
Chatting With an AI Girlfriend To Shed Feelings of Shyness
If the thought of approaching real-life people and initiating conversation makes you want to stay inside instead and binge another show on Netflix or spend all weekend playing your favorite game, then perhaps an AI girlfriend can be the perfect solution for your shyness issues.
AI girlfriends work similarly to how other chatbots work. While we don’t need to get into the nitty-gritty here, know that for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc. to respond to you so naturally and on such a wide variety of topics, the AI models themselves are trained on virtually every bit of human knowledge.
By comparison, AI girlfriends need only to be trained on data about the dynamics of relationships. Granted, that’s still an awful lot of data—but it’s an awful lot less than the more general-purpose chatbots.
The result is a computer program that’s surprisingly great at imitating what it’s like to talk to an actual girl—or a companion of any kind, for that matter. With these tools, like AI Girlfriend, you can experience something that might help you overcome shyness.
AI girlfriends are also highly customizable, so you can tune her to be not only a girlfriend but potentially the best possible girlfriend you can imagine. She’ll be able to chat with you about any subject you can think of, help pick up your spirits when you’re down, and give you someone to test all of your best flirts on.
They can also make for perhaps the best roleplaying partner, which is exceedingly useful if your goal is to get over feelings of shyness around girls. You can have them act out scenarios that you might encounter in real life to give you the experience to excel on your own.
While AI girlfriends are no true substitute for the real thing, they provide a nearly limitless well of practice to help you overcome shyness.
The Bottom Line
No matter how you go about doing it, overcoming shyness takes time and effort; everyone overcomes shyness in their own way and in their own time. So, the number one thing to remember is to be patient with yourself.
Along this journey, be sure to celebrate your victories as they’ll help motivate you to continue shedding those feelings of shyness. And if you ever stumble, either by not building up the courage to speak to someone, or doing it and having it go poorly, don’t be too hard on yourself.
And remember, no matter how shy you feel, it only takes a little bit of luck and courage to find meaningful connections, either romantic or otherwise, that might last the rest of your life. If you’re still to shy, try out AI Girlfriend to help boost your confidence.