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A lack of confidence is often put down to something we call shyness.
缺乏自信通常被归因于我们所说的害羞。
But beneath shyness, there may lie something more surprising, pernicious and poignant.
但在害羞的背后，可能隐藏着一些令人惊讶、恶性的和辛酸的东西。
We suffer from a suspicion of ourselves that gives us a sense that other people will always have good reasons to dislike us, to think ill of us, to question our motives and to mock us.
我们对自己有一种怀疑，这种怀疑让我们感觉到，别人总是有充分的理由不喜欢我们，认为我们不好，质疑我们的动机，嘲笑我们。
We then become scared of the world, speak in a small voice, don’t dare to show our face at gatherings and are frightened of social occasions because we fear that we are ideal targets for ridicule and disdain.
然后，我们变得害怕世界，说话声音很小，不敢在聚会上露面，害怕社交场合，因为我们害怕自己是被嘲笑和鄙视的理想目标。
Our shy manner is the pre-emptive stance we adopt in the face of the blows we feel that other people want to land on us.
我们的害羞态度是我们在面对别人想要打击我们时采取的先发制人的姿态。
Our shyness is rooted in a sense of unworthiness.
我们的害羞植根于价值感缺失。
As shy people, when we find ourselves in a foreign city in which we know no one, we can be thrown into panic at the prospect of having to enter a busy restaurant and order a meal on our own.
作为害羞的人，当我们发现自己在一个陌生的城市，一个人都不认识时，我们可能会因为不得不进入一家繁忙的餐厅独自点餐而陷入恐慌。
Dogged by a feeling that no one especially wants to know us, that we are outside the charmed circle of the popular and the desirable, we are sure that our leprous condition will be noticed by others and that we will be the target of sneering and viciousness.
我们被一种没有人特别想了解我们的感觉所困扰，认为我们自己处于受欢迎和令人向往的迷人圈子之外，我们确信自己的麻风病会被别人注意到，我们会成为嘲笑和恶毒的目标。
We unknowingly impute to strangers the nasty comments that we are experts at making to ourselves; our self-image returns to haunt us in the assumed views of others.
我们会不知不觉地把自己擅长对自己说的恶毒评论归罪于陌生人; 我们又会被别人假设的自我形象所困扰。
We imagine that groups of friends will take mean delight in our solitary state and read into it appalling conclusions about our nature.
我们想象一群朋友会从我们孤独的状态中获得一种刻薄的快乐，并从中解读出关于我们本性的可怕结论。
They will see right through our veneer of competence and adulthood and detect the deformed and unfinished creature we have felt like since the start.
他们会看穿我们伪装能力和成年人，探查到我们从一开始就好像是畸形和未发展完全的生物。
They will know how desperate we have been to win friends and how pitiful and isolated we are.
他们会知道我们是多么不顾一切地想要赢得朋友，知道我们是多么可怜和孤独。
Even the waiter will fight to restrain their desire to giggle at our expense in the kitchen.
甚至连服务员都会竭力克制自己在厨房里嘲笑我们的欲望。
A comparable fear haunts us at the idea of going into a clothes shop.
一想到要走进服装店，我们就会产生类似的恐惧。
The sales attendant will surely immediately sense how unfit we are to lay claim to the stylishness on offer.
售货员肯定会立刻感觉到我们有多么不适合他们所提供的款式。
They may suspect we lack the money; they will be appalled by our physique.
他们可能会怀疑我们缺钱，他们会被我们的体格吓坏的。
We lack the right to pamper our own bodies.
我们没有权利纵容自己的身体。
It can be as much of a hurdle to attend a party.
参加聚会可能会遇到同样多的阻碍。
Here too our fundamental imagined awfulness is perpetually at risk of being noticed and exploited by others.
真正的你想象的可怕是你将永远处于被别人注意和利用的危险之中。
As we try to join a group of people chatting animatedly, we dread that that they will swiftly realise how unfunny we are, how craven our nature is and how peculiar and damned we are at our core.
当一群人兴致勃勃地聊天，我们试图加入时，我们担心他们会很快意识到我们是多么的乏味，我们的天性是多么的懦弱，我们的内心是多么的古怪和可恶。
The novelist Franz Kafka, who hated himself with rare energy, famously imagined himself into the role of a cockroach.
小说家弗朗茨·卡夫卡以罕见的精力憎恨自己，他把自己想象成了蟑螂的角色，这是出了名的。
This move of the imagination will feel familiar to anyone sick with self-disdain.
这种想象力的举动对任何患有自卑的人来说都会感到熟悉。
We, the self-hating ones, spontaneously identify with all the stranger, less photogenic animals: rhinoceroses, blobfish, spiders, warthogs, elephant seals…
我们这些自我憎恨的人，会自发地认同所有陌生的、不那么上镜的动物：犀牛、河豚、蜘蛛、疣猪、象海豹…
We skulk in corners, we run away from our shadow, we live in fear of being swatted away and killed.
我们躲在角落里，我们逃离我们的影子，我们生活在害怕被重击和杀害的恐惧中。
It is no surprise if, against such an internal background, we end up ‘shy’.
在这样的内部背景下，如果我们最终变得“害羞”也就不足为奇了。
The solution is not to urge us blithely to be more ‘confident’.
解决的办法不是轻率地催促我们变得更“自信”。
It is to help us to take stock of our feelings about ourselves that we have ascribed to an audience, that is, in reality, far more innocent and unconcerned than we ever imagine.
它帮助我们评估我们对自己的感觉，我们归因于观众，也就是说，在现实中，我们比我们想象的要天真得多，也比我们想象的要冷漠得多。
We need to trace our self-hatred back to its origins, repatriate and localise it, and drain it of its power to infect our views of those we encounter.
我们需要追溯我们的自我仇恨的根源，消除并定位，并消除它影响我们对所遇到的人的看法。
Everyone else isn’t jeering, or bored or convinced of our revoltingness; these are our certainties, not theirs.
其他人并没有嘲笑我们，也没有对我们的反叛感到厌烦或深信不疑; 这些是我们确定的，不是他们确定的。
We don’t have to whisper in a circumspect manner and enter each new conversation, restaurant or shop with a sheepish air of apology.
我们不必小心翼翼地低声细语进入每一次新的谈话，不必带着一种羞怯的道歉神情进入餐馆或商店。
We can cast aside our introverted circumspection once we realise the distortions of our self-perception, and can come to believe in a world that has far better things to do than to despise us.
一旦我们意识到自我认知的扭曲，我们就可以抛弃内敛谨慎，并开始相信这个世界有比鄙视我们更好的事情要做。
