Shyness doesn't have anything to do with Boldness in one's life

I was always shy but I also was intense and aggressive and very bold underneath all this too. 

Aggressive might be the wrong word here because I was always a very kind and helpful and polite person. However, I also had a temper if people hit me or put me down. So, I would defend myself as long as I felt I could survive this and not die from a knife wound or gun or club or chain. This was the 1950s and early 1960s remember.

I recently explained to someone how for me meeting someone new is overwhelming for me. I think this is because I'm an intuitive and i usually know everything about a person I need to know within the first 5 to 10 minutes of meeting them. Have I ever been fooled? Yes. Many times when I was under 25 or 30 but not very much since then.

So, when I meet someone new it is like standing under a waterfall but each waterfall is different. Some have rocks coming over the cliff and some are dirty or polluted water but most people are a mixture of pure water mixed with rocks mixed with various kinds of pollution in their lives and sometimes craziness.

So, when I meet someone I want to know if they are a threat to me or my family or friends since people tried to kill me when I was 9 to 12 years old. So, I don't lightly trust people now because of this.

So, I really want to know if this person is a physical or psychological threat to me in any way. This is the first thing I want to know.

So, I find meeting people (generally speaking) is very painful and difficult.

However, if I can survive the first 5 to 10 minutes with that person I might find them wonderful and want to be around them more (or not).

But, I have always found the first 5 to 10 minutes meeting a new person as excruciatingly painful for me.

Because I never know what to expect.

But, the other side of this is I'm 6 foot 5 and I don't smile much which intimidates people a lot too.

However, I don't smile out of survival that I learned as a child. If you smile among boys they would beat you up when I was growing up. So, smiling was a way to go to the hospital. So, I learned to never smile unless I was around people I trusted. This was just basic survival in the 1950s around other boys or men then.