afraid of one's own shadow vs shrinking

afraid of one's own shadow

adj

  • Exceptionally timid. 

shrinking

adj

  • Shy and retiring. 

noun

  • The act of one who, or that which, shrinks; act of becoming smaller or moving timidly away. 

How often have the words afraid of one's own shadow and shrinking occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )