I am an introvert. A loner. A happy hermit.
This world is too much for me. Too loud, too fast, too bright. Cell phones, leaf blowers, laptops, big fast trucks, fluorescent lights & Ipods. I love to be alone. I grew up alone with my animals. My best friend was my dad. Children my age overwhelmed me and made me feel uneasy and nervous. One of the few times I managed to get invited to a birthday party, I called home crying with my nerves shot wanting to be picked up because a roomful of insane children were playing a pop the balloon game...for fun. I was never good at childhood, Alice in Wonderland freaked the hell out of me, I read encyclopedias, biographies & dictionaries for fun. My friendships were always with adults. As an adult going to the grocery store or church can render me into a pile of jello & take all day to "recover". A concert is physically painful. Loud noise and bright lights are out of the question, it makes me ill. It drains all the energy from my body. Being in a group of people makes me feel like a caged wild animal climbing the walls. I do not enjoy parties or group conversation or debates of any kind. After potlucks or the like I come home mortified because i realize I can't remember the end of any of the conversations because most likely I walked away in the middle of it. I am easily distracted and cannot focus in crowds. (meaning 3 people) I avoid controversy at any cost. We don't discuss politics or religion at our house for the sake of peace. I am quite the Princess and the pea and completely socially unacceptable. I know some thrive on debate, I do not. I am a very private person. My God made me this way, gave me a need for solitude, peace & tranquility. So to be with God and worship Him, I usually "go to church" at the river, surrounded by His creation. He lets me bring my dog.
The problem is it took me SO long to figure all this out. It was wonderful to discover that I wasn't broken and I didn't need to be fixed. Another reason this is such valuable information is that it has enabled me to help others recognize this need in their life. (yes, introverts occasionally help others) I live in a family of theatre people, performers, musicians, EXTROVERTS. They have to be surrounded by people and talking to someone at all times. The more the merrier. Bunch of Bohemians. Except for one. My Little Hank is just like me. All morning was a chaotic nightmare, both his brothers home, loud, music, fighting, talking, asking, wanting him to do this and that until they reduced him to a pile of emotional rubble, I found him hiding under the futon trying to survive them and their demands. Well, after lunch, they both left, work & classes, so it was just me & Hank. The house was quiet. He sat down at the kitchen window and pulled back the curtain. He got out his new set of acrylic paints and brushes an insightful friend gave him for his birthday. (thanks,Mrs. H) He sat down and began to paint. He painted a beautiful solitary blue bird on a tree branch and the entire time he was humming and singing quietly to himself as happy, content and peaceful as a child could ever be. I thought how grateful I was that he will never have to figure it out, he knows he needs a lot of alone time. He will never try to do all the things the world says we have to do, as young as he is, he knows what it takes to be happy. He then trotted off to take a warm bath and is now playing happily, talking to his dog & singing in the tub. So, all that to say, if you are an loner, if you know or love an introvert, I have two things to share with you that changed my life. The first is a book called
Party of One , A Loner's Manifesto by Anneli Rufus & this is her website. http://www.annelirufus.com/ The second is the following excellent (& funny) article,
Caring For Your Introvert. I sent this to a fellow introverted friend (yes we also have friends) who said she was going to make it into brochures to hand out at parties and slip under her bedroom door to her family. (she also is captive in a family of extroverted freaks, hi KP) Two of my daughter Tallulah's best friends are introverts and during an attempt to throw them together and make them socialize, Gox said apologetically, "I'm sorry, I guess I'm just better one-on-one". to which Bink quickly replied, "I'm not." LOL I always joke with my social friends that I am going to open a Home for the poor loner children who have them for parents. I LOVE those kids. (hi kaitybug) It will be a huge house with many rooms and all the chairs will be facing corners & we will all sit together apart for hours in the dark, brooding in silence. :) One big happy quiet family. Applications now being accepted. And remember, we aren't broken, please don't try to fix us...
Caring for Your Introvert
From Atlantic Unbound:
Caring For Your Introvert by Jonathan Rauch (February 14, 2006) Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?
If so, do you tell this person he is "too serious," or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?
If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands—and that you aren't caring for him properly. Science has learned a good deal in recent years about the habits and requirements of introverts. It has even learned, by means of brain scans, that introverts process information differently from other people (I am not making this up). If you are behind the curve on this important matter, be reassured that you are not alone. Introverts may be common, but they are also among the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups in America, possibly the world.
I know. My name is Jonathan, and I am an introvert.
Oh, for years I denied it. After all, I have good social skills. I am not morose or misanthropic. Usually. I am far from shy. I love long conversations that explore intimate thoughts or passionate interests. But at last I have self-identified and come out to my friends and colleagues. In doing so, I have found myself liberated from any number of damaging misconceptions and stereotypes. Now I am here to tell you what you need to know in order to respond sensitively and supportively to your own introverted family members, friends, and colleagues. Remember, someone you know, respect, and interact with every day is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts. It pays to learn the warning signs.
What is introversion? In its modern sense, the concept goes back to the 1920s and the psychologist Carl Jung. Today it is a mainstay of personality tests, including the widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Introverts are not necessarily shy. Shy people are anxious or frightened or self-excoriating in social settings; introverts generally are not. Introverts are also not misanthropic, though some of us do go along with Sartre as far as to say "Hell is other people at breakfast." Rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring.
Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. They often seem bored by themselves, in both senses of the expression. Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially "on," we introverts need to turn off and recharge. My own formula is roughly two hours alone for every hour of socializing. This isn't antisocial. It isn't a sign of depression. It does not call for medication. For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating. Our motto: "I'm okay, you're okay—in small doses."
How many people are introverts? I performed exhaustive research on this question, in the form of a quick Google search. The answer: About 25 percent. Or: Just under half. Or—my favorite—"a minority in the regular population but a majority in the gifted population."
Are introverts misunderstood? Wildly. That, it appears, is our lot in life. "It is very difficult for an extrovert to understand an introvert," write the education experts Jill D. Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. (They are also the source of the quotation in the previous paragraph.) Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood. They listen for a moment and then go back to barking and yipping.
Are introverts oppressed? I would have to say so. For one thing, extroverts are overrepresented in politics, a profession in which only the garrulous are really comfortable. Look at George W. Bush. Look at Bill Clinton. They seem to come fully to life only around other people. To think of the few introverts who did rise to the top in politics—Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon—is merely to drive home the point. With the possible exception of Ronald Reagan, whose fabled aloofness and privateness were probably signs of a deep introverted streak (many actors, I've read, are introverts, and many introverts, when socializing, feel like actors), introverts are not considered "naturals" in politics.
Extroverts therefore dominate public life. This is a pity. If we introverts ran the world, it would no doubt be a calmer, saner, more peaceful sort of place. As Coolidge is supposed to have said, "Don't you know that four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still?" (He is also supposed to have said, "If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it." The only thing a true introvert dislikes more than talking about himself is repeating himself.)
With their endless appetite for talk and attention, extroverts also dominate social life, so they tend to set expectations. In our extrovertist society, being outgoing is considered normal and therefore desirable, a mark of happiness, confidence, leadership. Extroverts are seen as bighearted, vibrant, warm, empathic. "People person" is a compliment. Introverts are described with words like "guarded," "loner," "reserved," "taciturn," "self-contained," "private"—narrow, ungenerous words, words that suggest emotional parsimony and smallness of personality. Female introverts, I suspect, must suffer especially. In certain circles, particularly in the Midwest, a man can still sometimes get away with being what they used to call a strong and silent type; introverted women, lacking that alternative, are even more likely than men to be perceived as timid, withdrawn, haughty.
Are introverts arrogant? Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts. Also, it is probably due to our lack of small talk, a lack that extroverts often mistake for disdain. We tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours. "Introverts," writes a perceptive fellow named Thomas P. Crouser, in an online review of a recent book called Why Should Extroverts Make All the Money? (I'm not making that up, either), "are driven to distraction by the semi-internal dialogue extroverts tend to conduct. Introverts don't outwardly complain, instead roll their eyes and silently curse the darkness." Just so.
The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves. Still, we endure stoically, because the etiquette books—written, no doubt, by extroverts—regard declining to banter as rude and gaps in conversation as awkward. We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts' Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say "I'm an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush."
How can I let the introvert in my life know that I support him and respect his choice? First, recognize that it's not a choice. It's not a lifestyle. It's an orientation.
Second, when you see an introvert lost in thought, don't say "What's the matter?" or "Are you all right?"
Third, don't say anything else, either.
The URL for this page is
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch
