Posts from — June 2010

I’ve known for a while that I’m an introvert.  I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs test more than once, and even though I love people and I appreciate spending time with my friends, it’s obvious that I am, without question, an introvert.  So what’s that mean?  A lot of people think of introverts as quiet, shy individuals that just keep to themselves.  Well, I’m not quite that.  And that’s not really what it means.  Someone with an introvert temperament gains energy from time spent alone.  There’s quite a bit more to it than that, I’m finding out, but that is the jist of it.

For one of my classes last fall, I had to take the Myers-Briggs again.  I came out as an INFP, which makes sense.  I’m pretty much a strong I (introvert) and F (feeling), with borderline N and P, apparently.  Before announcing who in our class came out as what temperament, our instructor gave us the breakdown of what everyone in the class was.  Each Myers-Briggs personality type works out to be a certain temperament.  Not surprisingly, there were a lot of Rationals in our group, and some Guardians.  But only one Idealist.  Yeah, guess who…

I didn’t really give a whole lot of thought to this, since I already knew I was an introvert.  And some people might not even think it matters a whole lot, but I honestly had never really thought about this before.  Until I realized I was dating a textbook extrovert.  Ricky, my boyfriend, is pretty much the polar opposite of me on this temperament scale.  He doesn’t understand my need to be home and spend time alone, or why “going out” wears me out sometimes.  To him, being with people is a total energy generator, not drainer.  One of the things I love about him is that I never have to guess what he’s thinking, because I always know.  He is quick to tell what is on his mind.  Of course he is, as an extrovert, he processes things outwardly.  He is stimulated by what goes on around him.  Being around a bunch of people gives him energy.  I, on the other hand, am the exact opposite.  I like people, don’t get me wrong, but eventually I reach my fill of them and need time to process thoughts on my own.  That’s the real difference between us.  Ricky, an extrovert, processes things by saying what’s on his mind.  He reacts to outer stimuli.  I, a typical introvert, react to and process everything on the inside.  Only if you’re an introvert can you truly know what this means.  I see so many of my friends that just have this need to hang out with people.  I on the other hand, can go days without doing that.  I have enough of my inner thoughts to keep me company.

I started reading this book, The Introvert Advantage, to gain a bit more insight into some of these things that confound me about how I process things.  It’s been kind of enlightening.  Like, for example, it talks about how introverts can easily be overstimulated by the external world, creating a feeling of “too much”.  I so know exactly what this means.  I turn down lunches with people just to be able to get away to spend an hour by myself.  Extroverts, on the other hand, gain energy by that external stimuli.  They need people, activities, places to go, to generate energy. Their focus is on the outside world.  To me, though, the thought of going out or being somewhere every night just exhausts me and makes me irritable.  I need my time to recharge.  Extroverts get lonely if they are not in contact with people.  Not me, not for quite a while anyway.  I can go for days in my own little “cave”.  In fact, doing so energizes me.  It takes me time to recharge and to process all the thoughts and goings-on inside my head.  Not getting the time or ability to do so can make me totally stressed out.

If you are an extrovert, wow, let me tell you… you will probably never completely understand what goes on inside our heads.  There are so many thoughts and stimuli and things to process that it makes me tired just thinking about it.  Oh yeah, that’s another thing… sleep recharges introverts.  Quiet time, down time… yeah, that’s what helps me.  Ricky is just the opposite.  He is always going, going, going.  That just makes me tired.

I wish I could explain everything in this book.  It’s honestly just a continuous learning experience.  The more I read, though, the more sense it makes.  I get worn out easily with all of the stimuli in my life.  On the days that I have an eight-hour day at work and then a three-hour class afterwards, I generally just want to go home and relax.  And I *hate* having weeks where I have a lot of stuff going on on weeknights.  It makes me just want to go home and curl up with a book.

So here’s the lesson I’ve learned: that what I am is okay.  I’m not weird because I don’t like to go out every night.  The fact that a lot of times I just like going to lunch by myself to read is perfectly fine.  And the fact that I have a lot going on inside my head that never really makes it out, that’s okay too.  These are all perfectly normal, and they’re really just me being me.

If you suspect that you might be an introvert, I highly advise you to read this book.  It’s been helpful, and even given me some ideas to best utilize my introvertedness.  And it might just give you some new insight into yourself.