Introverted

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

I have slowly been coming to a conclusion that I actually acknowledged and spoke aloud for the first time today.

Partly because I think I've had the wrong interpretation of the words introvert and extrovert.

I thought all introverts were quiet and all extroverts were loud.

Since I tend to be loud and demonstrative and expressive, I have always considered myself an extrovert.

But lately there has been a LOT of information about introverts crossing my path and I've been surprised at how much of that info actually seems familiar.  I've begun to wonder if my suppositions were wrong.  Perhaps... it has nothing to do with how you express yourself and everything to do with how you relate to people.

If you throw me in a room full of people and tell me to go 'round and talk to folks, I'll put on my actress face and do it...but it won't be easy.  I won't be comfortable.  Even if I know almost everyone there. I'll have to fight the urge to start emptying trash cans or refilling the snack trays or some such thing.  Not because I have a need to serve, you understand, but because that's safer.  I can be busy and not risk anything.

I've always assumed it was because I was lacking basic social skills.  Because I feared rejection. 

But lately I have wondered if  it's because I'm a loud introvert.  A contradiction, maybe...or maybe not.  It's easy to use performance as a place to hide and avoid having to deal too directly with others.

I still have to deal with the fear of rejection...been hit with it too many times...but I have suddenly had the thought that maybe, just maybe, the core of the issue isn't fear...it's introversion.

This is a pretty big paradigm shift.  When I stop considering that discomfort-in-a-crowd as fear and start considering it as a hardwire issue, then that does away with a lot of self-criticism.  Instead of fighting to get over or get delivered,  I need to consider how to adapt; how to learn to work with who I am instead of trying to fix a character flaw.

Maybe...just maybe...there isn't as much fear in operation as I thought. 

Maybe I can stop being frustrated with myself for not seeming to get over that fear.  Because it. Isn't. Fear.

I'm just an introvert.