Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? What would be nice about it?
Not being alone.
But what if I don't mind being alone? Or even prefer it?
The trap of "I am not an extrovert"
201–210 of 473 posts
Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ever since I stopped doing this I’ve been much happier. Now that I’m old I don’t feel pressure to conform to social norms, I just do whatever I want. If that means I don’t see anyone else for weeks who cares. In my youth I felt so much pressure to be social and it’s just not what I want to be doing.
Pressure to be social is like pressure to stay fit. If you don’t put any effort it atrophies.
Unlike being fit, being social doesn't have any inherent benefit in terms of health. It's merely a preference.
Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And the idea of approaching and talking to someone I don't know fills me with terror. I think this is social anxiety and not to be confused with introversion.
Sure, they aren't quite the same thing, but they are related. And I used an extreme example. In general, among introverts, some have a high tolerance for social interactions, some have a very low tolerance and there are people everywhere in between. Or to use the terminology of introverts having to expend energy to interact with other people, you could say different people have different fuel efficiencies.
My SO and me are both introverts, and we've talked a fair bit about it. We both enjoy social events every now and then, but we do need to recharge afterwards.
The common theme for us seems to be that we expend a lot of energy when talking with others. We analyze what they say, in order to come up with thought-through responses or follow-up questions. We don't do "chit chat" as such.
Before such events I dread them, because I know it will feel exhausting. Yet when I'm at them I have a good time. Afterwards however it feels almost exactly like I've been programming hard for a whole day, my brain is spent.
I, unlike my SO, also has some social anxiety. I'm very likely somewhere on the spectrum, as I often feel difficulty getting social interactions right. So I spend some extra energy thinking about what the right response is to this or that, or how to interpret body language. Especially if it's a new setting or a lot of new people this can cause a lot of extra mental work.
This part however has gotten better with the years, mostly because I've stopped caring so much what others think and just let myself be myself more.
Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When Pompeii erupted the population was around 10k just there. And Rome (the city) had a population of 1 million or more, but that doesn't change the fact that demographers estimate at most a 10–20% urbanization rate in the Roman empire—meaning at least 80% of the population lived outside of cities in rural areas. And that's Rome, which had a notably high urbanization rate compared to periods before or after, not m…
Rural doesn't mean your living secluded away from the world though with two other families to talk to. There was still a society and economy to be part of, governments that rule, wars being fought, religion etc
None of those things required social engagement with large numbers of people on an ongoing basis. Occasional contact with the broader world for business and religion is not the same thing as the intense, frequent, and large-scale social expectations that are a burden for most introverts.
There's a huge difference between going to church on occasion (or even weekly, which was not always the norm) and living in a city with a population density measured in the thousands per square mile.
Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rural doesn't mean your living secluded away from the world though with two other families to talk to. There was still a society and economy to be part of, governments that rule, wars being fought, religion etc
None of those things required social engagement with large numbers of people on an ongoing basis. Occasional contact with the broader world for business and religion is not the same thing as the intense, frequent, and large-scale social expectations that are a burden for most introverts. There's a huge difference between going to church on occasion (or even weekly, which was not always the norm) and living in a city…
How else would you live?
I think this idea of villages of 30 people where you don't talk to anyone is just a fantasy. Even the Mayflower had 130 people to just set up their new town.
Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of those things required social engagement with large numbers of people on an ongoing basis. Occasional contact with the broader world for business and religion is not the same thing as the intense, frequent, and large-scale social expectations that are a burden for most introverts. There's a huge difference between going to church on occasion (or even weekly, which was not always the norm) and living in a city…
How else would you live? I think this idea of villages of 30 people where you don't talk to anyone is just a fantasy. Even the Mayflower had 130 people to just set up their new town.
> idea of villages of 30 people where you don't talk to anyone is just a fantasy
I didn't say that—I said you'd regularly interact with only ~30 people (give or take). You'd probably be on good terms with a few dozen more, and it's been demonstrated that we really lose the ability to have relationships entirely by about 100-300.
The average city today has about 8x that number of people per square mile. That's entirely unlike anything that evolution equipped us for, which is why I object to OP's assertion that we all descend from extremely social people. By modern standards we absolutely do not.
Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or not just limited amounts of time, but limited types of people. I have some friends who I have no trouble talking with all day. But with the overwhelming majority of people I meet, even if we get along well, I feel exhausted after too much interaction. Dealing with some types of "extroverts" is particularly tiring due to not caring about the weird formalities and talking around things that a lot do to seem "friendl…
I've never been able to distinguish this from simply being shy. More shyness means more stress in certain social interactions and stress is tiring. Moreover, I'm pretty sure you could take the most extroverted person around and take them out of their social element and they too would tire out. And vice versa, some of the most introverted people don't get tired out by their spouse.
The difference between introversion and shyness is the difference between exhaustion and fear. They can influence each other (being afraid all the time is exhausting, for example), but they are ultimately separate emotions that need not coexist or have any relationship to each other.
Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"
#208What I learnt from this post is that no one else is going to wait for you. If you are introverted, doesn't speak up, doesn't volunteer for anything; why are you surprised that you are not growing?
Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"
#209One thing to me is fairly obvious: people who are introverts can be social, but only for limited amounts of time. For example, I like talking a lot, but I can only do it for limited amounts of time. Maybe only a few hours a week. If I'm pushed past that point, I just don't want to chat any more. It's like I'm full of food, but with socialization. After that I find socialization immensely distasteful and irritating. T…
> Extroverts don't understand this concept of limited capacity for socialization. I think there's gotta be a middle ground where someverts are more tolerant of socializing for long periods of time. It still becomes draining, but they don't have some terrible allergic reaction. More like just mild sneezing!
Introversion level is really just a measure of how much social stimulation you require on average. Everyone has some level above which they feel exhausted and below which they feel lonely/bored.
Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
The field of personality psychology continues to believe it has meaning: extraversion is a factor in the five-factor model.
the five factor model suggests nothing about "gains energy/drains energy", it simply measures tendency toward extraversion and identifies it as a highly explanatory factor in personality. There are 5 factors because those 5 are the factors that when measured appear to be independent variables, and explanatory.
> There are 5 factors because those 5 are the factors that when measured appear to be independent variables
This is not correct; they are not independent.