I always admired people who seemed comfortable attending an event that required mingling and small talk, who seemed to skate from one conversation to another. Their presence alone seems irresistible, able to seize control of an audience, evoking laughter, or intense interest in the stories they unfolded. I’m lying, of course. I didn’t admire them. I resented them. The longer I watched them dip in and out of conversations, the greater my resentment. I wasn’t forthcoming about such feelings but that cynical inner critic arguing the guy had probably never had a substantial thought in his life betrayed any efforts to self-deception. The sheer ease with which they maneuvered left me baffled and diminished.
Sometime in the early seventies, self-help writers began to popularize the issues around human temperament, especially some of those explicated by CG Jung. We learned to attach a name to why some of us found it so challenging to be genial and spontaneous among strangers. For me, and those like me, the more people, the more stressful. We were introverts. And our experience taught us other people liked extraverts more than they did introverts. We learned, over time, introversion was, if not a disability, certainly a deficit. It’s a pretty hefty generalization, but I think most introverts experienced it similarly. Memories remain painful enough to evoke a wince when, for example recalling an event from my high-school years on, say Facebook draws the comment, “I didn’t remember that you were there.” Introversion was, and often still is, understood to be something we needed to “get over” if we were going to be successful and productive adults. But the truth is, we just didn’t understand it. The self-help writers popularized inventories like the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and its diminutive cousin, the Kiersey Bates Temperament Sorter, which helped thousands better understand the meaning of introversion and extraversion. They emphasized introversion did not mean we were doomed to sit on the dark edges of all events hoping to encounter someone we knew who would stop to talk. It didn’t mean we would stand on the periphery of dances in High School and cocktail parties as adults and pray for someone to approach us as if we were worth their interest. And even if they did, we often couldn’t find the words to keep the conversation going knowing only to nod our heads as if we were intensely engaged. And remember we were without props to disguise our introversion. A cell phone is an introvert’s best friend. Now we can project the image of someone in constant demand responding to make believe text messages, emails and listening to our own voicemail message over and over. The good news is we are learning that introversion reflects a preference not a set of intractable behaviors. We are fully capable of learning and even executing behaviors most would describe as extraverted. The big discovery has to do with how executing behaviors that we’re not temperamentally suited to depletes our energy while performing behaviors better aligned with our temperament energizes us.
Learning that I could manage my introversion/extraversion balance was existentially critical for me because for the next +4 decades I would work in careers that had me in countless public events, regularly demanding I engage with people I did not know. As a Minister, teacher/workshop leader, business development executive, I was always with people, more people, and still more people. But I learned how to look like an extravert and was often told I made it look easy. It never was and still isn’t. I learned how to do this, I suppose, mostly by watching real extraverts do it and modeled myself after them. I adopted the “fake it ‘till you make it approach” and over time was able to emulate extraverts. And yes, I often came away exhausted. Well, that’s not exactly true. I came away with the pleasant buzz of victory and attracted attention that extraverts are familiar with, then felt exhausted. I learned many of the heady benefits of extraversion. As my confidence grew, I was less afraid to say what I believed. I said what I thought was funny. I offered an opposing point of view than that which was passively tolerated but secretly thought to be silly. It was always momentarily energizing but exhausting over time. The image that comes to my mind is Bob Fosse’s daily routine in ALL THAT JAZZ– taking a snort of cocaine to clear his head and shake off the exhaustion of being chronically “on” which indeed he needed to be. Looking in the bathroom mirror one last time before leaving, he smiled, and announced, “It’s showtime!” Day after day he had to act out what may not have come to him naturally without the ability to replenish the energy it demanded from him. As you may recall, it didn’t end well for Fosse and he danced himself right out of this world and into the next.
There are a couple of lessons to be taken from a better understanding of introversion and extraversion. First, we are not one-dimensional beings capable of exploiting only what we seem to have a natural predisposition toward. Extraverts make so many things that may feel impossible to introverts look easy. But we do possess the capacity to learn and with a little courage develop new adaptive skillsets to compensate for what we may be more naturally drawn to. Introverts can learn behaviors that empower them to do things they believed they could not. This also goes for extraverts who can, for example, learn to be still in a group to make room for others to participate.
Second, it is vital to one’s well-being to know who they are and the difference between their natural leanings and the skills they have developed to adapt to different circumstances. Shunning one’s introversion in favor of their newly-acquired adaptive skills can be exhausting and soul killing. Without returning to that which gives you energy (introverts, for example, may require more solitary time), sustenance must be derived from unsustainable forms. For Fosse’s character, it was perhaps the cocaine that helped him operate in “showtime” mode beyond his capacity. For others it can be the attention, the praise, the feeling of being recognized that helps them operate in this “showtime” mode. The truth is it doesn’t matter what seduces you into abandoning something so essential to who you are, only that doing it will cost you. The lesson here is to be mindful that who we are is not a prison, but an oasis, a place to return to over and over for nurture, comfort, and strength. And, that this, in turn, empowers you to venture beyond self-imposed limits.
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