Anxieties of an Introvert

     Hi, my name is Karen, and I am an introvert.  (crowd:  “hi Karen”)    Some people call it shy, some call it anxious, some call it being introverted.  They are all a bit different,  yet all inter-connected – and all living inside of me like the cast of an awkward television comedy   (I hope Zooey Deschanel would play me).

     Introverts tend to be reserved and reflective.  We find both comfort and the recharging of our spiritual batteries in quiet surroundings with the solitary company of ourselves (and maybe our dogs).  We are perfectly content this way, without needing extra stimulation from the external world.  In fact, being immersed in a sea of other people can feel over-stimulating and energy draining.  In contrast, extroverted people are more outgoing, talkative, and relish being surrounded by others.

     My husband and I are great examples of this continuum.  After a long week, it helps him relax to go out and mingle in the energy of large groups of people.  Somehow walking amidst the chaos of indistinguishable loud sounds and voices, meeting new people, and broadening his social network is exhilarating and relaxing to him.  I, on the other hand, would need a long week to recuperate from going to dinner with a large table of people I already know.  Though some introverts merely prefer this, my preference is based in shyness and social anxiety – ahhhh the viscous circle, how you haunt me.

     Interestingly, I have wonderfully rich relationships with my friends – in my head.  I think of them often, plan on how to contact them, enjoy the thoughts of what we’ll talk about and do, and mentally send them hugs.  But that cerebral interaction then satisfies the momentary urge to connect.  Later,  the thought of physically acting on dialing that phone makes my chest feel a bit tight.  I’ll just wait to “connect again” with them until next time, as if this time in my thoughts counted as a true connection.  It did for me, though I fear it doesn’t for them.  If only they knew, I’d at least get credit for what a nice interaction we had in my head.

     There are times that I thoroughly enjoy the company of others.  I always feel comfortable with my dogs, my parents, and my husband.  As a kid, I was most comfortable one on one, usually with only one specific friend at a time (though who that friend was changed over the course of time, depending on age).  As an adult, the times I get together in small groups of 2 or 3 (where I count as 1 of them) with a handful of close girlfriends is nice.  (Though I notice as I get older, I even get anxious when those plans get closer, even though afterwards I’m always so glad to have connected with them and look forward to doing it again).  Going back to school as an adult, I felt lucky to have made one friend who helped keep the overwhelming social nature of it all feel more intimate and manageable. 

     To combat my uneasiness with the phone, text was helpful for a while.  When that started to feel too close inside my personal space,  email became my most tolerable way to connect.  But over time, even that joined the ranks of the haunted.  For a while, Facebook was a way that felt comfortable to socialize with people I liked staying connected to.  But even that, over time, began to feel the creep of that familiar tight chest feeling.  Sitting in front of a screen that flashed “new message” began to feel the way the flashing red light of my nemesis, the phone, had made me feel for years already. 

     It’s funny because many people are surprised to hear me characterize myself as anxious, shy, or introverted.  In my job I constantly had to meet new people and would force myself to put on a brave face and jump in with a smile.  What no one saw is that as soon as I got in my car at the end of a workday the only thing that came faster than tears was an audible sigh of relief to finally be by myself again in the solace of my car.  I was good at my job.  I helped a lot of people.  But my own social anxiety and daily struggle against shyness and insecurity made it mentally exhausting.  My time away from it has shown me that although I am a hard worker who wants to help people,  if I didn’t change something soon,  it would be at the expense of my own emotional health.

     I read back, and realize I intended this to be a humorous blog.  But sometimes things happen for a reason.  Sometimes anxiety isn’t funny at all (though it does help me when I can chuckle at myself in retrospect).  I usually just sit down and start typing and the blog writes itself.  I think it’s refreshing to read things that are from the heart and not overly polished.  So maybe this catharsis is helping me, or maybe it will help someone else.  Either way,  here are a few things I hope all my friends (and friends of other introverts) know:

1. Even if you rarely hear from me, I think of you often.
2. The amount I see you in no way reflects the amount I love you.
3. Not connecting often is about me, not you – you are wonderful.
4. I need a lot of quiet alone time just to feel at the minimal mark of “normal”.  (To feel great, I need even more).
5. If I leave early it doesn’t mean I wasn’t having a good time, it just means I hit the wall between “fun” and “over-stimulated”.
6. It’s not that I don’t like to drive places with you.  I like to meet there, in my own car, because it helps me to feel in control of my ability to leave an environment once I hit said wall.
7. The more I see someone, the more they become my routine, so the less anxious I feel.  If I see other friends more than you it doesn’t mean I like them more.  It just means they snuck under the radar into my comfort zone.
8. For the same reason, I didn’t see you less once I got married because I loved you any less.  My routine has changed and therefore my comfort zone shifted.
9. It’s not that I like my dog better than you (well, that’s not entirely true),  but my dog is the only being that I feel completely comfortable with at all times.  She truly is my lifeline, and she is the reason I am as positively functional as I am.
10. Even if we haven’t connected in a long time, I am here for you.  If you ever needed me, I would be there for you to help, the same way that just knowing you are a part of my life has always helped me.