Coping tips for a young introvert

 From a recent Dear Prudence chat:

Hi Prudie, My family is rather large (45 people on average for Thanksgiving) and my husband's parents are divorced and we try to see both of them at some point over the weekend. Our kids are 13, 11, and eight and in the past have seemed to enjoy spending the holiday weekend this way. Yesterday my 11-year-old daughter told me that she wants a "quiet" holiday. We have noticed that she is getting increasingly introverted over the past year or so, more likely to read by herself than play with her brothers and cousins. She told me that there are "too many people and too much driving." My husband and I are party-loving extroverts, so house hopping and driving six+ hours over the weekend is no big deal to us. But my daughter doesn't complain often and I know if she brings something up it is legitimately important to her. In small groups, and especially one-on-one, my daughter is a delight: creative, funny, and very smart. But in big groups she just fades into the background, possibly counting down the minutes until she can read by herself again. How do I balance my daughter's request that we tone things down with a) reasonable expectations from family to see us, b) the rest of my immediate family's love of going all-out, and c) not making the holiday all about her. My daughter's personality is so different from the rest of us that I don't know how to meet everybody's needs at once. Any advice? Any introverts want to chime in?

In addition to Prudie's answer, I have some ideas:

- First of all, don't worry about the fact that she's fading into the background!  That's not a problem.  She doesn't need to be the star.  She's there, she's doing her duty, she's not being rude to anyone, that's sufficient.  Work with her on managing the situation so she doesn't get overly drained and melt down, work on giving her options for respites and recharging, protect and advocate for her within the family, but don't worry that she isn't the star of the family dinner table.  Civil and emotionally neutral is sufficient.

- In terms of specific strategies, is there a job she could do that would take her away from everyone else?  A dog that needs walking?  A sleeping baby that needs to be checked on?  Something that needs to be fetched from the garage?

- Is it possible for her to spend a small amount of time (like 10 minutes) in the car alone while everyone else is in the house?  You could have a code "I need to get something out of the car", give her the keys, and let her get in the back and decompress.  If anyone comes out to check on her, she could be rummaging through a bag that's in the car.  (Besides, anyone who catches an 11-year-old girl secretively getting something out of the car is just going to assume that she got her period.)

- Set a schedule, tell her what it is, and stick to it.  "We're going to Auntie Em's for dinner at 6, and we'll leave by 10."  It's much more bearable when you know when it's going to end.

- If the house is big enough to have multiple bathrooms, when she needs a break she could use the upstairs bathroom.  The two-storey suburban houses in my family have a small powder room downstairs, and a full bathroom upstairs that's the family's primary bathroom (for showering, brushing teeth, etc.) but isn't in any of the bedrooms.  (There's often also an ensuite in the master bedroom.)  Usually guests use the downstairs bathroom, but when there's a lot of people in the house and it's family, you might use the upstairs bathroom if the downstairs bathroom is occupied.  This would be quieter and give you a moment alone.  You can pretty much stay in there until you hear someone coming up the stairs, and then you have the excuse "Oh, the downstairs bathroom was occupied and I couldn't wait." (Again, they'll just assume that she got her period.)

- If there is an unoccupied "public" room of the house (i.e. not someone's bedroom), she could go hang out there and, if someone comes and asks her what she's doing, she could say "Oh, I was just admiring this picture on the wall.  What's the story behind it?"  Practise plausible scripts with her, so she can turn being "caught" being alone into a pleasant sociable conversation-starter.

- If the trip involves overnight stays, can you stay in a hotel rather than with relatives?  Since the letter mentions the introvert daughter as having "brothers", that would mean she's the only girl, so she should at least be able to get her own bed.  If you can manage a suite instead of a room, maybe she could get her own room (girls going through puberty do start needing privacy from their brothers, after all), or sleep alone in the living-room area of the suite.  If you have to stay with relatives, think about how to give her her own space to sleep. Maybe she'd prefer sleeping on the couch in the den rather than on her cousin's floor?

- Can you host, maybe every other year or so?  That would spare your daughter the driving time and give her the option of retreating to her own room.

- Does she have a smartphone?  (Or will she within the next couple of years?) Since she likes to read, maybe she could put an ebook reader app on her phone, and, when she gets a chance to duck into a quiet room, read that way.  It gives the appearance that she's  just sending a quick text or something, whereas sitting with an actual book implies that you've settled in for a while.  People might still think she's rude for ducking into another room and texting during a family event, but I think if she can give the impression that she's just finishing up when someone notices her, it shouldn't go over too badly.

- Try to give her at least one day off during the weekend.  I always find going straight from an action-packed weekend to a full week of work (or, worse, school) is practically unbearable.  I need at least one day to sleep in and lounge around at home doing nothing.  If it's not possible to have a day off during the weekend, maybe let her stay home "sick" on the first day back.  (You could tell her brothers she really is sick if they're likely to want a free sick day too.  Again, they'll just assume she has her period.)

- Depending on the personalities involved, you might consider strategically outing her as an introvert to key family members.   Don't make it a big "We need to talk" with undertones of shamefulness.  Break the news with enthusiasm for the revelation and sympathy for your daughter.  "I was just reading this book, and I realized that Daughter is an introvert.  You know how we love seeing the whole family over the holidays and get energized and recharged from it?  Turns out all this time this has been draining to her, poor kid!"  If one key member of each household you're visiting is aware of her needs (and isn't going to use this information to give her shit), maybe they can help with things like letting her walk the dog or giving her more private sleeping arrangements, or at the very least not meddle and nag if they ever spot her catching a moment's privacy.

- Prudie recommends the book Quiet by Susan Cain.  It is useful, bit I found Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney even more useful. It includes a technical (but understandable) description of the neurology behind introversion, and specific strategies for introverts in extroverted families.

Analogy for everything

This comes from an article on why dogs bite, but it applies to everything in the world:

Bites are usually caused by an accumulation of stressors. Each time a dog is exposed to a stressor, stress hormones are dumped into the brain. These stress hormones are like the puzzle pieces in Tetris. They build up over time. You have to actively reduce the stress (like a Tetris player clearing lines) through management, desensitization, counter conditioning, and general stress reduction techniques. If you are not taking steps to reduce the stress, it begins to accumulate. The dumping of stress hormones into the brain leaves the dog increasingly sensitized to stressors, which replicates the puzzle pieces dropping faster and faster until you eventually reach the threshold. Soon, the dog bites. The game is over.

Stressors vary in individual dogs. One dog may be stressed by loud noises, nail trimming, men with beards, wearing a shock collar, foul weather, and a bad diet. Another dog may not seemingly respond to these factors but is sensitive to visits to the vet’s office, small children, cats, people that smell like beer, dogs walking past the fenced in yard, and people approaching or entering the home. Every dog has stressors (commonly called “triggers”) and a big part of effective behavioral modification strategies is identifying these as accurately and thoroughly as possible, which allows behavior consultants and handlers to focus their efforts most efficiently. Stressors, like Tetris pieces, accumulate over time.

This explains introvert brain. The more time you have to spend in the company of other people without a moment of privacy, the more stressors (Tetris pieces) accumulate until you melt down.

This explains how phobias work. The more you're exposed to triggers (or the threat thereof) without having time to reset, the jumpier and edgier you get, and the more susceptible you get to future triggers. (Among other problems, this is why desensitization therapy is problematic when you're likely to have uncontrollable exposure to your triggers in everyday life.)

This explains why, when I was a kid, I often had trouble just being nice and putting up with stuff that grownups thought I should be able to just be nice and put up with. After being bullied all day in school, and having my sister get all up in my business when I got home, and being subject to whatever lectures and judgement external factors had made my grownups feel like delivering regardless of whether I needed to hear them, and having no control whatsoever over when I arrived and left and went to bed and woke up and ate (or even what I ate), I had very little room left to just fake being nice so we can all get along. It's not that I've matured, it's that I can now go home or eat potato chips whenever I damn well please, which clears a lot of Tetris lines.

It's the most multi-purpose analogy I've ever met. I think if you're lacking an analogy for anything, this one just might do the trick.

Shyness as selfish: a more useful approach

A while back, I heard the idea that shyness is selfish, and I blogged about why this selfishness (insofar as it is selfish) seems perfectly reasonable to shy people.

However, explaining the concept as "shyness is selfish" is unhelpful, because what it's really saying is "Stop being shy!" And you can't just stop being shy. You need specific strategies, accrued experience, a safe environment, and cumulative empirical evidence of the net results produced by non-shy behaviour. It isn't a matter of convincing people why to do it, it's a matter of explaining in specific terms how.

Today it occurred to me that the real point is that non-shy behaviour is helpful and useful. I learned this by watching my Gen Y colleagues, who are so much more confident and Entitled than I am. This is useful to me. I don't have to think of everything myself or start all the conversations or figure out what the other person needs. If your goal is to get people to unshy, it would be far more effective to show them why and how unshying is helpful to others rather than just making them feel guilty for being "selfish" on top of feeling shy.

I've heard this presented in loose terms by people saying you should "contribute", but that implies that what you say has to be big and important enough to be considered a "contribution", which adds even more pressure. And there's also conventional wisdom like "Ask questions!" and "Approach another person who's shy!" But that doesn't work so well, because if you're shy the last thing you want is some stranger wandering up and interrogating you.

It's more useful to express precisely what unshy actions a shy person can take and why exactly they're helpful to others, and even more useful to witness this in action. It takes self-awareness and bravery and a supportive environment, but it's far more useful than just telling the shy person they're being selfish.

Teach me people skills

Suppose someone is talking to me, and I can't think of anything to say in response. It's a point in the conversation where a substantive response (i.e. more than "Okay") is expected, but I've got nothing.

What should I say?

I already have in my repertoire admitting that I can't think of what I'm supposed to say at that particular point, but that doesn't always work. Any other ideas?

Sometimes I hate introvert brain

One effect of my highly introverted brain structure is that thoughts and ideas don't always come to me in words. They come to me in abstract, intangible concepts, which then need to be consciously and mindfully put in les mots justes before I can express them. This is why sometimes in conversation I just sit there saying nothing. This is why I sometimes just freeze up in my other languages - when the concept isn't coming out in perfect words, it isn't coming out at all. (Hoshi Sato demonstrates this phenomenon here.) It's actually an advantage in translation, because I'm less likely to become married to the idea that a certain word is a certain concept, so my translations are more idiomatic and I don't fall for calques or faux amis as often. But sometimes it's a disadvantage in real life, because people tend to evaluate you based on the words on the tip of your tongue.

Today this is annoying me especially, because I just read this article, and there's something he's missing. It's a nuance. I'm certain it's present IRL, but the USian author of that article can't see it from where he's sitting. I know it's there. I can feel it in my brain. I could point you to the precise part of my brain where I can feel it. But it isn't coming to me in words.

It's like I'm a fish who has lived in salt water my whole life and has never been in fresh water, talking to a fish who has lived in fresh water his whole life and has never been in salt water (it's amazing what modern telecommunications technology can do!), trying to explain to this freshwater fish what it feels like when ocean salinity levels change. I know there is something he isn't groking, but I can't articulate it because it's both a subtle nuance and an inherent part of my cultural environment.

And, current events being what they are, by the time it comes to me in words, it will be irrelevant.

When do unto others doesn't work

I've been struggling for quite a long time to compose this post, because it's very hard to write without sounding whiny or "woe is me". So I'm going to cop out and state outright at the outset that my intention is not to sound whiny or "woe is me". My intention is simply to observe an invisible obstacle that makes it harder for people to understand each other and enjoy pleasant social interactions. I use many personal examples, but that's because those are most accessible to me - I'm not often inside other people's heads.

So this train of thought started with this:

When it comes to not understanding the inner state of minds too different from our own, most people also do a lousy job, Schwarz says. "But the non-autistic majority gets a free pass because, if they assume that the other person's mind works like their own, they have a much better chance of being right."

I've blogged before about how this is a problem for me as an introvert in making conversation with extroverts. It's also been a problem in other areas. For example, when I'm going through an emotionally difficult time, I tend to retreat within myself. Talking about it doesn't help - it actually makes it worse because it keeps me dwelling on it - I just need some time and space alone. However, sometimes my friends feel neglected when I withdraw, and if I tell them I'm withdrawing because I'm going through a difficult time, their feelings are hurt that I'm not confiding in them. So where an extrovert would be able to heal themselves and tend to their friends' feelings with a single action - by talking about their problem with their friends - I can't do both at once and they actually work at cross-purposes. If I heal myself I'm hurting my friends' feelings, and if I tend to my friends' feelings I'm hindering my healing.

Before I had even heard of the difference between introverts and extroverts, someone told me that a friend of his had just had her dog hit by a car, so they were taking her out to a bar to get drunk. I was shocked and appalled. How could you possibly think someone would want to go out when their dog had just died? They'd totally want to sit alone in a room and drink by themselves! How dare they burden a bereaved dog owner that way! So since I was completely unaware at the time that other people's brains and emotional needs worked differently from my own, if the bereaved dog owner had been my friend I totally wouldn't have given her what she needed (and would probably have abandoned her to wallow in her grief on the assumption that that's what she needed); and if the bereaved dog owner had been me, I would have been so pissed off at my friends for trying to take me out to a bar of all things, at a time like this!

This also applies in situations where your innocent individual preferences are different from the norm. For example, suppose someone decides to hold a barbecue in the park, with all kinds of sports activities for everyone to enjoy. Conventional wisdom is that this is good and fun and a win-win-win situation. The barbecue will feed everyone, and it's the kind of food that people actively enjoy eating. Being outdoors is nice, spending time with lots of people is nice, and sports activities are fun. So your typical person gets their hunger sated, the pleasure of yummy food, the enjoyment of being outdoors, the hap hits of social interaction and the fun of playing sports. If they were a Sim, their hunger, social and fun meters would all be going up, and they'd have a few positive moodlets. And on top of this all they get the social capital of having participated in the group activity.

However, I, personally, don't get pleasure from most of these things. I'm vegetarian, so a barbecue is always a struggle to find something I can eat (and what's usually available will do the job, but isn't the kind of thing I'd go out of my way to eat.) Spending a day outdoors in the park would get me bitten to death by mosquitoes - even if the typical person isn't being bothered at all - and if bugs get near the food I'm going to have a panic attack. Sports simply aren't fun for me, and as an introvert I am drained rather than energized by the large group. So, if I were a Sim, my hunger, social and fun meters would all be going down, and I'd have a few negative moodlets. (And, as we all know from playing the Sims, if your mood rating is too low, you can't doing activities you don't enjoy - the option simply isn't available in the menu until your mood rating goes up.) But if you tell people this, you're no fun, a stick in the mud, a spoilsport. So if I want to gain the social capital of having participated in the group activity, I need to convince people that my needs meters are going up and I'm full of positive moodlets when they're actually going down and full of negative moodlets. Then, once the activity is done and I'm back home, I have to treat all my mosquito bites and eat something that makes me happy and get my mood back up so I can function at work the next day, whereas the people who actually enjoy this activity are sated in every way and already have their mood back up. So it isn't just the fact that you don't have access to do unto others and it isn't just the fact that you have to perform to gain social capital rather than just being yourself, it's also way more time consuming to have needs and preferences that are different from others'. Not only can you not multi-task the barbecue into meeting multiple needs, but others assume your multiple needs have been met. "What do you mean you need to go home and relax and have something to eat? You've been at a barbecue all day!"

And another part of the problem is that even if you know other people's needs or preferences are different from your own, you don't necessarily know what they are. For example, now that I know something of introversion and extroversion, I know that an extrovert who has just lost her dog probably doesn't want to be left all alone. However, I would never ever in a million years come up with the idea of taking her to a bar. That is simply so far removed from anything that feels remotely helpful to me.

So what do we do with this? I'm not quite sure. But a good start would be to stop putting value judgments on individual preferences, and to be open to the fact that not everyone's mind works the same as our own. Something I've been experimenting with recently (not sure if it's a good idea or not, but I'm in a place where I have a bit of leeway) is being completely out about the fact that I'm not sure what to do and asking other people for advice. "Is it appropriate to ask the mother of the hospitalized preemie baby how her baby is doing?" "Is this the kind of event where it's better to arrive early or to arrive late?" "This is the first time I've trained anyone, at all ever, so if I'm ever being less helpful than I should don't hesitate to let me know, because I'll never figure it out otherwise." If it doesn't result in everyone thinking I'm a total idiot, maybe it will at least give people an idea of the range of things I do and don't know.

Why does it bother you that I'm quiet?

Question for extroverts:

I've blogged before about how when I was a kid people would say to me "You're so quiet, you never talk."

Question: suppose we're in a randomly-assembled group (classmates working on a project, co-workers on the same shift, people who happen to live in the same neighbourhood waiting for a bus). Sufficient conversation is flowing among the group, but I personally am being quiet.

Why does it bother you that I'm being quiet?

This always happened in randomly-assembled groups with sufficient flow of conversation. Among friends, I'm better able to think of stuff to say (or babble mindlessly and boringly). When there is insufficient flow of conversation, people never seemed to tell me that I'm quiet. The vibe I got is that my quietness bothered them (rather than being a poorly-conceived attempt to draw me out), and googling around this idea I've found that extros are bothered/weirded out by quiet people.

So why, precisely, does it bother you? (Not that I can really do anything about it - I don't have a secret stash of witty conversation that I'm stingily withholding - but I cannot even begin to imagine why this would bother someone.)

How do older people end up with social skills that are no better than mine?

I know I have no place criticizing people's social skills because I don't have that many myself. Normally when I encounter someone who is socially awkward, I see where they're coming from and we try to muddle along.

But it occured to me that my social skills have been improving over time. I see someone use a formula I could use, so I yoink it and use it myself. For example, I used be awkward about leaving voicemails asking people to do something specific - I never knew how to end them smoothly. Then someone left me a voicemail saying "...so if you could get back to me on that by the end of the day, that would be great. Thanks!" That would totally work! So now that's how I end my voicemails. I do that whenever I see someone do something that would be a solution to a problem I have, and I'm slowly improving over time. It isn't anything deliberate, it's just the normal process for diffusion of linguistic innovation.

But I know people who are far older than me and don't have much better social skills. They can be like twice my age, but they don't often do better than me and in some cases do worse than me.

How does that happen? Are they not improving, or were they worse than me to start? If they were worse than me to start, how did they get jobs? And I'm not saying that snobbily (I've only had one good interview ever myself) - I know there's a certain amount of charm required to do a successful job interview, even for a position that isn't big on people skills, and I can't imagine that a person with my people skills minus 30 years of experience could do that. Did job interviews require less charm 30 years ago?

Or is it possible that society's people skills in general have improved, and any given individual stays in their place within the hierarchy? It might work that way, since everyone is probably improving the same way I am. When I'm 100, kids are probably going to look at me and wonder how I ever functioned in civil society.

Analogy for why introverts have trouble with small talk

This started in response to the comments on this Cary Tennis letter but got far too complicated for a comment thread.

Think of the pool of all possible conversation topics - everything you might ever conceivably blurt out - as a well-organized email folder system. The vast majority of the emails are archived by topic. These are things you can say in reply to productive and substantive inquiries. There are a few emails in your inbox. These are new things that you can introduce during a lull in conversation. And there's a bunch of crap in your spam folder. These are things that are completely useless in conversation. (e.g. "There are four light switches in this room." "The capital of Uruguay is Montevideo".) You hardly ever look in your spam folder anyway, it's all the Nigerian finance minister trying to enlarge your penis and sell you fake university degrees anyway. Sometimes you do go into your spam folder for a specific reason, just like sometimes you do need to know what the capital of Uruguay is, but the vast majority of the time you ignore it and it isn't even worth thinking about.

I think introverts have a stricter spam filter than extroverts. We have things in our spam folder that more extroverted people would consider suitable conversational openings. There are fewer things in our inbox, and some of the things that (by conventional social standards) should be in our inbox are in our spam folder.

For example, it would never ever in my life occur to me to ask a casual acquaintance about their vacation plans. The topic was simply in my spam folder, right in between "I have a hole in my sock" and "I had two cups of coffee today." (Yes, these are things I might just announce to a close friend, but, as I've blogged about before, it works differently for close friends.) When I read someone mention that as a possible topic of conversation in the Cary Tennis comments, a lightbulb went off. "Oh, THAT'S why people at work keep asking me that!" Because it was in my spam folder, I figured they were asking me for a particular reason, just like if your best friend sent you a penis enlargement email you'd assume they have some particular reason for doing so.

So where extroverts can just reach into their inbox - the first page you get to in any email interface - to find an appropriate topic, our inboxes don't have enough topics. So first we have to come up with the idea of looking in our spam folder at all. Then we have to sort through it trying to find something that's less crap. We can't give them just anything from the spam folder, we have to sort through the whole thing (and how much crap is in your spam folder right now?) trying to find the conversation equivalent of, say, a shoe sale flyer rather than penis enlargement spam.

And the other problem is, once we find the exact conversational nugget we need in our spam folder, we think "Hey, there's some useful stuff in here, let's filter less strictly so it ends up in the inbox!" Then we set our spam filter too low and end up with all kinds of crap in our inbox, and the next think you know we're walking around offering to enlarge people's penises. This manifests itself in the phenomenon of people who claim to be introverts going off on a babbling rant about themselves or their interests. Because all the stuff in our inbox tends to be stuff we're genuinely interested in, if someone treats one of our spam topics like an inbox topic we assume they're genuinely interested.

So unless you want us randomly free-associating and dumping the entire contents of our mental spam folder on you, you'll have to either tolerate our pauses or take more than your share of the lead.

Edited to add: Having been bullied adds another dimension to all this. My bullies would often ask me questions that would sound perfectly innocuous to outsiders and that adults with benign intentions may well use as fodder for small-talk, but the bullies would use whatever I answered as fodder for bullying.

For example, they might ask me what I did that past weekend. If I didn't do much of anything (which, objectively and outside the bell jar of adolescence, I rather quite enjoy), they'd mock me for not having any friends. If I did something with my family, they'd mock me for spending time with family because I don't have any friends. If I did something with friends, they'd mock me for the insufficient coolness of my friends or our activity. In the weird world of middle school, it was a loaded question to which every possible answer was socially unacceptable.

So because of all this, a bunch of topics that appear benign to outsiders are quarantined in my mental spam folder because they look just like emails that have previously given me viruses. After having been judged so often for my answer to "What did you do this weekend?" I wouldn't dare ask that of an acquaintance or co-worker any more than I would ask them "So are you a top or a bottom?"

Things They Should Invent: introvert/extrovert temporary switch medication

Introverts, picture this: You have oh so terribly many errands to do and phone calls to make. But the more you do, the more places you go and things you see and people you talk to, the more energized you'll feel. Wouldn't that be useful?

Extroverts, picture this: You're stuck at home all alone with no one to talk to for hours and hours and hours. But the more time that passes all alone, the better and happier and more energized and revitalized you feel. Wouldn't that be useful?

We wouldn't want this to be permanent or ongoing. Speaking as an innie, getting bored when alone in my head sounds like living hell, and I'm sure extros would get frustrated living with our slow, easily-stimulated brains. But it would be so convenient to be able to switch every once in a while!

They know the neuroscience, so why can't they make us a drug to do this?

Things I Don't Understand

1. People who automatically assume other people's motives are different from what their own would be in the same situation. Fake but representative example:

"OMG, that bitch has her office door closed! She's totally snubbing me!"
"Does this mean you're snubbing us when you close your door?"
"No, of course not, I just close my door when I need to make private phone calls. But she's totally snubbing me!"

I don't understand how people can do that. And I'm not saying this in a lamenting-humanity's-lack-of-empathy way, I'm saying that my brain simply does not do that and I totally don't grok how people can. My brain always defaults to assuming others' motives are the same as my own, and it's actual work to move away from that and land on something else. But some people seem to do that rather often. I'd love to dissect their brains.

2. People who are surprised that Kids Today are familiar with music that isn't from their era. Nearly all the music we consume is recorded! Of course people are familiar with things that aren't of this very moment. I am certain that you personally, anyone at all who is reading this, have at least passing familiarity with some music by Beethoven, Louis Armstrong, The Rolling Stones, and Beyonce, even though most of those are probably not of your era. And I'm sure you don't think it's any big deal at all. It's just walking around and living in the world. But a surprising number of times I've encountered adults who are surprised and impressed when a teenager has a passing familiarith with The Beatles.

"You're so quiet! You never talk!"

When I was a kid, my peers would often say to me "You're so quiet!" "You never talk!" I had no idea what to say in response.

As an adult I'm better at thinking of clever responses than I was as a kid, but to this day I still have no idea what they wanted or expected me to say in response to that. Now I'd probably answer "You're so quiet!" with "Aren't you glad?" and "You never talk!" with "What do you want me to talk about?" (wide eyes, raised eyebrows, open hands, body language communicating that I'm ready and willing to talk about whatever it is but I have no idea what it is). But I still have no idea how they expected me to answer or what they were getting at.

Googling around this idea, I found stories of other people being asked outright "How come you never talk?" or "Are you always this quiet?" I think today I'd answer these questions with "It's either that or babble mindlessly. I suck at coming up with the appropriate quality and quantity of conversation." I've found in general that when I openly, matter-of-factly and unapologetically state my personality flaws, people act like they don't believe me or like they think I'm kidding, but it totally smooths over the potential tension from those personality flaws. For example, someone wanted to take my picture, so I said "Only if you let me fix my make-up first. I'm entirely too vain and shallow to let anyone take my picture with imperfect make-up." She acted like she thought I was kidding, but she still patiently waited while I fixed my make-up before she took the picture, which has NEVER happened before! Usually I get a candid picture taken against my will and/or a bunch of crap about being so vain and shallow as to not want my picture taken with a shiny forehead.

Another reason why Do Unto Others doesn't work for introverts

We already know that because introverts don't get energized by interpersonal interaction and do get energized by being alone, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us doesn't work when socializing with the other 75% of the population.

It just occurred to me that it also doesn't work in the basic art of conversation.

A general rule of making conversation is that you should ask the other person about themselves, because people like talking about themselves. But this doesn't work on me. I mean, it will do for keeping the conversation going, but I get no particular pleasure from telling someone I just met that I live in Toronto and I work as a translator, yeah, straightforward French to English, but I also speak Spanish and German and Polish to varying degrees. So because I don't get anything out of telling them about myself, it doesn't occur to me that they'll get anything out of telling me about themselves so I keep forgetting to ask. Conversely, when it does occur to me to ask someone about something it's generally because I am genuinely interested, so I tend to subconsciously assume that if someone asks me about something it's because they're genuinely interested, so then I prattle on. So as a result, I come across as a standoffish egomaniac, when I am in fact just forgetting myself and doing unto others. I am working on answering inquiries about myself in a cursory manner and then reversing the question to the other person, but it doesn't come naturally and right now I've sort of got a "Oh, right, I'm supposed to ask about you too!" vibe going on.

In real life (as opposed to artificial small-talk interactions) if I have something to tell, I only get pleasure out of telling it to someone who's close to me, and with people who are close to me I can generally just walk up to/call/email them and launch into a story. You can totally go to your mother or partner or best friend and just dive right into what happened at work today. If it's a small anecdote that isn't of particular interest or particularly personal, I just blog it and people either read it or ignore it, no big deal. But it's not like I'm sitting on a supply of stuff that I'd get pleasure out of telling to a stranger or random acquaintance if only an opportunity would present itself. I suppose if I didn't blog my random anecdotes I would be, but my random anecdotes don't like to sit quietly inside my brain and tend to blurt themselves out at inappropriate moments if I don't get them blogged.

Do extroverts really deliberately not talk to people (even when they have something to say) for the sole purpose of spiting them?

I've heard this sentiment many times; the most recent iteration come from today's Dear Prudence:

My husband has three children from his first marriage. Every year the three of them—now ages 16, 21, and 25—come to my mother's Christmas party and line up on the couch sullenly, grimly, and silently. This rudeness is extremely embarrassing to me in front of my other relatives. Worse, my husband is kind of powerless when it comes to his kids and tends to join them, silent, on the couch. I would just like to have them not come, because I don't think I can make them talk, but this thought distresses my mother no end. What do I do?

This lady seems to think that her stepchildren aren't talking for the sole purpose of spiting everyone else. This is odd to me, because it seems so bloody obvious to me that they're feeling shy and awkward and uncomfortable in the home of all these near-strangers (their stepmother's family of origin). They clearly just can't think of anything to say - or perhaps can't think of anything to say that's of sufficient interest and doesn't push any hot buttons. (For example, I know full well that people don't want to hear about the organic hair products I'm recently obsessed with, and the strange mistakes that came up in the text I was quality controlling don't make a good story to people without a solid grounding in comparative stylistics. And we can all think of that one person whom you just shouldn't get started on politics, so a whole wack of topics are right out if that person is there.)

However, this lady thinks they're doing it on purpose and out of spite. Therefore, it stands to reason that not talking even though she has something productive to say is something she might conceivabely do out of spite (because how else would it occur to her that this might be their motivation?)

Do extros actually do that? How egotistical is that train of thought - "I will deprive them of my wit and wisdom because what I have to say is so fucking special that it WILL be missed!" Do they never find themselves at a loss of what to say?

In the meantime, here's a helpful hint: whatever fascinating thing you think the non-talker has to say, they aren't aware that they have it or aren't aware that it might be of interest. So (assuming it isn't too personal) ask them about it!

Things They Should Invent: online circadian rhythm tracker

There are a number of websites that you can use to track your menstrual cycle. You put in the dates of your periods and over a number of months it starts predicting your menstruation and ovulation dates. It's useful for people who have irregular cycles or are trying to do fertility awareness.

I want something like that for my circadian rhythms. My energy levels wax and wane throughout the day, and if I could predict when it's going to happen I could leverage this so I don't find myself having to do more draining activities at low-energy times. Mindfully doing hour-by-hour observations over a number of days isn't very practical, because I have to fit in real life too. What I'd like to be able to do is whenever I notice that I'm feeling up or down, I enter the time that this happened, and the computer uses all this information to tell me when I can expect to be up or down in the future. Then I can schedule more draining things for up times and keep down times more low-key

"Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne pas savoir demeurer en repos dans une chambre." - Blaise Pascal

All of man's troubles stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room. I've seen it quoted differently and attributed to different people, but I think the one in the title is the original.

I can totally sit quietly in a room. I can sit there and just think, it's intellectually satisfying. Add internet access so I can google and I'm perfectly content for hours and hours and hours. It's a hardcore introvert thing.

The problem is this can easily hinder real life. I have stuff that has to get done. I have to be places by a certain time. But I sit down and start thinking and then google something and the next thing I know two hours have passed. I'm content, I'm satisfied, I'm at peace, I've had all kinds of interesting ideas, but real life isn't getting done. I can convince myself to build up momentum and go out and get a shitload of stuff done and I do feel some satisfaction from checking it all off my list, but it doesn't give me the hap hits (as Marti Olsen Laney writes about) of sitting quietly in my apartment.

How does one go about becoming a wealthy, eccentric, reclusive genius with a discreet but loyal butler to take care of all their petty day-to-day needs?

Things that are completely unlike video games cannot be used as a viable substitute for video games

There has been a lot of anti-gaming sentiment in the media lately, and a lot of it has been suggesting things that parents could have their kids do instead of gaming - sports, outdoor activities, family board games, etc.

The problem is that these activities don't do for the user what video games do.

Video games occupy part of the brain while letting the rest of the brain roam freely. It's an indoor activity that you can comfortably do in any weather and in any clothing. Because it's indoors, children don't require immediate adult supervision so can be given some modicum of privacy. It's a solitary activity, so you can use it to unwind from the stress of a day full of social interaction (especially helpful for introverts). If you're playing a multi-player game, it's something you can enjoy with people you have stuff in common with.

The proposed alternatives don't do these things. While gaming lets me think by occupying the part of my mind that would get bored from just sitting and thinking, sports occupy just enough of my mind that I can't think freely, while not providing me with any significant entertainment. Gaming can be done indoors in any clothes and in any weather, but outdoor activities require that you get dressed appropriately for outside and make yourself suitably presentable. Video games can be done in privacy from one's parents, while outdoor activities require supervision and family activities have parental involvement. Gaming can be done alone, but sports and family activities must be done with others, thus making them draining instead of re-energizing for introverts. Multi-player gaming is done with your online friends, whereas organized sports and family activities are done with a group of people whose composition you have no control over.

None of these activities provide users with the same benefits as gaming. They are completely different things and no substitute for gaming. If so-called experts feel the need to propose alternatives to video games, they should come up with alternatives that users would enjoy the same way as they enjoy video games.

The problem with introversion

Introversion is inefficient. I've spent the better part of today inside my head, maybe eating or drinking coffee or experimenting with my hair, but mostly inside my head. But the problem is I have 3,000 words of overtime this weekend, plus I have to go to Dominion and Noah's and the LCBO and the library and Futureshop and BSO and Beddington's, plus my apartment needs probably about 10 hours of housework, plus I have to exercise enough not to lose momentum and there's about six things I want to blog and a dozen things I want to watch on youtube. (Watching youtube or TV or anything is external stimulation. It entertains me, but doesn't give me those inside-my-head hap hits.)

All of this would be so much easier if I actually found it more interesting to do things than to do nothing and spend time inside my head. But not only is getting all this stuff done work, it's also more boring than doing nothing.

Times like this I wish for an extrovert pill.

Open Letter to "Wanting To Talk It Out in Alexandria"

To the writer of the second letter here:

I'll bet you anything "Elaine" is an introvert. She actually does need to stop and think about how to respond. It isn't passive-aggression. Her thoughts don't come to her immediately as words, and she cannot just talk out her thoughts. She does not have the words - her thoughts do not exist in word form - until she stops and thinks about how to formulate them.

Read The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney for information about how this works and how you, probably being an extrovert who thinks by talking, can coexist with this.

Do blind people ever just want to be left alone?

I often see blind people on the subway, and random strangers always help them. Most people have obviously read the same pamphlets I have, because almost everyone does it right. They give them specific verbal instructions ("The subway door is two feet to your left"), they allow the blind person to take their arm and guide them to a seat, basically whenever there's someone with a white cane, everyone's looking out for them and someone almost always jumps in and helps.

I wonder if this gets annoying for the blind people though? If every time I see a blind person a stranger is helping them, then blind people must get helped by strangers all the freaking time! I wonder if that ever gets annoying to them? Sometimes when I'm making my way through the crowded city, I really just don't want to deal with any people at all. I wonder if blind people ever feel like this and wish people would stop helping them?