introversion

We don't need to be in a designated role to take ownership of our environment. We can simply decide that we will be the giver, the helper, or the greeter wherever we are. We can even make a little game of it. We can tell ourselves: Today, I'm going to make at least three new people feel welcome. Or we can say: At this party, I'm going to gift two people a genuine compliment.

Often, we find ourselves wedged in the middle of a draining conversation. We might desperately want to dislodge ourselves from the interaction, but instead we stay in receiving mode, absorbing their words like a slow-acting poison.

At least a third of the world__ population are introverts. While they can pretend to be extroverts for a while, frankly, the task is exhausting. I hope Charlotte accurately portrayed the complexities of this personality. Contrary to common belief, introverts are not necessarily shy. They are not misanthropists. Though they gain energy from solitude and quiet, they don__ always like to be by themselves. They are, however, wonderful observers of the world around them, are quite self- aware, and prefer deep conversations to small talk. They are also inclined to think that there__ something seriously wrong with them. Many times they desperately hope that if they just try hard enough, they__l be able to be like everyone else. I should know. I am one. Perhaps my novels always speak to questions of worth because so often I doubt my own.

During relaxation we drop our guard. Particularly in conversation. Relaxed conversation leads to openness. And in openness we often reveal what should never be revealed.

I__l be honest with you. I__ a little bit of a loner. It__ been a big part of my maturing process to learn to allow people to support me. I tend to be very self-reliant and private. And I have this history of wanting to work things out on my own and protect people from what__ going on with me.

In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring...

the idea of being invisibly alone in a crowd of strangers is so tempting for a number of introverts...or maybe for loneliness?

I realised I really was shy. And once I was in it, I couldn't escape. I'd go to talk and find my face was made of cement. Nothing would come out. On winter days, I'd feel myself turning grey at the edges and fading into the walls.Was this defensive strategy? It was paralysing. And it went on for years.

...I also believe that introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I__ never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward.

When we take into consideration the needs of both ourselves and others, we communicate honestly, compassionately and effectively.

Many preachers are at home among books but quite at sea among men.

The exaggerated dopamine sensitivity of the introvert leads one to believe that when in public, introverts, regardless of its validity, often feel to be the center of (unwanted) attention hence rarely craving attention. Extroverts, on the other hand, seem to never get enough attention. So on the flip side it seems as though the introvert is in a sense very external and the extrovert is in a sense very internal - the introvert constantly feels too much 'outerness' while the extrovert doesn't feel enough 'outerness'.

That Seigo could go into geisha houses, accept luncheon invitations, drop in at the Club, see people off at Shimabashi, meet them at Yokohama, run out to Oiso to humor the elders__hat he could put in his appearance at large gatherings from morning to evening without seeming either triumphant or dejected__his must be because he was thoroughly accustomed to this kind of life, thought Daisuke; it was probably like the jellyfish's floating in the sea and not finding it salty.

Osborn was a founding partner of the advertising agency Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn (BBDO), but it was as an author that he really made his mark, beginning with the day in 1938 that a magazine editor invited him to lunch and asked what his hobby was. __magination,_ replied Osborn.

I went up on the hill and walked about until twilight had deepened into an autumn night with a benediction of starry quietude over it. I was alone but not lonely. I was a queen in halls of fancy.

Although she was gregarious, she inadvertently separated herself from people because she was so often inside her own head, focusing on her creativity.

Complaints of feeling cut off, shut off, out of touch, feeling apart or strange, of things being out of focus or unreal, of not feeling one with people, or of the point having gone out of life, interest flagging, things seeming futile and meaningless, all describe in various ways this state of mind. Patients usually call it 'depression', but it lacks the heavy, black, inner sense of brooding, of anger and of guilt, which are not difficult to discover in classic depression. Depression is really a more extraverted state of mind, which, while the patient is turning his aggression inwards against himself, is part of a struggle not to break out into overt angry and aggressive behaviour. The states described above are rather the 'schizoid states'. They are definitely introverted. Depression is object-relational. The schizoid person has renounced objects, even though he still needs them.

People expected certain things of me: assistance, silence, comfort. They had no idea who I was.