INFP Introverts: The 64-Color Box

Too often, people mis-equate what it means to be an individual with being a freak. Individualism, according to most, unfortunately, means anyone who bucks the norm, be it Frank Lloyd Wright or a psychotic young punk who drowns himself in booze and marijuana. This definition of individualism is not individualism—it is freakism.

A freak’s favorite holiday is Halloween—in which every person comes dressed in a monstrous and grotesque outfit, exerting their differentation from everyone else. The freak wants to create a pretty rainbow, with every person being distinctly different from one another. Differentation is the most primary value to a freak.

The individualist, on the other hand, rejects rebellions for rebellion’s sake—just as he rejects tradition for tradition’s sake. The individualist does not have as a criterion that he is different from other people in order to be an individual. The individualist understands that individualism has one criterion—that you are the sole controller of your destiny. The individualist is one who, at all times, takes on the responsiblity of thinking for one’s self.

Continue reading “Freaks vs Individuals”

Field Guide to the Loner: The Real Insiders
Loners are pitied in our up-with-people culture. But the introvert reaps secret joy from the solitary life.
By Elizabeth Svoboda, Psychology Today

Miina Matsuoka lives by herself in New York City. She owns two cats and routinely screens her calls. But, before you jump to conclusions, note that she is comfortable hobnobbing in any of five languages for her job as business manager at an international lighting-design firm. She just strongly prefers not to socialize—opting instead for long baths, DVDs, and immersion in her art projects. She does have good, close friends, and goes dancing about once a month, but afterward feels a strong need to “hide and recoup.” In our society, where extroverts make up three-quarters of the population, loners (except Henry David Thoreau) are pegged as creepy or pathetic. But soloists like Matsuoka can function just fine in the world—they simply prefer traveling through their own interior universe.

Loners often hear from well-meaning peers that they need to be more social, but the implication that they’re merely black-and-white opposites of their bubbly peers misses the point. Introverts aren’t just less sociable than extroverts; they also engage with the world in fundamentally different ways.

Continue reading…

The mob thinks we are maladjusted. Of course we are adjusted just fine, not to their frequency. They take it personally. They take offense. Feel hurt. Get angry. They do not blame owls for coming out at night, yet they blame us for being as we are. Because it involves them, or at least they believe it does, they assemble the troops and call us names. Crazy. Cold. Stuck-up. Standoffish. Aloof. Afraid. Lacking in social skills. Bizarre. Unable to connect. Incapable of love. Freaks. Geeks. Sad. Lonely. Selfish. Secretive. Ungrateful. Unfriendly. Serial killers.

The mob wants friends along when doing errands, working out at the gym, at the movies. The mob depends on advice. Eating alone in decent restaurants horrifies the mob, saddens the mob, embarrasses the mob. The mob wants friends. The mob needs to be loved. It lives to be loved. Or hated, with that conjoined fervor with which mobs face their enemies. Both love and hate are all about engagement. About being linked with humanity generally, as a policy. Loners have nothing against love but are more careful about it. Sometimes just one fantastic someone is enough.

As a minority, we puzzle over nonloners, their strange values. Why do they require constant affirmation, validation, company, support? Are they babies or what? What bothers them about being alone? What are they so afraid of? Why can’t they be more like us? Loners live among the mob, so the mob mistakes us for its own, presuming and assuming. When the mob gets too close, the truth is revealed. Running or walking away, chased or free, any which way, we tell the mob in effect I don’t need you. Hell hath no fury like a majority scorned.

Continue reading “One is (Not) the Loneliest Number”

There’s power in numbers. Take two, for example. Two is the proper minimum of people who are supposed to be sitting at a table in a restaurant. At least, that’s what the Mel’s Drive-In busboys insinuate by putting two place settings at your table when you’re obviously alone. Two has the power to wield attention. But what power does one have?

[…]

I sped down Hollywood Boulevard cranking the Move song “Omnibus” and enjoyed the cool air slapping me in the face. I mean, you would think that waiters would give really speedy service to people sitting alone, to hurry up and get them out of there so that a couple who could give them a bigger tip could be seated. But most of the time, we parties of one are…

Continue reading “Dancing With Myself”

“Introverts are not what the rest of us, the three-quarters of the population who are extroverts, think they are. If you’re cripplingly shy and desperate to make more friends, you’re probably an extrovert; if you spend time alone because you’re depressed, you could be either. True introverts are, on balance, drained by social interaction and energised by time alone; for extroverts, the opposite applies.

[…]

“Introverts find social interaction tiring, some studies suggest, because they can’t help but engage and empathise to a degree that extroverts habitually don’t—an approach that would exhaust anybody if they did it all the time.”

Continue reading “Know Who You Are”

“You may imagine from the above that I am a misanthrope. A bitter and friendless recluse who is a daily latte away from being a full-blown hermit. But, apart from an occasional fit of rage at the state of humanity in general, I spend most of my time on the warm and fuzzy, peace and love to all humankind side of the fence. Dislike of people is not my problem; in fact, I don’t have a problem. It’s just that I’m an introvert.”

Continue reading “Solitude is Bliss”

The little country mouse looked at the trap, and he looked at the cheese, and he looked at the little city mouse. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I think I will go home. I’d rather have barley and grain to eat and eat it in peace and comfort, than have brown sugar and dried prunes and cheese and be frightened to death all the time!”

The Country Mouse and the City Mouse

Jung believed that objects fascinate extroverts. It is through objects that extroverts are able to define themselves and, therefore, interact with their surroundings. They take delight in themselves and people and are “open, sociable and jovial, or at least friendly and approachable…on good terms with everybody, or quarrel with everybody, but always relate to them in some way, and in turn (are) affected by them.”

Extroverts can adjust easily to existing conditions. They like to be “the life of the party” or “in the spotlight.” They feel the most at ease when they are surrounded by a group of “enthusiastic” people and, in many cases, they are able to lure large amounts of people toward them. They possess a “need to join in and ‘get with it’ and the capacity to endure bustle and noise of every kind, and actually find them enjoyable.”

Introverts, on the other hand, define themselves through personal revelations. They look inside themselves (instead of to others) to circumscribe the type of individual they are. They are usually more serene and appear more distant than extroverts. “Their emotions, passions, and powerful impulses lie dormant under the surface of their equanimity. They try to hold their ground against outside influences by giving them low value, by letting in only flashes and snippets of what is happening, or by staying aloof from them altogether.”

They define not only their individuality based on their own personal revelations, but their decision-making as well is constructed within themselves. They seldom look to others for answers of how to live or who to be. According to Jung, “crowds, majority views, public opinion, popular enthusiasm never convince him of anything but merely make him creep still deeper into his shell.” *

“I feel the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church. It’s the light of grace for me. I never close my door behind me without the awareness that I am carrying out an act of mercy toward myself.” —Peter Hoeg

“Silence is the only time you can really hear yourself think. This largely explains the success of the iPod. Keeping quiet is a dangerous and demanding thing to do, because it brings you face to face with yourself.

“A very good test of your relationship with someone is if you can sit comfortably with them in complete silence. In the same way that a man can’t see a hole without looking down it, most people can’t stand a silence without filling it. Some people feel a compulsive need to fill the silence with their own voice, regardless of what it’s saying.”

Continue reading “How to be Silent”

“Our lives are typically filled with noise. There are the noises from the outside world that we cannot control, and there are the noises we allow into our lives. These noises, from seemingly innocuous sources like the television and radio, can actually help us avoid dealing with uncomfortable thoughts and emotions. However, using noise as a distraction hurts more than it helps because you are numbing yourself to what may be internally bubbling up to the surface for you to look at and heal. Distracting yourself with talk-radio, television, or other background noises can also prevent you from finding closure to issues that haunt you.”

Continue reading “Sound of Stillness”

I hate repeating myself. This is one of the main reasons that I write. If I already wrote about something, I am unlikely to be interested in writing about it again. It’s done. If you were shouting over me when I was talking, you miss it—and that’s it. If I was telling you to watch out for the car and you were too busy doing an extroverted dance, when the car slams into you I don’t say “Thank God!”—I say, “Bless Darwin for giving me the tools to understand.”

Continue reading “Understanding Introverts”

Everybody knows that I love Americans. I love their enthusiasm, I love their accents and I love…well, loads of things about them. But not everyone in England shares my taste for befriending people from the good old US of A. You see, Americans have a very off-putting problem…they’re just too bloody loud.

Continue reading “The Cure for Being American”

I’m an introvert.

If you’re an introvert too, you may have wondered what it’s like to be an extrovert. Well, I can tell you. When I was young, I briefly took a medication that, as a side effect, turned me into an extrovert.

Continue reading “Inversion”

Shy, schizoid, and highly-sensitive are fuzzy terms often used interchangeably with introversion. They are not the same as introversion, but I think each word captures some important aspect of human experience. Let me define each of the terms so it isn’t so blurry and describe what each one illustrates. Both introverts and extroverts can be shy, schizoid, or highly-sensitive.

Introversion: This is a healthy capacity to tune into your inner world. It is a constructive and creative quality that is found in many independent thinkers whose contributions have enriched the world. Introverts have social skills, they like people, and they enjoy some types of socializing. However, party chit-chat depletes their energy while giving them little in return. Introverts enjoy one-on-one conversations, but group activities can be overstimulating and drain energy.

Shyness: Shyness is social-anxiety, an extreme self-consciousness when one is around people. It may have some genetic roots (in the form of a highly-reactive fear center), but it is usually learned from experiences at school, with friends, and in families. For some, it comes and goes at various ages and in certain situations. Shy people may feel uncomfortable with one-on-one conversations or in group situations. It is not an issue of energy; it is a lack of confidence in social situations. It is a fear of what others think of you. It produces sweating, shaking, red face or neck, racing heart, self-criticism, and a belief that people are laughing at you. It’s a feeling that you are the only person standing in a giant beam of a klieg light and you wish the floor would open up and swallow you. Shyness is not who you are (like introversion), it is what you think other people think you are, and therefore it is responsive to behavior change. Extroverts who need to be with others to refuel can suffer greatly if they are shy. The good news is that learning strategies to alter your behavior can significantly reduce shyness. I have included several practical books on shyness in the Bibliography at the end of this book. Try some of the suggestions in these books. They work.

Schizoid: People with this disorder live in a painful dilemma. They need relationships, yet they fear close involvement with other people. In most cases, the individuals have grown up in traumatizing and/or neglectful homes and have withdrawn or detached to avoid any more pain from human contact. The schizoid personality disorder is a common diagnosis in the mental health field. Too many psychotherapists confuse it with introversion and shyness, as if they were all the same thing. They’re not.

Highly-Sensitive: These are people who are born with a certain cluster of traits that is often described as a sixth sense. They are extremely perceptive, intuitive, and observant, with finer discrimination than most of us…

Our culture values and rewards the qualities of extroverts. America was built on rugged individualism and the importance of citizens speaking their minds. We value action, speed, competition, and drive.

It’s no wonder people are defensive about introversion. We live in a culture that has a negative attitude about reflection and solitude…

…

MBTI: The 16 Types –> The Sixteen Types at a Glance
Take the Test –> Jung Typology Test

“Mommy, she’s embarrassing me! Make her stop, Plleeeze!” I sobbed. My mother, who was crammed awkwardly with two little girls in a tiny public bathroom, looked at me unsympathetically. “Meghan, she’s two, she isn’t going to stop.” My little sister, crouched down at the floor, head popped into the next stall, was pleasantly chatting with the nice lady with the misfortune of being trapped next to us. I wanted to disappear. My sister had no problem making new friends and talking to strangers. But to me, having someone’s attention, especially unwanted and unsolicited attention, was beyond mortifying.

That bathroom incident was the first time I can remember being aware of my own self-consciousness. My sister’s casual approach to making new friends was so foreign to me that even being in her presence while she gleefully introduced herself to anyone who would listen was difficult to take. This awareness of self, and desire to focus inward, is what characterizes me as an introvert, and this self-awareness is one of the things that gives me the strength to succeed today.

So many times in my life I wanted to disappear, to become invisible. Social events, family gatherings, and even average school days were uncomfortable for me, and over time I developed a habit in these situations of sneaking off to a quiet place to regroup. I grew up with people excusing my antisocial behavior with comments such as, “oh, she’s just shy.” But being shy is more about being timid, easily frightened, and tentative in committing oneself. Shyness and introversion will often go hand-in-hand, but they are not the same thing.

Continue reading…

“Because I’m small and soft-spoken, people think that I’m fragile, submissive, and subservient. And, for some reason, they think, ‘Oh, we need to protect her. We need to take care of her.’ Don’t underestimate me. People pat me on the head and I go to myself, ‘Oh, and aren’t they going to be surprised?’” —Calista Flockhart

Via salon.com:

Boy oh boy, does this topic touch a nerve.

After spending many happy years in academia where quiet thoughtfulness is not considered a character flaw, I have been having one helluva time back in the real world. It feels like I’ve been thrown, kicking and screaming, back into high school. People either want to take advantage of me, belittle me, or ignore me completely.

I don’t need medication, as I’ve been told by well-meaning but clueless family members. I’m not a cold fish because I don’t flaunt and flirt my way around a party. I can’t believe that actual adults actually feel the need to poke and prod another adult into talking more. I do not lack confidence or self-esteem because I’m not constantly puffing out my chest, expressing my Very Important Opinions, or tooting my own horn. I am not a snob. I am not a misanthrope. I love people. I am genuinely interested in people. I love to listen to them, I love to watch them and study them. I even love to talk to them from time to time when they’re nice and not pushy.

I enjoyed the greatest pleasure of my life falling in love with a charming extrovert and suffered the deepest pain of my life losing him because he didn’t get it and he couldn’t see me.

I need a freakin’ support group, but I don’t think they exist…we really are an aggrieved minority, but we suffer in silence.

—No Name Given

For all the things shyness is, there are a number of things it’s not. For one, it’s not simple introversion. If you stay home on a Friday night just because you prefer a good book to a loud party, you’re not necessarily shy–not unless the prospect of the party makes you so anxious that what you’re really doing is avoiding it. “Shyness is a greater than normal tension or uncertainty when we’re with strangers,” says psychologist Jerome Kagan of Harvard University. “Shy people are more likely to be introverts, but introverts are not all shy.”

Continue reading “Secrets of the Shy”, “Shy? Or Something More Serious?”, “Shyness, the New Solution”