Here's How Introverts Interact With The World Differently From Extroverts (Video)

- June 13, 2020

For introverts, small talk stresses them out, while deeper conversations make them feel alive. While most extraverts are energized by such interactions, introverts often feel intimidated, bored, or exhausted by them. … Instead, introverts prefer deeper conversations, oftentimes about philosophical ideas.

Your whole life you’ve been confusing people – including yourself. Social interactions can either recharge or drain your social batteries. Parties can make you feel alive, switched on, and your most confident – or completely bored, annoyed, and withdrawn. You’re resilient and sensitive at the same time. Very social but rarely out. You enjoy being the center of attention - there are days when you think out loud, and you rarely care. And then there are days when you over-think everything, rarely thinking out loud, your annoying inner monologue kicking in. The entirety of your being is a conundrum.

You need constant mental stimulation. You hate first dates. “Please anything but small talk,” you think to yourself. Unlike a real extrovert, small talk stresses you out like crazy – you need deeper conversations to make you feel alive. At times you physically can’t stand talking on the phone. You’ll screen your phone calls – even from your closest friends. It’s too intrusive for you. Friends expect you to tear your mind away from whatever it is you focusing on and focus on them. This literally makes your brain hurt, your mind can’t change direction easily.

Maintaining friendships is a constant struggle for you. At any given point, you have one (maybe two) best friends who are your entire world. You’ll connect with people very easily, that’s not the problem. Here’s the thing, when you meet with someone, you’ll go out of your way to make them feel comfortable and happy, but it takes you a while to feel fully comfortable, so you can only take being around others incrementally.

At the same time, when you’re upset you need to talk it out with at least three different people. This can puzzle you emotionally – you need to be surrounded by people to be happy, but you also have moments of wanting to isolate yourself to recharge and be left alone with your thoughts. Your self-angst is maxed out. You often feel like you’re out of control of your emotional life – so you compensate by tending to desire control in other areas of your life. You’re driven, often a perfectionist, you care about the outcome of things. Indecisiveness is your Achilles’ Heel.

You ebb and flow between needing time alone to recharge your batteries and getting bored or antsy spending a day at home alone – this sort of downtime feels either completely satisfying or utterly pointless, it all depends on your mood.

Sometimes you feel like you were made in reverse. Coffee can actually be counter-productive for you. You hate traditional systems. You notice details that others don’t. You loathe the concept of how things “should be” – from the structure of our educational system to certain “rites of passage.” You think about everything – maybe a little too much. But it’s in your intolerability of “what’s supposed to be” that you innovate your own life.

Being a unique blend of both an extrovert and introvert makes you interact with the world a little bit differently than others, while it can be stressful, it often makes you see the world originally, too.