I met a guy who can’t stand being alone. He has to talk with someone – this is what he said. He told me that people thought that he would be an extroverted but he is in fact an introvert. How come?

2 comments

  1. there are no extroverts or introverts but people scaling more or less on the extrovert scale.

    I am an extrovert who loves being alone five out of seven days. Being with people I like attention most of the time, I don’t mind not being the center but I also like being it and I am good at it.

    Life is not black and white and it depends on your surroundings too

  2. Some see introversion as having a rich inner life. Of course, we can’t compare our inner lives, we can’t tell whether your friend’s inner life is any less rich for being talkative.

    Others see introversion as “regaining energy from being alone”. I dislike this definition, as someone who often seems like an extrovert, I still expend energy to do so, it’s just energy I’m happy to expend. This also suffers a little from the issue above, we don’t really have the capacity to compare our experiences.

    Others see introversion just as being shy, but that is of course a very superficial definition, a definition an observer might make. A person who does not do anything outward-facing might still fail to do any particular introspection.

    To others, introversion is just codeword for anxiety, being self-conscious (not to be confused with self-aware).

    I’m sure there are more understandings.

    So, at least part of the problem is that everyone has different, not overlapping ideas about what introversion and extroversion is. And of course, that in turn means that the words are kinda meaningless, there is no point in working out what a word “really means” if others will use differently. Either take the time to understand what someone means by the word, or live with the fact that your understanding will be superficial (which isn’t a terrible thing, just something we should be aware of).

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