As a philospher I question long-held beliefs about society, such as the qualitative distinction between extroverts and introverts. There is none. The distinction is make-believe, made up by academics, and has no bearing on you or your social reality.
Academics and social scientists love making up boxes to classify people in. It helps them produce tables and graphs. It does nothing to advance our understanding of ourselves. ‘Introverts’ don’t exist. All people live on a spectrum of extroversion. People only differ in terms of degrees of extroversion, but there is no such thing as an ‘introvert’.
An introvert, i.e., someone who behaves introvertedly, in all likelihood, has been the victim of a specific type of childhood abuse. Namely, you were told to shut up, be quiet, sit still, stop bothering mommy and daddy, stay out of the living room, stay in your room, stop making those sounds coming from your mouth, play in the garage, stop making music, stop dancing, stop the noise from walking on the floor. And if your parents or caretakers were particularly belligerent at getting you to act unheard and unseen, you will have slowly internalized these behaviors by age 10. Meaning, you were made to behave introvertedly, not because you’re an introvert, but because you were punished for displaying your natural extroversion.
Repeatedly punishing a child for displaying extroverted behavior may, then, produce an introverted child. It’s as if the now grown person is still trying to ‘prove’ how well they can follow the rules that once restricted them. Society, of course, is of little help. There is no understanding of your condition. People label you as an ‘introvert’ — or worse , something more insulting — and dismiss you for being that way. Meanwhile, you are constantly failing to speak for yourself, as though you are still waiting for the permission you never had. Even though you want to go out dancing, you tell yourself you’re not supposed to, or make yourself believe you don’t like dancing.
The literature on introverts makes things even worse. You see, the literature was written by academic retards who never question anything. Academics simply assume there are extroverts and introverts, and then tell introverts to “discover the power of the introvert” or “how to thrive in an extroverted world as an introvert”.
They never tell you: you’re not really an introvert because no one is.
Is no one an introvert? Exactly. No one is. All people are born extroverted, but some people are so severely punished for it they begin to hide themselves from social life. That’s not the same thing as being an introvert. That’s being an extrovert who has learned not to act as one. The stress, anxiety, depression you feel as an introverted person comes precisely from this conflict: you really are an extrovert, but your internalized punish-reward system keep your from acting as one. And that is destroying your life.
The academics are, as usual, all wrong, and their advice is absolutely destructive. Academics want you to believe you were born an introvert rather than made. They will never offer you the correct advice, namely to unwind the punishment-reward system you mistakenly internalized as a child. Those learned rules were a coping mechanism to help you survive in a household that hated you for being outspoken and playful. It may very well be that your parents have been raised in the same manner, and they were merely passing it on to you.
That’s not an excuse to spend a life living as an introvert, though. You don’t have to. You can heal all the pain and frustration in your head by simply breaking out of your false programming. You can stop behaving as an introvert by starting to display your natural extroverted behaviors. You achieve this by speaking up.
You’re not out in the sun by yourself reading books because you’re introverted. You’re doing that because you learned to withdraw from extroverted behaviors, usually out of an unhealthy yet subconscious fear of being punished for them, as you were in childhood.
Here, then, is the “cure”: accept you have been equipped with a false self-image. Accept that you can peal off this false self-image to reveal your true self. Accept that all people are born with some natural degree of extroversion. Accept that there is no such thing as ‘an introvert’ and that you aren’t really one either. You are now free to display extroverted behaviors, and you’re going to discover that what’s makes people start taking an interest in you.
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