As a masking Autist I approve. I was shopping today, that’s enough for a week.
It’s funny, because I’m the exact opposite. I’ll be absolutely burnt out at the end of a week, but put me in a crowd of people Friday night and I get juiced to joke and sing and ham it up until morning
If it’s my D&D group: I can go 7 hours.
If it’s mandatory fun at the office: 10 minutes and I’m drained.
I’m an immigrant in Germany and began learning German at eighteen. I’m C2 and getting my masters in German language instruction, but I still feel so exhausted after interacting in German for long periods of time. I’m also generally an introvert, so it’s draining in multiple ways. I know it’s just that I need more experience and there’s no real helping it, but it really kills my mood sometimes. I work as a salesperson/barista at a bakery, teach classes, and interact with all my friends in German, but my husband speaks perfect English and it’s such a relief to be able to talk to him in English at home.
I’m an introvert but I’m fine in parties for hours, usually.
A few years back, we were at a wedding where I had previously met only the bride, while my wife knew a bunch of people. She was off talking to people, and I just drained within two hours. Ended up waiting for her in the hall outside the room.
I’m an introvert
I get a lot of heat for this, but I like to remind people that there isn’t really “such thing” as an “introvert.” I am on a doomed crusade to get people to stop labeling themselves as such.
You’re a normal person who doesn’t like some types of socializing or gets exhausted easier from some kinds of interaction. A huge percentage of people are going to get burned out by social situations they’re not engaged with or having a good time with. There’s a reason you see groups of bored, tired looking people hanging around outside of receptions.
And what about people who feel exhausted by every type of social interaction? Because that’s my experience. I’m not saying it cannot change over time, but labels can still be useful. When someone describes themselves as an introvert, nobody assumes they are drained by every single interaction. People generally understand it as a way of describing how someone responds to strangers or groups, rather than how they respond to all interaction.
There is nothing wrong with that. A label can help someone express a pattern they recognise in themselves without believing they are trapped by it. It is simply a way of communicating how they tend to feel in certain situations. Many people adopt mindsets that feel natural or comfortable without assuming those mindsets define them forever.
And what about people who feel exhausted by every type of social interaction? Because that’s my experience.
That is literally what I’m talking about. That feeling is a muscle, it can be exercised and changed.
IF YOU WANT IT.
This is where people lose their minds when I do this ill-fated game. I don’t care if you’re fine.
But a lot of people are not fine, they cling to the label to avoid change because comfortable patterns are going to be what your rationalizations default to before it will rationalize doing something really uncomfortable like even going to therapy, much less going out and meeting new people and pretending to be social long enough that you get stronger at it. This is where the label, and all the “personality profile” horoscope bullshit online does real damage to young people who need to be exercising their brains.
If you’re fine, it’s fine. But a lot of people are not fine. The trends isolation and avoidance of each other is causing real harm to a lot of people.
Actually introversion/extroversion is the only personality trait for which we have hard, physiological evidence. Introverts and extroverts use different chemical pathways in the brain.
Introverts have longer dopamine pathways and high cortical arousal, lending to getting too stimulated.
Even the way blood flows in the brain during tasks is different. In introverts, it tends more toward the frontal cortex while in extroverts it flows more toward sensory pathways (sight, sound, touch).
I get a lot of heat for this, but I like to remind people that there isn’t really “such thing” as an “introvert.”
You should get heat for that. It’s not merely factually incorrect, it’s dangerous, harmful misinformation. Neurodiversity exists. Learn to live with others who don’t think, feel, or function the way you do.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33548763/
ELI5
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-science-of-introverts-vs-extrovertsYes. And we call that kind of person an “introvert”.
I know the idea makes you feel uncomfortable, but I promise you are capable of so much more than you’ve been led to believe by society, culture and peers and even your own mind.
Thanks I’m cured! All my anxieties and masking and difficulties socializing from overstimulation have gone away because of your uninformed happy thoughts. Why didn’t I try that before?!
Try what? What exactly do you think I’m saying?
edit: If you’re happy with how you are, then there’s no problem.
You’re insisting that the frameworks some people use to understand the world are all made up (to be fair you aren’t entirely wrong). But the power of positive thinking bullshit is peddled by every grifter and their mother and is often the stick used by people who aren’t willing to acknowledge that depression isn’t all in your head.
It’s akin to saying, just go for a run and you’ll feel better. You may be right, but you are completely neglecting that medication is also useful possibly above and beyond a nice jog.
People can better themselves, but this particular category of argument ignores a lot of realities for people that need more than a pep talk.
Also, introvert and extravert are nice short hand terms for “probabilistically, I gain or lose energy from the average social outing”.
I’m not prescribing platitudes and positive thinking, I’m saying if you think you’re an introvert and you’re unhappy with it, you can change with practice and work. It’s hard work and you fall down a lot but you can have a very different lifestyle with far more opportunities to meet people, have relationships and get recognized in your career or study.
The problem I am outlining is that many people think this is outside of their capability because they are “An Introvert™” and that’s just a word, not a diagnosis of a disease.
Why would I wanna change? I’m happy as an introvert, know that I have a limited energy in social settings and there is nothing wrong with that or need change. What are you on about?
There isn’t any issue if you’re happy and no need to do anything. I feel like that should be pretty self-evident.
This may seem shocking to you, but some of us are okay being introverts, you know? It’s not something negative. Society values other types of personality more, that’s a fact, but I’m fine the way I am.
This may seem shocking to you
I often come off as rude or abrasive because I assume people are smart enough to understand that on this topic, I am specifically talking about if you have a problem or you’re unhappy, so I don’t drop a wall of qualifiers.
And I still won’t drop a wall of qualifiers because in my 25 years of having this conversation more often than not, the people who respond that they’re fine and happy usually aren’t and wish that they could make some kind of changes to their life, which is why they felt the need to respond that they’re fine despite obviously not being the target of the message.
What you actually mean when you say ‘I assume people are smart enough’ is ‘I expect people to make the same assumptions as me’. People come from very different contexts. You can either drop that wall of qualifiers and be understood by most, or skip it and only have a few get your point. It sounds like you know why you’re being misinterpreted and, for whatever reason, want to keep it that way.
The qualifiers give people a bridge to escape, a way to say “No, that’s not me, I know my situation and my feelings, and despite being sad like 90% of the time, in this once instance I am the exception to the rule and don’t have to do shit to feel better.”
So yah, I rather make people mad and get them to reply “whaa that’s not me, you don’t know what you’re talking about” because that is action, that is something that forces people to think about why the message makes them mad, and if they get hit with that enough, they often think about it more and can change. The fervor to pile on and say “you don’t understand me” just tells me it’s working. Because it takes an almost subconscious obtuse rejection of a broad, not-targeted message to lash out at it. We need to understand this behavior in ourselves as well.
there isn’t really “such thing” as an “introvert.”
This is something non-introverts say. I promise if you fit the label you’d understand its usefulness.
That’s some fantastic examples of clinging to labels which I am speaking against. As someone who managed to stop feeling the need to be isolated, stopped feeling social anxiety and social exhaustion as rapidly, I know quite a lot about the work it takes to change, and how you look back and realize that it’s not mature or helpful to use these kinds of labels to describe yourself or anyone else.
I will go ahead and reap the anger and hate of the sheltered Lemmy masses here, but there’s no such thing as “being” an introvert or “being” an extrovert. They’re not engrained personality types or conditions, they’re descriptions of where people are on a spectrum of social energy, and that spectrum is not a science, it’s not an actual “thing” that’s fixed or solid. These are just descriptors of feelings and circumstances.
Some people who identify as “extroverts” will get massively drained and bored in a social situation that they’re not having fun with or engaged with, and some “introverts” will find they can’t get enough of being with the people who stimulate them and make them feel engaged. Everyone has an energy level for different kinds of socialization, there are no real rules here. Throw away those “23 signs you’re an introvert!” website personality tests because they are harming your self-image and potential opportunities.
Why am I setting myself up for lots of “BUT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING” replies?
Because I have known too many people who are miserable and alone and keep telling others (and themselves) that they are an “introvert” and thus precluded from going out and exercising their social muscles and meeting new people. Really what most people mean when they say they’re an introvert is that they’re socially awkward or inexperienced or that their current social group doesn’t stimulate them.
Meanwhile, I went from non-verbal as a young person to a leader in business and community organizer with far more opportunities than peers who are still hiding in discord. This wasn’t achieved because I was secretly a super-chad who didn’t know I secretly had a huge extrovert generator hidden under my hood, it was by deliberate effort and repeated, embarrassing failures and exercising muscles I didn’t know I had. Volunteering to plan events, then volunteering to HOST events, then taking on roles that put in contact with more and more people, and learning social cues and emotional intelligence. Getting out of my own head took work.
You CAN do this kind of work, even if you’re completely repulsed by other people but lonely, even if you’re on the autistic spectrum, even if you’re completely down at the bottom of a cynicism and isolation hole. This is a problem that is growing among younger men and women alike who tend to retreat to online spaces and adopt avoidant personalities and end up deeply lonely and depressed.
We’re social creatures, we survived hardships for millions of years in our past by creating community and connection. We’re so deeply wired to connect with others that we suffer and can even die without talk, touch and emotional connection. Don’t isolate yourselves, exercise ALL your muscles regularly.
I’m not going to debate this because that tends to make you double-down internally, I rather you get mad and digest this internally, accountability for change always lay with you and only you, you have more power for change and growth than you’ve let yourself believe. Also, if you’re happy and don’t want change, why are you replying? Ask yourself why it’s so important that you feel the need to attack a message that doesn’t help you personally? Stop wrapping your child-like avoidance of doing the hard, accountable things in a broader societal wrapping paper. This is about you.
TL;DR of the above for anyone else: Socializing is a muscle which can and should be exercised.
Which I actually wholeheartedly agree with. I had a similar experience to you, though not as extreme. I had maybe one friend, didn’t talk to people, considered myself an introvert, basically the typical person you’re talking about. Then I met someone who taught me how to exercise that muscle, and encouraged me to meet other people. Took some time, but I went from having one friend, to having over a dozen. And I’m capable of actually talking to people I don’t know now, instead of clamming up and getting anxious, most of the time. Barring certain physical or mental disabilities, I always try to encourage my introvert friends to talk to others more, as much as it’s a horribly embarrassing, awkward, and especially draining experience at first.
This all being said, you sound like a douche. Especially with that last paragraph. Chill, my dude. Don’t immediately assume you’re gonna be under attack. There’s hardly enough people on this site to spam you with replies anyways.
Thank you for the recognition of both what I have to say and that I am in fact, a douche. I have a lot of approaches for a lot of domains. I am antagonistic douche on Lemmy because it’s a pretty foul hugbox in most areas honestly. And I’ve been through a few. I rather make people mad and have them think about what I had to say and why it makes them mad than have another “happy super-supportive give-and-take” conversation that goes nowhere and is forgotten because the people who do always, always, always push back on this message in particular feel like they “won.” I don’t want upvotes or thanks, I want people to feel things and think about them.
I don’t know if it’s the best approach, but I don’t really care, I’ve been at this a while and I am really worried for the younger people who are isolating themselves from any friction at all. It’s becoming disastrous for our whole society because it’s allowing the worst people to take over using the most mentally held-back methods of being seen and heard. We need fucking warriors out there, not people who are afraid to challenge authority or be shouted at.
even if you’re completely repulsed by other people but lonely, even if you’re on the autistic spectrum, even if you’re completely down at the bottom of a cynicism and isolation hole.
This is not the same as being an introvert. (Which is a thing)
Some people facing some of these issues could perhaps use the term introvert to describe or justify themselves or their behaviours, but it doesn’t mean they are correct.
I don’t care about the specific qualities of the labels, I’m talking to and about people calling themselves introverts who are miserable and lonely and think that they can’t change.
x-vertism is a behavioural archetype that changes with mental state. Nothing is absolute. Lots of social and structural factors impact people’s mental state from outside their control.
I can appreciate that what you’re saying is good willed, but it feels like the equivalent of telling a depressed person to try “not being sad.”
I will go ahead and reap the anger and hate of the sheltered Lemmy masses here, but there’s no such thing as “being” an introvert or “being” an extrovert.
As I stated after your other comment, this is factually incorrect and genuinely dangerous misinformation.
https://lemmy.world/comment/20869844
Neurodiversity exists and what most ND people need isn’t to be changed or “cured” for the comfort and conformity of neurotypicals, but to be accepted and supported for who they are and how they think, feel, and function. You are actively perpetuating the myth that ND people just haven’t “tried hard enough” to pretend they are like you. Stop it! This ignorant bullshit literally kills people. ND people almost always know what society at large expects of them and they just aren’t wired that way. You clearly have no idea what masking takes out of someone.
Again, stop it. You have no idea how much harm you are doing by spreading these outright unscientific fantasies.
I was once you, and and had the same feelings and wrong ideas that I derived from sources I sought out to reinforce my avoidance of change rather than looking at actual human experiences, getting therapy, and accepting that I could break free of depression, social avoidant behavior and anxiety and doing the fucking work. I’m not telling anyone my answer is for everyone, but if I can turn from someone like you, to someone like me, than I will NOT stop sharing my experiences and opinions and guess what.
This will really burn you up.
I’ve helped many, many people.
I won’t see another message from you, and if my attempts at reaching even a small number of people who need change bother you that bad, you also know what to do.
They’re descriptions of people by Carl Jung, one of the old timey psychologists. He’s the one that came up with all the vague horoscope-like definitions:
You know that one of the unfortunate qualities of introverts is that they so often cannot help putting the wrong foot forward. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 35-36.
Moreover there are not a few introverts who are so painfully aware of the shortcomings of their attitude that they have learned to imitate the extraverts and behave accordingly, and vice versa there are extraverts who like to give themselves the air of the introvert because they think they are then more interesting. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 564-565
In pathological cases, as you know, unconscious love also becomes a source of heightened fear of the object for the introvert, and, conversely, unconscious fear becomes a source of powerful attraction to the object for the extravert. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The introvert does feel, too, and very intensely so, only in a different way than the extravert does. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
Whereas the extravert needs the object to bring his type to perfection and to cleanse his feeling, the introvert experiences this as a horrible violation and disrespect of his personality, because he absolutely refuses to be, so to speak, the chemical dry cleaner for the feelings of extraverts. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
This is not the case in the introvert. His representation of things is inadequate, precisely because of the lack of feeling- into [the object]. His thinking is in accordance with outer reality, but not with his own inner reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
This explains the often- observed fact that the introvert thinks and preaches all sorts of nice things but does not do them himself, in fact, does the contrary; whereas the extravert does all sorts of good and nice things but does not think them, in fact, often the contrary. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The extravert knows, by feeling himself into others, by what human means people can be won over, whereas the introvert tries to create values in himself with which he tries to impress and force others toward him, or even bring them to his knees. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
Conversely, the introvert strains the pleasure- unpleasure mechanism in his unconscious by the conscious, idealistic desire to create the highest values proper to force others to come to him, thus degrading people to objects of his desire. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The ideally oriented introverted person is faced with the fact that he scares away from himself precisely the human love and joy that he is really trying to find behind all his desire to impress and to be superior, and that he keeps and chains to himself only those inferior persons who know best how to cater to his desire. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
While the introvert’s conscious attitude is an impersonal and just attitude of power, his unconscious attitude aims at inferior lust and pleasure; and while the extravert’s conscious attitude is a personal love for human beings, his unconscious attitude aims at unjust, tyrannical power. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
I would say: the introvert also tries, through the hypothesis of abstraction, to reach the object, actually reality, which seems to him chaotic only because of the projection of his unused and therefore undeveloped feeling. He tries to conquer the object by thinking. But he wants to reach the object quite as much as the extravert. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The only goal for the ideally oriented introvert is the production of impersonal, imperative values, and for the equally ideally oriented extravert the only goal is the love for the object. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The fear the introvert feels rests on the unconscious assumption that the object is too much animated, and this is a part of the ancient belief in magic. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 65
The extravert is controlled by his relation to the thing without, the introvert by his relation to the thing within. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 64
The conscious extravert values his connection with the outer object and fears his own inner self. The introvert has no fear of himself, but great fear of the object, which he comes to endow with extraordinary terrors. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 65
The extravert, on the other hand, takes his unconscious material in an introverted way, that is, with extreme caution and with many incantations to exorcise the inner power the object exercises over him. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 66
I started with the primitive idea of the flowing out and the flowing in of energy, and from this I constructed the theory of the introverted and extraverted types. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86
While Jung had some amazing insights for his time which pave the way for much deeper research into psychology, he was also deeply focused on bonkers mythology and solar schlongs than how we as people can relate to each other and the world around us.
His work on how hidden or repressed trauma impacts the mind probably will have a longer lasting impact on psychology than the ideas about set “archetypes” that people like Jordan Peterson have used extensively to prop up the idea of natural hierarchy, and why we should respect billionaires because they’re cool and awesome. (I’m working from memory but I think that was the title of one of Peterson’s books.)
As an introvert, this is exactly why I avoid these type of situations in the first place.
I have enough introvert/chill friends that most of my social outings are enjoyable hangs or game nights (and having the structure of a game really helps me). But every once in a while the extroverts wants to do a big holiday party or something and I’ve finally convinced all of them that I don’t secretly hate them, I just need to step out and exist in silence periodically or I’m going to go insane.
But I definitely don’t sign up for all of the extrovert parties.
yeah, that’s me at this very moment. Having the time of my life at this lan party but something inside me just snaps and I’m suddenly tired
Reported for posting a picture of me without my consent.
I’m in this picture and I don’t want to be
It’s basically explaining what introverts are
There’s not enough time.
Art style looks AI but concept is definitely human
Took me less than 5sec to discover that he’s a legit artist, with a WP page.
ai doesn’t have a “style”
It does. Developers train the AI on specific sets of images and cluster the outputs under categorically headings.
The end result is these pre-fabbed cookie cutter appearance to AI output. Even before you notice the surplus of fingers or weird melty background elements, an experienced eye will catch orientation and framing and composition that all look the same.
No it doesn’t
How so? Each panel contains the same characters with consistent features, the art is consistent and drives a point… Not seeing it here
