A fact about me: I am an introvert and accepting this about myself and learning about it is one of the huge ways I am learning to love and welcome myself.
Introversion can be confusing though. I told a friend the other day that after our two-hour class meeting at school (which I enjoyed and was fully engaged in and took an active role in) that I would have to go home and recover by lying down for a while.
She was really shocked. I guess because I am outspoken and confident and happy to lead. And those aren’t things usually associated with introversion. According to my research, it all makes me a ‘social introvert’.
You see, I know I’m an introvert because as much as I love contact and friends and newness and connection, I also need to balance this with downtime. I mean nobody-asking-anything-of-me-lights-off-no-stimulation kind of downtime. Preferably involving blankets and tea and no humans.
This is my plug in. It is my way of filling back up. It is a way I honour myself. It is how I look after my sensitivity and openness. It enables my giftedness and strengths to exist and be born in my life.
And what I find is that people who are introverted tend to have shame around their tendencies and needs – in other words we think there is something wrong with us. I remember when I was younger at a party praying that the guy I was talking to wouldn’t need the toilet because of The Gap that happens. That terrible loitering in-between-conversations shall I just go home gap.
I also remember wrapping myself in my mum’s heavy velvet curtains as a child when visitors came to the house. So tight that I would eventually be forced to unravel myself for breathing and survival purposes.
And I spent so long thinking ‘one day I will be confident like the people who seem to find this whole thing so easy’. Because I didn’t understand that everyone has their own version of difficult. And because, essentially, I was more focussed on the anxiety deep down that there was something wrong with me.
There is nothing wrong with us introverts. We need duvet time. We are thinkers, observers, empaths, feelers, book lovers, text-rather-than-call-ers. And that’s not just okay and allowed; it’s more than okay and allowed. It’s actually where our giftedness lies and it’s the shape of the container that holds what we specifically came to bring.
If you want to dive into this subject, there was a huge conversation on my Facebook page about a book I read last month on this subject. It is brilliant.
But really I want to say right now, let’s be introverted together – like on this blog, no need to leave our duvets kind of together.
I have this feeling many of you who come here may know what I’m talking about with the duvet thing and the downtime. So I thought I’d share.
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PS I saw a quote similar to this one floating around by an anonymous (probably introverted let’s face it) author the other day. It didn’t leave me and inspired me to write my own version including duvets.
Love.
About Hollie
