The Quiet Rise of Introverts

by Brenda Knowles

  Independence is not the same as individualism. Individualism conjures up “do your own thing” images of liberated and somewhat self-centered people. Independence, for our purposes, is a close relative of autonomy. Along with mastery and purpose, autonomy is one of the three basic human needs, according to motivation and self-determination theorists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. If we want to motivate a human, we should give him or her autonomy, something to master and the opportunity to be part of something bigger than him or herself.

  Our current culture values independence (and sometimes individualism) and deplores anything that smacks of neediness or dependence. You are complete on your own. You don’t need a man/woman! Pick yourself up by the bootstraps! Even though educational and professional settings emphasize group projects (introvert nightmares) and collaboration, independence is still revered. We reward and praise those who think independently and make decisions quickly. We see them as smart.

  In parenting, the goal of most parents is to teach their children how to live on their own, each maturity stage taking the kids further and further away from home. This may, however, be changing. A 2014 Pew study of recent housing trends found that more 18–34-year-olds live with their parents than either on their own or with a significant other. But despite the statistics, living in your parent’s home still carries a certain stigma.

  Inner direction is a leg up maturity-wise, compared to being externally directed. It requires the wherewithal to act on our own, regardless of circumstances and others’ opinions. Although independence is more mature than dependence, it is still missing the key element of relating to others. Independence does provide the necessary foundation for interdependence though, which we will discuss in Section III.

  As introverts move along the maturity continuum, we move further away from dependency on our parents and society’s view of us. No longer do we blame others for our misfortunes or give them credit for our successes. It’s all on us now. The paradigm of “I” replaces the paradigm of “You.” Because we are more self-directed, we examine our lives and figure out what we need to feel successful in our own way. When we know ourselves, it is easier to be morally and soulfully articulate. It is easier to both advocate for and accept ourselves.

  As we fuel the flames of independence, we figure out who we are, what we need, how to take care of ourselves, and how to be our best selves.

  THE PURPOSE OF EACH PRACTICE

  Each of the following chapters introduces a practice and principles that support it. The purpose of each practice is to help the reader become more effective and fulfilled in everyday living. Applying the practices and using the principles as guidance help you reduce anxiety and feel the energy and ease of living meaningfully, while moving along the maturity continuum.

  Practice One: Waking Up Principles of Self-Awareness

  “What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters, compared to what lies within us.” —Henry S. Haskins, “Meditations on Wall Street”

  IS IT TIME TO TWEAK THE RECIPE?

  I like to have a recipe. I can make anything with a recipe. I’m not afraid to try exotic dishes or difficult techniques, as long as they are spelled out. I could follow the instructions of an old-world Italian lady and make fabulous gnocchi, but I would beg her to write down the steps so that I could make it on my own later.

  Recipe following is how I’ve lived much of my life. “Combine 1 college education with 1 caring and successful husband. Add 3 children and stir.” This turned out well for the presentation part, but flopped in the end.

  Who knew ingredients could evolve? Who knew we’d eventually feel limited by a recipe?

  Ultimately, winging it became necessary; a random combination of internal and external mixing led to a completely different, but richer, end product.

  SHARING RECIPES

  In the beginning, my husband and I even had recipes to follow and share with our children. We had access to oodles of child-rearing books and we ate them up. We deferred to Consumer Reports for the correct stroller, crib, monitor, etc. We controlled and extolled proper procedures for all aspects of feeding, sleeping, pooping, learning, and disciplining. If by some miracle there wasn’t a book on the subject we needed, we looked to our family, friends, and neighbors to provide examples and instructions. This was all fine and dandy, until the first time we were confronted with a child who didn’t fit the textbook description. Who knew recipes could go rogue?

  “If we expect our children to always grow smoothly and steadily and happily, then…we’re going to worry a lot more than if we are comfortable with the fact that human growth is full of slides backward as well as leaps forward, and is sure to include times of withdrawal, opposition, and anger, just as it encompasses tears as well as laughter.” —Fred Rogers

  VAPID BETTY CROCKER

  Sometimes as a meticulous recipe follower, I’d forget to taste the food at the end of production. I was so sure the recipe was foolproof, I assumed the food would be delicious or as good as the last time I made it. This was a mistake. We need to periodically taste and tweak our creations.

  Ten years and three children into my marriage, this textbook homemaker was one depressed tuna casserole. I needed zing, pizzazz, brightness of flavor. I was making sloppy joes like a robot. They were consistently tasty, but I was bland. My heart was heavy. So, there I was with a house full of people counting on me to be Betty Crocker, and I couldn’t even be me—because I didn’t know what I was made of.

  WHAT AM I? MASHED POTATOES?

  What if I was just a follower or tasteless mashed potatoes? I was unsure how and if I wanted to look inward within myself. I did know that I couldn’t bear to make one more uninspired hot dish. I could not let myself become stale living at sous chef status. I was simmering away to nothing in a very un-Martha Stewart way (unless Martha snaps at her kids, feels mediocre, and cries in the shower).

  So, I timidly stepped outside my own kitchen and experienced the full flavor of someone else’s sloppy joes. I smelled the aroma of coq au vin and noted its essence. I gathered enough spicy ingredients (in my case, fitness training, guitar lessons, writing) to ensure my own depth of flavor. I made renegade chef friends: either people who had been burned and learned, or had always made up their own concoctions (or both!). They gave me the freedom to wreck a few meals. Dared me to fail or completely kick a recipe up a notch. Wham!

  WINGING IT

  It turns out that I’m capable of winging it, even if I prefer not to. I have imagination and, what’s more, I can teach others to make their own gnocchi. I’ll even write it down for them, but it’s better if they just give it a whirl themselves. It doesn’t matter if the cake doesn’t rise or the soup is salty. Trial and error is the risk-taking/transformative part, the part where our lives and hearts rise above the container. Where internal goes external, with a dash of creativity.

  As for my kids, we still confer with friends and family regarding their upbringing because it is fun, and because they often reassure us that there is no such thing as a foolproof child manual. We try to let the kids develop their own flavors. I know they need help and guidelines, but I also know they need to taste what life has to offer, beyond the laminated recipe card. I want them to know there are recipes out there, but that it’s perfectly wild and delicious to sample a lot before choosing a menu. They need permission to experiment and mess up. They need encouragement to be who they are without a recipe. They need to know what they are made of.

  I first wrote what you’ve just read above as an essay years ago when my marriage was coming to a close, but my self-awareness was blossoming. It shows the first step toward independence: waking up. If you are “making sloppy joes like a robot” or raising your children just like your neighbors raise theirs, you may be sleepwalking. You may be completely unconscious regarding who you are. I was.

  FITTING IN BUT LOSING OUT

  The Swiss psych
iatrist Carl Jung spent the first nine years of his life as an only child. He lived primarily in his imagination, and blissfully engaged in hours of solitary play. When he started school, he found he could not remain connected with his beloved inner world. In order to fit in, he adapted to his new school companions—and in doing so, he felt that he lost an important part of himself.

  Many introverts can relate to Jung’s story. In order to fit in, we abandon the sweet sense of home found in our thoughts and feelings and move along with the current of our culture and social circles. Often this means making ourselves into something we are not, including rowdy playmates, perpetually industrious parents, and vapid Betty Crockers.

  THE COMPETITIVE MERITOCRACY

  We all (introverts and extroverts alike) let the hum and busy-ness of external life lull us into a complacent stupor. In fact, New York Times columnist David Brooks says in his book, The Road to Character, if you’ve lived in the last sixty or seventy years, you’ve been living in a competitive meritocracy. This means that you’ve lived with a lot of competition and pressure regarding individual achievement. Doing well in school, getting into the right college, finding a great job, and moving toward success have been focuses for you. Comparing yourself to others has been the primary gauge for determining whether you are “doing it right.”

  Brooks uses the term “résumé virtues” to denote the skills that we bring to the job market and those that contribute to external success. Internal virtues, such as kindness, faithfulness, bravery, and honesty, are what Brooks calls “eulogy virtues”—these are the qualities people remember us for after we’re gone. Just like the personality traits of introversion and extroversion, we all have résumé and eulogy virtues, but one is usually more pronounced than the other.

  The education system (as well as society in general) orients itself around résumé virtues. It’s a lot easier to articulate and plan career goals and skills than it is to describe and execute a plan for profound moral character.

  With all our time, energy, and attention focused on external achievement, we have less time, energy, and attention to put toward our inner realm. It’s easier to keep on following the recipe and be an achievement automaton than it is to pause and reflect on what we are doing and who we are.

  Because our inner world is so neglected and the inner world is the introvert’s happy place, the introvert suffers. It’s difficult to go against the current, without the electricity of our inner world to energize us.

  Conflict is stimulating too. It’s easier to maintain harmony by complacently agreeing than it is to find the vocabulary and energy to speak to the contrary of cultural norms.

  Carl Jung said personality or wholeness is an achievement earned (not given) in the second half of life. The first half of life is spent emancipating ourselves from our parents, finding a spouse, creating a family, and becoming an effective contributor. Jung’s theories about the first half of life line up with the meritocracy ideals. After we’ve satisfied these ideals, we look inward. We develop our psychological selves by noticing tensions within us. We pull opposite traits into closer balance: for example, if we are more introverted, we might strengthen our extroverted skills. We bring the unconscious into the conscious. Jung called this process individuation, and we will discuss it further in Practice Three.

  In my own life, I’ve followed the pattern or recipe Jung described. As a suburban, stay-at-home mom, I fell into the trance of the ultra-achiever. I kept myself and our three children so busy there was no time to think. My outwardly successful husband led the show. He attended a highly accredited MBA program. He had a high-paying salary as a portfolio manager at a hedge fund. He was doing it right according to the meritocracy and society at large. We were perfect citizens—buying cars and homes and saving for our kids’ college funds and our retirement.

  I did not take the time to question our lifestyle or to look inward until I was thirty-seven years old. Perched on the ledge between the first and second halves of my life, my eyes fluttered open and self-awareness slipped in.

  TENSION

  The first feeling that interrupted my sleep was a low-grade tension. The year my children were six, four, and two, I found myself at the doctor’s office sitting in a vulnerably thin examination gown, asking for something to give me energy, boost physical desire, and stave off depression. The doctor wrote a prescription for Prozac, an antidepressant.

  At that point in my life, I had a part-time nanny, personal trainer, housecleaners, and virtually no budget restrictions. There were no reasons why I should not be able to design and juggle magnificent schedules, or to have profoundly happy children, a well decorated home, and a blissful demeanor. And yet I found myself being short with the kids, emotionally overwrought, and just plain sad. I had no drive. I tuned out some of the noise and requests of me in order to get through the day. I vacillated between extreme sensitivity and dull malaise.

  There was tension between the roles I played and the real me. I did not know it at the time, but I was living the perfect life for an extroverted commercial success. The life of the competitive external achiever (a successful individual, according to the meritocracy) did not sit well with my internal temperament. My husband and I had engineered a world where I had no time alone, few generative conversations, and a constant outpouring of energy. Many people would say that’s the life of a parent. I agree. The point I hope to make is that my situation caused enough dissonance within me to make me seek relief.

  But I subconsciously knew that the doctor could not fix my problems (dependent paradigm). I had to work on them myself. I’d effectively contributed, as Jung said, and now it was time to look inward.

  I did not fill the prescription.

  SOLITUDE

  My love affair with solitude began. Instinctively, I searched for time and space to be alone. I had a desperate need to regain energy. Socializing with the neighbors and dinners with my husband’s coworkers did not recharge me. Only in solitude could I breathe. In solitude thoughts were heard, daydreams flowed, clarity arose, ideas came together. I came together.

  The problem was that when I spent time alone, I was not spending time with my family. Good mothers don’t spend time away from their families. They live to be with their children. It was hard to explain to my husband why I would rather read for two hours by myself than be with him.

  “I had told people of my intention to be alone for a time. At once I realized they looked upon this declaration as a rejection of them and their company. I felt apologetic, even ashamed, that I would have wanted such a curious thing as solitude, and then sorry that I had made a point of announcing my desire for it.” —Doris Grumbach, Fifty Days of Solitude

  It seemed other people loved the constant hits of interaction through social media, emails, texts, phone calls, and in-person meetings. Everybody wanted to keep in touch all the time. My former in-laws called frequently for short conversations. Quite often the calls felt like interruptions to any rare moments of concentration I had.

  Why was it so vital for me to be left alone? What was wrong with me? For a long time, I could not articulate what my soul needed.

  Slowly, with intentional observance, I began to notice that if I did not take time for myself, my presence became muddled. My thoughts gridlocked and my demeanor was zombie-like. I came across as there but not there. That was not good enough.

  Many people come alive in relationships. The more the better. I was driven by relationships, but found myself inspired and transcendent in solitude.

  Eventually, I stumbled upon Marti Olsen Laney’s classic introvert guide, The Introvert Advantage. I took the included assessment to find out if I had introverted traits such as:

  •When I need a rest, I prefer time alone or with one or two close people rather than a group

  •When I work on projects, I like to have larger, uninterrupted time periods rather than smaller chunks

/>   •I can zone out if too much is going on

  •I don’t like to interrupt others; I don’t like to be interrupted

  •I can become grouchy if I am around people or activities too long

  •I often dread returning phone calls

  •I am creative/imaginative

  •I form lasting relationships

  •I usually need to think before I respond or speak

  I answered yes to the majority of them. What a revelation! I had to know more. I read anything I could find on introversion in 2008, before Susan Cain had popularized the topic by writing her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.

  Dr. Laurie Helgoe, in her book, Introvert Power, shares her husband’s experience of dealing with her introversion and need for space. He likened it to a light being removed or a projector stopping during a feature film. I tried to keep that in mind when requesting time to myself.

  I learned that introverts need space to live as their true selves. We unfold like old road maps—creases released and possibilities endless—when immersed in open-ended time. Extroverts need hits of attention and interaction to stay energized. Different methods of rejuvenating, neither better nor worse.

  I found a place to rest in the words of famous loners like Henry David Thoreau and Charles Bukowski. It had been so long since I felt that kind of belonging. Like a parent’s lap or a lover’s embrace, the acknowledgement that cravings for solitude were not selfish or bad enveloped me in warm acceptance. It was like sitting late at night at the kitchen table with my dearest friends.

  “Now, more than ever, we need our solitude. Being alone gives us the power to regulate and adjust our lives. It can teach us fortitude and the ability to satisfy our own needs. A restorer of energy, the stillness of alone experiences provides us with much-needed rest. It brings forth our longing to explore, our curiosity about the unknown, our will to be an individual, our hopes for freedom. Alone time is fuel for life.” —Dr. Ester Buchholz