The Quiet Rise of Introverts

by Brenda Knowles

  WHERE TO START WHEN YOU HAVE NO DISCIPLINE?

  What if your life is one big indulgent, disorganized and stressful mess? What if you have no self-discipline? Where do you start? You start small. Do one small additional task every day. For instance, decide to never leave dirty dishes in the sink overnight, and then make sure the sink is empty before you go to bed every night for a week. Make your bed every day for a week. It may help to make an X or a check mark each day on the calendar when you complete the chosen task. This gives you an extra feeling of accomplishment.

  Think about what drives you morally. What do you value highly? A mature and morally driven person strives to spread more light than darkness. They work to further projects that can never be completed in a lifetime. They have personal truths that drive them. They are always working to better themselves. Considering and including these lofty ideals into our everyday existence, gives us signposts to follow and strength to carry us as we embody self-discipline.

  This morning, I knew I had to spend all day and most of the night working on this chapter of the book. I knew it was going to require strict discipline. No talking with friends on the phone. No mindless eating as I type. No extensive breaks. I set a goal of writing 4,200 words by six o’clock. Writing and sharing helpful insight (self-expression) are two of my higher loves. They give me the purpose and energy to work steadily and put off distractions.

  I hit my target word count at the six o’clock deadline. I did not stray from my work today. By doing so, I boosted my self-esteem and self-respect. Add that to new self-awareness and my self-table (more legs than a stool) is pretty stable. There’s a feeling of self-reliance and self-confidence that self-discipline (wow! that’s a lot of selfs) breeds. There’s healing in completing projects and expressing ourselves.

  CREATIVITY AS HEALER

  “Always the seer is a sayer. Somehow his dream is told; somehow he publishes it with solemn joy: sometimes with pencil on canvas, sometimes with chisel on stone, sometimes in towers and aisles of granite, his soul’s worship

  is built; sometimes in anthems of indefinite music, but clearest and most permanent, in words.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jung used a technique he called active imagination with his patients. He encouraged them to enter a state of reverie in which there was no judgment and no interference from him. Active imagination sounds a lot like the flow state, or meditation doesn’t it? Within active imagination patients told of their fantasies. Jung suggested they paint or draw these fantasies as they bubbled to the surface of their consciousness. While creating, the patients re-discovered parts of themselves long forgotten or hidden. Jung believed the unconscious held the secrets to our wholeness. He often used dream interpretation and active imagination to bring the unconscious to light.

  I often use intuitive writing with my coaching clients. The uncensored, free flow of writing based on prompts also brings up neglected or underused aspects of the client’s psyche. It helps bring unity between the conscious and unconscious, the internal and external world, just as Jung’s active imagination did.

  In asking my coaching clients where they feel most alive and most at home, I help them recall what makes life meaningful. Sometimes it leads them to take up a hobby or passion they abandoned to meet the demands of an achievement and competition-based world.

  One client, who is fully aware of the benefits and healing found in creating art, often paints pictures with a woman in them. The woman is always her, and post-painting she makes a point of interpreting what the piece tells her about herself. One time she knew she had to paint a picture in black-and-white with shades of grey. When interpreting the painting after it was finished, she realized she had been trying to live her life too strictly—in matters of black and white. She started to look at and create “grey” options in her life too.

  UNDERSTANDING LIVES AT THE INTERSECTION OF UNCONSCIOUS AND CONSCIOUS

  Those with a creative talent are often better able to bridge the gap between the external reality and the inner world. A writing teacher once told our class to make the universal specific within our writing. I pondered this idea for a while. She wanted us to link our own specific experience with that of the universe or that of others. In doing so we create understanding. At the intersection of our psyche and the external world there is connection and understanding. For example, I might write about a time when my children were embarrassed to have me speak in their school about introversion. The idea of being ashamed about introversion and its traits may resonate with my readers. Putting my feelings and insight about introversion out into the world serves as a gateway between the unconscious and conscious.

  Often a hunger to create unity within our chaotic and unbalanced psyche propels us to investigate and create external manifestations. We want understanding. We want to resonate with others. Do artists have an advantage when it comes to healing from past wounds or depression?

  GRIEF AND LOSS. HOW THEY AFFECT SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-DISCIPLINE

  A study done on children who lost their mother at an early age (before eleven) showed they had a greater chance of suffering severely from a mental illness later in life. It was the severity of the mental illness that was unique to the children who experienced grief from death of a parent. It was not the appearance of mental illness itself.

  It makes sense that children who lost their mother at an early age would experience reduced self-esteem. Mothers are generally the givers of unconditional love and affection in the early stages of our lives. Mothers make children feel loved just for being themselves. Their death (absence) or even a lack of a warm relationship between parent and child can lead to a predisposition for depression for the child later in life.

  The lack of an internalized parental voice not only affects self-esteem; it also affects self-discipline as we noted earlier. Self-esteem is not only linked with unconditional love, it is also linked with feelings of competence. It would again make sense that the loss of a parent at an early age would reduce self-esteem and produce a feeling of incompetence or helplessness. Emotional anxiety and depression both come with feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. Women who lost their mothers before age ten were more likely to exhibit dependent or anxiously attached behavior as adults than women who had not lost their mothers.

  ARTISTS AND INTROVERTS HAVE AN ADVANTAGE?

  Stay with me. I know this is a complex subject. The creatively gifted who suffer from bereavement or depression are often able to use their talents in a process of repair that allows them to come to terms with their loss or pain rather than deny or avoid it. As we discussed the benefits of solitude in Practices One and Two, it was suggested that introverts and the creative process are at home in the solitary environment. The introspective and the creative use solitude and their artistic skills to come to terms with their pain. While others rely on the counsel of others to help them process suffering, the creative and introverted do it within their own psyches. Once the project or art is created, it may be shared with the world, thus bringing the internal external, making the specific, universal.

  FINDING CONTROL AND COMPETENCE THROUGH CREATIVITY

  The creative act defies helplessness. It gives the creator a feeling of control and competence. It pushes hopelessness aside. It serves as a coping mechanism and as a method of expressing emotion. As we learned in Practice Two, naming or labeling emotions is a powerful tool to combat anxiety. It moves our neural processes from the primitive and reactive limbic system to the more evolved and controlled prefrontal cortex.

  Creating art is not exactly labeling emotions, but it is expressing them in an organized way. It gives us a narrative and formulated way of describing our feelings. No unconditional love or parental voice can lead to low self-esteem and little to no self-discipline. If we work on and complete long-term creative projects, we improve both.

  Anthony Storr, therapist and author of Solitude: A Return to the Self, says, �
�The search for order, for unity, for wholeness is, I believe, a motivating force of signal importance in the lives of men and women of every variety of temperament. The hunger for imagination is active in every human being to some degree. But the greater the disharmony within, the sharper the spur to seek harmony, or if one has the gifts, to create harmony.”

  Perhaps it is a blessing to be neurotic?

  WHAT DRIVES US TO DEVELOPMENT AND WHOLENESS?

  What is it that compels some of us to struggle to achieve wholeness and not others? What drives a portion of us to apply self-discipline and create expressions of our feelings? Jung argued it is not necessity, for necessity still leads most people to follow conventions. He also said it is not moral decision because that can still be reinforced by common conventions and traditions and hence be employed by the majority.

  Jung called it vocation or a calling. In its essence it is a combination of what we long to do and what the world needs us to do. This drives us to complete ourselves, to develop our inner being and release it into the world. It calls us to transform.

  Inspiration + Implementation = Transformation

  Jung believed unity of the psyche or wholeness is not sustainable. The end point of individuation, where the fragments of our psyche unify, feels like being one with the universe and resembles a sense of peace, but the nature of humans is to continuously change. We get comfortable in a setting, then a tension or change occurs and we have to adapt to create the feeling of unity and harmony within again. So, in this way, we are always stretching and growing to achieve wholeness. We need difficulties to nudge us. We need the quieting of the ego and the humility of the struggle to advance our growth.

  If we do not listen and let our difficulties or imbalances nudge us, we risk overdeveloping certain traits. Anything overdone is problematic. For example, if we do not check our natural preference for critiquing over appreciating (a Thinking preference), we may alienate loved ones with our perceived negativity.

  If we do allow for humility, self-examination and growth, we add to our wisdom and maturity. This maturity was not won by competing with others but by improving ourselves through self-discipline and healing ourselves through self-expression. The fragmented pieces of our psyche, and the confusion about what or who to follow, settle into a wholeness led by higher loves and a deep calling.

  CHALLENGES TO BECOMING WHOLE

  If we are depressed or our lives are chaotic, it is tough to develop self-discipline. The idea of organizing and taking control seems overwhelming. We do not have to be depressed or severely disorganized to lack self-discipline either. Sometimes we just enjoy being in our head and collecting data so much that we forget to make a move.

  Action steps for integrating self-discipline:

  1.Start small. Do one small task every day that you do not want to do but gives you immediate results. For example, make your bed every morning. If you forget or run out of time one day, do not beat yourself up about it. You have not failed. Simply make the bed as soon as you can that day, even if it is right before you crawl into it at night. You only fail if you give up altogether and stop doing it.

  2.List your higher loves. What goals, people, causes, or projects feel right when you work on them? Think about those that have long-term benefits. They give you the most reward.

  3.Stop the reverie and put your big-girl or -boy pants on. There is no transformation without implementation. Personal development is hard, and only a few have the courage, guts, chutzpah, endurance, etc. to do it. Listen for your calling and let nothing get in your way. When you slip up, do not soothe yourself with indulgences like food, drugs, alcohol, shopping, Internet surfing, television, co-miserable friends, etc. Just begin again.

  We are challenged if we are too one-sided with our preferences and do not spend time honing the other functions within our psyche. We feel an imbalance or tension within us.

  Action steps for unifying the different attitudes and functions of your psyche:

  1.Have a therapist, personal coach or friend help you figure out your dominant functions—the ones you have been doing without prompting since you were a child. Listen for words like stupid, idiotic, or love to come out of your mouth. These signal a bias in your thinking or feeling. Consider choosing an action that would surprise someone close to you and is the opposite of your bias. Perhaps you love to problem solve using logic. It is the only thing that makes sense to you. You believe people who use emotions to guide them are idiots. Next time an issue comes up turn to your heart or other people’s hearts first to help you make a decision and resolve the issue. If you rarely use your senses or body to engage with the world, try taking a fitness class or playing a musical instrument. Physically, challenge yourself. As an introvert, it is easy to stay inside our heads, strive to bring what is inside you out into the world. If you love to read for example, find a friend or book club to share favorite books or authors with. I suggest meeting face-to-face. Interactions on the Internet will not give you that stretch of growth necessary to improve neglected functions.

  SECTION III:

  INTERDEPENDENCE

  In Section I, we discussed the dependence phase of the maturity continuum and its reliance on the influences and approval of others. We said via Stephen Covey, “Dependence is the paradigm of you—you take care of me; you come through for me; you didn’t come through; I blame you for the results.”

  At the dependence maturity level, control is in another person’s hands. We allow others to take care of us physically. They make decisions for us or influence our thinking intellectually. If we are emotionally dependent, we depend on others to improve our moods and give us a sense of security and self-worth.

  For introverts, that often means we undervalue our nature because society values high-energy, friendly, fun, talkative, outgoing, popular people. It means we adjust our demeanor to align with the external world’s expectations. We put on our active, vocal, group-friendly masks and do our best to fit in.

  As we move away from the dependence phase, we move into independence. Covey said independence is the paradigm of I. I can do it. I am responsible for myself. I choose my path.

  We move into and through our independence by noticing tensions pushing us to change. These elements of discomfort may be internal or external, positive or negative, but they cause us to wake up and become conscious of our living.

  Through reflection and time in solitude it is easier to hear our inner voice. We make thoughtful decisions and consider our dearest relationships. We don’t have to worry about being perfect or falling short of other’s expectations. In solitude, we find ourselves.

  By slowing down and paying attention, our natural inclinations and preferences surface. Creativity blooms as we have time to notice beauty and our five senses. Ideas percolate and develop as we give them time to play out. There is a clarity that helps us self-direct. We no longer need others to lead us. We have a better understanding of what drives us, what we are willing to work for.

  Another ingredient that fosters our independence is someone or a group of significant people who believe in us. They do not judge us. They do not indulge us. They provide a mirror to show us what we are capable of and whom we are. They serve as role models and they serve as support.

  The support of nonjudgmental peers and the self-awareness and calming presence found in our element, give us the courage to take action outside of our comfort zones. The inspiration pushes us to act. Self-discipline improves and our self-respect rises. We not only think about ideas, we implement them. We transform.

  We begin a process of unifying our inner psyche by working on preferences and cognitive functions (thinking, feeling, sensing, intuition) we largely neglected in the past. We have a desire to become whole. As introverts, we may strive to put ourselves out into the world more—get out of our heads and into our bodies or into activities and interactions outside of our inner realm. If we
are predominant users of group harmony and feelings to make decisions, we may start to incorporate logic and reason into our process.

  Our knowledge of our nature, values, flaws, and how we contribute leads to increased self-confidence. The more inner-directed we are the more capable we are of building and healing relationships.

  Stephen Covey defined maturity as courage plus consideration. Courage is necessary to carry out full-blown authenticity. Vulnerability and willingness to go against the grain take bravery. Living authentically while taking others’ perspectives and feelings into consideration is maturity.

  As introverted, highly sensitive or socially anxious people, we may struggle with the courage piece. Assertiveness is not easy. We tend to think of it as a version of aggressiveness. Aggressiveness feels harsh and loud.

  What if we thought of assertiveness as a diplomatic way to get our message across so the other person can take it in with minimum discomfort? Diplomacy is not so bad. Diplomacy allows us to stay thoughtful and tender, while expressing our needs.

  We need character and independence to move into interdependence. We saw the rise of personality and competition as gauges for a person’s worth starting in the early 1900s with the movement of people from rural areas to urban settings. But based on psychobiological research, neuroscience and personal experience with clients and my own life, I propose that the most fulfilling and rich lives come from what Stephen Covey calls the laws of life: self-discipline, integrity, cooperation, and contribution. Tapping into our values, self-respect, and self-awareness (gleaned during our work toward independence) while taking part in healthy relationships is the ultimate maturity. This is interdependence.