You cannot take it anymore.
The feeling is hard to describe, but you have reached your limit.
There is an overwhelming desire to be anywhere else, but you cannot leave.
It feels like the walls are starting to cave in, enclosing around you.
Time is slowing down.
You are irritable for some reason you cannot explain.
Everything feels harder than it needs to be, or at least harder than it should be.
Your mind is reeling.
“There has to be somewhere I can go.”
“Why am I tired?”
“At some point, someone will give me the all clear, provide a way out.”
Every extrovert reading this knows exactly what I am talking about. In Kansas City, where I am writing this, we are two days into a “Stay-At-Home” mandate that has severely limited humanity’s general ability to interact with one another. That is the point though. Limit interaction and thus limit the ability of the coronavirus, COVID-19, to transmit from person to person, thus keeping the most vulnerable among us safe and the health system from overloading.
Stay at home.
Do not leave.
All interaction outside of your family is confined to the digital realm — FaceTime, Zoom, MarcoPolo, etc.
Like being in prison for an extrovert.
You thrive on interpersonal connection.
You need it in order to feel happy, healthy, fully functioning, fully alive.
And now it is gone.
For at least 30 days.
As one friend of mine said on Facebook the other evening, “At midnight, the local government will outlaw any kind of extrovertedness.”
Introverts in an Extrovert World
I feel your pain.
I am an introvert, but I totally get it.
Why? Because the experience I described above is one that introverts are intimately familiar with. It happens to us in the middle of a party or at the end of a long day of meetings or out in public where there are large crowds gathered. Introverts live in an extrovert world. Everything is set up for the people people among us to thrive. Which makes total sense, because on the spectrum that is introversion-to-extroversion, 60-75% of people fall somewhere on the extroverted side.
That is why introverts are easy targets. We get subtly jabbed at for wanting to stay home rather than go out or for preferring a good book to a big gathering. We are kind of misunderstood. Our quietness or desire to withdraw is often taken as being upset or disinterested or rude.
But what is really happening in those moments? The walls are caving in.
We have tapped out our threshold for interaction.
We feel trapped.
Our mind is reeling.
We are tired.
Time is slowing down.
Now, for the most part, we have learned how to adjust. We have built our strategies for managing those feelings, even when leaving is not an option. We will allow our mind to drift somewhere else for a few moments (you might think we are “daydreaming,” but typically we are just allowing our minds to have some blank space), maybe we step away for a few minutes in order to find some quiet, in our less admirable moments we might disappear into our phone or a minute in order to disengage. Or maybe we will just sit there, quietly allowing the rest of the room around us do its thing while we take it all in and try not to attract attention to ourselves.
All of that to say this: My heart genuinely goes out to the extroverts among us.
“For the time being, extroverts are living in an introvert world.”
It has to be hard. I can literally feel your pain. I completely understand the disorienting nature of your experience. Not only that, but I think even the introverts among us are going to have a hard time as these days plow forward. And if that is the case for those of us who thrive on time alone, I can only imagine what it must be like for those who thrive on social interaction.
4 Strategies for Extroverts in an Introvert World
With that in mind, I thought I would share a four ideas or strategies that may help the extroverts in the world manage this time a little better. These are skills that most introverts have perfected over the years, but I have flipped them around as possible ways for extroverts to manage this unique season in life.
Take stock of how you are feeling. Those feelings of fatigue, irritability, difficulty focusing, etc, that is you telling you that you need some engagement. Odds are you do not need a nap or that your kids are simply driving you nuts (though they might be doing a little of that, too). You may just need some social interaction. Those are not feelings you are probably accustomed to having to use as signals, simply because there are not many times when social engagement is so hard to come by. Become aware of those internal promptings. Let them act as signposts, pointing you to what you need. In the same way that hunger moves us to eat and thirst moves us to get something to drink, allow your brain to tell you when you need to create some interaction.
React accordingly. Now, I fully understand that your options for interaction are not what you would like them to be. But make lemonade out of lemons, here. Get all your friends on zoom at the same time. Take a walk and force the neighbors or strangers outside to talk to you from across the street. Go for a drive, honk in your friends’ driveway, and wave at them aggressively. Have a conversation from your car window to their doorstep. Maintain that weekly coffee or lunch meeting, just make the coffee or the lunch from home while you share it via FaceTime. Be creative. But when your brain tells you that you need some interaction, create some socially responsible interaction.
Be proactive. Do not just wait until your brain is screaming at you. Set stuff up in advance. Introverts are professional at planning out their time at home. Sometimes I cannot tell you exactly what is on my calendar, but I can tell you exactly when the night at home is going to be. Then I guard it like a dog guarding a fresh bone. Do the same. My wife, the wonderful, fun, exciting extrovert that she is, has a calendar on a whiteboard at our house right now of all the various “social” activities she is planning during this season.
Treasure your opportunities. We introverts are not opposed to interacting with others. We simply have a lower threshold for how much of it we can handle before we are drained of energy. We treasure time with people, but simply do not need it as the running background to everything else we are doing. Introverts have learned to treasure both their time with the people they love and their time alone. You are not going to have all the normal workplace interaction, church interaction, kids’ activity interaction that you are used to. The quantity simply is not going to exist for a season. So treasure the opportunities that are available. Let them fill you up and keep you energized until the next one comes around. In the middle of the interaction, let yourself feel how energizing and wonderful it is. Again, not something you usually have to do because the world is mostly set up for you to have all the interaction that you could possibly desire.
If nothing else, maybe this time will help all of us to be a bit more empathetic toward one another. I know that one of the biggest tensions for Melody and me in our marriage revolves around her need for interaction (extroversion) and my need for time alone (introversion). If nothing else, this season has the potential to teach us all how to be a little more compassionate toward the feelings and needs of those who may tend in the opposite direction as us.
Hang in there, extroverts. This too shall pass, as they say. Ecclesiastes says that there is a time for everything under the sun. Now, I will be honest, “global pandemic that forces the world into their homes” is not in the list that Ecclesiastes 3 puts forward. Nor is it something that I ever expected to interact with. But this is a season that will last for a time and then will disappear. Until it does, be intentional about finding the strategies necessary to help yourself press forward through this season.
