We are surrounded in a world that always celebrates extroversion and with people who want to be with extroverts. Introverts often find themselves in a navigating maze of misunderstandings and societal pressures. I recently had a conversation with a 19-year old girl, named Sona who shared her thoughts and insights about the challenges she faced as being an introvert. She is currently pursuing her degree in Literature, talked about her confusions and complexity of being an introverted identity.
Introverts like her often struggle with the expectation to fit into the extroverted norms. She described how she was constantly being self aware during conversations and how it made her feel like she would never really fit into this world. She finds it difficult to say the right words and the timing used to feel like a tightrope walk. Introverts are still labelled as shy, scared and untalented by the society with her experiences. The world is build in such a way that the more extroverted you are the more opportunities you get. Despite her remarkable talents, she has always come across skepitical because of her quieter character. “People just assume that you don’t have anything to say just because you are quiet, but they don't know the mountain of thoughts and words inside you..”
Credits: @theserenefactor
She also spoke of times where she reluctantly joined outings with friends, not because she wanted to be in a crowd but just to avoid judgements. “In my school days it was not easy just to have a best friend and hangout with her, I always wanted to prove myself that I have a lot of friends and for that I just hangout even though I don't want to..” The pressure introverts often feel to blend into and not to care about themself even at the cost of their own peace and comfort is seriously concerning.
“Another phrase that has constantly thrown my way is that..” she said, “I come across as cocky or having an attitude just because I don’t engage in constant chatter.” This shows how most of the time introverts' silence is often misunderstood as arrogance or aloofness. “I used to be scared of this judgement in my school days. For that I used to try small talk with my friends, relatives or people around me, but it's not just who I am”, she said. It’s hard when people around me cannot accept me being myself.
Another hurdle she talked about was familial expectations. “Even my parents never fully understood my introverted nature, they still believe that I’m shy and lazy to talk to people..”, she said. Parents often encourage and pushed to step outside and engage with more people. Mostly among the Indian parents, when they discover that their child has an introverted nature, they think its really something to fix. And their usual way of fixing this is to take to programs and partities and compel them to engage in activities. “I really understood who I was only a few years back. Then onwards I started to feel happy being myself and stopped trying to fit into extroverted culture. But it’s really hard when your own parents can’t understand who you really are..”
It is really important to undo these misconceptions about introverts. People should be able to celebrate the uniqueness of their character. And so it's important to be ourselves in order to love ourselves.
Credits: wordsforintroverts.com
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