I have been a good balance of introverted and extroverted my whole life. I love to have time all by myself to curl up with a good book, not speaking to anyone for sometimes a whole day. But I also love spending time with people, not shutting up for hours. Within the last year of my life, I find that I have remained socially extroverted but become more mentally and emotionally introverted. Does that make sense? Allow me to break it down for you.
I used to be the type of person who always asked other people for their opinions on my potential decisions. I was very indecisive. What outfit should I wear? What should I do about talking to a friend who did something to bother me? Should I go talk to a professor about why I didn’t like a grade on something? I couldn’t make a decision on menial things and even some relatively serious things for the life of me! It was bizarre because I do have a strong sense of self. Yet for some reason, I used to try to collect as many opinions as possible and then “select” the best opinion that would help my problem.
Last year when I first came to college, I found myself doing that once again but on an even higher ground because I was removed from home and out of my comfort zone. But then I found that I began to feel stress from my inability to make decisions. In fact, I had too many opinions to work with. Because of that, I used to be afraid of the judgment I would receive from people if I didn’t use their piece of advice/opinion to “save the day” so to speak.
Are you caught up now? I was trying to make decisions for myself — which I was stressed about. Then I was worried about what other people would think… but I brought those people into the situation by asking for help. So I was pretty much enduring full-fledged self-sabotage. I created unnecessary worry for myself.
Now, things are a lot different. I can’t tell when the transition occurred, but it got to the point where I simply wanted support from people, not their opinions. So, I became more introverted. I give people a sense of what was going on in my life, but any sort of big issues or decisions I choose to keep to myself. You have to ignore all the outside voices and think about the most important one — yours. I knew that somewhere inside me, if I ignored and silenced all those outside voices, I would be able to come to personal conclusions for myself… and I did. I still do. That’s not to say that I suppress emotions or hide parts of myself to friends and loved ones, but at the end of the day, no one knows what’s better for me than me… and I need to only listen to that. You should too.
Until Next Sunday,
Margo