This is very long (for me) and could probably be better written, but I need to get it out of my system now so it is what it is.
I think I have adequately expressed to you how misanthropic and introverted I am.
I think I have also talked here a bit before about dealing with depression and anxiety and how much medication has helped me.
The book I just finished deals with both of these issues in a way that alternately fascinates and infuriates: Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, by Christopher Lane.
I have a lot to say about the things discussed in the book and I don’t really know how to begin. I suppose I can begin like this:
“When people are well, after all, we presume they will be sociable.” (p 13)
For most of my life, I have been told either directly or indirectly that my personality, “introverted, shy, self-contained” is defective and pathological. Normal people are the super gregarious, outgoing types. Not everyone has told me this, of course, but the majority of the feedback I have received is this way. I … never believed it. I also never believed that the extroverts are defective or pathological. I joke about it but I don’t actually believe it. I’m much more live and let live than I may seem to be. And that, frankly, is all I would ask of others. Leave me alone about my personality which does not conform to yours. Why do you care?
Apparently you care because in the 1970s, when I was a child, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was revised to include a vast array of heretofore unknown conditions and disorders, many of them to do with introversion, social anxiety, and shyness. In one fell swoop, we were introduced to things like introverted personality disorder and avoidant personality disorder, this despite some rather intelligent concerns including the following from analyst Naomi Quenk, “It is a gross disservice to the valuable and well-functioning introverts in our society to have a pathological label attached to their normal and healthy attitude. It is discouraging that the psychiatric community has seen fit to encourage the extraverted bias characteristic of out society … I therefore encourage you to reconsider this change in the nomenclature, as its retention in the presently planned form may only serve to create pathology where none is warranted.” (p 78)
Yes and thank you.
I have never believed that my introversion, my “small people needs” as a friend once put it, are a disorder. I understand that I am generally supposed to, but being this way has never kept me from living my life. It has never prohibited mental or emotional growth. It has never deprived me of anything that a normal human being needs, whatever a normal human being is. My fear of public speaking may well be pathological but I wasn’t aware that public speaking was a requirement of any aspect of a full and normal life. My antisocial and misanthropic tendencies are not in the least pathological, although if it makes someone feel better to think that I am not enduring their bullshit because I have a disease, that’s okay with me as long as I don’t have to endure their bullshit. I am positive I don’t have to endure what are to me boring, awkward, sometimes hostile public gatherings/rituals/events to lead a full and normal life. Still, the hostility I am on the receiving end of, because I refuse to conform and adapt to the rules and assumptions of the gregarious, is frustrating and difficult to take sometimes. It is also hard for me to understand since I haven’t actually done anything to anyone.
At the same time the DSM was being revised, the pharmaceutical companies were enthusiastically positioning shyness and social anxiety as treatable disorders that they—surprise!—had medication for. This has gone down a predictable and unfortunate path, so that people are told, via somewhat ham-fisted advertisements, that medication will make them the social butterflies they secretly long to be because that is, if you recall, normal.
When I finally talked to my doctor about my symptoms, symptoms that were genuinely maladaptive and problematic, he told me I had classic clinical depression and started me on Prozac. It made a difference, a positive difference, and I understand how odd that may seem since study after study shows that most of these medications do little more than placebos for most people.
I should also tell you that I didn’t go to the doctor (my gynecologist in this case) because I wanted to alter my personality and become extroverted, social, and gregarious. I wanted to get back to being my normal misanthropic introverted self. By my late 20s I had three emotions available to me: rage, apathy, and terror. It was a terrible way to live. I was so paralyzed by terror I couldn’t compose or send an email without agonizing over the details and second-guessing my own ability to read what I had written. I couldn’t just be exasperated or frustrated. I was unable to maintain my conscientiousness and punctuality to the point that I didn’t care if I never got out of bed again.
Not a single bit of that is normal when it is all you’ve got 24/7.
The Prozac actually helped me. I am back to being my mostly introverted and misanthropic, pretty high-functioning (I suppose), and happy (by my definition) normal self (current difficult situations aside). Prozac doesn’t work for everyone and I don’t know if any of the other medications would have worked as well or at all. And if medication hadn’t worked, I would have tried other types of therapy until I found something to help me get back to being me. Throughout all of this, I have continued to be enraged at the advertisements for anti-anxiety/anti-depression medications because they imply that any behavior you exhibit anywhere along the spectrum of non-extroverted, non-gregarious emotions and behaviors is pathological and must be treated for you to have a full and happy life.
I folded the corners of a lot of pages in Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, including p. 208:
“The logical, perhaps inevitable, consequence of this biomedical turn in psychiatry is a growing consensus that traits once attributed to mavericks, skeptics, or mere introverts are psychiatric disorders that drugs should eliminate. With other contributing factors, this emphasis has transformed our expectations of the individual in society so dramatically that we now tend to believe that active membership in community activities, the cultivation of social skills (becoming a ‘people person’) and the development of a group consciousness are natural, universal, and obligatory aims. We thing the adjustment should be painless rather than a cause of unease and, sometimes, even of profound discontent. We tend, moreover, to attach such importance to the attainment of these goals that psychiatrists are now licensed to regard as ill those manifesting even vaguely ungregarious behavior.”
There’s also this on p. 209 where, citing a government report called Beyond Therapy, the book’s author says that this report questions “the aspiration, voiced with increasing stridency in our culture, that we should polish our irregular edges and that society should function free of introverts, curmudgeons, misanthropes, pessimists, and the diffident or apathetic.”
So here’s the thing. I have always been comfortable with who I am. I have, even as a very insecure adolescent, known that I am wired a particular way and will always encounter misery if I try to go against that wiring and be someone else, someone chirpier, more outgoing, more interested in the spotlight. This allowed me to go to the doctor and say “these particular behaviors, the rage, the paralyzing anxiety, the apathy” are too extreme. I’d like to dial these back to a manageable, normal level for me because if I keep going, I’ll end up in facility of some sort.” I didn’t go to him and say “I think I need to change my personality and be happier and extroverted so please give me some medicine to make the avoidant/introverted behaviors and feelings go away.” I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be me again, grumpy and antisocial, but neither miserably depressed and terrified nor suddenly super sunshiney and the life of the party. The former was a terrifying extreme of my personality; the latter is someone else entirely.
I worry about the people who believe the message that they are supposed to conform so completely to the gregarious, extroverted personality profile, and that they must medicate themselves to get there. I worry that because they don’t know who they are, they are taken advantage of and damaged in ways that we don’t yet understand. I worry that they suffer more depression and anxiety and add a generous helping of self-loathing because the medication promises they’ll be “happy” in a way that is not aligned with their personality. No one wants to be miserable, but if you think you can define what misery and happiness are to another person, or if you think you can define what they are, uniformly, for vast swaths of society, you are very dangerously wrong.
In expanding the DSM to include all manner of social anxiety disorders, the team responsible claimed that they would hate for people who need help to be left out of the equation, and that’s a noble thought that I appreciate. That they expanded the definitions so apparently carelessly negates, in my mind, their noble quest by creating disorders and illnesses that simply aren’t there. I’m lucky that I am self-aware enough to know what I needed. I’m lucky I had a good doctor. I’m lucky I found a medication that actually helped me. I am further lucky that I could come off of it without any ill effects. Not everyone is so lucky.
Related: Introverts are people who find other people tiring.
Note: Slightly edited on January 8 to reverse order of two words that were really bothering me and to add a link to the book.
Comments (31)
I overwhelmed and horrified y’all didn’t I? Sweet.
Not even close. You make perfect, rational sense to me.
I am an introvert by nature, antisocial even, preferring my garden and nature to people outside my family circle. Strangely I have a job that requires constant contact with people. Never in my 47 years have I questioned whether or not it is normal, I don’t care what others decide the standard is for the “norm” I am who I am, like it or lump it. :)
Your post was eloquent and to the point, you’re obviously intelligent and a clear thinker, you are comfortable with who you are, more power to you I say!
cheers :)
I wonder about that–are there legions of people who think they must medicate their otherwise healthy selves (pardon the inadvertent use of “theirselves”) just to fit into society? It’s an interesting question and sounds like a Charlie Kaufman screenplay in the making.
While I’m perceived as an extrovert, I find myself drawn to introverts and not just because they let me hog the conversation! Maven was blogging the other day about choosing words carefully because of laryngitis, and I’ve been returning to that excellent idea. Maybe I’m drawn to introverts more because they’ve chosen their words more carefully or spent more time ruminating, rather than blurting constantly. It’s been said (in my own home) that I’m an external processor, and I’m trying to get a handle on that. I often feel like I’d be a better person (for lack of better term) if I tipped the scale a few notches toward the introvert side.
Really, when it comes down to it, I like all types, intro and extro. I am not so much of a misanthrope anymore because I found it deeply connected to damaging negative feelings about myself. I have tried to let us all off the hook basically, in an attempt to not hate the ol’ (wo)man in the mirror.
Excellent, thought-provoking post.
erin and molly: Thanks.
Marigoldie: My misanthropy is very passive, for the record. Also, the external processing is a very sore point with me because I cannot tell you how many times I have been shit-hammered for NOT being an external processor, accused of not listening or not caring or not having an opinion or, even worse, tacitly agreeing with whatever shitty thing has been said to me about me because I didn’t respond immediately. Fuckin-A, that pisses me off.
I don’t particularly mind if someone thinks out loud and does external processing but I DO mind if I am expected to do it as well and am then beat up for not doing it.
I think it is great if you want to try to do less blurting and more ruminating but I also think that people have to function however is best for them so it might turn out that your instinctual approach is the best way for you to communicate. Every single time I have ever tried to do more blurting than ruminating it has been a disaster because I tend to blurt out the most direct, unfiltered thought I am having, usually the thought that cuts the deepest. Some things are better left unsaid. Of course,even after ruminating for a while, I might still say that thing, but I would prefer to have thought it through first.
Culturally, we make it very seductive to be classified as “ill” in some way or other. Being classified as “ill” lets you off the hook for so many things like living up to what you or others perceive to be your potential, doing the showier Angelina Jolie-esque type of voluntary work, being on time with things, keeping up with relationships that require more work than you want to put into them, etc. I say this because I found myself doing that — looking for some disease that would give me a handy excuse partially because I don’t like confrontation and partially because these days it’s not sufficient anymore to just say “no.” Our concept of what constitutes “normal” keeps getting narrower and narrower until, conveniently for the drug companies, just about anyone would qualify as needing their product. And there are a huge number of handy illnesses with such vague symptoms. Pharmaceutical ads really play into this, especially when they list symptoms that could be applied to just about everyone: everyone has at some point fatigue or insomnia.
I see this market-driven diagnoses in education — the more types of learning disabilities you can come up with, the more off the hook the school is about results (and the more funding). Naturally, there are genuine learning disabilities. But it’s more cost effective to create more learning disabilities than to recognize and correct problems with the system.
I honestly think this drive to make everyone conform is because we’ve taken away the underpinnings of social discourse. There used to be rules of etiquette that guided us through everything, from how to greet a stranger without infringing on personal space to what your obligations are in relationships. Now it becomes up to each person as to what we’re “comfortable” with and subjecting every encounter with our own judgment. It’s like an endless episode of Seinfeld.
sisiggy: Yes, it really is like an endless episode of Seinfeld for me sometimes. I hated that show.
Also, this book comes on the heels of a book about Asperger’s Syndrome, with which I identify greatly but I wonder about it. It isn’t that I don’t think Asperger’s is a real condition; it is that I see a lot of overlap with my own personality, but I [a] don’t think I have it and [b] don’t want to be saddled with the diagnosis, however handy it might be sometimes.
I wouldn’t mind if we still observed some of the basic underpinnings of social discourse. I can manage those, believe it or not. Although the social discourse stuff tends to run amok after a while as well.
she whined
And don’t even get me started on the school system.
Ironically the social model we introverts are supposed to aspire to is rarely more than an illusion.
Years ago my stepfather told my mother that she need not worry about me, the kid who worked so hard at being left alone, she should be worried about the one who worked so hard at never being alone.
It’s as though we’ve flipped the model. People are no longer interested in hiding their flaws and appearing “normal”. Now in order to be accepted you have to walk around waving a diagnostic banner that lists your personality traits as syndromes.
carlarey: Maybe a diagnostic sash would be more subtle. I, personally, would prefer a diagnostic double-headed battle axe.
The cultural inability to live and let live is very frustrating. And that goes in both directions. Don’t pick on folks who aren’t exactly like you and don’t go around announcing your condition (perceived or real) as a substitute for conversation. Dammit.
It’s as though we expect people to be responsible for our special treatment because of who we are and the only way that can be justified is if we have a “condition” that is beyond our control. I’ve said over and over again, probably here, that my son’s diagnosis of ADHD (see above comment on “conditions” classified as learning disabilities) within in the school system, would have given him a whole leeway of behavior that was totally inappropriate. While I didn’t expect the school system to raise my son for me, I at least expected them to hold him to the same standards as the rest of the world. They made my job twice as hard.
Like it or not, at some point we have to interact with someone else and lately it’s a challenge just checking out for groceries as the clerk delivers a discourse on how she found out she was dyslexic and that’s why her line moved so slowly. Frankly I thought if she just shut up and concentrated on what she was doing, the line would move just as fast as any other, but this was her victim story (we went into what side of the family produced dyslexia and how many generations, etc.)
What a can of worms you’ve opened! And, frankly, I’m a soleciphobic in recovery. (Yeah…I looked it up…)
sisiggy: So which side of the family produced dyslexia? I MUST KNOW.
Also, I couldn’t find “soleciphobic” but I did find scoleciphobia.
Years ago my stepfather told my mother that she need not worry about me, the kid who worked so hard at being left alone, she should be worried about the one who worked so hard at never being alone.
That’s an astute piece of advice.
As a former abrasive, braying extrovert who’s become more and more introverted (though arguably no less abrasive) over the years, I agree that there’s something odd in the widespread tendecy to equate “extroverted” with “normal.” That’s a messed-up baseline for normative behavior.
Elsa: Braying. Heh. No one has ever accused me of being braying but I have been called abrasive on numerous occasions. Imagine that.
My god, this is so ON TARGET; and, I feel so much regarding what you have written here.
I have just been hired to do a very part-time job for now, ( very part-time because it is brand new to the people who hired me as well) within the mental health system in my community. I am so glad that I can be a part of making history in mental health. I will have the opportunity to share just the way you have here. And, in that sharing, I will be able to work with legislature, etc. to make real changes for people. I had to have a diagnosis or dual diagnosis of mental health disorder/s in order to get this job! That’s a biggie in regard to what I will be doing.
It’s way more involved than I can comment about here on your space, however, I am so moved by what you have said here. Some of us are lucky enough to have the insight, and be able to express what feels “normal” for us regardless of what the damn DSM states. People know what they need and what feels right for them most of the time. Even those with less expressive abilities or insight, still know somehow…like Prego, “it’s in there.”
I have taken prozac for 15+ years, and without it, I take a nose dive. So, it works for me. I do have a chemical imbalance and a dual diagnosis; but, environmental factors have played a huge role in some of my mental health issues as well. Thankfully, now I also have a good doctor who insists that I have an active role in decisions about medication.
I think I mentioned here before that I am much less social than I was 20 years ago. Looking back on those years however, I realize part of what I was doing was giving people what they expected mostly, and I was never quite happy about it. This led to a whole array of problems for me later in life. My upbringing had so much to do with my screwed up sense of self years ago…I am more introverted than I ever was before, and I have never felt more “normal”.
I will be able to share this in my job. Engaging people to learn and know more about what they want and need is the biggest thing I will be doing. People will not see me as a therapist or doctor giving them the rights and wrongs of their place in the world. Instead, I will be working to help turn stereotypical mental health techniques upside down. I am so excited.
You are so right that some people are not forutnate enough to advocate for themselves, and what can happen to those people with medication is often very scary. Also, therapeutic approaches that make people work to become something they are not, is for the fucking birds.
(pardon me)
My personal feeling is that you’ve got it going on! I know you don’t need or want a compliment, or warm fuzzies, or whatever…you don’t need bullshit. I just am so truely moved by what you have said here because it is right on with the training I just received and what I will be doing in my workplace. There is hope and possibility for change out there; at least, that’s what I believe today–heh.
Also, my former lengthy comment was directed toward you, jag. I went back and read everyone’s comments after I recorded mine. I received food for thought from all the comments. Some of my reactions are these:
*The school systems suck for the most part; and that’s a whole different ball of wax!
*Sisiggy: The lady working the cash register obviously wanted the world to know she was dyslexic for all the wrong reasons. When someone has a disorder and really takes responsibility for it, there is a different result than what you witnessed from that person at the register.
* Along the same lines, mental health disorders are very painful and very real. However,when a person becomes well enough to be active in their health, he/she can take responsibility for recovery and wellness. No illness should ever be used as an excuse for not being the best person one can be; although, the best person one can be will not suit everyone. That’s just life, I suppose… However, we have been living in a society that has taught people to focus on being ill; taking medicines; remaining “stabalized”. People have been told that is the best they can hope for. In mental health, it is referred to as the coke and smoke syndrome. (Google Pat Deegan) People buy into this because for whatever of a thousand possible reasons, they feel they have no choice. This is especially true with mental illness.
My job will be all about helping to change this “stay sick” mentality among those who are mentally ill. Not everyone will recover and be as well as they could be; however, we can hold out for the people who are able. Mental health is taking a turn for the better; but it will take time. The stigma has hurt people more than the disorder…
My husband has dyslexia and other reading disabilities, and I am proud to say, though all that he has done to compensate through the years has been very difficult for him, others have not known; it has not stopped him from doing his job everyday for 29 years. He has taken responsibility. Sorry I took so much space jag. I got on a roll…
Oh drat, HTML damn you!
Again:
<3
Jag: Like I committed her entire saga to memory…which was a mixture of actual fact and what I think was her own conjecture. If you’re dying to know, her performance is every Friday morning at the local Food Lion. I’m sure she’ll provide charts on request. As for the worm…I even copied and pasted that and still got it wrong.
Tracy: This is very exciting: “Engaging people to learn and know more about what they want and need is the biggest thing I will be doing. People will not see me as a therapist or doctor giving them the rights and wrongs of their place in the world. Instead, I will be working to help turn stereotypical mental health techniques upside down.” Good luck.
Wil: Heh.
sisiggy: So … you didn’t commit her entire saga to memory then? I’m … I’m … I’m CRUSHED.
I’m…I….I’m a braying extrovert, aren’t I, Jag? I’m sorry.
Wait, no I’m not.
Trasherati: You have NEVER brayed.
Trasherati: But you are profoundly extroverted. Profoundly.
The toughest thing for me was dealing with the extrverted cheerleader-”Let’s have fun, get up in front of a group and act out, etc” when you would rather be shot or shoot the cheerleader. As a former HR manager, I conducted a lot of group meetings and never singled out an employee unless I first cleared it with them. I found out early on that most people did not like attention called to themselves. Advertisers, however, present it the other way. They are braying extroverts and want everyone to be like them. I once attended an HR conference where the presenters wanted us to make group presentations in “rap” form since MC Hammer had stayed in the same hotel the night before. They said it would be “fun”. I, of course, declined to participate.
Wow, Tom, you sound a LOT like a friend of mine : )
Trasherati: I simply cannot imagine what incident you might be referring to.
It’s funny because most psychological advances have been made in the last 200 years…coming slowly from accusations of witchery, lobotomys as curing agents and many other foul ways of looking at what we now recognize as chemical imbalance, mood disorders, or just general differences in behavior. I’ve never considered that I might be someone else, granted reprieve by the fact that I do get my self most of the time. Looking out, and reading words like yours here, I sometimes think that the mental health industry has once again been swept under the rug. It seems like the pharmaceutical companies have found a way to make money while they convince most of us that we could have a better life…on this or that drug. And you are right to say that some of us can have a better life, can learn to have a better life and then wean ourselves of the drug. But, it isn’t the message that we get. There aren’t talks about personality and different types of personality anymore…there are talks about disorders. There are talks about medications to fix disorders… and I imagine that like physical ailments…it may take forever until western philosophy influences psychology in some of the positive ways it has influenced body health. There is a negative terminology about introversion. And just the other night, I was talking with a young friend about how as an introvert one can be misunderstood and must reach self-awareness quickly. I always hope that most of us get the machinery to evolve quickly and accept who we are, but you are wonderful to argue for those who don’t have that opportunity. On a lighter note, I always wonder this…what about the poor Weimaraners that get featured in every single depression commercial? I mean, it seems like they’d get a beagle of some kind. It’s a bit of odd casting as I’ve never known a Weimaraner that didn’t seem like it was giddy, or at least abundantly energetic.
Have you heard of “party of one: the loners’ manifesto” by anneli rufus?
You might like it
Cheers
I can sum it up in one sentence – I am an outgoing, gregarious guy, but I can’t function without the help of people I surround myself with – people who generally are quiet – but know when it’s important to speak – and when they speak, they say short, important, profound things that I often gloss over because I am focused on….whatever I’m talking about….
People like that are precious. If you are a shy person, see if you can make yourself in that mold, not in the mold of “everyone MUST be a people person.” Involve yourself, and when you do speak (which can be very rarely), make it QUICK and TRUE and people will treasure your input and insight. I promise.
And forget the school system and mental health systems. Being a major extrovert, I was tagged (between age 10 and 21) with every mental illness you can think of—and hard, hard drugs to keep “Johnny quiet and doing good in school.” All I wanted to do was think, and discuss….and lead people. NO….we can’t have that! We need “appropriately behaved and acculturated Johnny!”
This was so well thought out and well written. I’m somewhere on the introverted spectrum myself, though I often pass for sociable because I tend to be friends either with naturally gregarious types (because they instinctively know how to keep a conversation going) or with other self-aware introverted folks (because for some reason we lose our social anxiety around each other and can both talk comfortably and accept silence semi-gracefully).
You said:
“Also, this book comes on the heels of a book about Asperger’s Syndrome, with which I identify greatly but I wonder about it. It isn’t that I don’t think Asperger’s is a real condition; it is that I see a lot of overlap with my own personality, but I [a] don’t think I have it and [b] don’t want to be saddled with the diagnosis, however handy it might be sometimes.”
Man, I’ve wondered if anyone else has thought about this, too. I’ve never seriously believed I have Asperger’s, but it’s a syndrome that strikes a chord with me, and like you, I see a lot of overlap with my personality. I have such vivid memories of teaching myself “basic” human skills like reading people’s expressions and understanding how jokes work. A lot of my social behaviour, well into my teens, was based on mimicry, which made being in social settings (such as seven hours a day of school) really exhausting.
Anyway, I used to think there was something wrong with me, that I needed to aspire to some shiny-happy Brady Bunch version of crowd-lovin’ gregariousness. And then, thank god, I got over it. THANK GOD. Now, when I choose to be with people, I can actually enjoy it, even though I still find social contact more tiring than envigorating. And I don’t beat myself up for preferring to stay home with my family, or for liking humanity more in books than I do in real life. Heh.
chris rock does a great piece in his hbo special, still scared, on legal drugs in america, the advertisers, and people looking for any symptom that will fit. pee your pants kind of stuff.
Excellent post. This is the same society that gave us Elmo. This would be back enough, but Elmo wants to be your friend too. Bah.