An Introvert or a wounded Extrovert?

Introverts or wounded extroverts? This is a big question that needs to be answered.

I’m glad to be sharing my thoughts on this out of experience, I really hope my beautiful readers get thoughtful and share their ideas or perspectives in the comment box below. The first time I thought about this topic was in 2019 when I had my first blog during my undergraduate program. The big question is: Are people truly introverts?

During my undergraduate days, I tried to reach out to a lot of people who believed and felt they were natural introverts simply because they find it hard to relate with others, and they feel they are better off working and walking alone, living alone, traveling alone, eating alone, and wouldn’t even mind existing alone if they could. But I think more of a choice than it being a thing of nature. This personal becomes a habit, then a way of life, and such people feel comfortable living their lives on their terms.

ARE YOU AN INTROVERT OR ARE YOU JUST ISOLATING YOURSELF BY CHOICE?

Do you know we come alive when we are around people we are free with? When we hang around productive people, we become productive ourselves. Most people who feel they are introverts don’t believe this. They use the term ‘introvert’ to hide or shield themselves.

So many people who think they are introverts were extroverts who got hurt by the people they trusted, and out of regret, dissatisfaction, and disappointment, they felt being alone was the best way to avoid such a scene occurring again. A very nice writer, Brianna Wiest called these kinds of people “wounded extroverts”.

I think we have more wounded extroverts than introverts in the world, we have wounded extroverts accumulating and increasing the numbers of people who say and think they are introverts. 

Being alone is not the way to solve the problem of an incident where the people we cared about or had connections with severed the connection all of a sudden. Years back, I might have advised otherwise, but as I grow older, I continue to realize that pain isn’t worth the stress.

If we continue to carry pain and anger, we only hurt ourselves. Life comes with so many lessons which include love and pain. However, the best thing to do is to readjust and improve ourselves and learn from the sad incidents we experience rather than isolating ourselves from people and looking for a fancy name “Introvert” to tag it. We should try to naturally reconnect with others that want to connect.

Some people who claim to be introverts have so many latent potentials and abilities they just keep hidden from the world. Most of them are shy and have this huge pride they want to protect at all costs.

But when they take an advantageous move of breaking free from their shell, they testify of a very good decision they made. Claiming to be an introvert is just some kind of umbrella most people use to shield themselves, and some become bad at relating with their fellow human beings and make people feel discomfort around them.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA FROM BROKEN RELATIONSHIP MAKES WOUNDED EXTROVERTS BECOME SELF-MADE INTROVERTS.

There are psychological traumas we experience when we go through heartbreaks from various kinds of relationships, arguments or betrayals from friends, heartbreak from our partners, etc. We go the extra mile of wanting no communication or interaction with people as a way of healing.

I have been in this situation an awful lot of times. Some people suffer psychological distress like anxiety, low self-esteem, lack of confidence, self-doubt, etc. when they are outside or in a crowded place. They embrace it and decide to be alone with no one in sight and they are used to keeping everything locked up within them, I feel the pain of such people because they slowly live a depressed life, mostly more pain than joy.

Wounded extroverts suffering from emotional injury tend to flip their switch from being extroverts to becoming introverts to heal their pain because their wounded pride has not yet recovered from the rejection, bitterness, anger, heartbreak, betrayal, pain, or insult.

Some introverts are liable to suffer from depression if they don’t have good control of their thoughts, because they chase everyone that can attract happiness to them. Solitude is a beautiful thing, but priding in being an introverts and wanting nothing to do with people is not encouraged.

Maybe I am wrong, and most people are just naturally antisocial, this might be a completely different case than building the mindset of not wanting people around. There was a time in my life when I was hurt and was completely scared of people. I felt people were really bad and scary, I never wanted to have anything to do with anyone.

But I had a mindset shift by talking to myself and few people I listened to, I accepted that not everyone is bad and I just had to see the good in people. We can be highly selective of those we let deeply into our lives, but we should live life knowing that we cannot exist in isolation. When we are hurt, we should try to heal and move on to accept the next beautiful people life will bless us with.

Most people claim to be introverts just to hide the fact that they can’t speak up, or stand up to others, so they would rather cover it by claiming to be introverts. Some other people have non-accommodating behaviors, either they cannot accommodate other people or people cannot stay with them due to their character.

They are mostly authoritative, selfish, self-centered, rude, annoying, and lack empathy and they don’t know how to treat other people in ways that will attract them to stay because they feel they are good on their own, some people under this category find comfort only in people they can boss around like puppets, people that won’t object or oppose their opinions, so people tend to just stay far away from them and the few people that stay are people that are actually ready to bear and accept or tolerate their ill behavior.  

So many people are used to thinking they are extremely introverted because they really like being alone but it turns out that they just like being at peace and avoid anything that threatens that peace and quite.

Most of these kinds of people are extremely extroverted when they are around people who bring them comfort and happiness. That is why we see some calm people who turn out to be loquacious when they become very close to friends and family. The majority of people fall under this category. I,  most times see myself behaving this way, should I call myself an introvert?

Check out quotes from Chidinma Ngameduru: https://chidinmainspired.com/quotes/