Originally Posted by
kiki1982
I think you are confusing a few things, though. Shyness has nothing to do with introversion. Introversion is wishing to keep your feelings to yourself. Shyness is being scared of what other people think. You can have a lot of self-confidence as an introvert, so not be shy, but still not feel comfortable meeting unknown people all day.
You can work on your social skills, so you will fool others and learn to keep a conversation going, but you will never become a decided extrovert. Let's say, you will have a pleasant conversation (for the other then), but you will not lay open your life to him, though he will do that to you most probably if he is an extrovert. Familiarity has a lot to do with it. If your lecturer in the beginnig elt incredibly oppressed doing her lectures but she persevered, then she will start feeling more comfortable. But she will never ever ever feel truly in her element doing that. She'll feel fine and confident that it will all go swimmingly as before, but every time she has to face a whole new class, that fear will surface again. Or at least so it is with me.
I did not mean to say that the world is literally ruled in all places by extroverts (in Asia it is the other way around), but the anglo-saxon world, led by the USA is definitely the measure when it comes to the business world. And American (business) people are scary to me as an introvert. Too much for one time! Facebook of all things (what a useless thing it is) is also their invention. It is a decided extrovert phenomenon. No introvert would wish to lay open all his opinions to all his friends and acquaintances, colleagues and what have you. I am quite confident that if you were to count the amount of 'friends' people had on those social networks and would then have them take a test to see what side of the intro-extrovert spectrum they are on, the people with the most 'friends' would probably all score above 50/100. Th introverts (under 50) would have fewer friends because they do not tend to hit the 'friend'-button too quickly, would put more privacy features on their profile, and would converse more in closed groups where the extroverts would have more friends and throw their opinions out there in the open without much regard for the status of friends they have (whether good inner circle friends or acuaintances).
As I said, there are parts in this world where the odds are different, probably in Scandinavia too. So, you as an extrovert are perceived as 'weird' by most people because you seem not to be able to keep yourself under control and people feel threatened by you (that is seriously how I feel if someone gets too close to me in one go). Conversely, introverts in an extrovertly-oriented society are maybe not bullied (although if they are, people are less likely to know about it, like with me) but at least found quiet, dreaming and are sometimes even totally misunderstood as disintersted or uninvolved. As in P&P where Bingley is perceived as the quintessential fine young man (a decided etrovert) and Darcy is percieved as proud and conceited (a decided introvert). He is maybe somewhat conceited, but him not talking to anyone but Bingley's sisters and anyone in their party was not down to him being too proud to talk to anyone else because they are beneath him, the prospect of a ball with all strangers is just too much for him and he has a hard time being natural, unlike Bingley. He is not the one to walk up to a lady and ask to dance. I can tell you as girl though, I never did and in our group girls were sometimes ask to invite. I danced for about 10 years. Every time the start of the academic year with a lot of new members was a porspect of fear because what do you say to them?
@Helga:
I feel that I was lucky in meeting my hubby. If I had an introverted hubby, what a mess it would become. At least now I have someone to talk for me. :)
When Mr Kiki (hihi, I like that ;)) went to Prague a year ago for a month, for a course, I just spent the whole month at home alone, with our three cats. I saw no-one. Didn't even feel alone. My husband is already driven up the wall if he has to stay at home during his weeks off for about three days. Oh, wait, he already wishes to go and have a coffee when we have reached the one-day mark...
