One of the insights that was given to me by the industrial psychologist lady from yesterdays blog was my classification as an introverted extrovert.
While this seems completely ridiculous, counterintuitive and also contradictory, it’s absolutely the truth.
Since I was little, I’ve hated walking into rooms with people who I don’t know and circumstances with strangers and I’m awkward when I’m introduced to someone by someone else by the first time.
When I was a little boy I was a younger brother and I was always the one sent to the shop, so when we would go down to the cafe on a Sunday night to get sweets which was a treat we got once a week, I would get sent from the car by my brother.
I hated going to have my hair cut on my own because I didn’t know the people who were doing it.
Even now, the prospect of going in to circumstances where there are people who I don’t know, without someone by my side whom I already know, who knows the circumstances into which we are entering, makes me anxious.
The prospect of the wedding that I’m going to in a few weeks with my wife where I wont know anyone already makes me anxious, even though my wife is with me.
What we do in these circumstances a lot of the time is we develop a strategy or a work around or coping mechanisms to manage and mine is the mask.
This is one part of the conversation that was discussed, these introverted extraverts (and they’re not particularly common but are well recognised) have the ability to ‘put on a show’ as an extravert, to cover the fact that they don’t like it.
This is a little bit like the fairy in the book Artemis Fowl, Holly, whose able to make herself invisible by using the mezmure where she vibrates extremely quickly so is invisible to the naked eye.
The problem with the mezmure is that it’s exhausting, the problem with the mask is that it’s exhausting too.
And so, last week we provided the sinus course again which was truly amazing and has moved on yet again, as it does year on year, to be something better and brilliant but by the end of Friday I’m utterly exhausted, to the point where my legs hurt like I’ve done a triathlon and my head hurts like someone has ran over it with a steam roller.
This is probably normal (or is it?), it’s normal for me.
It’s a contradiction that something that makes me feel so exhausted and even so bad at the end of something that I look forward to so much, but that’s the way it goes.
Perhaps by understanding myself better I can lessen the impact.
Blog Post Number - 2764