Annabel thank you. I always love your input.
BlackUnicorn good insights! I'd say I have a bit of trouble with that same thing you wrote about in the part a. I read your post and did some thinking around that. There are actually some patterns like that with Alec, which I feel have their basis in some way we've learned to be with each other. Your comment made me think about that more, and I'm glad about that. I actually came to a conclusion that I will make it my aim to become more aware of that automatic process that sometimes happens where I adopt his feelings for myself, and try to change that. I think it will take some time, but I believe gradual change is realistic.
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I only recently got familiar with the introvert/extrovert concept, through this article in the
Guardian. I am not sure how neatly all people can be put into those categories (and this is a comment I need to make since there are so many of those neat binary categories through which people organise their world view into which I don't fit). However, I did get lots and lots of food for thought.
I am an introvert if anybody is. And this relates to many poly things (as well as to other things in life). Most notably to my energy levels and being a hinge. The whole need for own time and space and things. It has been a while since I made a decision that I want to accept my limitations in terms of often not being able to do what I would want to do (or what I expect of myself or what I feel others want from me or whatever). There is regularly a complete lack of energy. Social situations in particular are ones that wear me down a lot. Those with lots of people I don't know especially, but I also need quite a bit of time alone, without even the people I am most comfortable with like partners or close friends. This has been very hard to accept for me. Just last time when Mya was here it was the case that I broke down crying from exhaustion on the last evening even though her visit had been very relaxed and comfortable.
When I run out of energy I feel low in general, but I can also feel like I am not good enough. It has felt like I can't accept that part in myself. I can only function when I view myself as I am at my best. That means I really like myself 95% of the time. But it also means that the times when I just
can't feel that much worse. I think that if I could just accept the periods of lower energy as a part of myself, I would still like myself a lot, and they wouldn't be such a threat.
I feel that the concept of introvert may give me some pretty good tools towards that. I have already started the thought process before, when I noticed the cycle of really high and really low levels of energy. Then, I thought that, on one hand, it feels awful at the lowest points but, on the other, I wouldn't want to give up the times of high energy when I feel so alive. If it was more stable, both would be gone.
This is sort of related to that. On one hand, I have a hard time with the fact that I don't simply have the energy for many things I would want to do at times, whether it's an event at the University, or having hot sex with my partner. But on the other, there's lot more things that are related to being an introvert and some of them are some I really appreciate about myself. I don't know how much I'm keeping to the content of the concept even (since I don't actually know much about it) but it was just sort of a starting point for lots of thoughts. And I see connections now that I didn't before.
For one, I really liked the way they put it in the article: "the introvert is simply overstimulated". That is what it is; when I need to be alone, or when I am tired after a social event. Overstimulation. And while it sometimes feels like I am doing nothing productive on a day, there is actually often loads of processing going on. Not all learning, for example, is wholly conscious. So, I need a lot of time, but directly connected is the fact that I can understand very complicated things well. I need to process a lot, but when I do I can find extraordinary solutions and make productive changes. Sometimes those things take all my energy but then, in time, the energy is back and I can put it into something else wholly since I'll have often made serious progress with the previous thing.
Today I actually started to wonder about one thing Mya and I talked about just yesterday, and whether that could be connected somehow as well. We talked about the connection between feelings and reasoning, and came to a conclusion that we work in slightly different ways. I may have a feeling, and then go through a thought process about it, and if I come to a conclusion that the underlying assumptions or causes of the feeling are irrational or untrue, it may be that the feeling hardly ever reoccurs after that. This doesn't always work so straightforwardly, but it has worked that way for example in case of jealousy. Years ago I used to be jealous of my best friend's new friends until I one day thought about it, and came to the conclusion that even if she meets people who she likes as much as me, or even more, that still doesn't mean that she values me any less as a friend. And after thinking that through I have experienced only very little jealousy, whether in friendships or partnerships. Somehow, because people often imagine others experience things as they do, I have simply thought that's how it basically works with everybody else, too. But apparently it doesn't always work that way. Mya said that she may go through a similar process, which leads her to decide that she won't act on the feeling, but the feeling can still remain there as it was before.
This was just an interesting noticed difference. I don't know if I went off a tangent on the introvercy thing, just came to think of that and wondered if it might be somehow connected. Anyway, enough analysis for tonight either way.