Sunday, March 16, 2014

Yes, I am Quiet

Yes, I am quiet.  I am fully aware of that fact.  It always makes me laugh when people point that fact out to me as though it is some new revelation to me.  It's just kind of who I am and who I've always been.  I've been told pretty much my entire life that I'm really shy and that I need to talk more.  I've never liked the word shy.  In my understanding of the term, I am not shy.  Yes, I have momernts or situations where I am shy, but who doesn't.  I may have more than others, but I don't have those social fears and anxieties much of the time.  An experience that I had when I was fairly young further solidified my dislike for the term.  In elementary school, our school counselor came and talked to our class about something, I don't even remember what it was.  But what I do remember, he said that shy people are shy because they think they are better than everyone else.  I'm not sure all these years later if that's actually what he said, but that's what I heard.  I was blown away by that.  Here I was always having been told that I'm shy, and now I'm told that it's because I think I'm better than everyone else.  This is the complete opposite of the truth.  Part of the reason I remain quiet so often is because I don't want to say something that offends anyone or makes someone dislike me.  That's really what I want is to be liked by people.

As I mentioned in my last posts, I had a lot of issues which hurt me in a lot of ways in my teen years.  During this time of my life, I started to crawl further back into my shell to hide my pain.  My addiction took the worst part of my personality and made it worse.  It soon became a game for me.  I would often go to school and literally wouldn't say a word all day.  People could just see that that's who I was, and it entertained me to see what people were willing to do to get me to talk.  It just really became who I was.

I didn't, and still don't, always like the fact that I am so quiet.  It drives me nuts sometimes that I don't take advantage of opportunities or get passed over because I am quiet.  I've wanted to change this fact for some time, but have just never been able to do so.  In the last year and a half or so, I've started learning something that completely changed  the way I look at my personality.  I finally heard about the terms extrovert and introvert.  The more I read about it, the more I have realized that I'm not shy, rather I'm just introverted.  Basically there is just a difference in the way my brain works compared to extroverts.  The way that I would kind of describe it is that there is just some kind of disconnect between my brain and my mouth.  It takes me a bit of time to get my thoughts from my brain into words coming out of my mouth.  I have a hard time with small talk because my brain and mouth just don't work quickly enough to really keep up.  There are times when I accidentally talk without really thinking, and it always just comes out mumbled garbage.  I trip all over my tongue and it just doesn't work.  I've learned that it is okay that I am like this, but I would like to make improvements.  That is why I try to do some things that are really out of my comfort zone, like writing these blog posts.  I don't know that many of the things about my personality will change.

I do often have thoughts and opinions on certain things, but, the way my brain works, I figure that if nobody asks, nobody cares to know.  I'm working on it.  If you want to know what I'm thinking, just ask.  I will probably tell you.  You may want to give me a minute to think about my answer, but I will generally let you know.  I will let you know if I don't know or if I really have no preference or whatever.  Feel free to ask me anything.  The thing I think many people don't realize is that I'm terrible at small talk, but I could talk about deeper subjects like life, health, etc. for a good while.  So just let me listen and observe and feel free to include me even if I don't say much.  I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything my brain just works differently.  Help me to overcome my weakness!

Here are a few things from around the Internet which kind of sum up my feelings.


No comments:

Post a Comment