"While extroverts commonly feel loneliness when others are absent, introverts can feel most lonely when others are present, because ours is the aching loneliness of not being known or understood."
How many times have I cried out "I just wish someone understood me?" I have heard this from many of my friends who are introverts as well. The funny thing is as many of us who understand each other, we don't recognize that other introverts understand us.
Related is this quote:
"One particularly insidious behavior in introverts is the tendency to suffer alone. We internalize our dark emotions, often increasing loneliness and closing ourselves to the love and insight that can bring healing and new perspectives."
I wish I had realized this five years ago. Well, I knew it, but I thought it was just another way I was broken. If I had known it's common for the introvert, I might have handled it differently. Instead I fought it, and then fought through it, entirely alone. I couldn't let anyone into my pain and fear and dark thoughts because that would, I don't know, indicate failure or something. Because of that, it was far messier than it had to be.
I think this was especially true because of my involvement in religion, and more specifically in charismatic christianity. I was known for being reserved, but also for being wise and skilled at spiritual warfare; therefore, admitting I was struggling would have meant to show a great deal of weakness. Being an already damaged introvert, I couldn't risk it. It could be because I believed if I had told someone, they would have attributed it to demonic oppression rather than just religious burn-out. If I had spoken to someone about it, I might have found someone who said "Of course you're struggling, that's common." But instead, the darkness consumed me.
From personal experience, I think introverts can tend to the martyr syndrome, as well. That is, almost wanting not to be understood, as much as we ache for it, because being understood would devalue our uniqueness. Now, this could be only a phenomenon for the individualists, the introverted 4's and the INFP's. Which could explain the utter reluctance to share our dark places.
I'm enjoying this book, because while there are many good resources about being an introvert, there is a very unique dynamic to introversion in religious culture. It has caused me more trauma than most other things in life, and reading a book that validates that this dynamic as not only real, but common, has been very beneficial to me.
One thing that the author gets into later on is the need for introverts who are involved in religious culture to take regular sabbaticals to recharge from the demands of ministry. This one fact alone could have saved me tons of grief; if, at the height of my involvement when burn-out became apparent, I had been allowed or even encouraged to take a break, rather than chastised and harassed for stepping back, I could have ended up in a far better place. Three or four months off, completely, could have prevented the five years I'm at now.
This is not to say I could have or would have overlooked all the negativity, inauthenticity and insincerity I take issue with, in modern evangelicalism in general, and my ex-church specifically, but a permitted break could have allowed me to process in much healthier ways, possibly preventing the trauma and grief that chased me completely away.
Stay tuned for more.
*All quotes are from the book, "Introverts in the Church: Finding our Place in an Extroverted Culture" by Adam S. McHugh.
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