A Peep into a World of Aloneness

On a typical Saturday morning, after a pretty engaging stressful week, woke up with zero plans and drive of how my weekend would be spent unwinding and cooling off from the excruciating long week activities, rather I was alone with my thoughts, focusing primarily on numerous imaginations of my feelings and affairs; I guess am beginning to sound a little weird right?.... am not actually, I just happen to fall in a category of an amazingly wonderful set which most times are misunderstood by most, maybe because of the slightly complicated or rather advanced nature. To avoid continuous build-up of a rather oddball impression, I fall in a particular personality category called INTROVERTS .
It’s really fascinating to be one, no disrespect to the opposite Extroverts (extrovert is one whose mental images, thoughts and problems find ready expressions in overt behaviour) who behaves in an outgoing manner, sociable personalities and are concerned with outer affairs whereas an introvert dwells largely in a realm of imaginations, if given sufficient ability, may become visionary poets or artists. We love the energy displayed by the opposite but as introverts we sometimes wish you could visualize what’s going on inside our brains. However, this lifestyle comes with perks and challenges, both which depend on our perspective.

IF YOU DO THESE THINGS, YOU ARE DEFINITELY AN INTROVERT
• You prefer spending time alone or with one or two close friends especially when tired
• You concentrate best when you are alone
• You see things and you understand
• You don’t get bored easily
• You often give the impression of being quiet or mysterious.
• You feel that you gain energy and strength from being alone
• You often take your talent to the next level
• You avoid unnecessary drama and conflicts
• Your attain maximum creativity when you are alone

You exhibiting some of these characteristics, not necessarily all; means we both have similar lifestyles and therefore makes u an introvert. However, some exhibit deeper characteristics, when this occurs it’s a total deviation from introversion but rather Social withdrawal so its expedient of you to understand the difference between both so as to avoid a mix up.

What happens in the head of an introvert’s

1. According to the “Introvert advantage” by Marti Olsen Laney, introverts have a longer neural pathway for processing stimuli. Information runs through a pathway that is associated with the long term memory and planning. In other words, it’s complicated for introverts to process frivolous interactions and events. As they process information, introverts are carefully attending to their internal thoughts and feelings at the same time
2. According to the studies by psychologist Hans Eysnck, introverts require less stimulation from the world in order to be awake and alert than extroverts do. This means introverts are more easily over-stimulated
3. The flip side of introvert’s sensitivity to dopamine is that they need less of it to feel happy. Extrovert’s brains run on energy spending nervous system, whereas introverts brain run on energy-conserving nervous system. This is why introverts feel content and energized when reading a book, thinking deeply, or diving into their rich inner world of idea’s.
4. Introverts brain aren’t as strongly rewarded for gambling or taking risks as extrovert’s are. The brain reward and pleasure system is activated by dopamine neurotransmitters. Scientists found that extrovert’s brains responded with more pleasure to positive gambling results. In other words introverts feel less excitement from surprise or risks.
5. The introvert’s brain treats interactions with people at the same intensity level that it treats encounter with inanimate objects. Introverts process everything in their surrounding and pay attention to all the sensory details in the environment not just the people.
6. As introverts are thinking, they reach back into long-term memory to locate information. An introvert will often compare old and new experiences when making a decision, which slows the processing down but leads to carefully thought-out decisions. This means that introverts have an active dialogue with themselves and usually walk around with many thoughts in their minds.

Perks/Advantages of being an Introvert
Introversion like I said earlier is an amazingly fantastic personality where you focus more on your thoughts, explore different imaginations, attain appropriate focus and concentration as well as achieve maximum creativity without experiencing any form of impairment from frivolous interactions. Here is a list of some of the advantages of being one

1. We choose our words carefully so others don’t have to wade through a river of bullshit to understand what we are saying.
2. We have imaginations and rich inner worlds.
3. We are most likely to access our innermost thoughts and creative ideas because we embrace solitude.
4. We are capable of great focus, which comes in handy when completing pretty much any tasks that require extended periods of concentration (advanced mathematics, writing, arts, science etc).
5. We tend to process greater volumes of information any given situation, it is for this reason that we get tired easily form overstimulation.
6. We embody the old adage “you have two ears and one mouth for a reason”. Everyone likes to be listened to.
7. Most introverts tend to carefully think things through before acting, which has obvious advantages.
8. We are observant of both environmental and social subtleties. While others are yammering away, we are taking everything in and processing it in our ever active minds

The life of an introvert as fascinating as it sounds still is likened to two sides of a coin, the head and tail which could be rephrased in this context as “the good and ugly”. This brings me to some of the challenges faced in introversion such as people seeing you as some type of monster that doesn’t like relating or being around people, finding your own voice becomes hard because your reserved nature doesn’t give room for verbalizing most of your thoughts, Spending too much time in your head could at times lead to depression.

However, it’s obvious the perks outweighs the negatives making being an introvert not much of a fremd but fascinating personality, only fellow introverts can relate favourably with this :).