I’m an introvert, but most people assume the opposite. Because I tell myself, as I walk into a party “I have as much right to be here as anyone. I belong. Now, who can I learn something about?”
Buuuuut… I can keep that up for about an hour. After that, I find myself thinking “Ah, there’s a bookshelf. There’s got to be a good book that I can sneak off to a back room with…”
After a half hour of reading, I can rejoin the madding crowd.
Out of curiosity, what’s the reason you’re forced to do these things?
I mean, peer pressure can be pretty strong, and it’s also easy to forget how horrible parties are in the interim. When everyone you care about is like, “Hey, let’s go do this fun thing!” you might actually convince yourself that it’s going to be fun (and in all fairness, one out of every ten parties I have attended were, in fact, fun.)
The most recent horrible party I went to was a Halloween party, ostensibly to support a friend who was going through a hard time. Our friends convinced me that he needed this, and I have a deep affection for this man, so I went. The party was filled with nerdy, socially awkward people (I am both) who had a harder time socializing than even I do, and I drove one conversation into the ground by accidentally talking about sex trafficking (you just get inured to these things on the job.) Then it was this girl pretending to be interested in our conversation while trying to get into my friend’s pants, and he was too focused on discussing writing with me to realize the girl was hitting on him. He was obviously uncomfortable the whole time. Because this is the kind of thing that your friends rope you into, thinking that just because they would have fun that certainly you would have fun, too! And you’re sort of stupid enough to believe them every once in a while.
The only good thing that came out of that night was our conversation on the drive home.
I was thinking that myself. I hate parties of more than about six people. I’m introverted, but I don’t have social anxiety. Honestly, it sounded like that post was describing social anxiety more than introversion.
I don’t think that this society has an extroversion privilege, but I think it does look at social anxiety as a character defect, or some sort of priggishness-- some kind of “You’re not ‘me-worthy’”; society fails so completely to have even the most basic grasp of social anxiety as something like asthma, or myopia, that child with it are treated in exactly the right way to exacerbate it. You get adults who have been driven sometimes to pathology.
By contrast, people who are introverted, but without social anxiety, or even shyness, pretty much get left alone.
You go to terrible parties.
Quiet zones, sure, I like a nice quiet chat away from the music/hubbub as much as the next person. And the introverts need a place to hide from us nasty shallow dominating extroverts, apparently.
But a TV on, at a party? Naah, unless it’s playing background video, like old B&W movies or a liquid light show, that would be a party I would hate.
It’s a party, not a sports bar.
Lessee … family weddings. Friends of family funerals. Party for very old friend’s mom who is visiting her for the first time in thirty years. Retirement party for my husband.
Things like that, where my absence would be noticed and commented on. In the case of my friend’s mom-honoring party, I could not force myself to drive through three hours of heavy freeway traffic at night to stand in a very small house shoulder to shoulder with a noisy group entirely composed of strangers for a number of hours and then drive home again at midnight (I go to bed at about nine thirty). I sat in my car in my driveway for twenty minutes unable to turn the ignition key. She took it as a personal slight and never really forgave me.
Very much an introvert here, and sometimes I really have to fight my inner hermit and make myself go be social. I almost always enjoy myself when I do, FWIW.
I work retail, and am perfectly capable of initiating and maintaining conversation with strangers. I can go to a friend’s house for dinner and chat pleasantly with people there that I don’t know. It’s all enjoyable (usually) at the time, but I do come home tired, not energized, and needing peace.
I have a need to be alone that is pretty well as strong as my need to eat and sleep. When work life is crazy busy, and my house has visitors, and people want holiday get-togethers I really just want to go hide. That’s about the only good thing to come out of the covid-crisis for me: No endless parties!
All that said, I do really enjoy being alone in a crowd that’s focused on their own thing(s). There’s an international level horse show that I’ve attended for the last 20 years, and one of my favorite things is getting there a day ahead of my friend-group and just wandering, people watching, shopping, eating, seeing what’s different this year, all alone in a big crowd in a venue we all enjoy.
When I was a kid, my family dragged me to numerous weddings for their friends and for friends of my siblings.
As an adult, I’ve been to plenty of other weddings for my friends and for friends of my wife, and also for extended family.
I have so far only been called on to attend two funerals (with associated post-funeral luncheons).
There are also work-related social events. Not just random “get a beer together at the end of the work day,” but full-on departmental picnics and holiday luncheons. Plus the same type of events for my wife’s workplace.
As an adult, I certainly have the authority to abstain from these sorts of events, but doing so risks developing a reputation as an antisocial prick, something that could reduce my future socializing options to even less than I would like.
In my limited, anecdotal experience, we have a lot more awareness of social anxiety than we used to.
And it makes me wonder whether we have a lot more social anxiety than we used to.
I don’t remember hearing about social anxiety until relatively recently. Now, [vast exaggeration]just about everybody has it[/ve]. Is social anxiety itself much more common nowadays, and if so, why? Or have lots of people always suffered from it without having that name for it?
I don’t consider myself and extrovert, but I usually enjoy social occasions. I look forward to high school reunions ( really, they’re awesome because the only people that go are the people that like reunions) and business conferences.
But one thing that struck me about the OP is that I never, and I mean never walk into a social situation thinking that anyone is going to be judging me negatively. I just don’t. I don’t think I’ll say stupid things or that people will think I’m awkward. In fact, I’m usually pretty sure that everyone I meet is going to think I’m awesome.
mean , if someone kidnapped me when I was running to the grocery in sweats and no makeup, and made me go to a fancy dress ball, or if I showed up in costume to a party that wasn’t a costume party, I might feel self-conscious, but otherwise, no.
I’m also not thinking of a room of thirty people as thirty chances at anything. I’m probably thinking that maybe there’ll be some good food or interesting conversation, without much expectation beyond that.
I don’t think that I’ve ever been to a event where every other attendee was a complete and total stranger, usually I know at least one person, even if I’ve only exchanged an e-mail or two with one of them.
In that case, I’d probably walk up to a group of people and say- “Hi, I’m a friend of Sandra’s but I’ve never met her in person. Can you point her out to me? If I actually know one or two people at the event, I find them and join whatever conversation they are having. Then I know 3 or 4 people and I can join their conversation as the groups shift, then before long I’ve met a lot of people.
Now sometimes I’ll go to an event and I decide I’m not enjoying it and I won’t stay long. But that’s usually because the music is too loud and/or there’s not enough places to sit ( I like conversation but I don’t like standing for hours).
They called it “shyness”.
We often referred to someone as “painfully shy”. I liked that diagnosis, as it did capture the, well, pain involved.
All I can say is my social anxiety has gone through the roof since COVID. It’s caused my comfort zone to shrink dramatically. IF social anxiety has increased in the last twenty years or so, it’s probably because socializing has been on a steady decline for a while now. COVID is just the icing on the nerve-wracking cake.
I don’t like the distinction of extroverts vs introverts because some of the most seemingly magnetic personalities are insecure and nervous. They just channel it differently. For example ‘people pleasers’ who really only try and make other people like them because it makes them like themselves just a bit more than before.
I have had conversations with strangers at events where we end up talking and having a good time which developed into a friendship beyond that conversation. I have had conversations with strangers which in that moment felt really good for both of us but it never went further than that because we never saw each other again. This distinction matters. I am not claiming to be really outgoing or charismatic or fun to be with. Quite often I would rather be at home in my comfort zone but the way it works for me is there will be quite a few other people in the room just like that too so we may as well get talking and make this a little more comfortable, and pass the time quicker at least. It’s amazing how time flies when you just get to know someone new even if the topics at hand are not particularly exciting. Because the fact they are new to you, and you are new to them, means there is something authentic about it.
That is what goes through my mind.
I’m a little surprised that no one has yet mentioned alcohol as a social lubricant.
As I understand it, some people find parties much more bearable when they drink, because it helps to loosen them up, make them more outgoing, and silence the kind of inner dialogue the OP describes.
Unfortunately, it’s never worked that way for me.
It works for me to a point. The problem is I love alcohol, it opens my mouth, and I become much more social, but I remain excruciatingly self-conscious. So then I’m just standing there saying, “Do I sound as loud to you as I sound to myself? I’m embarrassing myself, aren’t I? I should just shut up now, shouldn’t I?”
And other drunk people are like, “No, no, no, you’re fine.”
And then we talk about things I would never discuss sober.
I have to say adding alcohol often does make things more fun, and when it’s with people you know well, it can be a total blast. I did drink at that stupid Halloween party but it didn’t help. And there were four other close friends there.