Me, too. This is the weird part for me: I can be the center of (positive) attention in a room of 50 people and it doesn’t bother me at all. But ask me to stand up in front of them and I freak out. Like serious panic attack. I cannot recall an incident in my past that would cause such a phobia. Go figure.
Well, I guess I am more social than I’m making it out to be. I do eat lunch with others almost every day, and it’s sometimes an enjoyable experience. (Often it isn’t enjoyable, but it’s tolerable.) If I had my druthers, I would choose to eat at my desk, with the door closed, because this is my comfort zone. So I guess by eating lunch with others, I am pushing myself.
But it’s harder for me to do anything beyond this. I did grab a movie and dinner with a coworker once, but it turns out that our personalities couldn’t be any more diametrically opposed. So we never had another escapade together. It’s easy to think maybe I’m just not around people who get me and that if I was, I would be more sociable. But I lack the desire to seek out people, regardless of how cool they are. Loneliness would be a helpful emotion in this situation, though it would suck. But at least it would provide motivation.
Are you unhappy? If not, why change? It seems to me that if you are OK with yourself and aren’t lonely, then there’s no need for “motivation” to do anything different.
My feeling is that as long as a person isn’t harming themselves or others, they should live any way they damn well please.
Practice. I have improved tremendously over the last couple years just with repeated tries. And do it with people you’re comfortableness, if possible.
And Xanax.
Not for me. I once went to a seminar-type thing about personality, and the leader described introverts as people who were highly aware that they have limited internal energy reserves. There are tons and tons of threads I read avidly but never reply to because I can’t afford the energy to really commit myself to participation. Either because I’m reading at work and always have to be alert in case someone walks by my cubicle, or because it’s a topic that can really rile me up and I don’t want to invest that much energy into a dumb internet argument.
Or I type something out and then think, “Awww, who cares?” and delete it. (I’m tempted to do this with this post, btw, but I’ll soldier on. 
Edit: especially now that I realize I was answering something from page 1 on page 3. Oy.)
Well, sure. Enough of any benzodiazepine would make me comfortable doing just about anything!
It was kind of a joke but not really. I take Klonopin for the first few days of a new class. Once I’m comfortable, I can teach without taking anything.
See, I’m the opposite, though I’m definitely an introvert. I don’t mind going in front of a large group of people when I have a speech to make, or lines to deliver. I get some nerves, like anyone else, but I don’t mind it, as long as I know basically what I’m going to say and how I’m going to say it.
It’s casual social interactions in small groups that scare me. People aren’t paying attention to my words, they’re paying attention to me, and judging who-I-am rather than what-I’m-presenting. They might even question or challenge me about it!
Lecturing, not a problem. Going out to lunch with my co-workers, problem.
well, not really “you too.” I don’t care what kind of attention it’ll be, I don’t want it. I simply do not want a bunch of people focusing on me for any reason at all.
That sounds more like extreme social anxiety than introversion.
not an either/or.
It was a revelation to me that it was just as hard for an introvert to say something as it is for me to NOT say something I want to say.
I don’t buy
Lots of complaints about extroverts in this thread. You know, you guys can be annoying, too. In the same way that our chatter may get on your nerves, your silence can make us just as uncomfortable.
I am like this too, except on an even more micro level. I am fine sitting around, talking about how crazy the world is. I can talk about weather and other trivialities. And if people give me an opening, I’ll ask them about more personal stuff (how many kids do you have?..where did you work before coming here?) But I really hate addressing personal questions aimed at me. “How are you?” sometimes catches me off guard.
But what’s weird is that I also hate hearing someone talk about their lives in too much detail. If I ask you how old your kids are, I don’t want to know their favorite foods and the cutesy thing they did yesterday. A couple of sentences is fine, but you’re going to lose me after that (even though I will look REALLY interested).
I’d rather much just talk about how crazy the world is. That’s so much easier to do.
And I hope the monster that snatched Brynda comes back so she can finish her thought.
ETA: She’s back!
OK, so explain. I have had people complaining about my lack of sociability before, or about my not drinking alcohol, or about my not wanting to go out after certain hours - but nobody gives details!
If all that’s bothering them is that I’m not like them, tought titties; not much I can do about that when they’re male, late-wakers, think the best fun in the world is to get drunk and try to pick up ‘night girls’ while telling each other what studs they are, and I’m female, an early riser and alcohol makes me sick. I need details before I can do something about whatever is bothersome - and for certain things the response will still and always be… tough titties.
Brynda, I know there is a little slamming of extroversion in this thread. It often seems to happen when introverts come together.
My only answer is that it is often to vent off the frustration that builds up while having to navigate an extroverted society. From early childhood, an introvert is pressured to conform to things that do not come naturally to them. If you want to play alone on the playground (as I tended to do), the teacher pulls you aside and asks if everything is alright at home. Kids call you a stick in the mud if you don’t want to stay up all night during a sleepover and play “truth or dare”. You are forced to do group projects. You get penalized in class if you don’t participate “fully”. People tease you if you don’t want to “party” or get blasted or don’t want to flash your titties. You go your whole life having to defend yourself against charges of being “anti-social” or “boring”. It gets tiring sometimes.
I think introverts end up stretching themselves much more than extroverts do, because the latter are rarely asked to do things that don’t feel natural to them. Yet extroverts have no problem demanding us to stretch even more.
So while I have gotten to a point in my life where extroverts don’t kill me as much as they used to (mostly because I am more assertive than I used to be), I do understand the tendency to slam them. Turn about is fair play.
This is the struggle I often have with these threads, the lack of consensus about whether we are talking about extraversion/introversion as defined by Myers-Briggs or as you have put it in the part that I have bolded above (which I love, by the way). I feel like I end up talking at cross-purposes with people because I am defining it the Myers-Briggs way and others are defining it as your extreme examples.
My mother, for example, has strong introvert preferences as measured by Myers-Briggs. She never leaves a thought unspoken, though, when she is in her preferred small grouping. She’s actually very self-centered, which people in these threads sometimes point to as a purely extraverted trait but seems to be a trait that can happen to varying degrees all along the extraversion-introversion continuum.
What lorene said. I’m an introvert who is sociable and don’t mind expressing my opinion. I see no contradiction.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. 
My late husband was an introvert, and it really opened my eyes to what it might be like to be an introvert in the US. Poor man–it was hard enough in England, but then he moved here! I do get that it is harder to be an introvert than to be an extrovert. I have also worked with clients who are introverted. Our society tends to value social interaction, and you guys get labelled unfairly, often as being snobs, etc. I get that you need more alone time.
What chaps my hide, though, is not introverts refusing to do social things. Stay home if that is what you want/need. What is annoying is when they do come to social events and just sit there, looking around in silence. Like I said, in the same way that you don’t like chatter, I don’t like silences that feel awkward to me. And if you are going to tell me to get comfortable with more silence, then you need to hear that I want you to get comfortable with talking. I think most introverts have the (mistaken) idea that if they don’t say anything, they can’t be judged and found wanting. It is safer to them to stay quiet. Wrong. That is exactly what gets you the “snob” judgement you don’t like!
Most of all, I want to dispel the notion that interactions are always easy for extroverts and we are just being judgmental. It is hard for me to slow down, to endure long silences, to stifle myself, to give you your huge gap to jump in the conversation. I don’t like carrying the entire conversational burden. So when you say extroverts don’t have to stretch…well, you’re wrong.
I don’t think is true, exactly. You’re assuming extroverts don’t have any social anxiety or just plain old new-people-nervousness. Shy extroverts are constantly doing things that don’t feel natural, because you’re scared of others and miserable alone.
I’m HIGHLY extroverted (in the getting energy from others sense) but actually I used to be rather shy. I had this mean-girls experience which made me somewhat socially nervous around other people (especially women, especially women who seemed “cool” or really with it) at the same time I craved human company. In order to not go crazy from lonliness I was more or less forced to constantly seek new, unknown social environments, which was scary and difficult and eventually all these experiences became a fundamental change in my personality (I am now not-shy as well as extroverted).
ETA: it’s also hard to tell sometimes where cultural difference and personality difference collide. Is a introverted New Yorker more outgoing than an extroverted Southerner? I don’t know? Maybe, maybe not. The difference is how they feel about it, not their actions per se I guess.