I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Susan Cain turned her book “Quiet” and its follow-ups into a cottage industry, but she does know her audience.
Maybe.
I see she offers courses through Authoritive.com, meant to help introverts thrive. Can’t load any of the course sites on my phone at the moment.
Nevermind. I’m not all that interested. I know plenty of local introverts so if I need any community, I’ll chum up with them. After a fashion. In my own limited way.
Reading “Quiet” was helpful. I appreciate the strategies outlined – from proposing a “Free Trait Agreement” at work and at home to help make life better for introverts to taking introverts and extroverts through the concepts of masking, coping strategies and the use of roleplay to help introverts prepare for stressful situations. Those are sections I’ll read again to figure out how to implement that at the workplace. I’m back to the office full-time after over five years’ bliss of working from home. I won’t gnaw on that particular bone in this post. Or at least not a lot.
The last few chapters of the book meandered a bit and were tough to get through. I should probably read them again. But it is interesting to see many of the strategies I developed on my own recommended to other introverts.
Going back to the office after working from home showed me my use of these strategies has diminished through disuse. Not that I have more interactions in the cubicle versus my basement, but going from my cubicle to the bathroom is fraught with far more interactive risks now.
Reading the book has helped me realize there are more introverted people where I work than I recognized in the past. It also helped me realize that sometimes dealing with those introverts – even for a fellow introvert – can be a pain, so I have a better understanding of extroverts’ pain now. Though I still wish they’d go out of their comfort zones and shut up more.
What stood out a lot to me is that neither introverts nor extroverts need “treatment.” They need understanding, and in many cases, accommodation. And it’s made me a bit more wary of people who think they need to “fix” others.
From the book:
As Ethan grew older, his parents tried in vain to instill “fighting spirit” in him. They sent him onto the baseball diamond and the soccer field, but Ethan just wanted to go home and read. He wasn’t even competitive at school. Though very bright, he was a B student. He could have done better, but preferred wo focus on his hobbies, especially bu9ilding model cars. He had a few close friends, but was never in the thick of classroom social life. Unable to account for his puzzling behavior, Ethan’s parents thought he might be depressed.
But Ethan’s problem, says Dr. Miller, was not depression but a classic case of poor “parent-child fit.”
Compare their worried about Ethan to [child psychologist] Dr. [Jerry] Miller’s assessment: “He was like the classic Harry Potter kid – he was always reading,” says Dr. Miller enthusiastically. “He enjoyed any form of imaginative play. He loved to build things. He had so man things he wanted to tell you about. He had more acceptance of his parents than they had of him. He didn’t define them as pathological, just as different from himself. That same kid in a different home would be a model child.”
But Ethan’s own parents never found a way to see him in that light. The last thing Dr. Miller heard was that his parents finally consulted with another psychologist who agreed to “treat” their son. And now Dr. Miller is worried about Ethan.
The main message I get is that we need to communicate with each other. For introverts, that can be difficult.
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