Honouring the Introvert.

So what happens when an introvert (ref MBTI or Eric Berne’s The Process Model), has no ‘Me-Time’? The fall out will inevitably result in stress symptoms. The longer the enforced extroversion, the more acute will be the response. There are over 50s igns of stress (Stress index questionnaire), crossing the landscapes of emotional, psychological, physical and behavioural. We may be sleepless and anxious, volcanic and escapist, we may become sad, overwhelmed of eat too much.

I know that I will suffer if I do not make opportunities to retreat. I also recognise this will impact on my work and my loved ones if I do not honour this need in me. Give me a week of being ‘demanded of’ (& that is how it feels to me, not actually what is being done), by family, friends, clients and colleagues, with no let up, and my fight or flight response is right up there. Continue in this manner and I become depleted and succumb to a ‘depressed’ state where I do not know which way is up.
It is my responsibility to recognise this need in me. It is my responsibility to take action. The media is designed for and by extroverts. I need to resist this expectation that I need to be ‘doing’ and with people at all times. For the quality of my progressional work, for the wellbeing of my family, for my own sanity, I do need to shut the door and retreat.
Even within a busy domestic work it is my responsibility to assert myself and create pockets of time and space into which I can withdraw and reflect. Not easy, but absolutely essential! Honouring our preferred way of being, albeit for small amounts of time, regularly, is both our right and our responsibility.

To learn more of working with Rebecca click here: The Daemon Career Coach