Discussion for article #233116
The notebook, and better yet, at conferences, the badge. Or just being able to pick up the phone and say "This is So-and-so from instead of having to explain why you’re calling. (In college, when I aspired for a while to photojournalism, I could do damn-all anything as long as my face was hidden behind a camera.)
I have a pet theory that introverts, or at least people who don’t like being the center of attention, make better reporters because the charge they get isn’t about being in a group of people, it’s about listening and getting the story. On the other hand, that doesn’t always bode so well for getting people to listen to the story once it’s gotten, especially in the current media environment.
Small talk IS torture. I read Susan’s Cain’s book and only wish it had been available when I was a teenager. Love the humor in your writing as well as your subject.
Bower bird, brumby and meerkat sidebars stat!
Author and others should take a look at writing and research about sensitivity, aka highly sensitive person or scientific term - sensory overload sensitivity (in extreme version think of those who can’t be around lots of noise or crowds). Cain’s work is interesting but she really doesn’t understand that intraverts are highly sensitive people, as are some extraverts (roughly 30% of HSPs are extraverts, while HSPs make up about 20% of the population). Look up highly sensitive person website for starters and check out Elaine Aron’s Youtube videos. Original study in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1997, vol 73:345-368.
Then there’s the other aspect, attachment theory and interpersonal neurobiology; i.e., what stems from high sensitivity (or intraversion if you want) and what is more directly psychological, especially the effects of childhood experience. For a very readable, excellent summary of the state of research in that field, see Daniel Siegel, The Developing Mind (2nd ed.). It’s one of those reads that you’ll never seen yourself and others the same after (the first chapter is online - do a google search for the title). Siegel is a academic researcher and psychotherapist (as is Elaine Aron).
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@WidowWiggin, see my comment about sensitivity. It’s not so much intraversion/extraversion as sensitivity overload sensitivity (HSP) that I wish I knew about as a teen - and wish my parents had been sensitive to that from the early on.
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I wonder how many physicians and other clinical types recognize themselves in this essay? Interest in people: check. Prefering a role that relies on some distancing/objectification: check. Feeling drained after a series of intense human interactions: double-check. If I had read this piece thirty years ago, I might have taken it into account when planning my career. But now I think I’ll just retire.
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@cellar_door, Still invaluable in retirement. If nothing else, helps understand how you react to certain situations and people, and vice versa. See my longer comment for suggestions on understanding the bigger picture.
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Communication is a problem at times.
4. Saying something out loud while with other people that strays about 4 trains of thought from what they were talking about.
Wow lots of shy men in here! LOL thats what drugs and alcohol are for you guys. Now lets take off shirts and go disrupt that local newscast