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I am an introvert not because I don’t like socializing with people, but rather because I can’t shake the impression that they don’t like socializing with me (an

I am an introvert not because I don’t like socializing with people, but rather because I can’t shake the impression that they don’t like socializing with me (and I have been proven right in this notion). In order to become more likable I’ve had to adopt an extremely perceptive and self critical mental framework to analyze every thing I could be doing wrong to annoy or offend people. It has worked, and people seem to like me more, but the mental exhaustion it induces has led to me often yearning for alone time. I wonder if introverts like me are common: those who enjoy socializing very much when they feel socially safe, but rarely feel socially safe.

fud101 2y ago
oversharing, being mean or harsh, not being sympathetic, not continuing the conversation etc, those would hurt your socialising.
zdc1 2y ago
I do wonder how much is extraversion vs introversion, and much are other factors like shyness/social anxiety, or as another commenter mentioned, being non-neurotypical. I feel like these discussions are full of mislabelled terms and people who may not be fully self-aware of where they sit. In social media I often see terms like "Introverted Extrovert" get thrown around when sometimes they just mean that they're an introvert who's good at masking. On the other hand, my energy level goes up in a group, but I definitely need time to warm up to new people before I can be comfortable around them.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  I see "introverted extrovert" as a kind of frustrated extrovert who doesn't have compatible people around to socialise with so feels the need to mask and work hard to socialise with incompatible people. Which is of course tiring.
  - taskforcegemini 2y ago
    what is an introvert then? because these arguments also apply on introverts
    - zem 2y ago
      someone who is drained by interacting even with compatible people whose company they enjoy
lll-o-lll 2y ago
You might be a bit autistic, common enough in the software world. Lookup something called “autistic masking”. Source: All the autistic people in my life. I really like autistic people! Find your people and you won’t have to pretend around them.
- frognumber 2y ago
  Right now, we increasingly like to stick labels on things, and I'm not sure it's helpful. Autism is a disorder, diagnosed in DSM V. Very few people in your life are likely to be autistic. As with many such things, it's a spectrum. Unless those cross a pathological threshold, it's not autism. Few SWEs are over that threshold. We used to call people "nerdy," "quirky," or other things (and it was okay to be that). That's in the natural spread of human personalities. If you're 5% of the way towards dyslexia, autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or whatever else, it's in the range of human personalities, not disorders. It's helpful to understand how different people work. Most SWEs and introverts share some characteristics with people with autism, and reading about autism can help understand oneself by interpolation. However, the label is not fair either people with actual autism, or to people without autism who believe they have it. Footnote: My experience is that extrovert versus introvert is mostly a function of whether you're invigorated by interacting with people or tired by it, and especially by people you don't know well. Yes, social skills are helpful, a skill one can develop, and important to one's career, but so are math or medicine. A good strategy for an introvert is to partner with an extrovert.
  - Viliam1234 2y ago
    > whether you're invigorated by interacting with people or tired by it, and especially by people you don't know well. In my experience, that depends on the people. Even if I don't know them well, sometimes the interaction starts great, and sometimes it is exhausting. From my perspective, some people are loud and annoying, and their communication seems mostly about establishing a dominance hierarchy. Other people are nice and calm, and they... discuss things, without necessarily making it about them being better than everyone else. But I would probably call myself an introvert, because when there is a larger group of people, there is usually someone who makes it a battle for dominance, so from my perspective almost all larger groups suck. But I have also seen groups where no one was like this, and they were okay. They are just very rare.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
blueflow 2y ago
> analyze every thing I could be doing wrong to annoy or offend people Is this a "you" problem or a "they" problem?
- fairity 2y ago
  Why would it matter? OP is experiencing an undesirable outcome, and assigning blame for the problem seems besides the point when the main goal is to change the outcome.
  - jimkleiber 2y ago
    If one can't figure out the causes of certain outcomes, how does one change the outcomes?
  - blueflow 2y ago
    Because you can reverse the situation and criticize them for being offended by everything and difficult for you to work with.
    - gosub100 2y ago
      you can, only if you have the critical amount of self confidence, appetite for conflict, lack the fear of losing them, and/or have another group of people who you can substitute after their loss. Thats a big ask for all but the most socially endowed of us.
jimkleiber 2y ago
I try to just adopt the perspective that people like me, often more than they might even think they do. It's not easy to do but when I do it, it makes it a lot easier for me to want to interact with them. And if you want, ive built tools and tricks to help me with this that I could share.
- mojifwisi 2y ago
  I am not OP, but I am interested in those tools and tricks.
  - jimkleiber 2y ago
    You can check out the demo of iFeelio[0] (app is currently obsolete because I got tired of coding and other reasons), which has a format for micro-journaling, basically answering "How do I feel?" with comma separated emotional words or phrases and "What is happening?" with 140 characters. Basically it helped me get better at identifying emotions (including mixed ones) and contexts. You can check out both Emotional Self-Defense[1] and emōkō[2], for some theory and drills to practice dealing with emotional attacks. One of the main principles is what I call the three steps: 1) truth, 2) fair play, and 3) love. Or telling the truth about how I feel, telling the other person how I imagine they might feel, and saying one thing to connect to them with love. The emōkō site has quite a few audio reflection drills I created to practice these three steps, with a variety of emotions and contexts. Lastly, checking out my podcast, The Jim Kleiber Show[3], especially the segment the DailyJim, where I do 5-10 min reflections most weeks Mon-Thu about a lot of these topics. I want to better organize these tips and tools I've built, as I have a lot more, but that's what I have for now. If you want to talk more about this, please reach out to the email in my bio, id love to share more. [0]: https://www.ifeelio.com https://www.ifeelio.com [1]: https://www.emotionalselfdefense.com https://www.emotionalselfdefense.com [2]: https://www.emoko.org https://www.emoko.org [3]: https://www.jimkleiber.com/show https://www.jimkleiber.com/show
gedy 2y ago
In the context of work outings and socializing, this is doubly so if you are older or unattractive. If you are at a company with a lot of young 20 somethings, they largely really have no interest in being around you, and attempts to socialize with opposite sex can easily be misconstrued (by them) as unwanted. So it's frankly not worth it, and not sure why I'd even want to put myself in those situations. And before you reply "well maybe you are being creepy", well QED
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  People will want to talk with an older boss.
ghidramans 2y ago
[dead]
scarface_74 2y ago
The further up I get in my career and especially when I fell into consulting in 2020 and more so after Covid lifted, I’ve had to “act like I like people”. I’ve studied how to talk to and deal with people a lot over the past few years. I’m good at it. But it is tiring. I was also an only child. While I have four friend groups including my cousins I grew up with, there are plenty of times I enjoy just being alone or even sitting alone in a crowd where I don’t have to talk to people. My wife knows that about me and she can sense when I just need some me time.
xhrpost 2y ago
Though often conflated, there is a difference between introversion (preference towards less external stimuli) and shyness (fear of social judgement). You may be a shy extrovert. Also I can totally relate to the hyper fixation on "what does this person think if me right now with everything I say?" I wish I had a simple super effective answer but I think it just takes small improvements over time. In general, if you're willing to show a reasonable level of mutual interest in the other person, they will reciprocate and with practice this can be trusted such that the anxiety reduces. Also accept that some people will just not be interested or necessarily like you and that's ok, but hard at first for sure, especially if you've faced social rejection earlier in life.

fud101 2y ago

oversharing, being mean or harsh, not being sympathetic, not continuing the conversation etc, those would hurt your socialising.

zdc1 2y ago

I do wonder how much is extraversion vs introversion, and much are other factors like shyness/social anxiety, or as another commenter mentioned, being non-neurotypical. I feel like these discussions are full of mislabelled terms and people who may not be fully self-aware of where they sit. In social media I often see terms like "Introverted Extrovert" get thrown around when sometimes they just mean that they're an introvert who's good at masking. On the other hand, my energy level goes up in a group, but I definitely need time to warm up to new people before I can be comfortable around them.

HPsquared 2y ago
I see "introverted extrovert" as a kind of frustrated extrovert who doesn't have compatible people around to socialise with so feels the need to mask and work hard to socialise with incompatible people. Which is of course tiring.
- taskforcegemini 2y ago
  what is an introvert then? because these arguments also apply on introverts
  - zem 2y ago
    someone who is drained by interacting even with compatible people whose company they enjoy

lll-o-lll 2y ago

You might be a bit autistic, common enough in the software world. Lookup something called “autistic masking”. Source: All the autistic people in my life. I really like autistic people! Find your people and you won’t have to pretend around them.

frognumber 2y ago
Right now, we increasingly like to stick labels on things, and I'm not sure it's helpful. Autism is a disorder, diagnosed in DSM V. Very few people in your life are likely to be autistic. As with many such things, it's a spectrum. Unless those cross a pathological threshold, it's not autism. Few SWEs are over that threshold. We used to call people "nerdy," "quirky," or other things (and it was okay to be that). That's in the natural spread of human personalities. If you're 5% of the way towards dyslexia, autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or whatever else, it's in the range of human personalities, not disorders. It's helpful to understand how different people work. Most SWEs and introverts share some characteristics with people with autism, and reading about autism can help understand oneself by interpolation. However, the label is not fair either people with actual autism, or to people without autism who believe they have it. Footnote: My experience is that extrovert versus introvert is mostly a function of whether you're invigorated by interacting with people or tired by it, and especially by people you don't know well. Yes, social skills are helpful, a skill one can develop, and important to one's career, but so are math or medicine. A good strategy for an introvert is to partner with an extrovert.
- Viliam1234 2y ago
  > whether you're invigorated by interacting with people or tired by it, and especially by people you don't know well. In my experience, that depends on the people. Even if I don't know them well, sometimes the interaction starts great, and sometimes it is exhausting. From my perspective, some people are loud and annoying, and their communication seems mostly about establishing a dominance hierarchy. Other people are nice and calm, and they... discuss things, without necessarily making it about them being better than everyone else. But I would probably call myself an introvert, because when there is a larger group of people, there is usually someone who makes it a battle for dominance, so from my perspective almost all larger groups suck. But I have also seen groups where no one was like this, and they were okay. They are just very rare.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

blueflow 2y ago

> analyze every thing I could be doing wrong to annoy or offend people Is this a "you" problem or a "they" problem?

fairity 2y ago
Why would it matter? OP is experiencing an undesirable outcome, and assigning blame for the problem seems besides the point when the main goal is to change the outcome.
- jimkleiber 2y ago
  If one can't figure out the causes of certain outcomes, how does one change the outcomes?
- blueflow 2y ago
  Because you can reverse the situation and criticize them for being offended by everything and difficult for you to work with.
  - gosub100 2y ago
    you can, only if you have the critical amount of self confidence, appetite for conflict, lack the fear of losing them, and/or have another group of people who you can substitute after their loss. Thats a big ask for all but the most socially endowed of us.

jimkleiber 2y ago

I try to just adopt the perspective that people like me, often more than they might even think they do. It's not easy to do but when I do it, it makes it a lot easier for me to want to interact with them. And if you want, ive built tools and tricks to help me with this that I could share.

mojifwisi 2y ago
I am not OP, but I am interested in those tools and tricks.
- jimkleiber 2y ago
  You can check out the demo of iFeelio[0] (app is currently obsolete because I got tired of coding and other reasons), which has a format for micro-journaling, basically answering "How do I feel?" with comma separated emotional words or phrases and "What is happening?" with 140 characters. Basically it helped me get better at identifying emotions (including mixed ones) and contexts. You can check out both Emotional Self-Defense[1] and emōkō[2], for some theory and drills to practice dealing with emotional attacks. One of the main principles is what I call the three steps: 1) truth, 2) fair play, and 3) love. Or telling the truth about how I feel, telling the other person how I imagine they might feel, and saying one thing to connect to them with love. The emōkō site has quite a few audio reflection drills I created to practice these three steps, with a variety of emotions and contexts. Lastly, checking out my podcast, The Jim Kleiber Show[3], especially the segment the DailyJim, where I do 5-10 min reflections most weeks Mon-Thu about a lot of these topics. I want to better organize these tips and tools I've built, as I have a lot more, but that's what I have for now. If you want to talk more about this, please reach out to the email in my bio, id love to share more. [0]: https://www.ifeelio.com https://www.ifeelio.com [1]: https://www.emotionalselfdefense.com https://www.emotionalselfdefense.com [2]: https://www.emoko.org https://www.emoko.org [3]: https://www.jimkleiber.com/show https://www.jimkleiber.com/show

gedy 2y ago

In the context of work outings and socializing, this is doubly so if you are older or unattractive. If you are at a company with a lot of young 20 somethings, they largely really have no interest in being around you, and attempts to socialize with opposite sex can easily be misconstrued (by them) as unwanted. So it's frankly not worth it, and not sure why I'd even want to put myself in those situations. And before you reply "well maybe you are being creepy", well QED

mixmastamyk 2y ago
People will want to talk with an older boss.

ghidramans 2y ago

[dead]

scarface_74 2y ago

The further up I get in my career and especially when I fell into consulting in 2020 and more so after Covid lifted, I’ve had to “act like I like people”. I’ve studied how to talk to and deal with people a lot over the past few years. I’m good at it. But it is tiring. I was also an only child. While I have four friend groups including my cousins I grew up with, there are plenty of times I enjoy just being alone or even sitting alone in a crowd where I don’t have to talk to people. My wife knows that about me and she can sense when I just need some me time.

xhrpost 2y ago

Though often conflated, there is a difference between introversion (preference towards less external stimuli) and shyness (fear of social judgement). You may be a shy extrovert. Also I can totally relate to the hyper fixation on "what does this person think if me right now with everything I say?" I wish I had a simple super effective answer but I think it just takes small improvements over time. In general, if you're willing to show a reasonable level of mutual interest in the other person, they will reciprocate and with practice this can be trusted such that the anxiety reduces. Also accept that some people will just not be interested or necessarily like you and that's ok, but hard at first for sure, especially if you've faced social rejection earlier in life.