Saturday
Jun162012
I Am Blessed With Being an Introverted Bushwhacker
Saturday, June 16, 2012
I walked around for a bit yesterday afternoon taking hyper-saturated photos, because it was depressing weather, and I still have this cold, and I have been spending too much time hunched over my laptop and too little time looking at the planet.
I've been going through another sometimes tedious phase during which the world is too much with me. My clothing is too loose/too tight/too scratchy/too hot/too touchy/too all over me. I can hear each tire on each car that drives by as an orchestra of four grating industrial instruments. Even with my cold, smells are so powerful I can barely eat most days.
This happens to me sometimes. As far back as my memory reaches, right back to when I was one-and-a-half, the world has been a loud place.
I can still remember the specific crunch and scrape of the blue shag carpet on my chubby baby knees in my earliest childhood home.
It wasn't until sometime in my mid-thirties that the colour red stopped being a vibrating, moving thing that danced in front of my eyes.
I was constantly prodded into more social-seeming behaviour as a child and teenager. At summer camp, I was pushed to join in with the chaos of group games where I couldn't keep track of anything while I tried to figure out where all the noise was coming from and what was expected of me and what colour flag from whose waistband was supposed to go to what end of the field and for what reason.
I much preferred sneaking away to drag a canoe into the creek. The water was low, but it was delicious to pick my way along among dying reed stalks with my paddle. My drag in the water told me how hard to push. Cold creek mud dried to a cracked film over my toes. Snails slid into the dark nose of the boat.
Away from the chaos of other kids, I could expand into the world and feel my place in it. My thoughts could fall into order.
There was no air for me on the playing field. The sensory overload forced me up into my brain, and my memory of those moments is a jumble of colours and shapes and words like an internal collage. It's as though the external stimuli were too much to even record.
I could not make patterns out of all the distraction, and so it became an assault bright as electric static.
In the canoe, I could feel the air move into and through me. I still know the particular sound of the lick of shallow creek water lapping between that green fibreglass boat and a protruding island of organic mush while I slid beneath a low tree.
I can go through days during which the world is less cacophonous, but I have to take care to retreat regularly into quiet spaces where there is very little movement and competing noise. If I don't give myself space to decompress, I end up exhausted and suffering from full body pain.
This is not a mere matter of introversion. It's a physical demand.
I've never been diagnosed with anything that explains this. I've had general practitioners sigh as though I'm just another woman with an hysterical ailment. I've had psychiatrists puzzle over test scores on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory 2 test and tell me that the best they could do was make a loose guess and offer me a prescription drugs just to see what they might do.
I don't like being anyone's guinea pig.
I have actually learned to appreciate my physical need for introversion. It makes me take time, time that I think most people don't get to stop to take for themselves.
I have to stop. I have to listen. I have to sit in the quiet and let the world sink in.
Until I was about 34 years old, I pushed myself beyond the breaking point all the time. It was a daily event for me to beat myself up for what I thought were my consistent failings at being a worthwhile human being, because I had always been pushed to behave against my grain, but then cancer and a nervous breakdown pulled me up short and said Following a path that you have not played an active hand in forging is breaking your heart. You will die like this.
There was no hyperbole there. I had to live a different way.
And so now I teach myself how to take the time, albeit slowly. I learn to listen. I have finally come to understand that the aggressive, wealthy extrovert that our culture holds up as the success story is on a road I don't even want a map to.
I was not given a road. I was given a forest through which I must bushwhack a trail, and, as it turns out, when I am not blinded by what I perceive others' expectations are for me, I actually like bushwhacking.
I know something now about this psychological/spiritual/physical bushwhacking, though, that I could never see before life made me listen, and it's this: if there is any such thing as a pointed universal consciousness, if there anything akin to divine bestowal for this avowed atheist, then I have truly been blessed.
----------------------------
Live It To The Full's e-course, Power Play with Phyllis Mathis, is Schmutzie.com's latest supporter:
I've been going through another sometimes tedious phase during which the world is too much with me. My clothing is too loose/too tight/too scratchy/too hot/too touchy/too all over me. I can hear each tire on each car that drives by as an orchestra of four grating industrial instruments. Even with my cold, smells are so powerful I can barely eat most days.
This happens to me sometimes. As far back as my memory reaches, right back to when I was one-and-a-half, the world has been a loud place.
I can still remember the specific crunch and scrape of the blue shag carpet on my chubby baby knees in my earliest childhood home.
It wasn't until sometime in my mid-thirties that the colour red stopped being a vibrating, moving thing that danced in front of my eyes.
I was constantly prodded into more social-seeming behaviour as a child and teenager. At summer camp, I was pushed to join in with the chaos of group games where I couldn't keep track of anything while I tried to figure out where all the noise was coming from and what was expected of me and what colour flag from whose waistband was supposed to go to what end of the field and for what reason.
I much preferred sneaking away to drag a canoe into the creek. The water was low, but it was delicious to pick my way along among dying reed stalks with my paddle. My drag in the water told me how hard to push. Cold creek mud dried to a cracked film over my toes. Snails slid into the dark nose of the boat.
Away from the chaos of other kids, I could expand into the world and feel my place in it. My thoughts could fall into order.
There was no air for me on the playing field. The sensory overload forced me up into my brain, and my memory of those moments is a jumble of colours and shapes and words like an internal collage. It's as though the external stimuli were too much to even record.
I could not make patterns out of all the distraction, and so it became an assault bright as electric static.
In the canoe, I could feel the air move into and through me. I still know the particular sound of the lick of shallow creek water lapping between that green fibreglass boat and a protruding island of organic mush while I slid beneath a low tree.
I can go through days during which the world is less cacophonous, but I have to take care to retreat regularly into quiet spaces where there is very little movement and competing noise. If I don't give myself space to decompress, I end up exhausted and suffering from full body pain.
This is not a mere matter of introversion. It's a physical demand.
I've never been diagnosed with anything that explains this. I've had general practitioners sigh as though I'm just another woman with an hysterical ailment. I've had psychiatrists puzzle over test scores on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory 2 test and tell me that the best they could do was make a loose guess and offer me a prescription drugs just to see what they might do.
I don't like being anyone's guinea pig.
I have actually learned to appreciate my physical need for introversion. It makes me take time, time that I think most people don't get to stop to take for themselves.
I have to stop. I have to listen. I have to sit in the quiet and let the world sink in.
Until I was about 34 years old, I pushed myself beyond the breaking point all the time. It was a daily event for me to beat myself up for what I thought were my consistent failings at being a worthwhile human being, because I had always been pushed to behave against my grain, but then cancer and a nervous breakdown pulled me up short and said Following a path that you have not played an active hand in forging is breaking your heart. You will die like this.
There was no hyperbole there. I had to live a different way.
And so now I teach myself how to take the time, albeit slowly. I learn to listen. I have finally come to understand that the aggressive, wealthy extrovert that our culture holds up as the success story is on a road I don't even want a map to.
I was not given a road. I was given a forest through which I must bushwhack a trail, and, as it turns out, when I am not blinded by what I perceive others' expectations are for me, I actually like bushwhacking.
I know something now about this psychological/spiritual/physical bushwhacking, though, that I could never see before life made me listen, and it's this: if there is any such thing as a pointed universal consciousness, if there anything akin to divine bestowal for this avowed atheist, then I have truly been blessed.
----------------------------
Live It To The Full's e-course, Power Play with Phyllis Mathis, is Schmutzie.com's latest supporter:
By all accounts you've become a grown-up: You've checked off several of your most important life-goals. You're functioning nicely in your chosen roles...This four-week course runs from July 9th to August 3rd, 2012, so head on over and register!
And yet . . .
A chronic restlessness nags your bones. A secret longing inhabits your sighs. In quiet moments a voice inside whispers,
"there's more to me than this."
categorized in health, personal history and tagged in childhood, health, introversion, introvert, introverted, mental health, past, spirituality
health, personal history and tagged in childhood, health, introversion, introvert, introverted, mental health, past, spirituality 
Reader Comments (24)
This post resonates with me in a very powerful way. I think it is just introversion. I've always thought there must be something wrong with me, what with the VERY low energy and the VERY high maintenance need for a lot of alone time and rest in order to function. I just can't get as much done as I want and as I think others think I should.
But we are normal...we're just normal for introverts. I think the reason introverts think we're not normal is because most people are extroverts.
This book is helping me feel less like a freak: The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World by Marti Olsen Laney Psy.D. The basic premise of this book is basically..."all that stuff you thought meant something was wrong with you...it's just you being an introvert." At first I bristled, I wanted more tips to get MORE done, to have MORE energy. But while she has tips for how to get along, her main point is that introversion is physiological and we need to accept it and work with it.
Thank you for this
As I have gotten older I have come to realize that my need for aloneness, quiet and solitude is normal. I fought and tried to immerse myself, without respite but it never turned out right. I started reading Quiet by Susan Cain and I'm nodding along, it is satisfying to have my needs validated.
Or you could have a type of autism, very light on the spectrum, like Sensory Processing Disorder or Asperger's Syndrome, or a type of synesthesia. I'm an Aspie girl, and this post reminds me of myself. Ain't no thaing, it's just who we are. But if you wish for help or relief, researching Asperger's and how it affects females (it's different for boys) can be interesting.
Thank you for your writing, Schmutzie.
Thanks for posting this. I heart this post.
I so resonate with this. I, too, am a tried-and-true introvert. I need, crave, will die without quiet. I get overstimulated in the grocery store, department stores, and malls. I have a very low tolerance for crowds and noise. I loathe advertising. (All of these things seem related to me.)
And I, too, am a bushwhacker and have been discovering that I absolutely love it. xo
Check out Sensory Processing Disorder...my son has it and it sounds VERY VERY similar to what you experience. It's actually quite common, but up until recently has it been recognized as an actual "illness" (it's not actually an illness, the brain interprets noises, touch, smells more intensely than regular folk). There's nothing you can do for it other than what you're already doing; giving your brain some time to relax!
"Following a path that you have not played an active hand in forging is breaking your heart. You will die like this."
A realization like that would have been me 8 years ago just before I packed up my kids and separated from my ex-husband. I had to re-visit some of that ancient hurt today when my family was helping me clean out my storage shed, the contents of which had been hurriedly thrown together just so we could be done with the van loads back and forth from the rented house I shared with him.
Right now everything is on edge and aches and the kids just won't be quiet, fighting like dogs among themselves. I need to decompress and I can't seem to figure out how to get there. It's not a room of my own that I need, to echo Virginia Woolf; it's a completely separate universe.
I can relate to this so much. Sometimes, I feel like the forced stopping point is inevitable and, honestly, I don't know whether I will have the energy to overcome it.
Erika, it's really amazing what we can get through, which I'm sure you already know, but it's true. When I was dealing with losing my uterus to cancer, my husband was crippled in bed with a back injury that had him literally screaming just to sit up. You know, because cancer's not enough.
If it comes to a forced stop, you'll surprise yourself. I know it.
Oh yes, me too, another uber-introvert right over here.
It's difficult to organize a life around the need for downtime, in our current culture, but those of us who need to find ways.
Another book recommendation: I can't explain how deeply I love Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim At Tinker Creek". It's not a how-to manual. It's the journal of a gifted prose poet, describing her incredibly intense experiences of simply observing nature, alone. She wrote this book several decades ago. If you look closely at that bush you're whacking, you might see the faint traces of the trail she blazed over the same ground, back in the day.
I'm a complete extrovert in a general sense - but even so, I had to learn that I had to make sure I got quiet time every. single. day. where no one is talking to me or wanting me. This is harder, now, with a six year old whose favorite place is apparently my body. It's part of why I don't sleep; late at night, I'm alone in a silent house and can read or daydream or whatever.
I also have to discipline myself; when I'm in a crowded situation (think: conference) I have to take myself away for a couple of hours each day, and make sure that I hug the edges of the room every couple of hours to get my balance back.
Anyway, all this to say, I get it. I get you.
This was just beautiful. I think that quiet, alone time and the ability to be introverted without apology is as necessary to my life as breathing.
Really, this was so beautiful.
There are some of your posts that I can't make it through to the end, to read the last remaining sentences...I can't read them clearly... because of the tears brimming in my eyes.
I don't know what to say, except that there is a lump in my throat the size of a peach pit and I just want to say thank you.
For so much: for not letting me feel alone in the world, for understanding and knowing and caring and loving us all out here.
Thank you.
I wasn't going to comment because I didn't know what to say. But this post touched me.
You sound like one of my sons. He has sensory issues. If you care for help, occupational therapists work on this. But like you said, you're not broken. It's just the way you process the world.
Yes you are correct, life is just TOO LOUD. I hope you find some quiet space today.
Until I was 37 I was a very strange extrovert. Then broke down. I became a therapist but wasn't to learn what mown problems responders for 20 more years. I would also learn we type way too much and don't look at people as wonderful individuals but a collection of labels. You probably do have sensory processing (condition) so....? I love the way you saw red. I have immense problems using an iPad keyboard. Sadly this does affect my life in too many ways. People still think if you can't do the simple stuff you're intellectually challenged and weird. Much as they claim to embrace weird,hah!
I think you would love sailing. When all the noise you hear is but the wind slapping the sails and the waves caressing the boat (I've been yearning to say caressing for a while, thanks for giving me the opportunity!)
This is so timely for me. I've always been a bit like this but lately I'm overwhelmed by it. I'm on sensory overload all the time (very hard with a loud 4-year-old) and I wondered if it were brought on by pregnancy. It seems crazy, but then that would be right up my weird little alley. In any case, I feel like the world is pushing me over the edge and I'm not sure what's down there.
I can only empathize with what you must go through every day. I am an introvert living in an extroverted world, but I am not so negatively affected by over stimuli.
I prefer a gentle canoe paddle, to taking a motor boat, in fact do as much as possible without motorized things.... except drive.
I feel it is a shame that cancer, is the thing that shows us the truth in ourselves.
I am inspired by your words, and will be content with who I am, hope you can do the same!
Yep, been there, done that...above and beyond being an introvert, I just find the world completely jarring a good deal of the time. Have you read anything about 'highly sensitive people'? I think I'm one, and it sure sounds like you're one too... http://www.hsperson.com/
This is why I think I find it so difficult many days to parent four children. I NEED quiet too -- in order to process thoughts, to function, to live sanely. And, as you can imagine, it's exceedingly rare to find the quiet in such chaos.
So, I get out on my bike alone when I can. Or retreat to my garden when my husband comes home. Or, on the really bad days, hide in the bedroom closet with my fingers in my ears.
Hello, I just discovered your website a few days ago and have been reading through your back posts because your writing is so beautiful and heartfelt, and the way you say things is original and powerful.
I am not typically a commenter, but reading this post made me want to offer a suggestion... As a psychologist, I know that our "diagnostic" system is a strange, awkward little construct that allows us to feel like we understand people somehow, but in fact has almost nothing to do with what people are actually like. I am much more in favor of just helping people to get clearer on who they are and how they experience the world and interact with it, remembering that exactly how they are is already good enough, and getting unstuck from the ways that they feel stuck.
That disclaimer aside, I think that the label of "sensory processing disorder" has something to offer here, if only because it leads to some useful techniques for managing that overstimulated feeling when it's hard to get to the kind of solitude you need... It seems likely that you do process sensory information (and relational information) in a different way than the typical person walking down the street; I don't necessarily think of this as a disorder, however. I think of it more as an incredible sensitivity to incoming stimuli, which is a double-edged sword. The way you notice/perceive/interpret information is amazingly creative and has the effect of lending new eyes to the rest of us when you choose to share it - a wonderful gift. But, I imagine that there are times when you would like to be able to slip gloves over those exquisitely sensitive nerve endings... Some of the techniques developed by occupational therapists to help children with different sensory perceptions have been wonderfully soothing, calming and center-focusing for some of the people I work with. Some of them might prove to be handy tools for you. Also, hypnotherapy (self-hypnosis) can be very powerful for helping people to change their perceptions of sensation... you might find it to be a useful method to help you "turn down the volume" on incoming stimuli when you wish to experience it less intensely, and still allow yourself to experience fully when you wish to become absorbed or delighted...
Thanks for your words.