Raschaverak wrote:

..and EXTROVERT - she's a teacher for pete's sake - my voice starts shaking when talking to only 3-4 people...

I was extremely shy at public speaking until I started teaching English. First day was HELL, i was terrified! As first week went on, it got better and better. Now I can't remember what it was like to be nervous in front of a class of kids.

Best way to get over these fears by facing them and doing them. You get good at anything with practise, genetics aren't a factor.

Raschaverak wrote:

I messed up a few dates, and emails

What did you do?

All of it was wrong. Extroverts rule the world. I have proof.
I'm screwed

six8ten wrote:

Y'know, I actually wonder if you're an introvert. Let me put it this way in a bit of an extreme example:

Stick an extrovert in the middle of nowhere with nobody around to interact with, and they'll go stir crazy. They require social interaction and can't go without it.

Do the same with an introvert, and they'll be just fine. They might even find it a relief. Makes it easier to concentrate on other stuff, good time to read books, do some artwork, etc.

What I see here is a lot of whining about not having a lot of friends/girlfriend, not being outgoing enough, and not having a huge social group. Doesn't sound like an introvert to me,  it sounds more like an extrovert with low self esteem.

Not that it's easy to be an introvert, as modern society does seem geared toward rewarding extroversion, and considers introvert tendencies as negative.

Introvert =/= shy, antisocial, misanthropic, etc. It just means you're fully capable of doing things on your own, and you like to have some "me" time to recharge.

This will explain it better than I could: http://briankim.net/blog/2007/10/top-5- … ntroverts/

I don't know what I am anymore.... but you could be right, thanks for the tip, I really might be an extrovert with low self-esteem. I've been searching the net how to improvbe the self-esteem, but did not find anything really useful....just a few tips.
The article you linked was interesting, but it basically says what I already knew: the world is for extroverts

I like necroing threads, so I just did it
Did not want to open another for it. So my question is, how do you stay positive? I know the power of it, but now matter how much I try, I just cant keep being positive, sooner or later it falls back to the negative downward spiral. How can I bounce back aoutomatically, and be postivie again?

Why I like meditation, because at times you can think of nothing.

I "meditate" all the time.

Raschaverak wrote:

I do meditate as well, however it doesn't seem to help. I guess I can only change my behaviour and my thinking pattern with acting, doing things differently in same situations, or doing different things, thus reassuring the positivity in it, and in hindsight, on the sub-conscious level, creating the seeds for positive thinking ("Oh I did this that time, how cool , oh I acted this way in this situation, how nice, ect.) This is the only way I can think of, I know myself this much, that I won't be able to just snap out of the negativity by deciding upon it. I need to act - without too much thinking

Have you tried any of the other advice people gave before, e.g. exercise? I think there's a lot more to depression than most people think, and it could just be a symptom of all sorts of different imbalances in the body. You probably stand the best chance by improving everything you can - negative thought patterns, stress, nutrient deficiencies, dysbiosis and chronic infections, lack of exercise, inflammation - there could be a lot of factors at play. It may seem like it's all in your head, but if your head was flooded with serotonin, you'd probably feel slightly different about that, and improving your general biochemistry is likely to improve your brain chemistry.

The gut-brain connection is an interesting one. A large part of the nervous system resides in the gut and the majority of neurotransmitters are created there. There have also been some interesting experiments involving "bacterial therapy", like this one. If you suffer from GERD, indigestion, bloating, gas, bowel pain, constipation etc then resolving these could be very helpful.

Fabrice mentioned vitamin D before and he's seriously right about that one. A deficiency is linked to more diseases than you could name, and it's extremely common, if not epidemic, nowadays. A recent report said 1 in 4 are deficient in England. If you can get a serum (25OHD) test, you might find the results interesting.

If you want to resolve any chronic disease, you've got to take on a big role yourself. Medicine isn't in the business of cure or prevention. It can take a lot of investigation and experimentation on your own part. Keeping up-to-date with the research and reading about the experience of others gives you clues and ideas to try. The most important thing is not to give up.

Sorry guys, Just seen tonight, and in the recent weeks tons of examples, that extroverts rule the world. That's how it is, introverts - have a happy time spent with your psychologists trying to find out why your world is not working - tell you why: because you are not extroverts End of rambling.

Last edited by Raschaverak (2012 July 13, 6:08 pm)

dizmox wrote:

What about people like Bill Gates?

Or Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), Larry Page (Google), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Warren Buffett, Steve Wozniak (Apple), J.K. Rowling (author of Harry Potter), Alfred Hitchcock, Tom Hanks, David Letterman, Michael Jordan, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey, who are well-known introverts too.

dizmox wrote:

Besides, trying to pigeonhole people into a silly dichotomy is childish.

This. Stop thinking in terms of introverts vs. extroverts. It will get you nowhere. Instead, detect your difficulties and then eliminate them.

Extroverts have their own set of problems too. They have trouble sitting down alone and focusing for hours on end like introverts. In fact, it is difficult for them to think without someone on which to bounce their ideas. I would never trade away my solitary thoughts for extroverted social glory. I'd be a far less interesting person if I did so. The very thought of such a trade seems shallow and desperate to me.

As an introvert who struggled with social situations, I made rapid progress by approaching the situation as a complex network of individual problems that needed to be resolved. Thus, the transformation didn't take place overnight, but at a gradual, although quick, pace. I analyzed my behavior for patterns that lead to undesired results, and then I designed strategies to break myself out of those patterns. Eventually, in between my junior and senior year of high school, I went from someone who did not even look my own parents in the eye to someone who gave room-silencing presentations in class.

During my transformation, however, staying true to myself was very important. Don't force yourself to step down to idle chat and cheap banter if that doesn't appeal to you. Don't be afraid to show your inner thoughts; extroverts are often blown away and impressed by the thoughts of introverts, but that won't happen unless they hear those thoughts. Of course, I'm not saying that you should be a curmudgeon that ignores social norms while crushing others under your weighty opinions (unless you're fine with that). Think of social norms like a canvas. You can't paint outside the canvas (well... let's not get into that debate), but you're free to express yourself within the borders of the canvas. It's easy to think of the confines of social norms as a type of prison, but that isn't the case. Without some framework to work within, we lack any common ground to interact with and understand each other. The framework of social norms is what allows the possibility of expression. Although it is important to try to make the framework maximize freedom of expression, we mustn't forget that it is what makes sharing our expressions possible in the first place.

Last edited by vileru (2012 July 13, 11:50 pm)

Are you kidding me? Is there anything more annoying than the extreme extroverts, with they constant talking and nagging and never ever ever shutting up, and the talking about their feelings the day you meet them? And the touching! The too much is bad rule goes for everything .

I'm happily introverted, btw. I wish that was my greatest issue =/.

Extrovert-related things that turn me off:

-High frequency of social interaction. If I socialised all the time, it'd feel like it turning into a blur and get exhausted. I need periods of relative isolation to recoup my energies and escape into my own fantasies from to time.
-Large social networks. I prefer to have my friends be close, or not be friends at all. I wouldn't like to have a long, tapering off tail of people who I list on Facebook as friends but hardly ever even talk to.
-Homogenity in culture and communication style. Sprawling, highly interlinked social networks lend themselves to decreased social diversity. Take the typical university social scene for instance. Everyone acts in line with the institutional culture. It's so incredibly boring. People who are totally isolated have the potential to become the most interesting (though admittedly often aren't - the problems that led to their isolation usually outweigh their endearing eccentricities).
-Large group situations. I will never get the attraction of these. It just seems like herd animal mentality to me. Maybe some people enjoy the feeling of depersonalisation and falling under the spell of group psychology. I do not know. One on one interaction feels the most special to me.

Despite being very chatty and at times almost clingy with the few people I do take a liking to, I consider myself a pretty militant introvert with regards to the above. And I think my life has been (or is recently becoming) pretty successful/interesting.

Last edited by dizmox (2012 July 14, 4:28 pm)