Last week on Thanksgiving Day driving to visit relatives, it took my wife and me an hour and a half to finish thanking God for all the blessings in our life. One of the biggest gratitudes for me was that that day was my 30th “birthday” of my new life in sobriety and recovery. It was not until my third year of recovery that I could see that its blessings were going to far outweigh the pleasures and comforts I had gotten from my two addictive habits.
What were my addictions? People can be addicted to a chemical, a person, a behavior, or even to avoiding something (eating, sex, leaving home, throwing things away, for example). I have learned that not being specific about my particular addiction protects my anonymity. This keeps my focus on the solution, not the problem. So let’s just say that I have regularly attended two different 12-step fellowships. I’ve also attended Celebrate Recovery meetings where people in bondage to any bad habit are welcome to come.
We addicts who have completed the 12 steps to the satisfaction of our sponsor I will refer to here as “recovering.” (For more information about this, including a user-friendly summary of the 12 steps, see the tab for Recovery on my website below, and read the article there, “How to Work a 12-step Program.”) We recovering addicts have most often received some major blessings, and here are my favorite features of our recovering life:
These all make up quite the benefit package. I have found many advantages and much wisdom from my studies in psychology, and from my Christian faith as learned through the church and the Bible. But most psychologists I know, and most active churchgoers, haven’t received very many of the blessings I have found in recovery. I doubt I would have found more than a couple of them without my addiction that made me seek recovery. No wonder I’m so thankful I’m an addict.
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Dr. Paul Schmidt is a psychologist life coach with offices in Middletown, Lexington and Shelbyville,
502 633 2860 mynewlife.com.
In 2014 a powerful and introverted New York lawyer Susan Cain wrote an influential and popular book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that can’t Stop Talking. She documents conclusively that in the last ninety years America has been developing a clear bias toward extraverted personalities. The other leading nations of the world all lean toward introversion: Germany, England, Japan, and China. Since virtually all our celebrities are outgoing and outspoken, introverts find it harder in America to find and keep their self-esteem. This article is for you.
Cain defines introversion primarily as being quiet and contemplative, and adds adjectives like reflective, modest, thoughtful, introspective, inner-directed, calm, solitude-seeking, and private. (By contrast, the traits of the extraverted “person of action” she gives as sociable, gregarious, assertive, dominant, excitable, risk-taking, flighty, active, outer-directed, light-hearted, and comfortable in the spotlight.)
I especially like the simple 3-question definition of Jane Collingwood at PsychCentral. She says you are an introvert if:
I have drawn up five questions to identify introversion, and those that ring true for any introvert can help explain to others how it feels to be him or her:
To help introverts explain to extraverts how they don’t feel, and to help them understand how it feels to be an extravert, here are five are signs of EXTRAVERSION:
By the definitions researchers use, most surveys put the percentage of introverted Americans around 35-40% (that’s if everybody is or isn’t, and it’s 25-30% if you account for the 20% who test out as “ambiverts”. The percentage of introverts in those other four countries is well over 50%).
An important thing to understand is that introversion and extraversion are inborn traits that do not change much despite the passage of time, changes in lifestyle, or efforts to change in counseling. It’s the way God made you to look at life and live it. It’s like your height or your skin color—best to learn to feel good about it, and see how it’s a strength for you and other people. What is open to change with education and effort is whether these traits are celebrated as a gift or bemoaned as a curse. Both attitudes are self-fulfilling prophecies, and more powerful predictors of happiness than the disposition itself.
If you are cursed with insecurity about your introversion, one way to change that attitude is to write down all the reasons you feel it’s a weakness (e.g., losing energy in social situations, slow making decisions, not saying much in meetings) and think (you’re good at that!) of ways each of these qualities is also a strength (working well in quiet solitude, seeing more sides of an issue as in risk management, hearing things others may miss like emerging consensus and new ideas from inside your brain).
Some biases against introverts are exposed by research to be myths. For example, research has shown us that introverts are NOT more likely to be agreeable/cooperative, conscientious, nervous, open to experience, or emotionally stable. Those traits can be acquired or avoided just as easily by introverts as by extraverts.
All of us need to appreciate that the quiet, thoughtful ways of introverts bring very important assets to any group. Because they think more and talk less, they don’t waste the group’s time. And because they think things through, what they do say is certainly more valuable to a healthy group or relationship than the chatter of those who say more.
Dr. Schmidt is a psychologist life coach with offices in Middletown, Lexington, and Shelbyville (633-2860).
As a psychologist, I’m not much on typologies. They assume all people fit nicely into one of several personality types, and I keep seeing bell curves from the research. Nevertheless, I am going to give you here three approaches to life that I see, three mindsets if you will. I think we all have moments of all three, but when push comes to shove, I think most of us make most of our big decisions in one of three ways. I very seldom look at people in these terms in everyday life, but sometimes when I am making my big decisions, I find it useful to think about the major parties I am choosing to partner with, to make sure they usually play on my team.
Behind door number one live people whose primary purpose in life seems to be looking out for number one. They typically take more than they give, and they are generally willing to be a bit mean or deceitful if it helps them get what they want. They are inclined to be opinionated, pushy, sneaky, dramatic, inconsiderate, and unsympathetic. They may be skilled at appearing helpful and unselfish when you need them to be, but they have usually figured out that the situation will pay them to act this way. Life to them is a game, to end up with the most toys, or the least pain or something, these folks hold very little sacred in life, because to them, life is most often a game to be played.
Door number two opens up to reveal people who generally look to do their fair share. They seem to give as much as they take, and to leave things pretty much the way they found them. They are fairly even-tempered and agreeable people, and when they think about making a deal with you, their approach is usually some version of “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” If the first group could be called Game Players, these would be Team Players.
Behind the last door we find people who I think of as Game Changers, because they are trying to leave the world a better place. They can give you more than they take, because they try to give of themselves from the inside, where they seem to have some private source of renewal. They are known for their truth and grace, their honesty and kindness. They seem always to be looking forward optimistically to a better life, whether in this life or the next. They are less worried about becoming empty inside than they are about becoming dried up. They make efforts to keep believing that the ones who give the most in life end up with the most, both in this life, and if there is one, in the next.
From my seat mentally looking at the game of life, and in my heart as I am on the field playing it, I have come to believe that most people live behind the second door, and they are the ones most often taken advantage of. They can’t easily understand how someone can go on for very long as a Game Player or a Game Changer. They can’t understand why everybody doesn’t play fair. It is also more difficult for Team Players to discern the motives of others with a different outlook. After all, both wolves and shepherds tend to present themselves as sheep, because it’s the sheep that both of them are after.
There are two times in life when it is most important to discern what type of person we are dealing with. One is when we make big decisions to partner with people, like who to go in with on a purchase, who to work for, who to work with, who to live with, who to marry, and who to guide us when we lose our way. At these times, we cut deals, and it is most important to get clear on who is giving and taking what, and who is worthy to be trusted as honest and kind.
The other time when discernment is crucial is at times of loss, when there is no one to partner with. These are the only times in life where people have much of a chance to walk through a new door, and interview people to consider playing for a different team. People do sometimes regress down to a more self-gratifying lifestyle at such times, and in fact, that is the course of least resistance. For a Game Player, evolving down involves considering playing other people by using more selfish and deceitful rules. Evolving up for both sets of Players requires embracing the people and principles of a higher-numbered door.
I of course recommend moving up to a higher life form. Whether or not there is any pie in the sky, it is just crystal clear to me that the only people who grow happier as they age are the geezers who live in the community behind door three.
Dr. Paul Schmidt is a psychologist life coach with offices in Middletown, Lexington and Shelbyville, mynewlife.com.