Eating My Words : What It’s Like To be An Extrovert

I’m writing this post to illuminate a part of my inner life as a fairly social person. I’m sharing it because I regularly encounter self-described introverts who assume that because I enjoy social interaction that it is easy or low-stakes for me. It isn’t. I hope that by exploring this I can share a little piece of my human condition with folks who are shaped differently from me.

Now I’ll cut straight to the metaphor.

For me, social interaction is a form of nourishment like food. I need it to feel connected to the world around me and it usually makes me feel pretty good. Like food, social interaction doesn’t all have the same flavor. Some interactions are sweet, some are spicy, some are like comfort food, and some are challenging to process. (You ever sit down to eat a dish you’ve never tried before and look at it like ”how do I even start with this?” Yeah. A lot of interactions are like that for me.) Eventually a self-aware extrovert becomes something of a gourmand, able to gauge the kind of interaction that the other person wants to have and enjoy it on their terms. Some lazy extroverts try to turn every conversation into a hamburger. (I’ve been guilty of that myself and I think it’s where a lot of our bad press comes from.) When things are going well for an extrovert the human world turns into a banquet piled high with delicious and varied interactions, a feast for the mind, the heart and the soul that never stops offering new flavors and comforting favorites.

Now let’s extend the metaphor..

Even an extrovert can become socially overwhelmed. You can’t keep eating forever; eventually you have to rest and digest. Some interactions are like a salad: nourishing and easy to process. Others are like a steak: you gotta spend awhile chewing on them. Some are like a dish that’s a little spicier than you’re used to: not a stab-you-in-the-mouth kind of spice but a warm glow that builds and builds until it starts to overwhelm the other flavors of the dish and you have to just take a break for a minute and cool down. Some interactions are like coffee: not terribly nourishing but enervating. Some interactions are like eating something you have a mild allergy to. Some are chewing broken glass or drinking rat poison.

That last line isn’t a joke. A tricky thing about relying on social interaction as a sort of psychic nourishment is that it can poison you. Hurt you in ways that it wouldn’t if you weren’t seeking nourishment from it. Any self-aware extrovert has a way of dealing with harmful interactions. Some spit the poison back in the other person’s face. Some push it aside and present their own meal, changing the dish through sleight of hand or sheer force of will. Others treat the interaction like they’re just pushing food around the plate. I try to treat it like I’m cooking a dish with the other person that I have no intention of eating. All of this is emotional labor and all of it is difficult.

Another form of emotional labor is being a professional extrovert (i.e. working in a service position). This work is famously awful for serious introverts but many are surprised to find out that it’s hard for extroverts as well. Being an extrovert in a service job is like being a cook in a restaurant; you pour effort and craft into dish after dish and you don’t touch a bite of most of them. Sometimes people want a dish you don’t know how to make and you have to improvise. Sometimes people try to force feed you poison. Sometimes you make a beautiful dish with someone but the interaction ends quickly and you’re left wanting for more. A lot of days you go home hungry and tired.

What I’m getting at is that as an extrovert the stakes are higher for me in social interactions than they are for folks who could take them or leave them. I need regular nourishing social interaction. Like my introvert friends I have a rich inner life but for me that life is affected by the interactions I have. More to the point, my sense of self as I move through the world is affected deeply by the interactions I have. The more I learn how to be me, the more conscientious I am about the interactions I have and the effect they have on myself and the people around me.

Finally, a disclaimer:

I acknowledge that ideas like “introvert” and “extrovert” are social constructs and almost every person is social to some degree. You may identify as an introvert and find that this metaphor resonates with you. That’s great! Don’t let me define who you are. Feel free to use the metaphor (or not) as it serves you.