Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

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0:30Kimberley Wilson:at Whole Foods Market. Is the American dream still possible? I'm Asma Khalid, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. One of the most successful exports the United States has ever sold the world is the American dream, that tantalizing promise of a better, freer, richer life. But is it still attainable? I feel like the American dream is alive, but not well. For more, listen to the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:02Kimberley Wilson:Hello and welcome. I'm Kimberley Wilson. I'm a counselling psychologist and this is Complex. The psychology podcast that helps you navigate your way through the quagmire of information that's out there about our mental health. In today's episode, I'm exploring introversion and extroversion.

1:30Kimberley Wilson:Now, there are thousands of online quizzes telling you whether you're an introvert or an extrovert and how that characteristic influences areas of your life. And you might well be thinking that you're lucky if you're an extrovert, because especially in the West, society really seems to favour extroverts. Things like rewards for speaking up in meetings or in class, those busy, bubbly social gatherings you see on social media, being the leader of the pack, the alpha. And in comparison, the poor old introverts, well, you've long been sidelined and overlooked. But actually, the truth is, as always, a little bit more complex than that.

2:17Kimberley Wilson:And that's what I want to look at today, because knowledge, my friends, is power. So let me be your guide from the noisy open plan office of misinformation to the peaceful library of understanding.

2:37Kimberley Wilson:And here with me is counselling psychologist, Dr. Oli Twizel. Welcome back to the studio, Oli. It's lovely to be back. Thank you for having me. We had a really great conversation before about confidence. And listeners, you can find that in the Complex feed on BBC Sounds. Oli, can you remind us what it is that you do? Yeah, so as a counselling psychologist, I work primarily with elite athletes and high performance individuals. And I also do a little bit of work with the NHS as well. and you told us last time that you're from a farming background and I wonder whether because sometimes certain professions attract certain personality types is there a kind of dominant introversion extroversion in farming?

3:22It's a really interesting one because I think farming in itself is quite unique as an industry it's more vocation than it is an industry and I think that a lot of farmers that you'll see will be you know kind of isolated from the local community So from that sense, you may take the view that they're quite introverted. But then again, most farmers are very sociable. And when they're out there and they're with other people, they're very keen to engage with others. So, yeah, it's a difficult one to kind of put your finger on.

3:47Kimberley Wilson:That's really interesting. And it already highlights the ways in which our personality types might interact with our environments and offer us different opportunities to express those aspects of ourselves or not. So I think this is going to be a very interesting episode.

4:07Kimberley Wilson:So I do love to start with a definition. So what do we mean, Oli, when we talk about introversion and extroversion? Yeah, so I think that introversion, it tends to be where we draw energy from within. And that means that generally, it's more of an isolated personal approach. Whereas extroversion is where we draw energy from outside of our world. So we bounce off of other people. And do you find yourself actually using it? Is it a helpful concept in the therapy room with the clients that you work with? I think I hold it theoretically in the back of my mind, because I think one of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to introversion and extroversion is that one is right and the other is wrong.

4:51And I don't think that that's the case at all, because it's a trait and it's not a disorder. For me, the bit that I'm more interested in is what are people's relationships with that and how is that interacting with their behaviours out in the real world?

5:07Kimberley Wilson:And actually that brings us quite nicely to the story that's been passed to us. I'll read that out for you and I'd love to hear what you think. So I'm going to call this person Belle to protect their identity. And Belle says, I know that I'm an introvert. I need quiet alone time to recharge my batteries after big social interactions, like going to the office. I listened to the radio and podcasts in my headphones as a way to decompress. This Sunday I desperately needed my alone time as I had to attend an all-day work event on Saturday and I was completely over socialized. I wanted to spend the day alone but my boyfriend, an extrovert, wanted me to join him for a coffee with his mum and I felt obliged.

5:52Kimberley Wilson:and then when we got home I was trying to decompress by cooking and listening to the radio but my friend called and I was interrupted again. Now I'm completely exhausted. Is it reasonable for me to insist on having a couple of hours of alone time every weekend? Ollie what are your thoughts? Thanks to Belle for sending that through because I think many introverts could certainly relate to that. My initial thoughts on that are that I think that Belle has already got some really good ways of coping and managing with the outcome that she feels from this kind of energy exhaust in the environment. She has identified what she needs, hasn't she?

6:36Kimberley Wilson:Which is a really good place to start. She already does things like listens to podcasts and various things on her headphones. She's got ways to kind of shut herself away from some of that external noise and recharge. But to answer her question more bluntly, I think absolutely it's reasonable for her to actually say, yeah, yeah, I need this time. And this is really, really important to me. And actually, Sunday seemed to be quite a poignant time to recharge. I had a client recently who talked to me about that desperate need for him to have that time on Sunday away from his friends and everybody else so he can recharge because he's in a very kind of high powered, high energy environment that keeps him running throughout the week and that kind of exhaustion comes to her head on a Sunday.

7:22So I think that's good. But I would say if she's going to set those boundaries, they need to be communicated properly and effectively with her partner before the Sunday happens. Then maybe it's better received and it's better understood.

7:39Kimberley Wilson:Yeah, because it feels like the challenge in Belle's story isn't that she isn't sure where she sits on this kind of personality characteristic or that she doesn't know what she needs. It's about whether she feels she has the right, the permission, to ask for what she needs to recharge. And I think we'll really get into that as we get into the episode, understanding why asking for that permission feels like such a challenge, particularly for introverts. A hundred percent. This feels like a good time for us to dive into the complexity.

8:16Kimberley Wilson:So to start us off, we need to talk about the big five, what psychologists call the big five, because introversion and extroversion sit within this larger personality framework. When it comes to introversion and extroversion, I think there seems to be a bit of a misconception that one is right and the other is wrong. And I think that often this feels much more of a a way of being for someone you may feel that you fall more to one side of the continuum to the other but it's really where you generate your energy either from within or from externally and i think that was really the carl young's initial thoughts when he came up with this back in 1921 this might be the first mention of young on complex actually i was imagining whether it could be.

9:02So Carl Jung, when he originally kind of coined this concept, it was much more a philosophical perspective. And he was just much more interested in why some people may draw their energy internally or externally. And it then kind of snowballed into something that became a bit more, we need to measure this. And I think that's an important distinction in time, because that measurable aspect wasn't I don't think the intention when Jung was looking into this. This is something which has essentially created this multi-million dollar industry that big business have latched onto and seen as a way of well in order to protect our profits or increase our profits we need to make sure that we're getting this particular personality type into the business, you know, let's get more extroverts in because they're the people who are going to really build this bottom line.

9:59And the reality is it's actually quite a false narrative because what we really need is we need both.

10:05Kimberley Wilson:I guess the distinction that is worth making though is that things like the paid for personality testing doesn't have very much scientific rigor behind it. whereas in psychological research when we're thinking about the big five there is much more kind of predictive validity to and I suppose I should describe what the big five is so the big five for psychologists talks about a key set of characteristics so openness to experience how much you are able to engage with new ideas and novelty conscientiousness basically how organized you are in a sense your extroversion or introversion your agreeableness how much you're likely to go along with things and your neuroticism which in this context really describes your tendency to feel negative emotions or things like anxiety and and depression so from a psychological research perspective the big five has much more predictive validity and a stronger research base than a lot of those kind of paid for personality tests you can do online or that are used as part, as you say, of recruiting for big corporations.

11:19Kimberley Wilson:Absolutely. Although it's very compelling, isn't it? The reason that also, despite the lack of rigorous research, things like horoscopes are still so popular. We do like to feel as if we are understandable and that we fit into a set or a particular group and that we can be described in a particular way. I couldn't agree more because actually when you mentioned horoscopes, that in itself is a way of trying to predict the future to try and reduce our anxiety about maybe what might happen. And some of these scales are essentially the same thing. But actually the reality is that it doesn't actually help because you can't predict the future and we can't predict how we're going to be in different situations based on all of that complexity that you said.

12:07Kimberley Wilson:Yes. And I think certainly when I, you know, I've worked in big corporations, introverts end up feeling like there's something wrong with them, that they are insufficient or lacking in some way because the workplace and corporate life is built in favor of the person putting their hand up, the person who's volunteering to lead, the person who is organizing Friday night drinks. and it can kind of leave introverts feeling at a real disadvantage. I can really relate to that. I had a client working with a big organisation. This is a client who's given me permission to talk about their story. He came to me with real issues around anxiety and particularly around public speaking and presentations.

12:54And as we started to unpack this a little bit more, it became very apparent that this person was very much at that extreme end of introversion. and it was very apparent that he was an introvert in a very extrovert working environment.

13:09Kimberley Wilson:It was a mismatch, really. Yeah, and actually, as we started unpacking that a little bit more, the client recognized that he had real value within that organization. But what's more, the company also valued him because the company were asking him to present on some of these ways in which he was working and his way of thinking as an introvert was very much kind of solitary, but allowed him to just understand the bottom line of what his role was, which was to bring in business for the company. And he was very good at it. And it was really the work in the room was trying to highlight that, that he could...

13:46Kimberley Wilson:That there wasn't anything wrong with him. There wasn't anything wrong with him. And he could rebuild his confidence and reduce his anxiety by recognizing that he did have real tangible value as an introvert within that extroverted environment. I see that a lot as well, that you have someone come in thinking, believing incorrectly that they are shy, perhaps that they have social anxiety. And of course, social anxiety does exist, but they have mislabeled themselves or been mislabeled by other people as being socially anxious because their tendency in groups is just to be quiet. And actually, it's much more that they're just judicious with whom they share their time and attention and energy with.

14:29100 % there's nothing wrong if you sit in the camp of an introvert but where I see the issues arise is that when people are trying to um it's a behavioral response to that it's that thing of oh well my anxiety is now going to rise because I now have to go to that coffee shop when I really don't want to do it it's the anxiety rather than the introversion that we're working with in the therapy room.

14:55Kimberley Wilson:And we've been thinking a little bit about introverts and introversion, but I'm wondering whether there are also risks for extroverts. So yes, a lot of the social world and work life is set up for them. But I wonder whether there's also a kind of social expectation or maybe an internalized expectation for them to keep saying yes to social invitations and put themselves maybe at risk of burning out or crashing out at the end. I think you've hit the nail on the head there because there are issues with the other extreme with the extroversion and burnout is the kind of key component to that because when your engine is constantly on and you're constantly working you're constantly saying yes to the next engagement then that doesn't really give much space for you to actually properly recharge.

15:45I'm imagining a world where someone's tendency

15:48Kimberley Wilson:see to extroversion crosses over with their people pleasing and they can get themselves into real trouble in terms of not being able to set boundaries, not feeling capable of saying no and just feeling like they have to keep turning up to things, keep saying yes to those invitations. Yeah, 100%. That can be a real issue for extroverts. Yeah. And you work with pro athletes. Is there a distribution of introversion, extroversion across your client group? Or actually, is it just about how that person channels their personality into their profession? I see both, and I think it is. I think it's just how that person channels that.

16:28Now, not just with sport, but in life, we talk a lot about leadership. And I think that we're littered with examples of great leaders. And I think great leaders can sit on both sides of that fence of introversion and extroversion. So it doesn't necessarily come back to what we were saying before, is that big business, big sports organisations need that big extrovert. There's a need for both.

16:50Kimberley Wilson:And if we think about relationship, like Belle's experience with her partner on the weekend, can introverts and extroverts struggle to understand each other? I also want to point out that in my experience, introverts and extroverts tend to find each other in romantic relationships. I am certainly in a relationship like that. But the challenges of when you're bringing your world together between negotiating the different needs of the other person. Somebody wants a busy social calendar, the other person just wants quiet nights in. How do we think about that? How do we negotiate those differences and those different needs?

17:25I think the important bit there is to actually name it and to have those conversations. But the important bit of that is to find the appropriate time to have those conversations. So it's finding those quiet times to talk it through and explain, you know what, you know when you asked me to go see your mother at that particular time, I wasn't really in a position to feel comfortable to do that. Now that is not me telling you that I don't like your mother. That is me just saying that in that moment I needed time to recharge. And if you can find the quieter times to have those conversations, you can recognize and understand each other's perspectives.

18:02The difficulty that we often find ourselves in is that we have that conversation 10 minutes before we're leaving the house to go to the cafe. And, you know, I'm not saying Belle necessarily said this, but Belle's trying to have this conversation with a partner that's saying, I don't want to go. And his anxiety is up because he's told his mother that you're all meeting. And then you try to have that conversation up here 10 minutes before you're leaving the house and the message gets completely lost. So I think, yeah, absolutely, there is value in having those two different approaches in a relationship.

18:37But it's just understanding and appreciating how one person might be versus the other.

18:41Kimberley Wilson:So I guess whichever personality type we find ourselves leaning into, the point is that we need to understand ourselves, but also recognize the validity in the other person's way of being and understanding what they need as well. Absolutely, yeah.

19:06Kimberley Wilson:so i've been alluding to the idea that introversion and extroversion aren't kind of dichotomous buckets that we sit in one or the other but actually that it's more of a spectrum and that works quite nicely because i always like to put our topic on a scale for the listeners so ollie if we were thinking about let's say an extreme extrovert at one end of the scale could you paint us a picture what might their inner and outer worlds look like yeah I think as an extreme extrovert their what I like to kind of term their engine is always on and they're always looking for the next kind of social engagement or the next opportunity to just to just bounce ideas off people and that's how they learn and I think that that can be exhausting to just observe.

19:57And that also can lead to real extreme issues of them trying to seek stimulation. The issues that can come into that might be areas around substance misuse and extreme kind of spending and they're seeking all these other pleasure activities.

20:15Kimberley Wilson:And if we were to go to the other end of the scale, what does maybe an extreme introversion look like? Yeah, so I think the extreme introversion, it's recognizing where that solitude goes from being a comfort and a value towards an issue. So they're spending way more time on their own. You're noticing that they're starting to cut friends and family from their lives. Because whether we're an introvert or an extrovert, we're all social beings and we need that social connection. Even introverts do value that sense of being with other people, even if it can be exhausting to them at times. Yeah. And I guess we should also make a shout out for the people in the middle, the ambiverts, that's the technical term.

21:05Kimberley Wilson:And then people will say, I'm an introverted extrovert or I'm an extroverted introvert. And actually what they're describing is this need for a little bit of both. Maybe they do enjoy the occasional social experience and they enjoy going to parties, but they will also really value a bit of downtime, a bit of alone time to recharge and recalibrate. Absolutely. I think that's probably the vast majority of us and I think that it may well be helpful to recognize yourself as maybe more leaning to one than the other but it might be more helpful to see, well, in which situations, in which scenarios...

21:42With which people. With which people. Which of my friends do I really value being that more extrovert with or more introvert with. And I think that requires a little bit of time and work on yourself to just kind of recognize that and appreciate it.

21:55Kimberley Wilson:So it's not the case that on this spectrum, there is the best place to be. It's much more about knowing who we are. You know, I like to think of it, I always have lots of food analogies. It's like red and green apples, right? They're all delicious, but it just depends on which recipe you're making. That's a great analogy. I love it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. there's no right or wrong um we may prefer a green apple in an apple pie and a red apple for snacking you're the expert on apples