Introversion: How to Know If You’re an Introvert #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today in my contribution to the #AtoZChallenge, I want to talk about introversion. This, like being a highly sensitive person, is another trait that’s often described in a positive, special-sounding way by those who identify with it and as a negative trait by those who don’t. Of course, as with most traits, introversion vs. extraversion is a continuum with most people not being at either extreme.

So what is introversion? The concept was originally brought into the public’s awareness by Carl Jung. According to Jung, introverts’ main source of energy comes from within rather than from the external world. For example, introverts get energized when alone and get overloaded when having to interact in a group.

It is not, as such, the same as shyness or social anxiety. Introverts, after all, do not necessarily fear interacting with others; it simply drains their energy.

Introversion is also not the same as loneliness. In fact, introverts need considerable time alone in order to recharge. I think many introverts actually feel more alone when surrounded by a large group of people than when they’re spending time in solitude.

Like I said, most people are neither explicitly introverted nor explicitly extraverted. For example, I for one get overstimulated in a group, but also don’t do well when alone for a long time. Like I said when discussing the Enneagram, my instinctual variant is one-to-one. That being said, preferring one-to-one interactions over group chatter is also a sign of introversion.

In other respects, I’m not really an introvert. This, once again, however relates to the positive traits of being an introvert. For example, introverts prefer to have one or two truly close friends rather than a large circle of acquaintances. While this is true for me, it’s not like I form deep connections easily.

Most societies in the developed world tend to value their more extraverted members. In this sense, it is understandable that introverts want to know how to deal with the world around them, a world that doesn’t primarily cater to them. For this reason, as with HSPs, there are many self-help books focused on introverts. There is also some overlap between being an introvert and being a highly sensitive person.

Highly Sensitive People (HSP) #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m once again incredibly late writing my post for the #AtoZChallenge. Today, the reason is the fact that I’ve been hyperfocusing on other things. Anyway, I still have some time, so let’s get into today’s post. Today, I want to write about the concept of the highly sensitive person (HSP).

The concept of the highly sensitive person as something specific was first introduced by psychologist Elaine N. Aron in the mid-1990s. Her book, The Highly Sensitive Person and its companions about highly sensitive people at work and in love and about highly sensitive children, are still quite popular. I read The Highly Sensitive Person when I was about 20 and, though I related to a lot of traits of being an HSP, it felt somehow off too.

What are the traits of highly sensitive people? At first, I thought the concept referred just to being sensorially and emotionally more sensitive than others. It’s been nearly 20 years since I read Aron’s book but now that I look over the current ideas for these traits, I can see what felt “off” about them: they are highly desirable traits, but not ones I possess. These traits include:


  • Being deeply empathetic and caring (on an emotional level).

  • Cherishing reflection.

  • Taking things personally a lot and/or having a hard time handling negative feedback.

  • Being detail-oriented: you notice little things that others miss.

  • Being deliberate and slow to make decisions.

  • Being “in your head” a lot.


Oh well, I relate to about half this list, but I did this deliberately (the list is more extensive) and it’s actually the less desirable traits I relate to.

There are many people who claim that being an HSP is just a positive way of looking at being autistic. Looking at the lists of traits I find online, I can see how a high-masking, low support needs autistic person could relate to some traits (heck, even I do and I’m not high-masking or low support needs). Then again, even Aron at first estimated up to as many as 20% of the population would be highly sensitive. In other words, everyone is a little HSP. And for clarity’s sake, I do not believe everyone is a little autistic. Quite frankly, I don’t believe that many actually autistic people have most of the traits of being an HSP. Yes, there’s some overlap and my father actually used a newspaper article about one of Aron’s books to shame me about self-identifying as autistic, but autism remains a disability. Being highly sensitive is not.

How Sensory Seeking Manifests in Me

Posted on by Astrid

As those who visit my blog regularly will know, I am autistic. My assigned staff put “highly sensitive” rather than autistic on my basic info sheet. This isn’t necessarily incorrect, but it is definitely incomplete. Not just because autism encompasses more than sensory processing challenges and because the hyped-up term of “highly sensitive” doesn’t come close to describing my level of overload, but also because in certain ways, I am not hypersensitive at all. Today, I want to talk about the ways in which I am, in fact, a sensory seeker.

The main aspect in which I’m a sensory seeker, is reflected in the way I approach food. I love love LOVE spicy food. I also love crunchy food. I can’t stand mash, because that is about the polar opposite of both. Honestly though, I find the texture matters more than the flavor, since mash didn’t get better with lots of black pepper on it and I can handle bland yet crunchy foods.

I also chew on hard candy. Like, I’ve tried sucking on it, but I really can’t manage to do that for more than a few seconds before I need to break the candy. Another example, but I’m not sure whether this is sensory seeking or lack of proprioception and/or coordination, is the fact that my staff tell me my spoon always clanks against my teeth quite loudly. I also realize now that drinking my coffee quite hot is probably a sign of being a sensory seeker.

With the sense of smell, I have a love/hate relationship. I love my essential oil diffuser, but don’t usually wear perfumes and can’t really stand anyone else wearing them.

In the tactile sense, I’m definitely a sensory seeker. This doesn’t mean I like all kinds of touch. I mean, I can’t stand it when people unexpectedly pat me on the back. Truthfully though, it should really go without saying that you should never touch another person without asking them first.

However, I love tight hugs, or used to before I broke my collarbone in 2019, which never properly healed. I also love to be rough when brushing my hair and am probably a bit rough when brushing my teeth too. When I wear my hair in a ponytail, it has to be tight too. And my shoelaces can’t really be tied too tightly. And yes, my spouse took up the challenge, only to tell me that, even though I didn’t think they were too tight, they actually were.

I of course need to mention my weighted blanket here too. It is 12kg, which is between 20 and 25% of my body weight. That’s on the heavy side as far as I’m aware. Of course, I got it when I still weighed nearly 20kg more than I weigh now, but then I’d often end up adding another weighted blanket on top of it.

Another aspect of sensory seeking I need to mention is being in constant motion, even if it’s small movements with my fingers or toes. I am not diagnosed with ADHD, though sometimes I think I could have it. I wasn’t extremely hyper as a child – in fact, my parents would describe me as a quiet child. However, I was definitely jumping onto lots of things. I no longer do this, but mostly because I can’t due to my decreased mobility. Now that I think of it, honestly I’m pretty sure that my need to walk a lot, is also a sign of sensory seeking and/or hyperactivity.

With respect to the sense of sound, I’m not generally a seeker. I do listen to soothing music on my music pillow when trying to get to sleep, but that’s it. I can’t stand background noise. Like, some staff suggest we have music on in the background while we play games, but I really can’t concentrate then.

Lastly, of course, is the sense of sight. I’m blind now, obviously, but when I was younger, I still had some sight. I definitely was a sensory seeker when it came to the visual modality. The most striking example is the fact that I’d often make shadows on my desk with my hands and look at them.

There are many other ways in which I express sensory seeking, but you get the idea. All this being the case, don’t discount my sensory overload just because I can be a seeker in other circumstances.

My Random Musings

Also linking up with Senior Salon Pit Stop.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (April 26, 2020)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all, how are you all doing on this fine Sunday evening? I just had a drink of my favorite soft drink, called Dubbelfrisss. I had my favorite flavor too, apple and peach. I also had some chips. If you’d still like a cup of coffee, I’m sure I can make some for you. I’m joining in with #WeekendCoffeeShare.

If we were having coffee, I would tell those of you who follow me from the coffee share linky that I’m rather active in the blogging department. I’m still going strong with the #AtoZChallenge. I in fact still have a long list of things I want to blog about even after this challenge is over. I really hope the writing juices keep flowing.

I did downgrade my WordPress plan from Premium to Personal. I, not being very tech savvy, can’t use most Premium features anyway and I don’t need the upload space, as I hardly ever post images. The only thing I used from the Premium plan, was Google Analytics, which was rather depressing.

Also in the tech department, I’d like to tell you that I’ve been struggling for weeks to get an eHealth app called Minddistrict working. Somehow, the E-mail that should have been sent to me to sign up, didn’t reach me. My CPN from mental health contacted some guy in IT about it, who replied rather bluntly that his role is not to teach clients to look in their spam folder. Well, if that had been the problem, my CPN could have told me. I’m not stupid! I eventually contacted my hosting provider, who want to look into it but need the headers of the bounce message Minddistrict should have received. My hosting provider was trying to be very helpful, but still the whole thing frustrates me to no end.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that I reached my 10K steps three out of the seven days of this week. On two more days, I got over 8K steps.

I also got weighed in on Thursday. I didn’t use the same scale I normally use, because that’s at the day center. As such, my results may not be accurate. However, if they are, I lost over 1kg. According to this scale, I just about crossed the line back from obesity to overweight. Yay!

If we were having coffee, I would share that the client who came to our home as an emergency placement two weeks ago, left again yesterday to go to a more suitable home.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I’ve been exploring personality traits a bit more. Like, I’ve joined some Facebook groups for what I think is my MBTI personality type. Most other people see me as INTJ, but I honestly think I’m more INFJ, as the feeler/thinker dichotomy is based on how you make decisions. Note that I learned in psychology class in college that one changes personality type about every month if dichotomous scales are used. I’m a clear introvert, but have no strong preference on all three other determiners. I’ve heard cognitive functions can make the MBTI more reliable, but I find most tests that include that pretty inaccessible.

I also have been exploring the concepts of HSP and empath. I read Elaine Aron’s book The Highly Sensitive Person in Dutch back in like 2006. I downloaded the 2013 English edition on Bookshare a few days ago and got some books by Dr. Judith Orloff too. It does remind me that, when the Dutch translation of one of Aron’s books first came out in 2004, my father read me a skeptical article in the newspaper about everyone needing labels nowadays. He said I was an “asparagus addict”, making a bad pun on the Dutch word for asparagus being similar to Asperger. That got me to stop self-identifying as autistic. Well, I guess I don’t care now.

What have you been up to lately?

Valid? #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

I’m not sure I’m valid. I joined some groups for highly sensitive people and empaths on Facebook. I relate to literally almost every trait associated with being an HSP/empath. Then again, I’m also autistic and this means I don’t have the cognitive ability to know what’s expected of me in social situations.

I’ve heard there’s some theory about autistics being hyperempathetic where it comes to feeling others’ emotions but less able to know what another person needs. Something with cognitive empathy being lower than emotional empathy. Or was it the other way around? I have no idea and am too lazy to google it now.

I always feel like I want to see myself as a lot more positive than I am. I mean, some people close to me have said I even have some narcissistic traits. Some people think of me as a pretty stereotypical autistic and I’ve always felt good about that, as it validates my feelings of being different and my need for support. Empath/HSP only validates my feeling different.

Yet sometimes I feel that my seeing myself as somehow highly sensitive, is a way of obscuring my negative traits. It’s not that I don’t see them, but that I label them positively in a way. I mean, 90% of empathy traits are worded at least somewhat negatively. For example, have you been told you are “too sensitive?” Do you need alone time a lot? When a friend is distraught, do you feel it too? Heck, I sense negativity a lot, but isn’t that just me being a generally negative person?

I have a feeling that part of the reason I want to see myself as unique somehow, has to do with an external locus of control. I don’t want to see my huge flaws and instead go label them as assets or blame them on my childhood trauma.

And yet most people say I have a negative self-image. My CPN from mental health wants me to do a module of cognitive behavior therapy on helping me get a better self-image. Maybe I need to learn to see myself as just the ordinary person I am without either negative or positive stuff that make me different. After all, when I say I’m a pretty good writer, people close to me often say: “Well, about average for someone with your education.” Apparently I’m quite arrogant in this respect.

So am I allowed to feel different or is that just an excuse to set myself apart from the herd? Remember, feeling like you can only be understood by certain people, usually those with high status, is a narcissism trait in the DSM. I’m not sure. I want to feel okay about myself, but doesn’t that mean seeing my negative traits too? And seeing them as well as the positive ones for what they are: just traits? I guess I’ll learn this in the module.

I’m joining in with #SoCS, for which the prompt today is “val”.