Depressed teen by Elizabeth Wagele
It's heartening to know that a book can make a big difference in a young person's life.
A therapist had an introverted teenage client who was depressed. Her mother and her siblings were extraverts. Unfortunately, they considered her to be odd. I found out about this when her therapist commented on my video, "The Happy Introvert." She said when she used my book (The Happy Introvert) with the teenager, "her understanding of herself increased dramatically and her depression began to lessen. Your book was able to reach her and with that information and the understanding of an introverted therapist, she was able to move into a self-acceptance and continue her individuation."
I mainly wrote "The Happy Introvert:"
• for introverts to let them know there are people who understand them, and
• for extraverts, to help them get in the shoes of the introverts in their lives, and
• for everyone to tell them introverts' gifts are at least as beneficial to them and others as extraverts' gifts
Just imagine the teenager's family asking her questions like, "What can you teach us?" or "How can I access my inner life more, the way you do?" Introverts and extraverts have different gifts to offer one another. The world profits from both.
In families, it can go the other way around, too; some families are made up mostly of introverts and look down upon the lone extravert. This is why awareness of personality typology is good for everyone. People are born with temperaments they can't do anything to change. For example, we are born naturally neat or messy, gentle or rough, loud or quiet, optimistic or pessimistic. Environment has something to do with our personalities, too, but we're not born blank slates as people used to think.
It's interesting to think how much our parents might influence our comfort with our introversion/extraversion, however. My parents were both introverted. My mother was quite shy but my father was comfortable speaking in front of large groups and was somewhat at ease socially. Perhaps the reason I've never fought my introversion is that I come from this introverted family. On the other hand, maybe I'd be more extraverted if I had had more extraverted models around me all the time.
Other Preferences
When I was a child, the sensate/intuition dichotomy was a bigger problem for me in my family than introversion/extraversion. I was an intuitive (N in the MBTIT system) and my mother was a sensate. Intuition is seeing possibilities and imagining future things. My mother preferred sticking to the here and now, what you can see and hear, and what is concrete. So when I would get too far out talking about "what if?" she would sometimes have a paranoid reaction. She couldn't follow me, I guess. I couldn't follow myself! I did know that I couldn't be myself around her, though. I would think I was having fun and being fanciful and I was frightening my own mother.
The other dichotomy is feeling/thinking. For example, a family full of feeling type artists that has a computer nerd child could become a comparable situation to the therapist's client if not handled well. Actually, this family values the personality and the thinking type child's skills-and vice versa. Since I made this family up, I'm going to make it up that they know a lot about different types of people and discuss it in their family. This is an accepting and understanding family. Nobody is considered "odd."
