Question of the day.

   How do you deal with loneliness? 

   My answer: 

   For me, it really depends. I generally like to be alone and can emotionally handle being alone for quite long, so while aloneness and loneliness are two different things, I think that also makes my threshold of feeling loneliness a fair bit higher than many people’s. I have also experienced many kinds of loneliness often so in a way I’m sort of used to it. I guess it’s like when you suffer with chronic pain your pain tolerance goes up gradually, or when you chronically under-sleep you function better on no sleep than an average person who sleeps 8 hours per night typically. So most of the time I don’t really even have to deal with it in any special way, I just notice that I’m feeling a bit lonely and move on. When the feeling gets more intense, I will try to alleviate it by talking to my family, or Misha, or people online, or go into my Brainworld.

   Sometimes, however, I feel a kind of loneliness that I have talked about on here many times before, which isn’t so much about craving contact with other people but more something from deep within, which does not go away when I interact with others. In fact, it can be the opposite if I am feeling this way while being surrounded by a lot of people, because then I see the disconnection between me and the people even more clearly. With this kind of loneliness, it really doesn’t matter if someone is physically present with you or not. You feel as if there is a huge wall between you and the other person/people, and while you can still communicate, it sort of feels as if each of you were speaking a different language and they’re not really mutually intelligible. Also, the world on either side of the wall is completely different and neither of you can have a clue what it’s like on the opposite side. So it’s actually easier to be alone while feeling this way, though you sort of feel lonely even with yourself, I really don’t know how to put it better. I think this kind of loneliness is the worst, because it’s so intense and gnawing at your brain that you can’t really ignore it completely, while at the same time there isn’t really a good way to get rid of it. It just has to lift on its own until the next time it comes. I usually get it particularly strongly during what I call AVPD flare-ups, which typically happen to me right after I had to do a lot of peopling, so I assume that this must be an AVPD symptom for me. What usually works best for me is just trying to distract myself, do something fun or intellectually and emotionally absorbing. I suppose there must be some link between this thing and distraction, because I often feel this kind of loneliness at night.

   Another thing that I experience that sort of feels like a kind of loneliness is in relation to the phenomenon that I call sensory anxiety, which is a complex thing that I don’t know how to describe well but I’ve already written on here a bit a couple times before so won’t go into detail here. When this sensory anxiety hits me particularly hard, I find silence very difficult, and I tend to feel safer when there are people around me, or Misha. This sometimes leads to very conflicting and weird feelings when I feel I can’t handle social stuff at the moment but at the same time feel scared of being alone. Or when there’s such a situation that the people are actually unwittingly the source of my anxiety in a way or are contributing to it. Here, distraction also helps to a degree, although it depends how high the anxiety is, because when it’s like through the roof I obviously can’t focus on anything else anyway. I also always listen to some music that has no creepifying potential at all or whatever else that I feel like listening to, and generally try to surround myself with a lot of friendly sensory stimuli, especially auditory ones. This always helps, though the degree varies depending on how anxious I am. 

   Generally though, I deal with loneliness of any kind a lot better ever since I have Misha in my life. Misha is also a creature who needs a lot of his own space, and he may not necessarily be up to spending time with me whenever I’m feeling lonely, but just knowing that he’s somewhere in the house often makes me feel a bit better.  

   How about your coping strategies? Do you actually experience loneliness a lot? 🙂 

Question of the day.

   Whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, what are some annoying things that the opposite do? 

   My answer: 

   Well I’m an introvert, and what I’m going to say obviously aren’t things that I think ALL extroverts do, just what I experienced with quite a few of them. 

   The most annoying thing imo is how a lot of extroverts see introversion as something weird, abnormal or pathological, something that is the worse option of the two and that you should at least try to change, or else you’re crazy, strange or something. I think if it’s something pathological, it’s not introversion but anxiety or other things like that, and introversion is just a totally neutral trait. Sure, there are more introverts than extroverts who have social anxiety or are shy, but that doesn’t mean that introversion alone is something that is deemed to make you pathologically shy and socially crippled, or that extroverts cannot develop those things (I actually wonder if something like social anxiety wouldn’t be even more painful and frustrating for an extrovert to live with). It’s kind of like being tall vs being short for example – each has its own upsides and downsides and potential risks that are more linked to the one but not the other, but none is inherently better or worse than the other. – 

   A lot of extroverts I know have a bit of an egocentric mentality, which sometimes really annoys me. They always readily assume that you must enjoy the same things as them, and if you’re not into partying or going out with their whole group of friends that you barely know, and if you politely refuse or something, they’ll assume you’re haughty/rude/cocky or that you don’t like them, alternatively they’ll keep trying to persuade you because they know that you want to do it and that you need company and someone who’d make your life less “boring”, you just don’t know it yourself yet, and even if you really do not want it, it’s the normal thing to do so you should. Speaking of extroverts assuming that you’re haughty or rude, that’s something that, to me personally as both an introvert as well as someone with AVPD and all that fun stuff that affects my peopling capacity, isn’t just annoying but also quite hurtful, because the last thing I want is for people to assume that I’m being deliberately rude towards them or don’t like them or consider myself superior in relation to them. 

   Insisting that you come in and stay at theirs when you just popped for a little while. Sure, it is hospitable to offer that, but insisting more than once when the invited individual already said “No, thank you”, to me it seems rather pushy and sometimes even threatening when someone is hellbent on having it their way. A lot of my family do that, and so does my Dad when people come to us. I always feel for them when they’ve come to, for example, just take their car back after last night’s party and my Dad invites them to come all over again and they’re like: “Oh no, no, thank you, we’d like to but we have this and this and that to do at home!” And he keeps going: “Oh but just stay for a cup of coffee” Guests: “Sorry but…” Dad: “I’ll make you a cuppa, come in, come in!” Guests: “But we really can’t stay long…” Dad: “Milk or sugar?”… That’s obnoxious! I totally get that he just wants to be nice and hospitable but, for flip’s sake, there’s a limit to everything! 

   And something that is objectively very minor but a real pet peeve of mine is how extroverts call introverted people “quiet”. I hate this word so, so much! Like, really? You see me for five minutes, during which I don’t really have much to say to you because I barely know you (and, as we’ve already established, I don’t know how to do peopling really) and you already know that I’m quiet? You should spend a minute in my brain. 😀 I can be very quiet, but I can  talk up a storm just as well in the right circumstances, and I think many introverts are like that, it depends how comfortable they feel in a given situation and how much they have to say on a specific topic. Some people, in addition to quickly labelling others with the “quiet” label, say it in a way that sounds as if they perceived those so-called “quiet” people as pretty dull and boring. And I do get that a lot of introverts seem like that at  first glance indeed. Sometimes even at second, too. And that group of introverts absolutely includes Bibielz too, perhaps even in the top 5! 😀 But if you label someone as “quiet” right away, you can’t expect them to ever open up to you. We’ll let you see what you want to see, we wouldn’t want you to get a shock from finding out how intense it can get when we go “loud”. 😀 And even those who are truly  quiet and very careful with how much they say at all times, they can be extremely deep people in their inner peace and balance, even deeper than those of us who hide intensity behind quietness, and in my experience can be really wise and anything but boring, but it takes time to get to know them of course. 

   So I think these are all the things that I find particularly annoying about some extroverts. 

   You? 🙂 

Question of the day.

   What’s the best thing about being an introvert/ambivert/extrovert? 

   My answer: 

   I wrote about introversion/ambiversion/extraversion and the advantages from it that we get in the society in a bit more detail in the past, so you can read that post as well, and the comments under it. 

   I quite like being an introvert and I don’t understand how so many people, even introverts themselves or introvert-leaning ambiverts think about it as a problem, something that is only a burden in life or something abnormal that you have to at least try your best to change. I think if it reaches a burdensome/abnormal level, it isn’t the introversion that is the actual problem, but anxiety/shyness/other people-related issues. It really irks me when people look at introversion as something pathological or inferior in relation to extroversion, and it’s weird since I guess the distribution of introverts vs extroverts seems pretty equal, extroverts  just make a bit more of a screamy impression usually as a whole, even if not all of them are necessarily screamy as separate individuals. So, since I like my introversion, it’s hard to say what is the actual BEST thing about it. 

   But I guess it’s the fact that introverts can be more self-sufficient emotionally is the best thing in strictly practical terms. I guess it must be quite difficult, especially for people who are very strongly extroverted, when they don’t have people around for a longer period and can’t really control it and feel lousy mentally as a result. As an introvert, I don’t need other people to make me happy, to provide me with things to do or meaning to my life. Sure, people can have an enhancing (or diminishing just as well, depends on a situation and specific individuals) impact on those things and make things even more interesting sometimes, but I can manage without that as well, sometimes even better because I’ve already mentioned on here a lot how I often have this thing going on when I’m around people where I can feel all the more lonely and kind of disconnected the more people there are around me, and it’s an extremely tiring feeling, way more difficult for me to tolerate than the normal aloneness. I feel all the more appreciative of that self-sufficiency that Sofi is the opposite, and so I can easily observe how difficult it can be for a pure extrovert when they don’t have that external stimulation from other people or when it’s greatly reduced, as was the case for Sofi during the pandemic, for example. I feel also really grateful for it because I am not very independent in other areas of life, so if I was also very emotionally dependent on other people on top of everything else, life would probably be quite shitty for people around me as I would likely turn into a proper parasitic being. 😀 

   How about you? 🙂 

Question of the day.

   Whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, what’s a nightmare situation for your respective personality type? 

   My answer: 

   Well for those who may be very new here I am an introvert, and based on my personal experience, the winner of The Introvert’s Nightmare Situation Contest would be First Communions! Except I don’t mean the actual First Holy Communion celebration at church when the child receives the Sacrament of Eucharist for the first time, as a Catholic, I think it is amazing, as long as the child has actually been prepared well and knows what it’s all about and so does their family, because these days this is so often not the case, as people focus on everything else except what’s actually important – whose child will be best dressed, or if all are to be dressed the same than what they should be wearing, how to take the hugest amounts of photos possible during the ceremony, which child should recite a poem, which Mum should thank the priest, which child should thank the mums, whom to invite, what presents should family members get a child, and the poor children are stressed out about loads of little details and excited about what presents they’ll get etc. etc. etc. – which is why I think children should receive Holy Communion individually rather than in large groups like based on grade or age, that Communion age should be younger for most children and the whole Communion party thing should take place the day before or after or whatever makes sense in a given situation but not on the day of the actual Communion. – But that’s a whole different pair of rain boots, as we say in Polish. 

   Communion parties are usually quite nightmarish though. They usually take place in some sort of a restaurant, because who wants to do that sort of thing at home and prepare all the food or even if they get catering who wants to play waiter and dishwasher all day. My Mum did that with Sofi and ended up with a badly strained leg. Such events are usually a lot more introvert-unfriendly when they take place in a restaurant vs at home, because usually the place isn’t very familiar to you or not at all, so you can’t just sneak out somewhere less peopled as you likely would in a family member’s or friend’s house, you can’t help out in the kitchen or something like that, or even lock yourself in a loo for very long. Taking a French leave may also be more tricky. There are no pets that you could talk to and focus on instead, like when I’m at people’s houses I usually play with their cats or dogs or something but at a restaurant there’s just nothing to do. You can probably go outside for a little while, but soon there’s going to be another course or dessert or something, and you just don’t have such freedom as you could during a similar celebration in a private house, where there may be some sort of a backyard, garden, lawn or whatever where you could de-people a bit. But generally you’re supposed to sit at the table and talk and either keep loading food into yourself or wait for the next delivery. The whole thing usually also takes a lot longer in a restaurant than it does at a house, but even at a house, for some odd reason it tends to take way longer than a birthday or stuff like that. There are usually  more people around you, as it may be some sort of collective party for more than one child, or there may be other guests at the place so even if you don’t interact with them, it may also contribute to the whole situation feeling overwhelming. Oh yeah and food. Well I don’t know if this is actually an introvert thing, probably not, but for me eating out is generally a problem for quite a few different reasons. Most importantly in this particular situation though, that I just don’t like to eat in social situations, and that I can’t get quite as much food into myself in one go as most other people seem to be able, so having a two-course lunch plus several different desserts plus snacks plus a huge dinner… I mean how do people even do this?! 😀 

   So yeah, if you’ve never been to a Communion, trust me, they’re pretty bad on brain batteries. I suppose wedding receptions must be even worse, but I haven’t been to one in a very long time so thankfully don’t have the experience really. Olek (who is also an introvert, though more functional than me and he claims that he just “doesn’t like people”, which I’d say is something different because while I’m very much an introvert I certainly wouldn’t say that I dislike people) has been to a wedding reception last weekend though , and, judging from how he slept pretty much til late afternoon after it, it must have been extremely rough. 🙃

   I just asked my Mum this question and thought I’d share her answer too. My Mum is kind of a curious case because I’d say she’s very much an extrovert, whereas she says she feels more like an ambivert and usually a more introvert-leaning one. So I guess she knows better what she is. ANyways, I asked her this and she said that for her as an ambivert, such a nightmare situation would be to be in a group of stranger people that she’s never met before, like the parents-teacher meeting that she’s going to go to tomorrow at Sofi’s school, and having to speak to them all, like introduce an idea that she has and thinks is good, and then if everyone was against her idea and she had to defend it publicly. Or, alternatively, if she had the idea but ended up not sharing it at all for fear of speaking publicly and her idea being criticised, and would then really regret it because, after all, she knows that it was a good idea. I think it’s interesting how there seems to be that sort of dichotomy or inner conflict when you’ve an ambivert. Because if I were in the same situation as an introvert, there would be no dilemma. I am just not going to share the idea, no matter how good it is, and I’m not even going to regret it, because I never share my ideas with stranger people, so I’ll just entertain myself watching them and chuckle internally at how weird they are that they haven’t come up with the same idea as me yet. Whereas here you have this weird push and pull in both directions, although of course it’s not all just a matter of ambiversion but also my Mum’s sensitivity to criticism. 

   How about your nightmare situation? 🙂 

Question of the day.

   If you’re an introvert, what activity brings out the extrovert in you? If you’re an extrovert, what activity brings out the introvert in you? 

   My answer: 

   Well I guess there’s no activity that would make me feel properly extroverted, but apparently in some situations I do seem very much like an extrovert, and that’s in writing. One of my pen pals told me that from my writing she wouldn’t have believed that I’m an introvert. Also when I talk to people about stuff that I’m really interested or passionate about or have loads to say and get really excited when talking about it. People see me as very outgoing then and it’s not surprising for me that some think I must be really extroverted. But I just like sharing with people what I find really exciting, especially if I have no other way of letting it out. 😀 

   How about you? 🙂 

Question of the day.

I am putting off…

My answer:

…helping Sofi with her school work. Since it turned out after all that BOTH of my parents have Covid (which wasn’t really much of a surprise as they have very typical symptoms so I don’t really know how come my Dad’s first test was negative and the doctor said it was bronchitis) we’ve been in quarantine. Sofi has been really mad about it because of course she’s bored and most of the time she quite likes going to school and she wants to, but she obviously can’t now. She’s also a little stressed about having to catch up with school work, which is a little out of character for her, she never used to worry about such things, but well, maybe it’s because she has exams in April. She left most of her notebooks and stuff in her school locker and today finally someone from her class had mercy on her and brought them to her. Someone is also sending her what they’re doing at school over SnapChat. So finally she can catch up but Sofi doesn’t like working alone, and also probably genuinely needs help with some stuff, and asked me to assist her or something, though I don’t really know what it is that they’re doing at school right now and she didn’t tell me, so I’ve no idea how much help I’ll be. I think mostly it’s just that she doesn’t want to be alone and wants to have audience as always. Also the way it works with Sofi, if she has something to do that she really doesn’t like, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on that because more often than not she’ll do it for five minutes and then go back to doing something more fun. So it’s possible that if no one helps her, she’ll never end up doing her entire school work because she’ll be distracted by a gazillion things. Except, to be honest, I’m getting a bit tired. I spent almost the whole day with Sofi yesterday, and the day before, and it’s fun, but my social battery is quite low at this point. 😀 Sofi’s really absorbing, and man does she have moodswings! She’s not as absorbing as she used to be when she was younger, but she still is. Normally I’d ask Mum to help so I could have time to recharge, but Mum’s sick and not doing very well and I’m sure the last thing anyone would want while being sick is to listen to Sofi’s incessant chatter and have to answer the neverending stream of questions. So I told Sofi that I will help her today so that she can at least start catching up on what her class has done so far this week, at least I could surely help her with English or something, but I so don’t feel like it, so I’ve been putting it off. I guess for now Sofi’s satisfied with it and, rather than trying to do something by herself, is procrastinating on her phone, because if it was otherwise she’d be coming to me every five minutes and asking me when I’ll help her. 😀 As much as I often feel kind of envious of Sofi, because I often have a feeling it is so fun and uncomplicated to be Sofi, I really don’t envy her that huge need she has for near constant human presence around her, it must be difficult.

You? 🙂

Question of the day (27th October).

What do you wish was easier?

My answer:

All things round peopling/socialising. I seriously don’t know how most people are so efficient at it when it’s so damn difficult.

You? 🙂

Question of the day.

What time of day does your energy level start to decrease?

My answer:

It’s actually nothing fixed for me, since my whole circadian rhythm likes to shift around a lot, so it can vary a fair bit, also depending on how I’m doing mentally and all sorts of things. But, very generally, as I think I’m more of a night owl, at least by default, I think I can say that for me it’s more like I tend to start with low energy levels and then they keep increasing. It usually takes my brain some time to get going when I wake up, and I’m also kind of physically sluggish in the mornings as well a lot of the time. It’s not because I tend not to have refreshing sleep though of course this can vary too, I guess my brain is simply the kind that takes its time to boot and I tend to have low blood pressure, and I guess the dysthymia may also have something to do with this. Coffee used to be extremely helpful with this, but now that it’s started to give me really bad anxiety, I can no longer rely on it so I have to use other things that are less effective but eventually my brain will get going on its own, it’ll simply take longer. If I’m peopling a lot during the day then my energy will be draining a lot faster. Currently (that is for about a week) my sleep/wake cycle has been pretty messy and I sleep A LOT, and I can’t even really put my finger on why it’s so because I can’t say I feel tired or sleepy, but once I do fall asleep I just can’t stop sleeping. I purposefully went to sleep very early last night wanting to hopefully wake up reasonably early yet give my brain time to sleep if it needs it so badly, but despite I fell asleep at like 10 PM I woke up after 11 AM! I didn’t even hear my alarm go off earlier in the morning and must have turned it off in my sleep. 😀 The other night I slept through a whopping 15 hours. Sofi managed to come back from school and I was still sleeping! Such things do happen sometimes so it’s absolutely not abnormal in Bibielland, or, in any case, not extraordinary, but I’m not a fan of it unless I’m really depressed and thus really escapist and sleep feels like the only way to live or when I have super cool dreams but lately it’s been meh where dreams are concerned. But at least I do feel rested after this sleep, so it’s not like it’s all wasted time, and things will probably shift in a few days anyway. So the way it is right now I also tend to start with lower energy that increases over time. But sometimes it can just as well be so that I wake up insanely early, say 3 AM even, and feel very energised, and then my energy will start to decrease around early afternoon.

How is it with you? 🙂

Question of the day (15th August).

Do you think anything good will come from the pandemic?

My answer:

I strongly believe so, but a lot of it may be on an individual level rather than more generalised, and the good vs bad outcomes may vary a lot for different people. We can already hear people who see a lot of upsides in it regarding their personal life, or their internal life, development etc. and a lot of people who are seriously struggling with all this and barely managing to stay sane, and I think there are loads of factors involved into it, from whether someone and their family has actually had been personally affected by Covid and how severely, to how people deal with being alone, to how people’s financial situation might have changed over this period, to how their overall health is doing and whether they’re at a very high risk or perhaps have a lot of health anxiety… So whatever I’ll be saying here is definitely not meant to regard all people, just some good outcomes that either I have experienced directly, or that I frequently see happening for people around me.

I like how you can do a lot more stuff online ever since the pandemic has started. In a way I’m surprised though that it seriously needed as much as a pandemic for people to figure out that, for example, you can work online, even in a field where there’s no such tradition really, that you can do school from home (of course there are a lot of cons to it as well but I think a large portion of them is also due to how people have had to adjust to this remote learning in so much rush, without more far-sighted thinking really, at least it’s definitely the case here, and some aspects of it are slightly irrational), that you can do concerts online and lots of other things. I guess once the pandemic is truly over, whenever that may be, a lot of it will come to an end, but I hope that still there will be more things that we will be able to do online if we so choose, than it was before the pandemic. Some people do better working from home, and in larger cities it certainly must help with the traffic. My Dad, who is a tanker driver and delivers fuel across the country, has been saying that one aspect of Covid he really likes is more low-key traffic.

I think it has helped a lot of families to connect more with each other. I’ve heard a lot of people saying that they have discovered some new hobby that they like spending their time doing, that they’d never have time for discovering, let alone learning, otherwise. A lot of people around me say they have benefited from having more free time, either because they’ve got to do things they’d never had time for before, or because they could simply spend some time with themselves and tune into themselves better. Interestingly a lot of people seem to have been reading more books. Some people have learned to cope with aloneness a bit better. For example our Sofi. Being alone is still very far from her preferred state, and she’ll always much prefer when a lot is going on around her, with a lot of people, but I think it’s good when you’re able to accept and manage somehow when things aren’t like this.

It’s also cool that we now get to appreciate our own countries more when it comes to travelling and vacationing. Rather than going to some distant country, locking themselves in a hotel with tourists from your own country and sitting by the pool with a drink, people seem to explore their own countries more here in Europe.

I think for many people, due to the hardships that they have experienced during this time, the pandemic might have also contributed to increased resilience.

As for myself, I haven’t really been affected by Covid very much on a personal level. So far, I feel extremely lucky that it hasn’t affected a lot of my family members, and those who have been affected had mostly mild cases. My gran was an exception, as prior to Covid, which she got shortly before last Christmas, she also had pneumonia, and then before the pneumonia she had bronchitis, so she had already been sick for a long time before she caught Covid, and we were all prepared that, given her very recent infections and her age (she’s over 80) she would most likely die. Thanks to all the dedication of my cousin, who is a doctor, and my gran’s own fierce will to live, she made it through and is perfectly healthy now, so people say she’s indestructible. She really wasn’t sickly or anything before that bronchitis, so I guess her immune system must be very strong given her age. We also haven’t been affected financially, and, except Sofi, no one in my immediate family felt particularly deprived of human contact, probably because we’re already five people living here plus Misha & Jocky, and my Dad and Olek were still working so they got to hang out with people there. I, as you know, have been happy being able to reduce the outside peopling to almost non-existent, and I work at home regardless. Not having to deal with people as much means my social anxiety has reduced quite a noticeable bit, which is nice. And, like I already mentioned, it’s so cool having access to more things from home. For example, last year, when most of the world was in lockdown, I was able to take part in a few concerts of my favourite artists online, in which I certainly wouldn’t be able to take part otherwise, because here people don’t even know they exist so I’d have to travel to other countries, which is tricky even without Covid involved, and even if it wasn’t, being a hermit I would still definitely not be able to relish them quite as much as I could from the comfort of my lil hermitage, with Misha laying next to me, not being distracted by anything from immersing myself in music.

What good things do you see, if any? 🙂

Question of the day.

Whether you are an extrovert, ambivert or introvert, what advantages do you have from your extroversion/ambiversion/introversion in the society?

My answer:

I am quite decidedly an introvert and find it to have a lot of advantages. My Mum, who is generally more of an extrovert-leaning ambivert but has her more introvert periods, always kept telling me as a kid that introverts are very useful and needed in the society, even if to some people it might seem like it’s better to be an extrovert. She always claimed that introverts are better at listening than extroverts are, and so if the world consisted only of extroverts, they’d keep talking about themselves but no one would listen to one another. I am pretty sure that listening skills or lack thereof aren’t strictly corelated with introversion/extroversion, because there certainly are extroverts who can also be great listeners, they simply tend to do it in a different way, just as I know introverts who are extremely self-absorbed and the mere fact that a lot of introverts don’t like talking about themselves doesn’t mean they’re automatically good active listeners, but I do think it might be true that introversion helps with listening more than extroversion does. I guess it does help me, anyway. I like listening to people and often find it interesting even if also usually a bit challenging at the same time because I feel I don’t always know how I should/how they want me to react to whatever they’re saying and I always fear that I don’t react appropriately or adequately to whatever is expected. I do have to have the brain energy for it though. I also think my introversion makes me a good observer, or in any case, better than I would have been otherwise, because often when I’m in a large/medium group of people I’ll often be the sort of person who is on the outside, looking in, so I often don’t engage very actively in the conversations, but will much more happily analyse the situation, people’s behaviours, what they’re saying, people’s interactions and relationships with one another, what they seem to be like etc. as I find it far more interesting and far less stressful, because I find people in general quite fascinating in their diversity and complexity, yet actual interacting with them is very exhausting. A lot of people think that you miss out on a lot with this sort of attitude, and that I in fact must be longing to be more in the centre of things, as is apparently the case with a lot of people who act similarly, but I seriously do not and I don’t do it solely out of anxiety. Perhaps I do indeed miss out on some good things that could have come out of it if I was interacting with people more actively and openly, but it gets compensated by all sorts of little things that I pick up on and that other people don’t because they’re too engrossed in engaging in peopling more actively, so I like to think that my perspective is in the end more multidimensional. I think being good at observing and analysing things does come in handy and useful and is therefore valued as an advantage in the society. Similarly, we introverts tend to be more in tune with all sorts of lil gut feelings and things, which can also be very useful for us and for others around us.

For some of us, we’ve been in a better position during the pandemic, as we naturally tend to deal better with isolation and aloneness than more extroverted folks, and I’ve come to realise that this is a really huge advantage in prolonged situations like this, and I really feel for people who find it difficult to cope on their own.

And, also recently, I’ve particularly grown to like the fact that my introversion makes me fairly self-sufficient emotionally. I generally think that, overall, life’s easier when you are an extrovert or at least more ambi-, but this one thing in particular is a really big upside to introversion in my opinion. I mean, our Sofi is very strongly an extrovert and she needs a lot of stimulation, adrenaline and a lot of stuff to be going on around her, she’s easily bored if she doesn’t have people around her and if things aren’t changing often enough. She needs things like having sleepovers, or herself sleeping at her friends’/cousins’ houses, parties, outings, travelling, people to play or even just hang out with on a regular basis, or if she’s alone she needs to have a clear idea what she’ll be doing in this time and preferably some strong, fun emotions, and she struggles to actually come up with any ideas herself of what she could be doing so she needs some prompting and encouraging and stuff. If she happens to have a week where no one can visit her, or she can’t visit anyone, can’t go anywhere or do any very fun activity, everything is meh. These are the things she looks forward to and her life goes from one such thing to another. Sofi only has a good day when it’s spent having a lot of WOW experiences and big emotions, surrounded by friends. And that’s fun and cool, except people aren’t available 24/7, so she’s bored quite often and has to depend on others to provide her some kind of entertainment and stimulation. Which I think is sad, because her friendships are often quite flaky and superficial, and even in the best friendship arguments happen, plus her friends have other friends and social obligations, and can’t spend all their free time with Sofi. And then there are things like COVID that can get in the way. Over the last couple years Sofi has learnt to tolerate being alone a lot better, as in the past she needed pretty much non stop attention to feel good, but her own company is still far from being something she likes for more than half an hour max, and it feels quite tricky to me when you have to depend on other people to make you feel good, therefore I’m really grateful that this isn’t the case with me and that I don’t need people to feel happy or stimulated or have fun, and that I rarely feel lonely as in in need of contact with human beings. In fact, as I think I’ve often mentioned, I often actually feel more lonely when I am around a lot of people, and I find this feeling way more difficult to manage and quite crushing than the regular loneliness.

How is it with you? 🙂

Question of the day (4th April).

Hey people! 🙂

Here’s the question I meant to ask you yesterday:

Do you feel like you have a special connection with animals?

My answer:

I don’t feel this way at all, but, judging from how a lot of animals are extremely clingy with me, you could draw exactly the opposite conclusion. I do like most animals in general, I grew up in the countryside where we’d always have a dog or two in the backyard, some wild cats running around, and fishes at home, I even had a hamster for a short while as a kid, then I started horse riding, and now have Misha and Jocky, but I couldn’t describe myself as a typical animal person, who would take some great interest in animals in general, or even a particular species, or anything like that. The only animal which I truly love in a way that goes beyond just liking it because it’s cute is Misha. Since I love Misha very passionately or obsessively as some say, a lot of people automatically assume I must be some crazy cat lady in general. And I don’t usually tell them that it’s otherwise because, of course I do like cats, but it’s not like I have some special interest or extreme love for felines as a whole. I feel I also had a very strong bond with a horse I used to ride for many years, that was absolutely amazing, but he died two years ago or so. I guess the fact that I’m madly in love with one cat and used to have an extraordinary bond with one horse doesn’t really make me an animal person overall or doesn’t mean I could have a connection with all of them.

For some reason though, a lot of animals seem to like me a lot. Often when I’m just walking somewhere and a cat passes by, it will come close to me and let me stroke it. Same about people’s dogs. We even have one dog in the neighbourhood who will always get so agitated whenever she sees me and will not calm down until her mummy lets her come over to me and I stroke her. It’s hilarious, although a bit weird. 😀 In my family, when we visit someone who has a cat or a dog, the pet will often come to me first thing, even though it’s my Mum or Sofi trying to coax it with some food to come to her and I don’t do anything. It’s especially remarkable with my aunt’s dog – Daisy – who is always literally all over me whenever I visit her. And I visit this particular aunt extremely rarely. In a way, getting so much attention from animals in social situations is fun, because it often rescues me from having to be social with people, or gives me something to do on family gatherings where I’d otherwise be bored to death (I think I talked about that when sharing Leah Nobel’s song Talking To The Dog At The Party, which I think should be introverts’ anthem 😀 ). In this regard, credit goes especially to my gran’s cat, Feluś, and one of my maternal grandparents’ backyard cats whom I called Michelle, who always keep me sane during social gatherings, as long as they are home. But on the other hand it often ends up drawing even more human attention to me and I don’t like that one bit. Also, especially with dogs, it can be quite awkward. I feel about dogs very much like I feel about children. They’re cute, but, in direct contact, I don’t really know how I should relate to them, what I’m supposed to do with them, and they can be a bit overbearing long-term. I even feel this way about our Jocky, as much as I like him at the same time. With Jocky it’s also funny because of course he’s mostly Sofi’s pet, just like Misha’s mostly mine, and Sofi and Jocky have very similar characters and love each other so much and play a lot. Still, it always bothers Sofi very much that Jocky always seems a lot more affectionate withh me than with her, even though I am not nearly as affectionate with him as Sofi is. I do play with him regularly and it’s fun, but I don’t do it not nearly as much as Sofi and don’t give him as much attention. Yet when we come back home from somewhere and he sees me and Sofi, he’ll be all over me first and only then scamper off to play with Sofi. I really feel for Sofi, I’d hate to have a similar situation with Misha where I’d love him as much as I do but he’d be more affectionate with Sofi. So while in a way I feel honoured that Jocky likes me so much, even though I don’t get it, I think for Sofi’s sake I’d rather like it more if he was more like that with her.

I guess it’s kind of similar to what my Dad experiences with children. He makes a rather rough impression and can be authoritarian and not necessarily your ideal candidate for a nanny, but, for some weird reason, he’s very popular with all toddlers with our family. They are often a bit shy around him initially when they come to us or when we come to their parents’ houses, but after some time, it’ll be my Dad on whose lap they’ll be sitting or running to him to tell him about some game they’ve been playing or give him a half-eaten lollipop or something, even though I would think my Mum is far more engaging with children than he is. Maybe it’s about his sense of humour and that, unlike my Mum, he hardly actually asks them any questions, and I suppose not all kids like being asked a lot of questions even if it’s in a very friendly way as is the case with my Mum, who is genuinely interested and doesn’t just automatically ask about how school is going.

Weird how such things work sometimes.

How is it with you? 🙂

Leah Nobel – “Talking To The Dog At The Party”.

Hey people! 🙂

Perhaps you remember when, a little while before Christmas, I shared with you a song called

Coffee Sunday NYT by Leah Nobel,

and wrote how I really liked her project “Running in Borrowed Shoes” which it was a part of. It made me instantly like her a lot, just that she came up with something like this. And yesterday, this song of hers that I’m going to share with you today, came up in my Release Radar on Spotify and I just had to share it because, well, it could as well have been the anthem of introverts or something like this, I believe. It’s just so true and relatable and to the point, I think many people could feel a connection to what she sings about here and I’m glad someone put it into words and into a song so well. I definitely can relate to it a whole lot, except I much prefer talking to the cat if it’s possible and if people have a cat. That makes it a lot easier. With dogs, while they are very nice and all, they somehow seem to always like me excessively and are all over me when they see me and that doesn’t really make the whole situation any less awkward, but a dog is certainly better than anything. It’s only a pity that few people in my family or who we associate with actually do have cats, and when they do, they’re typically the kind who can go in and out as they please, so you never know whenn they’ll be home. But yeah, an animal can always make a party a lot easier to go through. I also can so totally relate to the bit that I’d rather be a loner than lonely with all these people around. I feel loneliness much more intensely around people than when I’m actually alone.

If you’re an introvert, do you also find animals’ presence helpful at all sorts of parties and other things like that? 🙂

Question of the day.

What’s your favourite season? Why?

My answer:

I used to love summer. If someone would ask me why, I’d typically say that because holidays are in summer (so I could be home from the boarding school for a longer time), because you can be in the sea, and because you can pick berries (I loved berries as a kid, I still do, but back then I lived in the countryside so we had a forest on the other side of our gate and we would often go there to pick them. But I never really had high tolerance for heat so for that reason summer also really sucked for me. Now that I’m out of school and don’t have to wait for holidays, and still hate heat, it doesn’t have all that appeal to me anymore. I think these days I like winter more, when it’s cold outside but you can keep yourself cosy inside if it gets too cold and feel happy that you don’t have to be outside. Misha is also so delightfully sleepy in winter. He’s also super sleepy in summer but that’s more of the heat and it feels more lethargic and apathetic, while in winter he’s just kinda lazy and often even a bit more cuddly. And generally the feel of winter feels somehow friendly to me these days. My ex-pen pal said once that he thinks that winter is a very friendly season for introverts. I got very curious and asked him why he thought so (with all my current liking for winter I think Christmas, New Year celebrations and the like don’t necessarily have to be the best thing for all introverts, in my family we also have a lot of winter birthdays, myself included, so I wasn’t really sure if I shared this opinion) but he couldn’t really specify. But when I think of it more, even with all the Christmas shopping, socialising and what not, there is something about winter indeed that makes it friendly for introverts and other asocial individuals. What do you think? 🙂

And what about your favourite season? 🙂

Working On Us.

It’s week #4 of Working On Us at

Beckie’s Mental Mess

and I’m very happy to participate in this prompts series for the second time. Last week, I was answering the questions for prompt #1, but this time, I found prompt #2 really relatable. It’s a photo prompt, so I couldn’t actually see it, but Beckie described it and the image of a brain inside of a bird cage really spoke to me. I suppose I should include the photo in my post somehow, but since I have no clue how to do it, and am blind, so don’t need to have a clue about pics haha, I’ll just leave it as it is.

I was thinking about that prompt a lot last evening and thought I would make some piece of creative writing but since I don’t feel very creative at the moment it’ll just be a bit of a ramble.

I’ve been fascinated by brain for years, and it’s one of my main interests. But it’s not only that why I found this prompt so relatable. I could say I often feel as if my brain was locked in a bird cage, and unable to get out, just never thought about such a metaphor before. What does it feel like when your brain is locked in a brain cage? For me, among other things, it means difficulty in releasing emotions, there’s no way to get them out, whether you want it or not. Your brain fills up until it’s all full and all the feelings are one big mishmash, so that sometimes you don’t even know what you feel any longer. Things get mixed up, until finally the brain can’t contain anymore, and things start to leak out. But instead of leaking outside in a proper way, instead of being expressed, they spill all over the cage. It’s flooded with stuff that can’t be released otherwise, and the brain is swimming in all the intense feelings. That’s when overload happens, and I start feeling a lot of intense anger that gets turned inwards, so I feel like self-harming. Sometimes, when the flood is really strong, something will spill outside through the grating, but the cage is tall and thick so it’s really hard. The only way for me to get my brain out of that cage is writing. Then, the bird cage opens and it can fly out and feel more free.

Another thing that a bird cage makes me think of in the context of my brain, is the feeling of alienation, or feeling disconnected, or loneliness in the crowd, inadequacy, or however you want to call it. I like being different, and individualistic, and I like being on my own more than around other people most of the time and feel more comfy with it. But when it becomes a bird cage for my brain is when I do need to be with someone, but for whatever reason can’t make a connection with people. Sometimes it’s like you can see other people from there, but there’s no way of communicating effectively. You can only bang on the cage and hope that they will hear you, but even if they will, they usually won’t be able to help you out, or open the cage, or get close enough that you could communicate, or feel the way you feel. Even if they do get to you, you’ve been living in this cage for so long that you can’t even explain to them what it’s like, and what you need, and they won’t understand, because they live out there in the world which is so very different. So after a couple trials, you just sit in the corner of your cage and look out, watching people come and go. Sometimes they’ll glance in your direction in confusion, not understanding why you are the way you are and live in a bird cage, what’s wrong with your brain that you constantly keep it in there. As if it was your choice. Sometimes you might feel desperate, and try to jump over the cage, but that hardly ever ends up well and is risky, you can easily get hurt. Even if you do get out of there in one piece, you quickly realise that you don’t fit in, and lots of consequences come with it. And after so many years of living in a cage your brain just doesn’t know otherwise and has it hard to adjust and be just like any other brain living in the outside world. So after all, you put your brain back into the cage, voluntarily this time, ’cause a familiar enemy is worse than the one you don’t know anything about and don’t know how to deal with.

That’s the way my brain feels sometimes. Well, regularly. Again, writing, for myself or with/to others, is something that helps, to some degree, especially blogging and penpalling is what I’m thinking of.

Also, I think the bird cage analogy works very well in regards to my sleep paralysis experiences too. It feels like my brain and me are locked up in a bird cage with all my dream monsters. I can see the outside world but they don’t see me, and I can’t run away because my dream “friends” are all over me. The only thing I can do is wait for the dream cage to open and flee as soon as possible.

What’s a bird cage of your brain? How does it look like and what does it represent? 🙂

Question of the day.

What are you not looking forward to?

My answer:

I’m not looking forward to my cousin’s 18th birthday. She’ll be having a very big party with dancing and lots of people, many of whom I’ve never even seen before, and I’m scared of that. I have arranged an escape plan for myself with the help of my very understanding grandad, from the other side of the family, not related to that cousin, and he said he’ll be able to help me most likely, but I’ll have to stay there for some time. Ugh scary. And boring.

You?

Share Your World.

It’s been centuries since I last participated in

Share Your World

at Melanie’s. I guess the last time was around… Christmas? That’s what I can remember, which is a shame because I used to participate in SYW pretty regularly and it’s fun. The questions this week are really cool so here goes, and if you’d like to participate too head over to her blog. 🙂

 

1. Was the last thing you read digital or print? – Digital, pretty much anything I read is digital, because I am blind, and Braille books are quite pricey, clunky, and limited in terms of availability of what you can choose from.
2. Are you more an extrovert or introvert? – Introvert all the way! Introverts rule! Yay for introverts! 😊 But actually, I read some of the fellow participants’ posts already earlier this week and quite a couple people stated that they are more extroverted on the Internet, and so am I, though it also depends on the circumstances and where on the Internet, the Internet itself doesn’t make me extroverted haha.
3. How is your life different from what you imagined as a younger person? – Hard to say, because as a child and teen I didn’t have a stable view of what I’d like to be or could be. As a very little child I wanted to be a singer, musician and dancer, and I didn’t want to have children “Because when women don’t want to have children they don’t have to have them, and when they want, they can” (that’s what I said in a film about my nursery where they asked me whom I’d like to be and my family laugh at it on every possible occasion). Indeed, I never really wanted to have children, and still don’t want, even if I wanted it seems pretty unlikely for multiple reasons. But as I grew older I never wanted to do anything with music professionally. I wanted to be a psychologist, writer, sound engineer, translator, quack (like my grandad sort of :D) and lots of other things. But when I was a very little girl, five-year-old or a little bit older, I once had a weird kind of dream…? I don’t know if it was a dream, an imagining, just a thought, or whatever, but I was lying in bed so I think it could be a dream, it was just one small scene but very clear to me. I saw myself in it as an adult, standing in the middle of a huge kitchen, as if I was about to prepare a meal or something, and there were kids all around me, a lot of children, mostly toddlers, all clinging to me. But what I remember the best from that little scene was some weird sense of despair, or helplessness that I felt. I felt lost and confused and like I don’t know what to do in this adult world. What am I supposed to do with these children? What am I expected to do? And it was so clear and powerful that since then, whenever I heard the word “adult”, I had that weird vision coming up, and in a way I still do. I don’t have a huge kitchen, or children, I don’t even make meals for myself, and my life right now feels pretty stable, yet sometimes I do feel like that adult me from my dream, which probably reveals my immaturity or something, but I don’t claim I am a mature person, I don’t claim that I’m immature either, I guess I just don’t know. 😀 Anyway, other than that weird dream thing, I don’t think my life resembles what I thought it could be like when I was a child.
4. Do you think about dying?   Does death scare you?  Why or why not? – As a person with mental illness, I’ve experienced suicidal thoughts so yes, I do think about dying, sometimes more often, sometimes less. I’m happy to say that nowadays, I rarely have active suicidal thoughts and ideations, but I do have passive ones a lot of the time. Also I am a Christian, so when you’re a religious/spiritual person I believe you have to think about that sometimes. My own death doesn’t scare me, although I’m a little bit anxious of what it will be like afterwards, what world we’ll end up in, if any. I’m also not scared of death as a concept, like my sis Zofijka is for example. SHe’s scared of dead people, murders and such. Of course it’s difficult and can make anyone uneasy, but I normally don’t feel scared by that without any context. What I’m really really scared of about death is those whom I love dying. Particularly my Mum and Misha. Some say my attachment to Misha is unhealthy because of that, and because of how attached I am to him even though he is a pet, but I really don’t know how I could cope with Misha’s death. If I had to, I probably would, life is like that, but I’ve never been attached to anyone in such a way as I am to Misha.

Additional Gratitude Bonus Question:  Who has been the kindest to you in your life? – The kindest? Like throughout my whole life? My Mum I think. Dunno where I’d be without her, but I’ve written about that many times before.

Question of the day (29th March).

What was something your parents said repeatedly when you were growing up?

My answer:

Huh lots of things, especially my Mum, she’s very repetitive at times haha. But like really very often? Hahaha the first thing that comes to my mind right now is that Mum used to say a lot that I’m “wild”, meaning that I don’t engage with people as much as expected. That was always very interesting for me, to think that I’m wild. 😀

How about your parents?

Question of the day.

Hi people. 🙂

Since February is definitely a birthdays month in my family, I have another birthday related question for you.

How do you like to celebrate your birthday? Do you actually like celebrating it at all or is it just a normal day for you?

My answer:

I definitely dislike the conventional way of celebrating special days – all people crowding around the table, having to absorb huge amounts of food at once, smalltalking, feeling bored and either you being in the centre of attention all the time or people not caring at all about the reason of the celebrations but just being happy to have some place to go and stuff themselves with food – depending what kind of a family you have. 😀 My extended are a blend of both haha. No that’s not for me. I try to have possibly decent relationships with my extended family, at least my Mum’s family, even though I don’t feel much of a connection with them for a variety of reasons, so I’ll adjust to such a way of celebrating if I have to, but that’s normally not my thing. I much prefer spending my birthday with just the people I genuinely love or like and care about and with whom I feel well like my immediate family and my online friends. For years I would rather avoid celebrating my birthdays at the boarding school so now I’m not that crazy about them either. It’s nice to do some things you really like on your birthday, to make it more special, be them something very unusual or just every day things you like, though my birthday this year, although really nice, wasn’t something I celebrated a lot. I know my Mum wanted us to go to the Italian restaurant that is quite close to us, because we both love Italian food, but unfortunately in the end it wasn’t possible as it would collide with my Dad’s job and Mum usually has to pick him up. Anyway, luckily I could avoid my extended family coming over, and my Mum just made my favourite toffi cake and my favourite salad and then chips for us for supper, which were all very yummy, we also went to church because of my birthday and I got a picture of a cat that looks almost like Misha, from my Mum, and it was all very nice. But other than that it was just a normal day, and if I had to choose whether I prefer having a rather normal, maybe even a bit uneventful birthday or a family gathering, I would definitely prefer the first. Other than that, here in Poland as in many other European countries we also have name days, which are originally a Christian tradition, and maybe because I’m Christian, or maybe for some other reason, celebrating your patron saint’s day seems just more worth celebrating than the fact you’re getting older. Especially now as I could change my legal name a few years ago and like the name Emilia, it feels like just a much better opportunity to celebrate. My name day is on 30th June so it’s always summer holidays then here, so even the atmosphere is more favourable and you can do more fun things, and my extended family still can’t get used to me having nam te day in June so I don’t have to worry about socialising too much. 😀

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

What would your perfect shindig involve?

My answer:

Well I guess a perfect shindig for me would be no shindig at all. It’s definitely not my thing. I sometimes can’t stand a normal family gathering, let alone a noisy party for God knows how many people. But if I had to take part in one, I’d be happy if there were some places where I could take refuge, or from where it would be easy to take a French leave and sneak out to my room with Misha as soon as possible. I just had a similar situation today. It’s my Dad’s nameday, and because it’s Sunday, lots of people came in hopes that there will be a lot of food and an opportunity to have fun. And my poor Mum had to make all that food, of course. At first we had a big dinner for the grandparents, and after that my Mum was really kind and understanding to me. She was in the kitchen and called me out. She said she just thought I’d probably be much happier to help her rather than sit with the rest of them, which was of course true, just took me aback a little bit since my Mum usually doesn’t care that much about my social dilemmas. SO I helped her out with making the bread – well helped would be probably too big a word, but I tried, anyway. – And then I could sneak out to my room and Mum told me she’d call me when the rest of the guests would come. ANd she did, so I came down to socialise with them a bit, but there was soon so many people, including children, or so it felt for me, that I felt sort of overstimulated, and despite really good intentions, I had to leave rather early, I started to feel really uncomfortable. So, no, no shindigs, please!!!

You? 🙂

Question of the day.

And the actual question for today is…:

ANy drama happening in your life right now?

My answer:

I think we need to clarify what drama is, or at least I have to. ‘Cause I don’t really understand this concept in general I guess. Or do I? For me, drama is a lot of fuss, usually going on in a group of people, which is causing a lot of emotional distress for all interested and people acting impulsively and often like in a drama and sometimes even attention-seeking, but no one actually knows what it’s all about, but despite all that some people like to get into or cause dramas. Or anyway any drama that I have ever been witnessing or somehow involved in was hard to figure out for myself, what do they actually make suh a drama about? It might be that I’m just too socially awkward and stuff, or just not a drama type of person so I don’t get it. Or maybe I do get it right? What drama means for you?

Anyways, back to the drama, or lack thereof, in my life. 😀 So as you can guess now I think, no, I don’t think there is much going on in my life that I could call a drama, there are rarely such things, because I simply hate dramas and making fuss of anything, so I don’t involve in dramas usually, and if I ever have to witness such things it’s very disorienting and in a way also cringy. Unless there is a real and important cause for making drama of course, then it’s not cringy, but can also be disorienting, but I wonder if something like this still could be called a drama. THere are some intense things going on in my life, like now that I quitted therapy with my last therapist, and have been talking with Mum about very intense stuff and figuring out a lot about it on my own (I maybe could say that I have an internal drama because of that because it’s really really intense) and then there is my aunt who has been sick and just had surgery a couple days ago, but… yeah, I don’t know if such things could be called dramas, I think not really. Our Zofijka is in the “drama stage” of development, she’s in her early teens and also very extroverted, so I often do hear about her school dramas, which are very, veery weird and cringy, and I guess that’s all I can say on this very confusing topic.

So, how about dramas in your life? How would you define a drama in this context, do you see it the way I do? 🙂