Introverts vindicated! It is okay NOT to express your emotions

After many of the major horrors of the last decade (Columbine, 9/11, Virginia Tech), the talking heads all over television were of one mind. "It is important to express your emotions over these events," they said in one voice. "If you are not speaking to someone about how you are feeling, you are hurting yourself and those around you." Well, it may be that this conventional wisdom is incomplete. Sometimes keeping it to yourself can be the best policy.

Using a large national sample, Seery and co-researchers tested people's responses to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, beginning immediately after the event and continuing for the following two years. In an online survey, respondents were given the chance to express their thoughts and feelings on the day of 9/11 and a few days afterward.

The researchers then compared people who chose to express their thoughts and feelings versus those who chose not to express.

If the assumption about the necessity of expression is correct -- that failing to express one's feelings indicates some harmful repression or other pathology -- then people who chose not to express should have been more likely to experience negative mental and physical health symptoms over time, the researchers point out.

"However, we found exactly the opposite: people who chose not to express were better off than people who did choose to express," Seery says.

Moreover, when the researchers looked only at people who chose to express their thoughts and feelings, and tested the length of their responses, they found a similar pattern. People who expressed more were worse off than people who expressed less.

It should be noted that this does not mean that everyone should be closing themselves down. The study authors themselves note that this really only shows that different people deal with trauma in different ways. An introvert should not be angry at an extrovert for needing to vent, and an extrovert should not be angry at an introvert for working thru their issues internally. Turns out, people really are built differently. Who knew?

Introversion as a way of life

Here at Mod-Blog, we have more than our fair share of introverts. Sean and I hold the prize for "most introverted", I think, but most of us trend toward that end of the spectrum. This is often a cause for consternation among my friends and coworkers, who don't get why I'd rather not go with them after work for drinks or attend the annual company picnic. (Of course, some of that is also a teetotaller not wanting to remember his friends as soddenly drunk.) This article from the Atlantic is a great window into my world.

Are introverts misunderstood? Wildly. That, it appears, is our lot in life. "It is very difficult for an extrovert to understand an introvert," write the education experts Jill D. Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. (They are also the source of the quotation in the previous paragraph.) Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion.

This matches my experience exactly. I can almost always predict the behavior and responses of extroverted coworkers, but most of them view me as a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

Do you need "Alone Time"?

I have always been a bit of a loner. I need some time to myself every day (and I don't mean the time in the bathroom). This has been seen by some of my friends and relatives as "weird" and even unhealthy. But modern research is showing that loners are a healthy part of the population who bring much of the detail-oriented skills and creativity to the world. Something perhaps less expected is that loners are not socially insensitive, but actually are oversensitized.

Previous MRI studies have shown that during social situations, specific areas in the brains of loners experience especially lively blood flow, indicating a sort of overstimulation, which explains why they find parties so wearying. But Guyer's results suggest that introverts may be more attuned to all sorts of positive experiences as well. This added sensitivity, she speculates, could mean that people who are reserved have an ability to respond quickly to situations—such as coming to your aid in a moment of need—or show unusual empathy to a friend, due to their strong emotional antennae.

This may explain why I prefer a few close friends to a large pool of friends I barely know. This is to be contrasted with other friends of mine who love to have a wide pool of friends whether or not they have emotional intimacy with any of them. Neither is wrong or unhealthy. Both are useful for society.