As our world slows down, are you a pensive introvert or a restless extrovert?

“The waitress is practicing politics

As the businessmen slowly get stoned

Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness

But it's better than drinkin' alone”

— Piano Man, Billy Joel

Pull up a comfy chair. Close your eyes. Fill your mind with nothingness. Don’t allow the toxicity of a collapsing economy or a worldwide pandemic that is killing tens of thousands, leak into your subconscious. Rid yourself of all the noise from the daily cable news shows or the afternoon briefings from Rideau Cottage or the White House. Cut your thoughts to the bone. Go deeper still, to the “youer part of you”.

Take all your anxiety and that claustrophobic feeling you’ve had since Queen’s Park ordered a stay-at-home directive and treat it as if it were dust on a countertop. Blow it all away.

Breathe deeply. From your diaphragm through your chest and out your nose. Diaphragm. Chest. Nose. Repeat it again and again until your jangly nerves are limp spaghetti. Turn your body into a decompression chamber.

If this sounds like New Age drivel, or some holistic attempt to quell an increasing sense of doom as we see heightened anxiety levels and a growing need to stay calm, it is a reminder that millions of us are still lost and searching for answers as we live through this pandemic.

But what about those who are just fine? Unfazed. Even distinctly more content than usual.

Yes, there are those among us, maddeningly, taking this very, very well. The ones who never get bored. They’re unconcerned with the uncertainty.

That’s not to say they’re callous, devoid of empathy for those who are suffering. They just seem more reasonable in the face of upheaval. But perhaps they are dealing with their own melancholy. Maybe their introversion is a bad place to retreat into during a crisis, when worries can be harmfully internalized, unlike those extroverts who release it all in a waterfall of hyper-nervous energy.   

We might mistakenly describe introverts as laid back, or cool and calm. Sometimes even wise. While they’re seldom seen chatting small talk to neighbours or running frantically around to the shops, it's often harder to figure them out.

They are the people on our street whose car is always in the driveway.

Many of these types seem to like long walks and are often found deeply engaged with a good book. The local bar or pub is seldom graced by their presence, at least not for more than a quiet drink. In public, we often don’t notice them. No obsessive messaging on their smart phone or distracted driving while on a call.

They're the introverts among us.

But are they, by nature, better equipped for this crisis?

Everyone responds differently to a catastrophe, because everyone is different.

Right now many of us are in full freak-out mode and circling the drain – watching from our homes as the world we had so cleverly constructed, falls apart.

Whether you’re anxiously checking shrinking stock prices or fiendishly searching for an online shopping fix, or just driving yourself mad with boredom, you’re not alone.

As we attempt to stickhandle around the crisis, plenty of other code-red warning lights are flashing, including the coming tsunami of emotional afflictions about to wash ashore in the days, months or years after this pandemic has passed.

But for now, let’s look at society’s two largest personality types — the introverts and extroverts.

If we can break down humans into these broad categories, which most psychologists do, then we have to ask: is one more susceptible to the serious mental strain of a worldwide pandemic? Question two: will this crisis create a new orthodoxy for living?

As one Oakville-based therapist told The Pointer in an interview last week, extroverts have been outrunning themselves for years. They are people in flight, always distracted, always in need of something to do. They get bored easily, and don’t like being alone. Some are social animals, and generally do well — emotionally, physically and financially — because of it. After all, humans are hardwired, programmed by millions of years of evolution, to gain the benefits of relying on and being with one another.

In the fantastically popular 1980s and 90s sitcom Cheers, the Boston bar was centre of the universe for a quirky collection of characters who were in essence, funny/pathetic and loveable/tragic. People like Norm, the accountant, a big likeable lug who drank enormous quantities of beer but never seemed to get stoned, and Cliff, the mailman, a misguided two-bit philosopher. There was also Frasier, the shrink who was both brainy and insecure. There was Diane, the sharp-tongued ambitious cocktail waitress, cynical, but world wise, and her foil/love interest Sam Malone, the owner/bartender. He was the central character, the ex-jock and not so metaphorical ace pitcher of the bar, who was either a wise guy or a big softie. The barflies arrived after work, drank until closing, and were back again the next day.

The characters in Cheers displayed a need for prolonged social interaction, and might find life under a shutdown difficult

Being home, alone, offered them no solace. They needed to be out, usually around people, or thought they did – however random the conversations.

Billy Joel summed up these archetypes in his song Piano Man, and concluded that for extroverts, and even introverts, a night at the bar allowed them to “forget about life for a while”.

Read the lyrics of the popular opening theme song of Cheers, they say it all:

“Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.

Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name,

and they're always glad you came.

You wanna be where you can see,

our troubles are all the same

You wanna be where everybody knows

Your name.

You wanna go where people know,

people are all the same,

You wanna go where everybody knows

Your name.”

But what happens to all those people happily gathered around the bar, when they can’t take a break from all their worries, together?

And what happens when, instead, these social creatures have to remain in isolation while the same troubles they’re all feeling, can’t be shared?

This pandemic has forced us to think about how to navigate life without the social escape and comfort that’s so vital to so many.

But what can we learn from introverts? And how can they learn to be around us just a little more, to infuse their essence into our world?

Many introverts are highly functioning and also like social interaction – but only for a time, until they grow bored, recognize the lack of benefit and return to themselves.

They are the opposite of busybodies, who need to involve themselves in their family’s or extended family’s concerns; they insert themselves into the lives of neighbours and frenemies (they often can’t nurture true friendship) or obsess on trivialities that should be outside anyone's purview. These are the people now telling anyone who will listen everything that needs to be known about the novel coronavirus. They end up engaging with everything and everybody but themselves.

This type of extroverted behaviour is closer to the far side of the social spectrum. Perhaps our collective isolation might do some good for people whose social energy has burned too hot.

A neurobiology study at McGill University captured in one of its publications in 2018, focused on our mobile-device habits, stemming from a healthy human need to socialize. The study said this is deeply rooted in evolution, and we all know people who are seemingly incapable of living without the bright screen of their phone for more than a few minutes. These people are constantly texting and checking out what friends are up to on social media.

Professor Samuel Veissière, a cognitive anthropologist who studies the evolution of cognition and culture, thinks humans have evolved to be a uniquely social species and require constant input from others to seek a guide for culturally appropriate behaviour. This is also a way for them to find meaning, goals, and a sense of identity. The conclusion: Healthy urges can become unhealthy addictions.

Is this our modern-day malady, the constant need to communicate, which is affecting a disproportionate number of us – mostly extroverts?

In our highly caffeinated society where connectivity is everywhere, and peace of mind is foreign to many, there is a constant need for speed.

With sleep deprivation and stress levels at all-time highs, and energy levels at lower lows, what happens when society suddenly steps on the brakes, and we come to a dead stop?

If our lives used to be a sprint, they are now drawn-out, down to a slow walk. Remember when you were up by 5:30, in the car (with coffee in hand) or at the bus stop by 6:30, and on your computer by 8? If you weren’t part of this headlong rush, you just weren’t cutting it.

When’s the last time in pre-pandemic days when extroverts spent a lazy Sunday like this: propped up on a big fluffy pillow for a couple hours to read the newspaper, cover to cover; then a slow, home-cooked brunch with the kids; followed by an aimless stroll around the neighbourhood; and, to cap off the day, a long movie before bedtime?

One author described our buzzed-out past as living our lives in the “remove”, a place outside what is actually important to us.

Those constantly on the run knew this was wrong, very unhealthy – both mentally and physically – but they couldn’t stop. One of the responses to this speeded-up world, was an uptick in calming apps. People who needed to but couldn't slow down, resorted to downloading platforms called Calm, Headspace, Day On, Breathe2Relax, Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock, Buddify, Smiling Mind, or even 7 Days of Calm, on YouTube. There are plenty more, and lots of so-called experts saying this need for speed was self-defeating.

Of course, there are also entire channels on YouTube dedicated to things like shopping challenges, for the giddy consumers who then need a calming app.

Two contestants on a YouTube shopping challenge channel

The apps (still available to all) come replete with the calming sounds of rainfall, a gentle fountain, waves hitting the shore. It seems the flow of water is a magic elixir, as is deep breathing, or long or short-form meditation.

For many millennials, who grew up with caffeine and one-hand texting, the cause and effect world they occupy – driven to the bone, then pushed to therapy – is filled with yoga and meditation and calming apps, or any other trendy therapy concocted by those who trade in the enterprise of anxiety.

For introverts who already liked to do deep dives into their subconscious, whether it was through the reflective world of reading, writing, gardening, or long walks in the woods, this seems over the top, and unneeded.

Many were already part of a minimalist movement. They are mystified by the shop-till-they-drop crowd, and now bristle at today’s hoarders, lacking any perspective or calm, who clean out the store shelves of toilet paper, readying themselves for the apocalypse.

These people, captured in the viral videos shared millions of times since the pandemic began, are a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Oakville’s Angie Tsounis, a certified holistic lifestyle coach, podcast host and author of Different from the Other Kids, is one of many leading a grassroots movement aimed at educating and supporting the parents of kids who struggle. She believes we have to create a less-stressful, more inwardly focused lifestyle.

“Most of us need to give ourselves a mental break – to spend more time with family, to get to bed earlier, to get our body and minds better aligned, to relax, to go for a walk in the woods, and to simply slow down. Some people are not used to sitting (extroverts), and they’re losing their minds.”

Many introverts are readers, and they have plenty of literary doyens to turn to in this troubling time.

Robert Louis Stevenson said humans should have the capacity to sit in a train station for hour upon hour and not get bored.

Introverts seem better equipped to relax, to take things in stride, and leave the Cheers bar after one drink and spend the rest of the night with their family, maybe getting back into that book on their night table, or heading to the garage for some peaceful woodworking.

Will a slowed down world make room for lost hobbies?

Tsounis thinks our sensibilities have changed, and if the pandemic has a positive side, it’s to help us rejig our body and spirit.

Maybe this will be the new normal. Extroverts have a large network of friends and display excellent social skills, and the concept of humans being "social by nature" is as old as civilization itself. The idea being that humans need social interaction to survive.

Author Ross Rosenberg, who wrote The Human Magnet Syndrome: Why We Love People Who Hurt Us, explains that all personality types (except anti-social individuals) need some form of human interaction.

Introverts – who lose energy from being around others – may find alone time more desirable than extroverts, who gain energy from the company of others. But this is all rather nebulous, and Rosenberg is uncertain how to decipher it all. Introversion certainly has its drawbacks too. And if many are just as worried and scared as the rest of us, remaining in psychic isolation probably isn't the best way to cope.

"Loneliness is a normal part of the human existence," he says. “We all feel lonely, but chronic, pathological loneliness is a deeply embedded pattern that is self-reinforcing. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Healthy, resilient people respond to normal loneliness by resolving it. Unhealthy people become overwhelmed by it."

Some find that they don't like being alone and get bored when they are forced to do so. Yet, by spending the majority of their lives entertaining others, extroverts haven't learned how to entertain themselves.

A critical component of feeling comfortable spending time alone is the ability to self-soothe, a coping technique learned at a very young age. According to Rosenberg, people with the ability to self-soothe most likely had a healthy early childhood, when their parents met their needs unconditionally.

Does this equip them better to handle a pandemic, the ensuing long-term lockdown, and a dramatic lifestyle change?

While introverts might use this time to self-explore, be creative, or embrace a personal to-do list, the extrovert will FaceTime, hold a movie night (remote, of course), make plans for a game night, or do anything to distract themselves from spinning in circles.

Being an introvert and extrovert isn’t the deciding factor on whether one person handles a pandemic better than another.

Introverts are probably better equipped (but not fully) to handle an extended stay in social isolation because, well, on the whole, they have been practicing social distancing for years. They are not asocial or anti-social, but enjoy social interaction only when it fits their game plan.

When they get bored listening to Norm and Cliff at the bar, or tire of Diane and Sam’s painfully comic public courtship, they leave. Their time at Cheers is a celebration, not a distracting social ritual.

We are in the early stages of a crisis that is still cascading, in human and economic and societal terms.

To those who were already practicing a form of social isolation, like introverts, it isn’t pleasant, but they are probably better positioned to handle this extreme realigning of society into a less connected world, for the time being. Even the dislocation from parents or other close family members and friends, is easier for those who sought out such connections less frequently. But there is a difference between being comfortable in one's own skin and hiding from a troubling reality because avoidance is just easier, or engaging in chronically unhealthy isolation.

For extroverts, and especially social animals, unless they are put into a medically induced coma, they will have to adjust their day-to-day lives, to slow down, to find ways to cope.

As the noisy sides of this pandemic play themselves out, the answering echo will take place in the days, weeks, months and years after a vaccine is found.

Before COVID-19, our lives were free and driven by choice. But perhaps extroverts will step back, freed from the speed and distractions for just long enough, to pick and choose from this temporary lifestyle the things that make them feel better.

The psychological impact of this shattering of norms, has yet to be measured – and it might never be. What is calming, however, is the fact that we have been here before, and survived.

Extroverts might be more likely to bristle at our current shutdowns because human interaction is embedded in their DNA. And introverts might actually find some extra solace knowing their preferred way of being isn’t currently compromised by the expectations of a social world.

That unseen viral enemy infesting our world has changed the way we live our lives. For those on a head-long rush to do everything and talk to everyone and keep so busy they collapse into bed each night exhausted, this new normal demands a pull back, and a reimagining of our lives. But it will end, hopefully soon. Some (introverts) will continue to delve deep inside themselves, while the others (extroverts) might give it a try more often.

For now, it could be the difference between simply surviving and trying to thrive.

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