I am probably not the only one when I am saying: “Life as being a shy and introverted person can be really hard!”. People who’s personality is outgoing, opened and extroverted don’t face problems and difficulties like we introverts do. So let me show my extroverted friends how life can be as an introvert and my introverted friends that. you’re not alone in this.
One of my biggest problem as an introvert is talking to people I don’t know and being scared of new and unfamiliar situations. I don’t really know how and why I am like this because I wish I was not… What I am fearing the most that the person I am talking to may react rude or that I make them feel annoyed. An example is going to a restaurant… Especially the ones where you order at the front and the waitress doesn’t come to you to pick your order. I always feel like that now, when I ordered the food they have work to do and might not be in the mood to do it. My mum always tells me that I don’t have a reason to feel this way because it’s their job and are happy when someone orders their food. Speaking from restaurants, one thing I noticed with me and some of my other shy and introverted friends is, that non of us wants to go in first, as crazy as this sounds.
Difficulties can be faced in situations where someone needs help too. When I am outside and I for example see that someone obviously needs help with something, where I know I can help and really want to help, I can’t. I can’t come over my fear to start talking to someone I have never met. It’s not much to asked: “Excuse me Sir or Madam, do you need help?” but I can not overcome this fear of doing something wrong and making this person upset.
Another great example of how life can be difficult if you’re shy, are the online classes. I heard people say:”Oh, must be great for you. Now you don’t have to interact with other people and can just stay at home.”,but they’re wrong. I actually love being around other people and have a social life with the ones I know. However the actual problem during online classes are turning your camera on, answering questions and so one. A great example is me during the first class of microeconomics last semester. Everything was fine, class looked like it could be interesting, everything fine. ( Maybe I should add, that you don’t have to turn on your camera and don’t get graded on your attendance and participation in my university). However after the introduction of the class and already learning a little bit, our Professor announced, that she will now divide us in Break-Out-Rooms so we can get to know each other better and talk about the things we learned so far. And guess what I did? I panicked and left the Meeting just because I was scared to talk to other people. During the semester I left the meeting a few more times because of this. However I overcame my fear a little bit and stayed in a few ones. Maybe this semester I can stay in all of them.
Last but not lest, I want to speak to the extroverts among you. I know that you don’t really understand us and why we might be scared or uncomfortable in certain situations which seem completely normal to you. If you know some of your friends has problems in new situations, help them instate of saying: “ Don’t be dramatic it’s not that hard to do a phone call or write an e-mail.” Maybe you just want to help but you make us feel more bad because, WE know that it should be easy and not hard, but for us it is. Something like this happened in my group of friends. One guy moved to another city because of uni (which I found really brave and impressive of him, because he’s more shy and introverted than I am), however he still needed to get his student ID but he hasn’t reached out to the student office, because he just couldn't do it and did not want to be in this situation and I knew what he meant. However this one girl just said:”But why haven’t you done that yet? It’s not that complicated to write and e-mail.” This made me mad, because of the things I said above.
I hope you all could learn somethings today!!! :)
