The Soul’s Journey – an Introvert Disadvantage

I am content to follow to its source,

Every event in action or in thought;

Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!

When, such as I cast out remorse,

So great a sweetness flows into the breast,

We must laugh, and we must sing,

We are blessed by everything,

Everything we look upon, is blessed.

W.B.Yeats.

This delicious poem by Yates written when he was about the same age, as I am wonderfully describes the gifts derived from doing our inner work. Recently, I had this kind of experience that unexpectedly, led to an amazing insight.

I am meeting friends at the Spaghetti Factory in Whistler. I try to get together with them every time I visit; we don’t see each other that often, and it is always a delightful, and meaningful evening. My favourite kind of social occasion when it is a small group and we can have in-depth conversations.

They were waiting in the lobby, and as I stood beside them, one of my friends announced, “there will be five of us tonight. I’ve invited another couple.” I noticed a flush energy flow through my body and recognized immediately a reaction that is familiar – a complex had engaged.

A complex was first identified by C. G. Jung, and best explained by James Hollis as “ a cluster of history, charged with energy that affects the present moment”. It resides in what is commonly referred to as the unconscious. When it is triggered, it grabs us like an eruption from the deep, and we are in its control. It can lead to violent reactions that seem inconsistent with the present moment.

I have spent many years learning to address them, each of us will experience them in our own particular way, I have learned to recognize this flush of energy through my body as a transparent sign of a complex engaging. As a result, I am learning not to react in the moment, but try to take a pause to consider my response.

I noticed in this particular case, the flush of energy was accompanied by a desire to leave. The traditional flight complex that can emerge as opposed to the fight complex, which can also show up. During the microsecond, in which all this occurred, my friend perceived perhaps, all was not well and asked me, “is that all right?” My response was “I don’t know I need to process this and I may need to leave.”

I explained that as an extrovert, for him it was always the more the merrier. For me as an introvert, it was always the less the merrier. I stood breathing, trying to relax and allow the reactions of the child, which are always associated with a complex, to dissipate. I realized that I would stay, but would have to adjust my perspective because my childish pattern might’ve been to express my feelings in a negative way and making sure everyone knew I was unhappy. I looked for an “attitude adjustment.”

During dinner, I was positive, upbeat, and I think probably quite engaging. In fact, my friend said to me afterwards, “Well, you looked like you were having a good time.” I knew that my real work began the next morning when I explored my experience and my feelings.

As always it is a humbling and revelatory experience. I realized at the heart of my reaction was a sense of overwhelment at the change in the circumstances surrounding the dinner. This was associated with the challenge that I had no control on what had transpired.

Complexes usually develop during childhood and I suspect that when as an introvert I began to become overwhelmed, I would do what I could to manage, probably through escape or often by sulking. This likely contributed to the controlling personality I developed and is something I have worked with over the years. When that control is taken away, then I am at the mercy of the child underneath. In this case, the child wanted to leave.

As an adult, I have learned to deal with such things in different ways and developing a positive attitude to cope with this had positive results. The earlier I see the complex, the less likely I am to react like a child.

At this point, I had a eureka moment. I realized my father had been an introvert. I had always been amazed by his behaviours in response to certain events. For example, his initial reaction was to refuse to go to his daughter’s wedding and his first response to our one and family reunion was to say he would not attend. In each case he became the life and soul of the event to the astonishment of his family.

Suddenly I understood him in a way I never had before. As an introvert his immediate reaction, was to feel overwhelmed by the event, and to refuse to go. However once he overcame that he moved into the same kind of compensatory behaviour that his son did years later.

Of course it also helped me understand myself, and realize this complex is genetically related to being an introvert and that is something I was born with. So, even though I may not be able to avoid the complex I can learn to manage my response. As the great management guru, Stephen Covey once suggested, “ between the stimulus and the response, there is a gap.” It is often a minimal interval of time but once we learn to recognize it, we can find space to change our behaviors.

NB I learned the difference between an introvert and extrovert, from a marvellous book given to me by a friend called, The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney. It changed my life.