Introverts, those who are forced to live beneath the surface of the Main Stream, often find themselves lonely and isolated, though they may be living amongst countless millions of people. Even as they require human contact, they must also exercise caution to avoid notice and the social censure that must come with it.
Food, shelter, clothing are the usual requirements listed for a human being. Social interaction is a fourth one that seems to be ommitted.
One who has gone months at a time with limited human interaction understands that it is not conversation that one misses most but rather the need for human touch.
This writer knows this feeling all too well. My skin would begin to prickle and itch after the first few months. I would constantly have to stimulate my fingertips and all the most sensitive spots along my fingers with my fingernails. After more than half a year, I would feel a cold burning across every inch of my skin. This feeling produces an icy, aching longing that permeates one’s being. It’s not the sort of cold one can warm with blankets or hot showers. What sleep one can obtain when in such a state is no escape, one wakes exhausted and cold, knowing that the body has not truly rested or relaxed.
When in such a state, the slightest accidental brush of someone’s fingertip sends a flood of warmth throughout the body and desperate longing for more. The texture of every ripple and whorl of that fingertip lingers in one’s mind for minutes afterwards. The spot that was touched smolders with a pleasurable ache until it finally cools. In social situations, one must struggle to keep one’s composure, unable to acknowledge what good someone just did with a mere accidental touch. They would never understand. Worse, one could attract criticism or even punishment for behaving so strangely in public.
The introvert gradually learns to fulfill one need and then others while remaining beneath notice. In time, this becomes the preferred approach and from such practice grows a lifestyle and worldview that is alien to those who live on the Surface.
From this formative experience comes the introvert “desire to attain their needs without touching other people too deeply.”
11 Comments
Fully understand what you’re saying here. I currently get my touch-fix through my dogs. However, I (unconsciously?) chose Labs, one of the most social breeds around, and now I find myself immersed in social contact through them, and have learned to adjust it to my own innate needs.
A friendly dog is an excellent way to fulfill one’s touch needs while remaining beneath notice of the larger society, while avoiding the social obligations that inevitably accumulate and lead to increasing self-compromise.
It could be argued that the introvert’s problems stem from his commonalities with the wider world, rather than the points of divergence.
You do have a point. While our human needs might be less than those of the average extrovert, the same needs remain like a curse.
It took years of enduring what felt to be a cursed life before I found a tranquility and peace that seems alien to most others around me.
Developing the inner discipline and enduring seems to have given me a sort of foundation that most of my contemporaries do not possess.
Developing a degree of mastery over the tyranny of social desires ultimately gave me ecstatic feelings of freedom.
Now, I am able to enjoy the pleasures of company without feeling addicted and dependent upon them:
a greater pleasure still to be able to partake of a pleasure without tasting the bitter fear of loss.
@MRDA – I question the usage of the word “problems” in this response, as that would indicate that the perception of the introvert is that their natural state is a problem that requires solving, which I don’t believe is the case.
Read it again.
I am not sure that an introvert’s natural state is a problem. The problem is that when the introvert is in his/her natural state, social contact becomes difficult and this causes the problem.
Even for us introverts social contact, touch, relationships are important; it is because of how others perceive us in our natural state that the problems begin to show up.
By ‘problems’ MRDA seems to refer to the irony that we suffer from social exclusion/isolation for many of the same reasons that anybody else would.
Thank you for sharing – truly well explained! Does purchasing massage services fulfil touch needs? Why were you living such an isolated life? Service in a lighthouse? Maintaining watering points on a large property? Sorry for being so curious! I suggest we start “Hugs sans frontiers” to fulfil this need for touch.
Nope. I grew up in suburbia going to a normal neighborhood school. No lighthouses or monasteries involved.
The greatest isolation is within a crowd.
mmm….sounds like a very difficult place to be. At least in remote areas, everyone is very friendly when they meet. Thank you for the answer!
C