Category: anxiety

Shy.  Bashful.  Awkward.  Introverted.  I’ve been puzzling over these designations lately, particularly in regard to myself and to my oldest child.

I have a long background in social services so I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs test many times and have always ended up with the INFP label.  Whenever the test has been described to me, the concept of introversion seems more layered than how it’s widely understood.  Here, let’s let wikipedia take over for a moment:

In Western popular usage, Extraverts (also spelled extroverts^[1]) are thought to be gregarious, assertive, and interested in seeking out external stimulus. Introverts, in contrast, are seen as introspective, quiet and less sociable. They are not necessarily loners but they tend to have a smaller number of friends. Introversion does not describe social discomfort but rather social preference: an introvert may not be shy but may merely prefer fewer social activities.

The last sentence is what I find myself hung up on.  I identify strongly with all descriptions of introversion except that I feel like what I experience does actually include social discomfort along with social preference.  Perhaps I have some social anxiety along with simply being an introverted person?  Another possibility is that the wikipedia definition means that social discomfort is not present in all situations and that social preference is what dictates whether the discomfort is present or absent.

We just had a flurry of really fun performances for St. Patrick’s Day and I enjoyed almost every minute of it but it is taking me a lot longer than usual to bounce back and I’m puzzling over how performing saps me emotionally at least as much as it does physically.  I don’t mean this in a negative way.  I absolutely love performing with the band.  It’s very fulfilling for me and I don’t think I would be as happy a person without at least this amount of performing in my life.  As enjoyable as it is, it is very hard.  Not so much in the moment, but for the days following.

Luckily for me, I have some people in my life who are restorative to my soul.

Edited to add an update that is probably only interesting to me. I now test as an INFJ. *shrug*

I’m sick.

Liam had some sort of virus a little over a week ago and I think he shared it with me.  Generous child, that one.  I’ve been knocked flat in bed all day.

In many ways, I’m really lucky this unpleasantness landed on a rare day off for me when Joe is home taking care of the lads and the only thing I had to cancel is my guitar lesson.

But I love my guitar lessons.  And we also weren’t able to make it to a birthday party for our sweet little pal who’s turning two nor meet his brand new baby sister.

Did I mention that it was supposed to rain all weekend but it turned out instead that it is actually perfect weather for doing all the things that I really need and want to do outside in the yard?

I also missed the rapture completely because I was watching the season finale of Bones on hulu.  I’m just off today.

Joe is a really good parent.  I’ve been up here in the bedroom all day listening to the three of them knocking around together.

Does this seem a little disjointed and even more meaningless than usual?  Yeah, it wasn’t really supposed to be a blog post.  I wanted to write in my notebook but I can’t find a pen and I’ve already summoned Joe a meeellion times today in need of toast, soup, water, and sympathy.

I miss people today.   I really miss my friend who I can always count on to be as interested in all the everyday details of my life as I am in hers.  I miss my parents and my sister and Joe’s parents and his brother and all those good people in our extended family.  I miss our Iowa City friends who have moved to Oregon (yes, I miss you twice!), to Milwaukee, to Chicago, to Boston, to Cleveland, to San Francisco, to Botswana.  I miss my little goddaughter in South Dakota and her whole amazing family.  I miss my beautiful cousins in Ireland.

I miss the feeling of being on top of things which really hasn’t returned in the two months that I’ve been home from my trip.  At the rate we’re going, we’ll be lucky if we finish our spring curriculum before the school year starts in the fall.

I don’t really have a hold on things right now.  It’s not the worst feeling but it’s unsettling for me.  There are more changes on the horizon too, just enough so that I am left wondering if I will ever again feel like I’ve got it under control.

I just set the laptop down for a moment because two little boys clad in Ben 10 pajamas, one holding a hot pink recorder and the other holding a slightly bent slide whistle, came up to my bedroom so we could do what has become our evening ritual of “The Family Song” which is loosely based on the Phish song “Simple” (nod to my friend and fellow music therapist Blythe LaGasse who taught this to me during internship) followed by the theme song to “Spectacular Spiderman“, me on guitar and Joe on on mandolin.

So you know what?  Scratch all that.  It’s all good.  It’s grand.