the glory all goes to the extroverts.

To have any chance of

seeming normal or achieving success, one has to

impress strangers, attend conferences, make speeches, outshine

competitors, manage people, join in with prevailing enthusiasms, socialise,

travel a lot, go out often and date widely. It can take a very long time before we realise

that – however much we might hope for this to be otherwise – this is not in fact us

at all. For our part, we happen to get very worried before going to parties, we have felt

close to death before giving speeches, any kind of social occasion perturbs us heavily,

we're left extremely jittery by encounters with news and social media, we start to feel

sick if we haven't had the chance to sit on our own and process our thoughts for a

few hours every day, we're very awkward

about having to be responsible for anyone at work and we are extremely wary of jolliness

or demonstrations of group fervour.

Conversely, we adore staying at home, we'd be quite happy spending a whole weekend (or

even a few years) in our own company with some books and a laptop, we only properly

like about three people in the world, we love exploring different rooms in our minds, we

are reassured by friends who know how to confess their vulnerability and anxiety, we'd like

never to have to go to a party again, we almost never complain that things are too quiet and

we love peaceful landscapes and uneventful days. We quite like flowers too.

All of this can bring intense suspicion to bear on us in the modern world. Why are we

so timid? Why can't we sing along with everyone else? Why aren't we coming out to celebrate?

We conclude that we are weird and possibly ill long before we can accept that we may

just be very different. To be an introvert is to be constantly impacted

by undercurrents and hidden electricity in situations that others will miss. What can

make a party or a company meeting so exhausting for us is that we aren't merely expressing

our thoughts and chatting, we'll wonder what everyone has made of what we've just

said, we'll suspect that we have failed to understand an important dynamic, we'll

be struck by a peculiar possible hostility from someone in the corner, we'll worry

that our face has stuck in an unfortunate, gormless position. We are – when called

upon – canny observers of the human comedy, but minute by minute, we are also hellishly

and exhaustingly self-conscious.

It sounds difficult, but an introverted life

can also be a very grateful and rich life. We need so much less in order to have enough.

We don't require noise and attention. We don't care where the giant party is. We

just want to potter around in our boring clothes, chat to the few people we feel comfortable

with, take walks and lie in the bath a lot. There can be so much in things if we let them

resonate properly. How much we've already seen; how many journeys we've already been

on; how much we've already read; what tumults we've already been through. We don't really

need more.

We're like children who don't need too much stimulation from outside.

An hour at a lively birthday party and it's imperative for us to go straight home and have a nap.

Recognising our introverted nature is not merely a piece of poetic self-knowledge. It

belongs to our mental health – for failing to make the correct accommodation with our

introversion is a fast route to overload and ensuing anxiety and paranoia. What we term

a breakdown is often simply an introverted mind crying out for greater peace, rest, self-compassion

and harmony. Experienced introverts therefore realise a need to push against the extroverted

agenda. Their sanity relies on being able to cleave to the insular routines they need.

We have at least got a vocabulary for explaining the structure of our personalities to others.

The next step will be to learn how to honour it – and properly allow people to lead the

quieter lives their temperaments crave and deserve.

Our book on confidence walks us around the key issues that stop us from making more of our potential.