How I Came to Be a Quiet Campaigner
I am not a psychologist, health-care professional or university graduate. I am an ordinary person with an ordinary office job and a passion for helping people understand themselves and each other and for championing the right to be an individual.
As I child I was painfully reserved, bullied mercilessly and given labels from shy to antisocial from teachers and family friends and doctors. It was only in my late teens that I finally learnt about introversion and that it is a normal personality trait and not a kind of mental illness. From then on I became very interested in personality psychology and have read extensively. I attend the 2006 HSP gathering in San Francisco and feel very fortunate to have met Elaine Aron, Jacquelyn Strickland and Susan Cain, who was researching her book at the time.
I have come a long way, twenty years down the track; I'm able to talk to strangers relatively easily, I can speak up and contribute to team meetings and I enjoy the occasional social activity. However, I'm still happiest when I'm on my own going for a walk, pottering in the garden or painting in my studio.
The Journey to Self Understanding
At school and I had it drummed into me by my peers and teachers that there was something wrong with me. Yet, deep down, I didn’t believe I was ‘mentally or socially ill’. I simply thought I was different, but had no way of explaining or proving to my peers, teachers, parents and family doctor that different was just another kind of normal. When I was about 13 my parents took me to a psychologist, hoping to help me become more like the other kids at school. I remember telling her in no uncertain terms that I had no interest in becoming like the other kids (they tormented me endlessy, why would I want to be like them?). She was a little shocked - under my timid exterior stood a pillar of determination. I didn't need to see her much after that.I am forever grateful for that strength, though I don't know where it came from. I didn't make things easier, perhaps it even made things more difficult for me because the more people encouraged me to be like everyone else, the more I resolved to be myself, which only made me stand out from the crowd even more.
In the early 1990s when we finally got a computer and the Internet at home, my father told me to do a psychology test online that a colleague had suggested to him. It annoyed me greatly as I was now in my early 20s and still he was 'trying to fix me'. I believe he thought that it was the only way I would be convinced to get help; that I would do the test and the results would say 'you have a serious social disorder, seek professional help immediately'.
It turned out it was a Myers-Briggs personality test and instead of telling me I was ill, it told me what I had believed all along – that I was perfectly normal and that I had an INFJ personality type common in about one percent of the population. I was thrilled with the result, at last I had proof that there wasn't anything wrong with me. I discussed it with my parents and got them to do the test as well and we discovered that they're both introverts too. My father had seen his over introversion as a serious flaw and felt he had failed me when he saw the same 'flaw' in me.
When I was 27 I immigrated to New Zealand from South Africa, alone. This was the most exciting, scary, stressful and exhausting experience of my life. There are times in the first few months that I believed I had made a mistake, that I just wasn't strong enough for what I was attempting. I considered looking for professional help, but wasn't sure that talking to someone would really be all that useful - what I really needed was more energy. I was in the library one evening, looking at the self-help books, but nothing seemed appropriate for my situation. I was on my out when I passed the psychology aisle and a book sticking out from one of the shelves caught my eye. It was The Highly Sensitive Person by Dr Elaine Aron. It was as if she had written it specifically about me. I realised I was an HSP and suddenly it all made sense - I was simply suffering from mental and sensory overload. After that I no longer felt guilty about getting extra rest and sleeping all weekend. Soon my energy began to return and I have never looked back.
Understanding who you are and respecting your own needs can change your life. It did for me.
