LOCKDOWN REALITIES.

I remember, when I was in Year Eleven, doing the Myer-Briggs Portraits of Temperament Test, that assessed whether you were an introvert or an extrovert, sensing or intuitive, thinking or feeling or judging or perceiving. I emerged as an ISTJ. I try to be coolheaded, and when I have time to think and process things, I can be. I become fired up about injustice (numerous politicians, including the former US president, make me extremely fired up and I told my cardiologist that were it not for my ARBs and beta blockers, I’d have probably had a heart attack over one Australian politician who sends me from calm to explosive at the drop of a hat) and I do take much time alone with my thoughts.

So, when I read that introverts tended to cope with the COVID19 related lockdowns better than extroverts, I thought, “Really?! I am hardly surprised to know that!” (sarcasm font)

I remember, when I was five, being in the car with my parents and we were talking about matching opposites and my mother said, “If that is the interior of the car, what is this?” and I said, “Interior.” “That’s right.”

Your extrovert is your typical party animal, someone who draws strength from being around others. Your introvert is someone who draws strength from being alone. As David Kearsey said in Portraits of Temperament, your introvert will leave a party early on. “Your introvert is not a party pooper but is pooped by the party.”

To an extrovert, being told that you can’t have a weekend consisting of: Friday night, meet friends at nightclub, dance the night away until closing time of 3AM, arrive home at 4AM, a few hours sleep, a Berocca and breakfast, meeting a friend for coffee, home, shower, meet friends at nightclub, dance until 3AM, home at 4AM, a bit of sleep, lunch with a friend, home, dinner, sleep, wake up Monday morning, coffee and breakfast, rave to colleagues about weekend, is almost as bad as sending them to an Abbey or confining them to a prison cell.

To an introvert, however, not having to catch a bus to work where the only seat is beside a woman who has sprayed on a little too much perfume and across from the gentleman whose well-tailored suit stinks from the cigarette he had at his stop is similarly uncomfortable. Not to mention the open-plan office in which they are forced to work with the noise of the photocopier and only a narrow partition separating them from their colleague who is noisily sipping the cup of soup they got from the coffee machine while noisily clicking away at their keyboard.

The introvert yearns for the return of offices that are not glass cubicles, but walled in with wooden doors, where they cannot be seen by their colleagues.

The introvert’s weekend typically consists of Friday afternoon/evening arriving home, dinner, an evening spent either watching television or reading, sleeping. Saturday: breakfast alone, a tidy of their unit, flat or house, doing some laundry, lunch, reading a book, bringing in the laundry, dinner, an evening in front of the television, sleep. Sunday: wake up, buy the paper, breakfast, chores, lunch, reading or watching television, dinner and a call to Mum or Dad or adult sibling, and I should have mentioned, the shopping could even be click and collect Friday evening on the way home.

That is not to say that an introvert is a misanthrope, we can, amongst people who bring us joy, have quite stimulating conversations, but environments that are dominated by people can tax our reserves. So, for us, the lockdown has been very little variation from what we typically do. The only thing that has been difficult is, especially for us autistic introverts, when we know that a lockdown is coming, say from 6PM, we have to fight the crowds to get our comfort foods. So, if we like steak or chicken, that is what we want from the store before it’s sold out. It has made us wish that shopping could be done in a manner that says, “Limit of this much per customer, and if we have warning of a three day lockdown, two pieces of steak per customer, two pieces of this, two pieces of that, and there’s enough for everyone.”

So, let’s not be too surprised by these findings. They are, after all, unsurprising.