> And the idea of approaching and talking to someone I don't know fills me with terror.
I think this is social anxiety and not to be confused with introversion.
I think this is social anxiety and not to be confused with introversion.
And I used an extreme example. In general, among introverts, some have a high tolerance for social interactions, some have a very low tolerance and there are people everywhere in between. Or to use the terminology of introverts having to expend energy to interact with other people, you could say different people have different fuel efficiencies.
The common theme for us seems to be that we expend a lot of energy when talking with others. We analyze what they say, in order to come up with thought-through responses or follow-up questions. We don't do "chit chat" as such.
Before such events I dread them, because I know it will feel exhausting. Yet when I'm at them I have a good time. Afterwards however it feels almost exactly like I've been programming hard for a whole day, my brain is spent.
I, unlike my SO, also has some social anxiety. I'm very likely somewhere on the spectrum, as I often feel difficulty getting social interactions right. So I spend some extra energy thinking about what the right response is to this or that, or how to interpret body language. Especially if it's a new setting or a lot of new people this can cause a lot of extra mental work.
This part however has gotten better with the years, mostly because I've stopped caring so much what others think and just let myself be myself more.
I came to realize that I'm really not that important. People aren't watching me. People aren't evaluating or judging me. They forget me when I move on. I'm not profound etc. They don't hang on my every word.
All that are things I put on myself. Nobody really "cares" what I say though, I'm just not that important.
Once I leave my ego out the equation, talking to people is a LOT simpler.
I’m an introvert and my wife have SA. TBH it’s pretty different : if I go to an event where I know nobody or where I don’t feel like I have something to say, I’ll just go and keep politely quiet. I’ll get more bored and lost in my own thoughts or just listening without talking than stressed.
My wife on the other hand is like you said, terrified and exhausted by such settings and even with familiar meetings. Moreover, the SA doesn’t stops when you start interacting while introversion can disappear or become unnoticeable once you are integrated to the discussion.
Also I feel like introversion can somehow be controlled as you age while social anxiety don’t or can get worse.
I’m In my 30´s, I’m still an introvert but I learned how to interact with strangers politely without giving a fuck. My wife with SA clearly can’t do that at all and is always asking herself if what she just said was appropriate.
I would be very, very surprised if most people with social anxiety aren't also introverts.
Introversion: This person gets energy from being alone or with close friends in a routine situation. (Not the same as being lonely, mind!). They feel attracted by situations and environments promising those situations.
Extraversion: This person recharges by mingling with other people. From small talk at the water cooler to larger social gatherings. They feel attracted by social gatherings, and want to be part of them.
Social Anxiety: This person is anxious in social gatherings (of people not being close friends or family). They have feelings of inadequacy about themselves as social beings, and fear being devalued for acting wrong or - worse - being wrong.
Those concepts are related but not at all the same. Persons being both extraverted and socially anxious long for social situations involving new people, but at the same time feel inadequate of being in them. Or ruminate about their behaviour afterwards. Or actively try to get comments of positive validation from their peers during or after the gathering.
At the same time people can be introverted and not socially anxious at all. I have a colleague like that: loves working alone, doesn't need companions even for longer, more demanding projects, but at the same time has zero qualms leading a team, talking to customers, going in front of unknown audiences. It just exhausts them.
Introversion and Extraversion are concepts involving motivations: What situations do people feel attracted to.
Anxiety is essentially about fear of inadequacy, or perceived lack of agency about a situation. So not about motivation, but about a concept of self.
There are, of course, feedback loops enabling correlations like the introversion + social anxiety one. Children (adults too, for that matter) have multiple avenues of gaining validation and positive experience in live, e.g. social competency (as colleague, parent, friend, community member,...), physical performance (sports, crafting, ...), intellectual performance and so on. If they learn that they are good at a thing, they tend to do that thing more often, because the experience of competency feels good. They will experience these kinds of situations more, and thus gain more competency in these kinds of situations.
Now if a child is often ill, and can't go play outside with their peers, it won't do nothing inside, but instead probably be reading or drawing or crafting. So it will not learn social skills at that time, but will get better at drawing and crafting. If it already had a tendency to introversion, that tendency will probably get stronger.
OTOH imagine a child that was very socially active in early childhood, but then , around 12 years old, the parents moved and the child had to change schools, and got bullied in the new school. This kid probably was extraverted and now gained strong feelings of social inadequacy, of not belonging, of being somehow different or wrong as a person. They will still feel attracted to social situations, but thanks to their experience of being bullied, this will feel very stressful to them. Extraverted and socially anxious.
One of the difficult things about Social Anxiety, at least for me, is that talking to a therapist is just about the most anxiety inducing thing I could do.
So one could be really eager to socialise but find it terrifying to approach (social anxiety), especially if many unknown people are involved.