It’s not uncommon that introverts are classified “highly sensitive person” and for good reason, because they are in a way more transparent on the surface.
Therefore how they’re feeling and how their sensations affect them is often more exposed to others.
As a consequence the extroverts are less classified or not at all, for their surface is more shielded and more polished and they seem at first glance to handle emotional bumps more easily. Therefore their sensations are less noticed and they themselves as well.
Both types are just as sensitive to their emotions and inner state; they simply react to them differently and apply different meanings to them. I’ve often stated that we live in a two dimensional reality – or perception of outer reality.
That statement applies to this area, for in a superficial perception of reality the extrovert fits in and the introvert doesn’t, therefore when these two types are discussed you might hear a sentence like “are You a highly sensitive person” with a hint of a suggestive tone – and the sensitive introvert (who might be one of the biverts* who can alternate between the two types) might actually excuse and explain what he is.
I often have periods – some of them even quite long, counting years – where I’m acting as an either type. In that sense I could be classified as bivert, but I don’t identify myself as such, particularly as I rebel against classifications and labels – in general and in particular.
Just like an A person or B person is a classification, a limitation and self-patronizing downgrade, I’d rather be a Rooster or an Owl. If a label is needed, then at least we can keep it interesting – in our pleasant Industrial Ghetto.
Therefore I refuse to Be an introvert or extrovert or bivert; just as much as when I do carpentry I am doing the carpenter and not being a carpenter. I can assume any role and part which pleases me or fits my needs. Those years when I acted the extrovert role I found myself quite at ease in that Persona, and did things which fitted that part. As those times when I introverted, I was doing other things.
In various discussions with friends and acquaintances through the years I have found that both types are equally sensitive to their inner world and to sensations. Often I have found that while the introvert often solves difficult emotional complications more easily and resolutely than the extrovert, particularly because he findst it easier to admit to his state and find a channel for it.
There are of course lots of exceptions and variations on this and I do this generalisation hesitantly. For example when it comes to the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types, originally inspired by Jung’s pioneering work, all types are interested in discovering their own types – or those of friends – and using the four-letter results, as “I am xyzb” or such.
Ouch, xyzb doesn’t fit that model! Shame on me – I’m a rebel (with a cause).
If one googles the myers-briggs model or just “personality types” one finds that there are numerous websites offering personality tests, usually well made sites and attractive and often with enought reading material to meet the needs of a modern busy consumer, and others less attractive but often with even more material to read up on.
These sites are all made by children of the consumer’s world – the quantifiable industrial ghetto children who are searching for meaning in their minds, lost to their own souls.
Ouch – I generalized again; perhaps I’m “xyzd” after all.
There are many other systems available to discover personality types. Astrology is one of them. Numerology another. Tarot cards are yet another, and then there is the power-animalistic version or shamanic version. There are of course some bar-versions which uses more common terms. For example: You’re an idiot. You’re a hoe, you clever sob, and so forth and so on.
At the end of the day; you have to live with all versions of you and you either love you or don’t. All else is secondary, classified or not. Diamond has thousand surfaces, and then some.
I take Jung’s ideas only as milestones on his journey and pointers to make my own – that’s precisely my critique of people who follow his pointers, that most of them don’t dare to go outside his box and use their own dynamic creativity to make their own.
For example I might just as easily replace his archetypes with the 66 santa claus’es or flower-spirits — or anything which guides me through my soulmountain – I also incorporate when I can quantum-spirituality: what you reflect upon reflects back, and then add the twilight zone between those two poles .
