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InkBlott
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C'mon. I don't think you'll find one person in several hundreds who lives by the equation Homicidal=Introverted. Yes, a good many killers have been described as loners. A good many more have been described as boisterous, abusive, mean drunk etc.
In fact, the quiet person is as likely as not described as "strong, silent type," "a man of few words," "self contained" and "having an air of mystery about him." He or she "doesn't waste words." We've built the whole cowboy mystique around this. Charles Lindbergh was "The Lone Eagle" not just for his solo New York - Paris flight but because. afterwards, he bore so much of his celebrity in polite, dignified silence.
Calvin Coolidge was approached by a woman who said, "Mr President, I bet a friend I could get three words out of you." "You lose," he replied; and America laughed. A German officer demanded General McAuliffe surrender the 101st Airborne at Bastogne and he replied "Nuts." (Or so said the press. I've heard it said that the one-word response was quite a bit more forceful.) We made him a hero.
It's been my observation that the few people who really are bothered by introverted behavior are those who expect others to be like they are; and who are not all that secure in themselves. (In Jungian usage, their Selves.) It strikes me that your problem - to the extent it is a problem - might fall more under the heading of shyness, not introversion. The two often go together and, as I said in my first, fully half (at least) of the yakking extraverts you deal with are introverts faking it. (I am still, in many ways, one of them.)
If you are really stuck in a job where you have to spend a lot of time talking, face to face, you might consider a public speaking course or Toastmasters International. The first really helped me open up, I think my Dad would've said the same about the second. Either should help you develop a certain comfort in this situation that you (and a lot more people than you think) don't like; and a certain confidence that, however much you'd rather be elsewhere, you can effectively function in it.
Eudaimonist really wraps it up. You are under no obligation - unless you are Saint Paul - to be all things to all people. You are certainly under no obligation to routinely torture yourself talking for hours about nothing because you're among "friends." The friends worth having are the ones who take you as you are. As you find them and they find you, I think you'll find you're not the social isolate you seem to think you are. In fact, that you're liked because you tend to speak only when you have something to say.
Thank you for your input. Much of it is encouraging.
I might add, however, that I am not shy. I'm quite self-confident in interacting with the public. I just don't find it natural, and have to create a rather exhausting persona in order to do so. It's an effective persona, but an inwardly costly one.
Here is a somewhat more challenging task: give an account of celebrated female introverts.
Of course the public does not make the direct connection of introvert = psychotic killer. It is a rather more subtle thing. I find that I am as likely to be described as 'weird' as I am 'quiet.' Am I weird? No. I work, obey the law, maintain a neat home, support my favorite charities, speak sensibly, have no odd tics, dress normally and have never had more than two cats at a time. But to many people 'quiet' and 'weird' feel very much the same in practice. This is why when neighbors find out that old Fred next door was actually cooking and eating the neighborhood pets and making their bones into mobiles, the fact that he was 'quiet' immediately connects in their minds, as if that fact alone should have clued them in that he was 'weird.'
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