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One glaring topic I have neglected to cover in this podcast and blog is extroverts. Approximately 30% of HSPs are extroverts! (btw, it can also be spelled extravert).
In this episode, I share tidbits I’ve learned from interviewing extroverted HSPs, including the challenges and differences of being the wonderful way they are.
Read the blog post version of this episode.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Podcast music attribution: By the Coast (2004) (Antony Raijekov) / CC BY-NC 2.5
I’m an extroverted HSP and greatly related to the interview quotes. I am indeed on that tightrope, feeling drained by being alone, yet highly affected by the many connections I’m drawn to. I find balance with self-care, trying to bookend social gatherings with solitude.
Thank you for this podcast.
Yes!!!
Thank you for the wonderful podcast and newsletters! I am actually both introvert and extravert and definitely an HSP. So I need lots of alone time but love meeting new people ( but ideally for short encounters). All your podcasts have resonated with me. It helps to know I am not alone or weird I’ve become much more accepting of myself thanks again Kelly!
Thank you for sharing Kat! I’m so happy it helps you!! 🙂
I think you should regularly have an extraverted HSP also being descried alongside issues for introverts, because we are 30% of the dang group.
Sorry I hit submit too fast. I just wanted to say that I am 50 years old, and have blamed others or myself my entire life for the drudgeries of my life—the perceived attacks and deep deep pain I have suffered emotionally and physically my entire life. I can’t even work anymore from a pain disorder, and it took meeting someone who also has HSP although she is introverted—She is and INFJ and I am an ENFJ. However, I have spent the past 5 years of my life alone and feeling although I have been rejected by everyone in my life and have been disabled. I was going to be a lawyer–and after I took the bar exam 10 times—almost passing several times, I had a mental meltdown. People had to tell me to stop, my wife left me and I was afraid to watch television—even Netflix if I didn’t know what it was, because if it ended badly I had panic attacks. I have just very recently found out that I am part of this club, and also the small club of the NFJ’s. There had to be a reason why most of my dearest friends and closest family members were introverts. I never could understand most of this as a teen, but still I could never quite hit the right handle of being “in.” The only place I ever felt exactly right was in law school, but that is a limited time, and cannot be extended or reassumed. I recently told my friend and dear mentor, and law school dean, that I am an HSP—she has said she has always known this about me, and that it is exciting, but can be very hard. I have to re-look at so much of my life now to understand what went wrong so much of the time. So I am going through a lot. It’s just a good thing my new lover is an HSP and a NFJ, and that she doesn’t mind it when I talk too much. LOL. I feel like I can just be me for the first time in my life.
This is amazing –> “I feel like I can just be me for the first time in my life.”
I feel like breathing a huge breath of fresh air for YOU as I read this sentence. I am excited for you and what the future holds.
I would like to think I am an introverted extrovert. I really appreciate this episode because I now fully connect to what it means to be a highly sensitive person.
This was great! I can relate to so much of it! I love and crave being around people. I even have fun when I’m there! Unfortunately, I leave and start thinking and thinking about everything I said and did and how people are thinking about me and thinking they don’t like me. I was actually diagnosed as having “social anxiety”. I’m not typically afraid of being in those situations at all…unless I’m in a “funk” that day. I may think too much about how I’ll feel afterwards and talk myself out of going, but that’s rare and a more recent problem that I’ve had. Thank you!
OMG This is the first time I have read anything about being HSP and also about being HSP and extroverted.. And for the first time I don’t feel so alone or weird or crazy or wrong or stupid..
I always knew I had a ‘thing’ that I was different from those around me. I am hugely sensitive, pathetically, outrageously sensitive to the world, to colour, emotions, people.. sound – when I was a kid I couldn’t go to the beach because the sound of the waves crashing used to freak me out, I’m also ultra sensitive to caffeine, and I can get absolutely overwhelmed by people, pressure, emotions. But I am also tough and funny and gregarious and take the lead socially and love to be around crowds.
Thanks so much for this blog and podcast. I don’t feel so alone. I have been recently consumed by self hatred and humiliation after a group holiday from hell which I organized in a flash of enthusiasm but which crumbled into my worst nightmare due to pressures of expectations from the group and overwhelm…
I always knew I was hyper sensitive but I thought I had to overcome it, now I am reading it is something to accept and maybe even celebrate.
Thank you
thank you for the kind comment!
Introversion and extroversion are extremes on a continuum. I myself am roughly 50/50, so I can relate to both sides. I too am someone who needs social contact regularly – if not my mood goes down and I feel empty inside. But I also don’t enjoy big parties with lots of people and noise, and if I do go to one like that I usually need to take breaks and go home early to wind down before bed. My ideal situation is to spend time with a good friend or a small group every few days and do something relaxing or fun (just talk/drink tea, go hiking, go for dinner, see a film, go swimming etc). I find this balance between alone time very tricky to strike, but until now I wasn’t aware that this was a specific challenge for extroverted HSPs. So thank you for this episode, it helped me understand what is going on!
*balance between alone time and socializing
This is mind blowing. Thank you so much, Kelly!
I thought, without doubt, that I have been and I will ever be an introvert.
But, when I heard what extrovert HSPs describe their desire to be with people, it sounded a lot like my desire, too.
I feel strong desire to be with people.
I am totally energized, even “high”, after having good time with people (strangers, friends don’t matter), and I don’t feel like wanna go home.
But also,
I feel totally exhausted after certain occasions, and feel strong desire to be alone.
I came to realize that my self-description of being 100% introvert has been an unfair judgement to myself. I have this mechanism that interprets “my extroverted desires” into “some sort of responsibility to conform with social ideal/norm”. I thought that I felt like wanna meet with people because I HAVE TO avoid isolating myself from society.
But, now, I begin to realize, I feel like wanna meet with people simply because I WANT TO.
I think I’m picky. I need a right set of people to enable me enjoy the interaction.
And I believe that the right set must include reasonable amount of HSPs. That surely makes me comfortable and enriches that sense of belongings.
But, being picky doesn’t necessarily make me a 100% introvert.
I’m floating somewhere in the middle of introvert/extrovert barometer, and it moves depending on situation.
Best of all, I finally feel alright about myself being just this way!
Does anyone know of a podcast and or support group for the HSP Extrovert?
Thanks!
Susannah