creative gatherings: a guide for introverts {part two}

a common myth in our culture is that introverts do not like being with people.  introverts love (or dislike) other people the same as extraverts.  as we discussed in part one of the guide, being in large groups for prolonged periods of time is energy-depleting for introverts and we aren't naturally skilled at and don't enjoy small-talk or chitchat.   introverts feel the same human emotions of connection and belonging and have desires to be with people who share their passions, it just might be necessary for us to manage those situations a bit differently.

most creative retreats where artists, writers, seekers, poets, yogis, photographers want to gather are going to be brimming with introverts.   because an introvert's comfort zone is internal and reflective, we tend to fancy the arts, writing and other inner-focused or inner-sourced endeavors.  of course there are many creatives who prefer extraversion with whom we will be retreating or workshopping, but generally you can count on more introverts attending a creative retreat than, say, a noisy and crowded social event where the primary purpose is to mingle with mostly strangers.

but even though we can count on a large number of introverts being present with us at creative retreats, we still have to manage the social aspects of the gathering.  this starts way before we get there.  the good news is this requires a bit of research, something most introverts enjoy.

know your retreat
spend a good amount of time here to gather as much information as you can about retreat options so that you can make the best decision for you and your creative and introverted needs.  i recommend doing a lot of online research.  peruse the retreat website and participant blog posts about the retreat (usually there are links on the website).  how is the overall feel of the retreat described?  what kind of classes and activities are offered?  what are the images communicating to you?

email or call (who are we kidding?  email.) the retreat organizer to gather more information about the energy of the gathering.  how many participants will there be?  what do the social activities entail? what about the schedule, is there downtime/freetime space?  are there places and spaces and opportunities to seek solitude?

talk to friends or connections that have attended retreats.  i like to get an introvert's perspective and an extravert's perspective.

consider the type of retreat.  writing retreats (or gatherings where writing is a primary activity) are probably going to naturally support more introversion.

most retreats are going to have social and extraverted activities.  this is good!  it allows you the opportunity to flex your balance muscles and practice extraversion.

here is a list of retreats either i or a close friend have attended which create space for introverts and extraverts to gather harmoniously:

animyst gatherings
be present retreats
call of the wild soul retreats
creative joy and taos writer retreats
life is a verb camp (this one is on my radar for 2015)
lucky star art camp
squam art workshops

this list is in no way exclusive, there are many many retreat options out there.  research away!

think about your own privacy preferences when it comes to lodging
thoughtful organizers are going to ask for your preferences when it comes to arranging lodging. usually this looks like a question or questions on your registration form about your privacy/social preferences and whether you prefer a single room or to have a roommate.  i have experienced a variety of lodging arrangements at retreats: roommates, single rooms, and staying off-site.

don't automatically rule out the roommate situation.  i've been incredibly blessed with the luck-of-the draw when it comes to retreat roommates (hello sarah and mindy) and housemates and most have become lifelong friends.  you may have the option to request a specific person to be your roommate and the retreat organizer will manage the final arrangement, taking the other person's preferences into account.  you might also want to contact the organizer to talk about how they do their roommate matchmaking and how/if you can help them make a good decision for you.

it's a good idea to let your roommate know you are introverted and you both can come to an agreement about sharing space harmoniously.

a single private room in a house full of people is a good option.  i've chosen this option before and it provides for a good balance of social interaction with privacy.

recently i had the opportunity to attend a retreat while staying offsite.  i attended the regular workshops, meals and evening activities of the retreat, but then left the site to sleep in a private house (this might also be a hotel room). this option allowed introverted me to feel less chained to the site.  i tend to need more alone-time in the morning, so it also allowed me to delay socializing by having my coffee, thinking and morning meditation, then arriving on site shortly before workshops began.

the price i paid for this option was that i missed out on some of the (intoverted-preferred, more intimate) conversations and connections that tend to happen around the retreat site/house at night and in the early mornings. and i really did miss that.

consider how travel options might affect your introversion
the ideal travel situation for my introversion is to drive, by myself, to and from the retreat.  this solitary time gives me plenty of introverted downtime to store energy for the upcoming retreat and to restore energy after the retreat. another option is driving partway by myself and picking up a fellow retreat participant on the way.

flying is another common option for transportation  let's consider how flying generally affects introverts.  even though there are a lot of people in airports and on the plane, there is little social requirement to interact so introverts tend to be okay with flying.  however, you are always taking the chance of being seated (captured) next to someone who needs to talk to you throughout the flight.  when i don't want to talk, i put my earbuds in (before i enter the airport) even if they are not connected to my devise.  this gives most people the subtle cue that i am not open to conversation right now.  hint:  i do this while shopping as well.

if your anxiety increases with flying, consider that we tend to cling to our preferences (introversion or extraversion) under stressful situations.  remember, this is our comfort zone, so it's our automatic happy place.  if you are stressed or anxious for other reasons, your introversion may be exaggerated and interaction may seem more depleting than usual.  we become even more introverted and extraverts become even more extraverted.  carl jung called this phenomenon being "in the grip" of our personality; it happens with the other domains of our personality as well (the other myers-briggs letters).

get a job
where do you find introverts at a party?  in the kitchen.  introverts love to have a little job during social events.  kitchen jobs and other opportunities to help the host give us a break from the responsibility of group interaction.  there may be an opportunity for volunteering or even work-study at gatherings. ask your organizer.

make preparations for your return
before the retreat is the time to think about re-entry (that weird hard time between retreat life and real life).  once you've selected the prefect retreat for you, remember you are going to need time and space to recover energy after the retreat.  this is especially important for introverts.

part four of this guide will focus exclusively on re-entry.  but at this point, when we are choosing the retreat, we need to consider location and dates and our own schedule and real-life responsibilities and give ourselves some buffer time here.

part three will cover how we can care for ourselves during the creative gathering.  it will be up in a week or so.

balancing intuition

i want to write a bit about the second, and my personal favorite, dichotomy on the myers-briggs type indicator:  intuition (n) and sensing (s).

if, like me, the second letter in your myers-briggs type is n, the type of information and experiences you most easily take in and trust are abstract, imaginative, theoretical.  people who prefer intuition trust their internal ideas, thoughts and instincts.  those who prefer intuition primarily use their own internal world's lens to experience the world.  they tend to be imaginative and visionary. 

people who prefer sensing, on the other hand, trust and like concrete, physical and known information and experiences.  people who prefer sensing primarily use their five senses (sight, touch, taste, sound and scent) to experience the world.  they tend to be grounded and solid.

one of the goals of the myers-briggs is to help people become aware of their inborn preferences so that they can actively seek balance in the opposite preferences for a fuller, richer life.

as a woman who strongly prefers intuition, i can stay in the beautiful and magical world in my head for hours and sometimes days.  i like to daydream, imagine, and ponder.  i relish and trust those fantastical flashes from my unconscious. 

to balance intuition, i need to seek more grounded experiences and focus on activities that engage my five senses.  the element that best incorporates all five senses for me is water:

seeing water:  the sight of the great blue sea makes me feel part of a big world that i can trust.  the straight blue horizon line reminds me that the world is perfectly balanced in space. 

smelling water:  the salt, the lives (fish, plants, sand, shells) it holds and nurtures.  the scent of clean.  the scent of childhood.

tasting water:  it tastes like nothing.  like space.  like emptiness.

hearing water:  one of my favorite sounds is the lonely drip of the faucet when i am lying in a quiet bath.  its perfect cadence and tone ground me in the physical world.  sometimes i submerge my head to lose myself in the underwater world of silence.  the drip softly penetrates that world and calls me back to surface.  to breathe.

touching water:  as it rolls across my skin, the dirt of life--both physical and emotional--is cleansed.  floating in water, my body is weightless and fluid and returns to its first environment.  its home environment.

how do you experience water?  

what are some ways you can live today through your five senses?

{beautiful water images are from my pinterest five senses board.}

if you are interested in a more spiritual and artful take on the myers-briggs, i'm in the process of creating a program.  please see here.  i'd love your thoughts and comments.

a team of one

my name is lisa and i am a recovering fake extrovert. 

from very early on, the resounding message in my home, my classrooms, my playgrounds and sunday school classes was that my natural inclination to seek solitude to think things through and imagine solutions was the wrong way to go.  join the group, share your ideas (and allow others to claim them as their own), brainstorm, work as a team; these were the commands repeated by my mother, teachers, girlscout leaders and anyone else whose job it was to help me succeed.

i learned that extroversion, and particularly the group-joining model of extroversion, was the best and only path to success.  very early on i perfected my extroverted persona.   i painfully volunteered to be in the play, give the speech, lead the group.  and i was good at it.  and it worked.  because our american culture values a strong team player above all else.

it's only in the last year and my new training and work with myers-briggs that i have discovered my true and lovely introverted self.  i peeled away the numbed layers of pain from years of being a pretend extrovert.  i realized that often being a part of the team left my ideas and contributions misunderstood,  "dumbed down" or hijacked by the inevitable team climber.  embracing my introversion has actually allowed me to be more effective and certainly more authentic in a group.

thank god we as a culture are starting to realize that our obsession with teamwork has gone too far.  i'm reading the book "quiet" by susan cain.  if you are an introvert, or a pretend extrovert, or an actual extrovert, it will totally be worth your time to spend twenty minutes watching her ted talk.

i am dedicating this weekend to introversion.  there will be reading, gardening, one-on-one talks, photography, cooking and lots and lots of thinking and writing.  sounds like heaven to me.

my intj week

this week i got certified to administer and train the myers-briggs type indicator.  it was a great training and i met some really great people.  but i'm a homebody and i don't like being away from home for more than a few days, so i'm happy to be back.  here are a few things i did completely in line with my type, which is intj (introverted, intuition, thinking, judging):

at the end of each (very full) day, i had to sneak out before people started making dinner plans with each other.  i needed space and time to recharge.  i needed to be alone, even in a crowd of strangers.  i loved the training and liked the people, but that didn't matter.  all energy i had for interaction was drained.  each night, i took myself to dinner and did a little shopping.  (introverted)

my favorite new place is sweetgreen.  i love the vibe in the space and the organic and local salads.  i am now on a mad hunt for at least one of those bright yellow metal french chairs.  and they do a little trick which is helpful for greens-avoidant types like me:  they put the good stuff (the grilled chicken, avocado, etc.) underneath the greens in the bowl.  that way you have to make your way through the greens to get to the goods.  i love this idea because i typically eat the top part of my salad and leave most of the greens. 

at papersource, i got a smash journal and accoutrement (thanks liz!), some paper and art stuff.  my "inferior" preference is sensing (practical, real, hands-on, concrete) so the art supplies will help me develop there...putting my ideas (intuition) into action making something (sensing).  we learned a lot about how our type should ideally develop over our lifetime and in true j fashion, i started making a plan to develop my sensing function.  in true n fashion, i imagine the art will be quite fabulous, because you should see it in my head.

working on my poor inferior sensing function has been added to my list of resolutions.  one of the things i learned this week that rang so true for me is that as an n (intuitive), things are, were and always will be better in my own imagination.  this is why i am frequently disappointed in vacations and other experiences.   while i adore and can't imagine going without my rich internal world, this consequence of the n type has always bothered me.  so i will be focusing a lot on the present and being in the actual experience.

good good things

• i spent my saturday afternoon in a house full of happiness.  beautiful people aged one month to seventy-or-so years gathered to celebrate the second birthday of the most precious little girl.  it's nourishing to be surrounded by healthy happy children and moms and dads who are loving, attentive and conscientious parents (provides a nice balance to my job).  there was a lot of playing and laughing and piñata engineering.  oh and ice cream cake.
• today i am off to the d.c. area for a weeklong training to be a certified myers-briggs tester/facilitator.  i'm very excited about this!  have you done the myers-briggs?  what's your type? i'm an intj.
• thrilled that my hotel is next door to a whole foods and within easy distance of everything else i love:  yoga, anthro, papersource.  papersource!!!  it will be good to be in the city for a few days.
• the coaching is going well!  my first week has been full of awareness and small-but-life-altering steps to wellness.  i love my coach.  she is intuitive and genuine and smart and funny.  her name is meg.  do you know her?  if not, get to know her.  you can thank me later.
• the year of the dragon starts this week!  i am a dragon baby.  and a sagittarius.  and an intj.  go figure.
• what is good with you?