Personality Traits, Introverts, Extroverts and Everything in Between

How to build your own recharge ritual and learn to choose yourself

11 min readNov 28, 2020

From a young age, we are taught how to be kind, how to love and how to show up… for everyone but ourselves. We are taught that putting ourselves first is selfish. For some reason we are not taught to build a relationship with ourselves, to get to know yourself so deeply that we know what we want and more importantly, what we need.

At the age of sixteen we are asked to make a decision on what we want to do for the rest of our lives, and not knowing is not an option. This is usually the first time we are asked to make a decision for ourselves, by ourselves, that will shape the rest of our lives — and wow, what a heavy decision it is.

I see the world fundamentally different from other people, for many reasons. What people say and how they interact has always intrigued me. I have known from an extremely young age what my passion is, what I need as a person to thrive and recharge. Still, being headstrong and adamant, at the age of sixteen I had to go against everything I had been taught and fight for my choices, and for myself. I had studied design and psychology from a young age, in and out of school and wanted to go into design as a career, which at the time I didn’t know would progress into UX — but my school had other ideas. I had to have meetings upon meetings with my parents and my school to fight to do the subjects that I wanted to do, as they saw it as an unstable career… if I even manage to get a job at all.

It’s worth adding that I didn’t have a bad school, however, they are taught to make sure that the students are vaguely equipped to go into the world and have a fighting chance. This is a lesson to be learnt — most people that try to stop you in life have their own set of reasons. Realistically, they should have done their research on me and the career I knew I was going into, and educated me on the statistics and work required to succeed instead of brushing it off as high school arrogance and ego. This wouldn’t have changed the outcome for me, but it would have for a lot of my fellow students.

I was brought up with strong female and male role models, my Mum and my older brother raised me to a teen, when my Dad* stepped in and continued to raise a headstrong female without the constraints of gender stereotypes. I was well equipped with the skills I needed to know myself, to know what I wanted, what I needed and know that I was able to fight for it. And no, I didn’t have a ‘perfect’ childhood, but the resilience in my role models through uncertain times taught me to be stronger and love myself no matter how hard it might seem.

Okay, so I want to add that my Dad mentioned is my technically my step Dad, or as I like to say… my chosen Dad. I am a firm believer that DNA doesn’t give you the right to be in someone’s life. If someone is a toxic influence or detrimental to your self-love, they don’t deserve you. Likewise if someone in a genuinely amazing person and a positive influence, you can choose them. If you learn one thing when learning to love yourself, let it be that.

A mother who radiates self-love and self-acceptance actually vaccinates her daughter against low self-esteem
- Naomi Wolf

Self-worth comes from within and we cannot rely on others to validate us, but self-love needs to be nurtured at a young age to blossom. It takes time to realise your worth for yourself, not just because someone else has said it. Self-love means getting to know yourself as well as you know other people — which may seem silly but you would be surprised how much there is that you don’t know or realise about yourself.

When you take time to replenish your spirit, it allows you to serve others from the overflow. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.
- Eleanor Brown

One of the most important things to remember when you are learning self-validation is that, most people are faking it. Yep, that’s right, most people aren’t as confident as you see them to be. This is one of the main reasons that you can’t compare or validate yourself against other people — you are only seeing what they are showing.

Personality traits

According to psychologists, there are five main underlying traits that define personality, including:

Openness — Which indicates how open-minded a person is.
Conscientiousness — A person scoring high in conscientiousness usually has a high level of self-discipline. These individuals prefer to follow a plan, rather than act spontaneously.
Introversion/Extraversion — These personality traits cover how outgoing, talkative and energetic, or reserved and solitary a person is and how they recharge and relax.
Agreeableness — This trait usually indicates how warm, friendly, and tactful a person is.
Neuroticism — A person who has a high level of neuroticism is more likely to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness.

Personality traits are, for the most part, categorised into introversion and extroversion. The thing to remember about introversion and extroversion is that it’s not black or white, one or the other — it’s a spectrum in which you can sit anywhere in-between. There are plenty of tests you can take online to tell you if you are an introvert or extrovert, remembering that these are very generalised and don’t show the spectrum. For example, the Psychologies test has 14 basic questions to answer — I didn’t really connect with a few of them and just ended up picking answers randomly, and at the end was told I am more of an Introvert.

Some of the traits associated with being an introvert and extrovert are:

Extrovert

Recharges and gains energy in social situations
Makes quick impulsive decisions
Can be seen as outgoing and enthusiastic
Thrives in a team setting

Introvert

Enjoys spending time alone to recharge
Thinks before speaking and acting
Can be seen as more reserved
Prefers working independently

I am technically an extroverted introvert, I have strong traits from both ends of the scale. These traits apply to everyone who isn’t in my select group of friends and family that actually recharges me. Some of these traits include:

Generally finding people both intriguing and exhausting — in equal measures
Interactions with new people in new situations completely drain me mentally and physically
I am very selectively social
I have absolutely no interest in trying to stand out in a crowd, and not because I am shy
People tend to assume I am an extrovert
I constantly feel the need to do something
I need nature to feel grounded
I see the world in a fundamentally different way to other people — or so I am told

Self-care routine

Building a personalised self-care routine is the most important thing that we just aren’t taught to do at a young age. In fact, for a lot of people, they are told that they shouldn’t ‘spend so much time alone’ or ‘focus so much on their friends’. Most people are taught a routine, but it’s someone else’s and doesn’t work for them. As an example I hate running, like seriously… hate! But as a young teen, that’s what I was taught will help me recharge, as that’s the experience other people have.

The way that I am means that my brain doesn’t stop, I don’t shut down my work self at the end of the day. I don’t stop feeling driven when I am at home ‘chilling’. I can’t just switch off. My brain is always firing 1000 thoughts and it’s a lot. When I am around people my brain is on fire — it’s attention is drawn to micro-expressions, body language, word analysis, taking in every morsel of visual stimulant… as well as being constantly over aware of all of my surroundings. While being so intently focussed on what’s directly in front of me, my brain consumes itself with simultaneously tracking how close people are, what’s going on around me and the surrounding structures. Sometimes I struggle to hold a conversation or even hear someone talking — my brain is simply overwhelmed by the number of stimulants.

Breathe

I was around 17 when I passed my driving test and this for me was a big step towards finding my self-care routine. It opened up experiences I couldn’t have before and I quickly found that one of the things that made me recharge was being alone, truly alone.

I found my happy place, my solitude, the place I could breathe again. I found this about a 20 minute drive from where I lived and visited it regularly for around 6 years.

Over the years I added a few places, mostly spots to take my labrador, Bracken — and then I moved to Wales. Well, Wales is not short of blissful solitude. My favourite of which is Moel Famau in the colder months, pictured here. You can walk for miles or drive to the top car park, walk 5 minutes and find a bench right on the edge of a hill where you can sit and watch the world pass by.

Things change

I have always been a person who doesn’t have a large group of friends — and that’s fine. I always end up with single friends from different aspects of my life, and they are mostly male. My personality just seems to mesh more with the male personality and always has, it may be because I grew up with brothers or that’s just the way I am. This seems like an issue to a lot of people — even in my school reports from primary school my friendships were mentioned as being odd and not with girls which seems to stem from the strong gender role stereotypes forced upon people. I am inclined to believe this even more as my female friends have this ‘male’ persona as a strong part of their personality.

I can say with ease and content that I am extremely lucky with the few true friends I have, and this changed me as I grew up. I was always the type to need time on my own to recharge, finding excuses to avoid social interactions — which played a big part in my relationships. I find adults completely draining mentally and psychically. While this hasn’t changed for the most part, there are certain people I can breathe around. When I say ‘can breathe’ that’s literally how I feel around these truly amazing people.

I was never the type to go out drinking all of the time, and honestly, this is mostly because of the people I was with. For me any experience being a positive one, including a night out, 100% depends on the people I am with. Around these people, I am honestly a completely different person, with a completely different energy. It’s not about how long I have known someone or how much time I spend with them, or even how much we have in common — it’s solely the connection. Once I connect to people that connection will always be there, it doesn’t depend on how often I see them, how many good or bad times we have had or how much time I spend talking to them each day.

Learn to breathe

We all work differently, relax differently and recharge differently. The things that make us happy may not be the things that recharge us. The people we love may not recharge us and that’s okay! You have to figure out what it is that recharges you, this may mean trying something new. Be okay with the fact that the things you do to take care of yourself may change, they may evolve, they may include people or not.

If you don’t know what makes you happy — why not try some self-care tips from Women’s Health for 30 days to build yourself a new routine. You will soon realise what works for you and what doesn’t.

Try 30 days of improving your mental and psychical health by

Drinking some water first thing in the a.m.
Write down five things every day that didn’t totally suck
Meal plan! Make a menu for the week
Try that new yoga/gym/boxing class
Have a mini dance party every day!
Move for at least 30 minutes a day
Sleep 8 hours a day
Start a journal and write down everything that happened that day
Sit up straight (no, really)
Plan a workout date with a friend
If you don’t like kale… don’t eat kale!
Exercise your right to say no!