Introverts explained by video games

 I stumbled upon a line of thought that might help others, particularly those familiar with video games, understand introverted behavior! Let's talk about it. 

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Introverted souls have trouble at times, and sometimes with those that don't understand how they recharge and why they need space. What I have discovered is a comparison to video game content. Hear me out on this one. This may make it easier to explain introverted nature to your friends who need an illustration to get it. Just as long as they are gamers.

The Introvert Zones

The concept of an introvert zone is foreign to some individuals. This does not mean that they are awful people. It simply means they don't understand your comfortable silence. If you take this concept and connect it to the video game concept of a relaxation chamber or safe zone/ healing temple in Legend of Zelda it becomes relatable. A healing zone or recharging station is a perfect illustration of an introvert zone. 

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An ocean temple is an even better example of how it functions in real life. For instance, the ocean temple drains you just by standing in it. In this case, it could be compared to a social situation where you are surrounded by people. The difference is that the purple zones (your introvert zone) that preserve your life force can be destroyed by those that pop up and stand in them without your consent. When you explain it like this, some humans may understand why you need to have your zone.

The enemies in this social battlefield are the loud, the shallow in conversation, the ignorant, and the needy. The loud shatter your zone. Shallow conversation wastes your life force. The ignorant break your zone unknowingly by being either loud, shallow, or needy. The needy demand your energy and help when you think they could easily do it themselves (which means those who need actual help may also drain energy, but not as much). They all have swords that shatter your safe zones in the ocean temple and make you lose social energy faster. Anyone who has played Phantom Hourglass understands that this temple is already hard to beat. 

Social Energy

Videogame status bars would be super helpful if they happened for introverts when they spent social energy. I have three colors that could explain to others our stages of losing energy. Green can represent when we are totally cool to hang out. Yellow is when we are proceeding to social situations with caution. Red is when we need to go home and stay there until we are recharged. If people could see the bar above our heads it'd be fantastic, but let me give you real-life guidelines instead.

Green is when you can be fooled into thinking we are extroverted. We're having the time of our life while we're chilling with friends. We are not proceeding with any caution and are freely jumping into social situations. This is when we are in our element with friends that give us energy back, thus charging us as much as we charge them. 

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Yellow is when we start to lose enthusiasm for social contact. We choose who we interact with carefully and what we do with caution. We know that we need energy for later. We avoid the people who don't understand our need for space. We conserve like a laptop that needs to be plugged in but isn't yet dead. So, when you see us start to get quieter and interact less, be aware that our battery is running low. 

Red is when some people get hostile and irritable. We get annoyed when people remain in our space when we have nothing left. Some introverts get mean in this red status and others keep it together and crash at home, but we all share the social exhaustion that makes us want to be King Arthur from Monty Python. We want to scream "shut up" at people in this stage of social energy. If you see we have nothing left and are annoyed at those who come up to us expecting a conversation, help us rather than let someone annoy us into hostility. That is what friends should do for introvert-kind. You'll find your introverted friends will hang around you more if you do so.

Again, if someone could see our social energy status bar our lives would be so much easier, but that isn't reality. Consider this illustration when interacting with introverted people. 

This, too, has enemies attached to it. This also involves healers. Healers give off energy and we seek them out in all stages of our status bar. Enemies are just the opposite. They leach energy by being too close, too loud, too shallow, completely ignorant of our energy levels, and sometimes completely obnoxious (when everyone else also gets annoyed). Healers give us our energy back and help us last through the ocean temple while we travel with them. Enemies drain us of life force/energy faster and kill our social battery swiftly. 

Why Explaining This Is Hard

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The problem with introverted behavior being explained is that extroverts have always lived in a world tailored to them. We are fish out of water when we are not recharged. Look at your school systems, your work activities, your job, and what the outside world expects from you. Extroverts thrive in social situations. Trying to explain your introverted nature to someone who clearly has never experienced your troubles is challenging. 

Some people who are emotionally intelligent get it right away. The people who are highly extroverted (but no less intelligent - everyone has intelligence) sometimes have some trouble seeing the perspective of someone who needs alone time more often. That is a truth that we introverts face. I hope this can help you explain introversion to others. We need to try to speak our reality to our friends so they can support us.