As an introvert who suffered for years with self-esteem issues I can totally relate with his words. Couple years ago I picked up the book People Skills[1] by Robort Bolton. It helped me look at how I reacted to people and often times shut down and got defensive. Or i would be so locked-up mentally trying to process my emotions I would just stop talking.
I found it's changed me in the way I interact with people now. Especially in highly charged situations like his first example. I find I have the ability to see the words and understand why the other person is being aggressive and to help defuse the situation.
What I learned is that i'll still be an introvert at time but at least I can change how I respond to people. And at times I feel more extroverted than normal :)
No. Can an extrovert become more introverted? Of course.
It may not feel "right" but it's fundamentally possible. The brain (more precisely, the stories we tell ourselves) are malleable. Age, location, friends, lovers, jobs, all weigh on which type of -vert you are. That's been my experience anyway.
Although I do think it's a slope with introverted at the bottom. I.e. it may be easier for an extrovert to become introverted than the opposite.
Psychological uncertainty is tiring. When I'm dealing with a problem and I have no idea how to solve it, it causes anxiety and I feel drained. When I learn more about the domain and have a framework for processing the problem, then I feel far more assured and energetic in handling it.
I think dealing with diverse people is the same. When I have a better understanding and "frameworks" to interpret what's going on, I feel a great more certain and confident, and this makes difficult interactions easy. This means I can do more "extroverted" activities and genuinely enjoy them - with less uncertainty/anxiety attached. I still go home to fully recharge - I'm not sure if it's possible to change that, but I can drastically change how long that battery lasts.
If you approach it with the attitude that the condition determines the person, then I suppose, yes, that's true.
But that's a pretty miserable attitude to approach it with. It's much better to keep an open mind to the possibilities of life - although its the hope that kills you. I mean - if you have to think about such things, it's most accurate to say that that's the definition of having been an introvert.
Anecdotally, inside every introvert is a squeaking, flamboyant self, desiring to be its opposite. If you desire it, you've got to (kind of) already be essentially interwoven with it.
> Isn't it fundamentally impossible to learn to become more extrovert?
I don't believe that anymore. I believe that the type of "-vert" our society categorizes us in is an environmentally created behavior. Most of which stem from our birth, how we're treated and the expectations the people who raise us (parents, relatives, friends, school teachers) subconsciously place on us.
Not the parent, but I think of it as analogous to running an emulator/VM. That is, if your reactions to input are those of an extrovert, does the interior process of how those responses are generated really matter?
Great analogy, and as with all VMs, you have a fundamental performance penalty for not doing it natively. Although you do get the flexibility of pausing / debugging / isolating the VM.
Continuing: When some path is followed enough to be the "hot path", it hits the threshold for JIT, and becomes much easier (much less performance penalty).
Not everything needs nor desires a deep well thought out intellectual response or witty comeback. I'm not justifying what he said, but at the same time he was just letting off steam. In fact it's possible he felt bad about it later (or not). What I would of done in that case is just to try to be friendly with the guy and talk to him about stuff not related to the situation at hand. He is stressed out.
I used to suffer badly from similar symptoms as described in the OP (although not as bad, so I can't relate perfectly). But over the years what has helped me is to focus less on myself (how do I feel, what is he/she saying about me) and more on the other person.
To test what's not in them, to test what's hard to automate well, to test the user experience, to test that your requirements make sense together, to try all the daft things users will do.
To try and break things with more ingenuity than my test suite.
Unit tests don't catch everything. Integration tests don't catch everything. I can do the tests if the company's happy with half the features implemented, half the bugs fixed, and paying dev rates for work that they're currently paying QA rates for.
If they'd built the core code in a unit-testable manner 20 years ago, there'd be fewer places that need manual testing now
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14893242