I don't think I fit in any of these boxes. Before I ever took the Myers Briggs or read Quiet[1] or people started talking a lot about I and E and other shortcuts I realized that I was different than most of my friends and that I needed to change. I was 14 and wanted to be able to carry on wide ranging conversations in the effortless manner that many of my friends and the adults in my life could.
So I watched an older brother of a classmate(he was a senior in HS) who could talk for hours about anything. I watched people at church and at family gatherings and community celebrations like 4th of July parades and Labor Day barbecues.
And I learned how to make small talk and how to engage people around me and I learned that I could find out interesting things about people and that many times you had to go through a ritual of small talk, sometimes for months worth of meetings and greetings and regularly seeing someone before you really learned anything about them.
And I learned that usually it was worth it. And eventually as I got older and became an adult I learned to tell when someone just didn't know how to talk about something difficult and so they talked about nothing and everything instead and how to read them and help them just by talking something over with them.
To quote Jane Austen:
"I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done."
"My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault -- because I would not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution."
So I watched an older brother of a classmate(he was a senior in HS) who could talk for hours about anything. I watched people at church and at family gatherings and community celebrations like 4th of July parades and Labor Day barbecues.
And I learned how to make small talk and how to engage people around me and I learned that I could find out interesting things about people and that many times you had to go through a ritual of small talk, sometimes for months worth of meetings and greetings and regularly seeing someone before you really learned anything about them.
And I learned that usually it was worth it. And eventually as I got older and became an adult I learned to tell when someone just didn't know how to talk about something difficult and so they talked about nothing and everything instead and how to read them and help them just by talking something over with them.
And I'm still learning.
[1]http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/about-the-book/