Introvert Born or Made?

Welcome to a new mini-memoir in blog installments. This is the most personal, the most revealing writing I've ever published, and perhaps it's about time. I've decided to take a look at some of the more central influences of my early years that shaped me into the person I've become. I share it here with the hope that this might encourage you explore your own shaping factors and discover a similar enlightenment.

Part One

Might fear of being high maintenance foment introversion?

I hate feeling and acting needy. Whether that is an innate trait, or a learned defense mechanism against multiple evidences of being unwanted, I could make an argument either way.

My memoir Sadie’s Life-Altering Secret: as her daughter imagined it (published under my pen name Raziel Bearn — an appellation connoting a secret child) is based on the true story of being given up for adoption. Despite there being perfectly understandable reasons that “Sadie” didn’t want a child at age 19, it left the subtle energy imprint that I didn’t matter.

Echoes, Lies and Enduring Mysteries (also published as Raziel Bearn) detailed the search for my birth mother. It looked briefly at how my adoptive mother had wanted a china doll to dress up and emulate her while never truly seeing, understanding, or wanting the child she got. Both of these books (available on Amazon Kindle) trace some of the reasons I do at times touch into a soul-layer of feeling like I have never mattered.

This is a predictable outcome when oneself feels unwanted at the core of one’s being.

Psychologically speaking, acting all high maintenance — by which I mean demanding attention and accommodation on the most minute things designed to increase comfort or overcome inconvenience — is kinesthetically a kind of screaming out loud a degree of neediness. I think of it as an outer sign of some form of social anxiety.

Sometimes this is linked to a show of privilege and entitlement veiling the need to be accepted. Sometimes being high maintenance is about being driven by one or more forms of anxiety and the need to create the feeling of safety. Often, it’s people who have unconscious difficulty tolerating psychological discomfort who lean towards managing that by being high maintenance.

And of course, being high maintenance can be a sign of narcissism. While many people might have narcissistic moments under the right circumstances, I don’t fit the clinical criteria for that diagnosis.

I don’t think I’m a high maintenance kind of person (others may be a better judge of that). I’m more avoidant. For the most part, I simply don’t allow myself to be somewhere where I won’t be able to tolerate discomfort, emotional or physical. Or I think ahead and arrange whatever accommodation I may need. For example, when my back hurt from standing too long at my daughter’s soccer games on fields where there were no bleachers, I took a folding chair.

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That abhorrence of feeling needy may not be a common trait for all introverts. I don't know. I haven't done a survey. I count it as a blessing because it helps me be proactive in taking care of myself, including avoiding situations and people that too easily become energy draining. That’s useful in helping me resist being cranky and hurtfully sarcastic.

Hating feeling needy results in prioritizing self-sufficiency. When I can take care of things myself, I feel safe. In control. Unlikely to be open to ridicule. Of course the downside of this is that it limits my opportunities for relationships.

Maybe there is an astrological component here for me, too. Capricorn is my sun sign, known as a reserved and inwardly focused personality. Scorpio is my rising sign, and its personality traits of secret keeping, and determined resourcefulness are how I’m comfortable meeting the world. Perhaps I’m just astrologically hard wired to like being a bit mysterious by withholding much of myself. Except with a very few.

Perhaps the Scorpio’s interest in secrets and self-transformation helped form my interpersonal boundaries. I know that over the years I have let very few people in completely. Mostly, that’s been okay. That few people have persisted in wanting to know me at the very deepest level anyway has just served to confirm that I don’t matter. Perhaps I just use the illusion of being an introvert to justify self-sufficient safety.

So, why am I writing about this? I’ll probably delete everything I just wrote anyway. And that makes me chuckle to myself. It would be such an introvert thing to do.

Anyway, the above is the surreptitious layer of baggage I've carried throughout my life. I didn’t realize until recently that I was slogging through those defenses and ways of being while just handling obligations, meeting responsibilities. I've enjoyed learning how to be self-observant, seeking to understand myself at a deeper level.

Personal growth is a spiral process. You achieve revelations on one level, then unconsciously repeat old mistakes. If you’re self-aware you soon see your pattern and break out of it, only to retreat to old habits, though if you’re lucky, with more perspective.

If it’s true as some new agers think that we design our lifetimes to learn certain lessons, I certainly hope I’ve learned mine. I’d like to tackle what being an extrovert has to teach me next time around.

If you read all the installments off this mini-memoir, you should ask what I’ve left out. What can I still not explicate like an extrovert? What remains behind the mask, and is it out of fear of ridicule or criticism, or a sense of dignity and privacy?

And, if you too are an introvert, or puzzled by one who is, I invite you to read with this question in mind:  how much of this resonates with  your own experience of making your way in the world?

In installment #2, I'll paint a picture of the neighborhood I grew up in and how that served as early triggers to my rebellious streak.

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Published by Liminal Realities. Copyright 2025 by Deah Curry. All rights reserved.

Cover Photo by Caleb Woods via Snappa