LET IT OUT

Strategies for introverts to tolerate crowds

WHICH ARE YOU? Not sure if you're an introvert or an extrovert? Sometimes it isn't so easy to tell. You can find out by taking the classic Myers-Briggs personality test at this Web site: www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm.

If you find that after driving the truck all day, you'd rather have a solo meal and watch TV than go to a bar full of strangers, you might be what's known as an introvert.

People who are introverted need to spend time alone in order to recharge — they don't (necessarily) dislike other people, they just find too much time around crowds really exhausting.

Knowing that you're introverted — and that being introverted is a very normal way to be — can help you understand why time alone can often be so appealing. Hopefully, knowing you're introverted can also help your spouse, kids, friends, neighbors, bowling team and polo club comprehend your need for solitude.

However, knowing your personality type likes seclusion doesn't help much with situations where you need to be charming — like at parties, job interviews and anniversary dinners. Luckily, there are tricks and tools you can use in these scenarios to help you turn up your crowd tolerance. Here are a few:

• Get some exercise before you're going to be around a lot of people, recommends Debbie Mandel, a stress-management specialist and author of the book Turn On Your Inner Light: Fitness for Body, Mind, and Soul. Running a few laps or doing some pushups will release energizing endorphins and take the edge off at the end of a long day. And you'll get so buff that people will be too afraid of your muscles to annoy you.
• If you have a job interview or some other interaction that requires your best pretend-extrovert self, try practicing the interaction in a sort of "mental video," says Tina B. Tessina, psychotherapist and author of It Ends With You: Grow Up and Out of Dysfunction. Tessina suggests going through several steps when you're making this mental video, first imagining the job interview (or other situation) as if it's occurring, then playing the scene in your mind to see how it develops. If you'd like the situation to play out differently, consider what you'd like to change. "Rewind and replay this mental image until it is successful (you handle the situation the way you really want to)," says Tessina. Keep playing this "successful" tape in your mind "until you feel confident you can do and say what you are visualizing. You have just reprogrammed your mind to create some new responses to tense situations, and you'll find these responses are available to you when you need them."
• "Use the environment as a prop," says Sandra Gordon, coauthor of the book The Shy Single. Pay attention to your surroundings and use them to jump-start dialogue. For example, if you're at a restaurant, ask someone: "Excuse me, but have you been here before? Are their burgers really as good as they say they are?"

It's a low-energy way to interact, and you might save yourself from a terrible burger.