[thisone]

I stopped pigeon holing myself as an introvert.

I quite literally looked at my life, thought about where I wanted to be, and then looked at what traits I'd need to cultivate in order to get there.

One of them was 'how to have a conversation with people' which was hard to learn, and embarrassing to practice, but I got there. I'm not 'extrovert' at it, and it is exhausting, but I'm no wallflower any longer.

Another one was 'how to disagree with someone and not be deferential, passive aggressive, or just plain aggressive about it' this I'm still working on, but I've gotten better at it.

Thankfully, the 'I can do it myself' attitude I had to cultivate as a child, gave me a good foundation of life skills. I can travel alone, attend conferences alone, eat out alone, generally take care of myself. I just needed to add some extra skills to be able to get to the 'happy' point.

[KKKKkkkk1]

Another one was 'how to disagree with someone and not be deferential, passive aggressive, or just plain aggressive about it' this I'm still working on, but I've gotten better at it.

What is the key to getting better at this, in your experience?

[thisone]

My biggest problem is deferring and when I don't do that, I railroad or say 'fuck this, I'm doing it anyway'. None of which is useful or productive.

But for me it boils down to an inferiority problem. What has helped is recognizing that feeling of 'something about this isn't right' and instead of either pushing it down (because I don't want to look stupid) or immediately saying 'hey that's shit but I can't tell you why' I take some time to really think about where that feeling is coming from.

Then, if I find the problem quickly enough, I specifically talk about and explore that, trying to be extremely careful to not use any 'blame' language. Because laying blame is unhelpful and makes people defensive. What I want out of these interactions is the best solution, not to be right.

If I don't find the reason for the feeling quickly enough I try to keep my mouth shut. Just because I've got a feeling that something isn't adding up, doesn't mean it's true.

[blaster151]

I relate to this. In my case it's exacerbated by my need to take time to come to conclusions (sometimes even overnight). I need to let things percolate in my subconscious and only then can I determine whether my intuitive reaction was "valid" or was based on a projection or an insecurity. Finding the right words to articulate it to others can take even longer. I have to get better at "placeholder responses" like "I'm interested in that and I want to respond, but I feel like I need some time to get my thoughts together around it."

[blaster151]

I was going to ask this too. I resonate with that description and haven't heard it described quite so well before.