Community-building for introverts

Needing other people (and also a bi-monthly trip to an underground bunker)

A few years ago, I had a loneliness problem. It felt embarrassing to admit: I was not an elderly person isolated from daily contact or a kid no one would talk to at school. I had a loving partner and family and extended family, I knew great people in my community and had deep connections with a small, just-right number of dear friends. But after Covid, two maternity leaves and work that connected me with clients but not colleagues, I felt a certain kind of emptiness inside me, something unfilled and unfulfilled.

I was craving more connection, the oxytocin hit I get from being around other people, from conversation and eye contact and a face breaking into a smile. I also had small kids and not much energy, and couldn’t work out which need felt most pressing. I wanted fun - remember that? - and I wanted to go to bed for a week and I wanted rich conversation and I wanted sweet, sacred silence.

I felt held back by my inner introvert, the part of me craving connection wrestling with the part that was worried about how much energy I had to offer. This is me: sometimes - often - I want to be home, especially in the evening and especially in the winter, sitting at my desk or staring out the window, with no one saying anything. Sometimes the effort required to chat at the school gates feels like way too much. When I teach retreats, I adore the connection and the chat but I also need to go and lie in my room and recover from teaching plus social battery drain.

I looked around me at people who threw big birthday parties or who could countenance more than one night out in a row, and then arrange a brunch with friends followed by a kid’s birthday party in the afternoon. Schedules that made me feel mildly panicky, but which are, of course, in and of themselves unproblematic - different folks and all.

In the last year my son has turned four and though only the tiniest amount of extra time has opened up, a small but remarkable sense of mental and emotional space has emerged. Probably I am less touched out, my senses are not so overwhelmed. I have been filling the space with the connection I now have energy for. I’ve come to recognise it as a current hunger, something rivalling my craving to sit alone at my desk and write.

I’ve started to structure my week around it. Sometimes on Mondays when I don’t have doula work, I come and write in my favourite cafe in south east London. I like it because it’s a creative place, a collage and making space, and because of the cinnamon buns and great music. But I like it mainly because it’s about 50 square metres, it only has 5 tables and everyone talks to each other. The staff are friendly and know everyone who comes in, people chat from table to table and stroke each other’s dogs and wave goodbye. Some places and spaces have good energy and attract good people, people who are there for connection too, even if they might not identify that motivation.

Every week I try and make space for a few exercises classes, my dance class and the lido for a swim and sauna (sometimes in the early morning, the time that interferes the least with work or family life). I try and meet a friend with a child the similar age as mine to hang out on my day with my son, and do a social thing for one night. I benefit a lot from these activities and grounding I feel from the regularity of a routine. But it’s the small conversations that fill me up. The chat about how gnarly that set of exercises is, a comment about the weather, someone asking how my weekend was: I collect these exchanges like the jewels that they are. I know “small talk” can feel like pulling teeth, but if we can hold the charge of interacting with someone new, we can feel the reward of social connection circulating within us, ripples that spread out in turn.

And then sometimes it’s too much. The other day, after an exercise class and soft play with my son before I took him swimming and had a full day of teaching the next day, I felt like if I bumped into anyone else I knew I would actually cry (I did bump into someone, and had to make a minute of agonising, exhausting chat - no offence to the innocent party who crossed my path). And of course, sometimes people are a pain in the ass. They can be boring or difficult or talk too much. Working in an office and facilitating groups in the last decade - plus being a keen observer of people - I feel like I have come across all types. It’s taught me to find a lot of compassion for others, to understand their contexts, AND that the net effect can still be that they can still be a pain in the ass!!

I called myself a “community builder” in a profile a while ago and wondered if it could be true if I still felt shyness when I struck up a conversation, sometimes chickened out of social exchanges, needed space and had to find courage to create connections. I think perhaps it can be true, that we can build community - people we need or want and who might need or want us too - and still find it hard sometimes, or need plenty of time recuperating from time spent connecting.

The community many of us have found here on Substack ticks boxes for people who want to connect but also want to sit at their desks quietly, occasionally glancing at the light dancing on the wall. The piece I wrote that had the most comments and engagement (even if one lady got offended by use of the F-word and called its use “unattractive” 😂😂😂) gave me such a sense of being seen and understood, this curious experience of multiple hands reaching back towards me from quiet bedrooms and sofas and cafes and buses from around the world.

Small talk gets a bad rap, but I suspect it is not really small at all. Brief exchanges stack up, fill us up, are an antidote to much that is wrecked in our beautiful, disconnected world. They - we, each other - are worthy of attention. Perhaps we are always building something with our actions, or our lack of action. Small pieces added to a slowly growing pile send up creating some kind of structure - something to lean out of and retreat to when the time is right.