I, Ambivert

I've been tested for introversion or extroversion several times in my life, even by professionals. The results have always been the same: I have strong characteristics of both personality types.

That's always made sense to me because I do enjoy being in groups and enjoy being by myself. In fact, I need to alternate those situations to be happy. One strange way this plays out, though, is that I'm perfectly fine with my own thoughts but tend to think in a conversational manner.

This came up in conversation, recently, because it's one of my go-to topics when I first get to know someone. It's always seemed interesting because I've never heard of anyone else with a mix of the two traits. While talking about it, I realized I've never done any casual research into this. No one's ever suggested it was a problem being a mix of the two types or made me feel like a freak, but I was surprised that I never looked into it just out of intellectual curiosity and self-interest.

Thanks to Wikipedia, I found there is a term for it: ambiversion.

There's a common joyous response to discovering you are not alone, that there is a term for something that describes you. I never expect to have that response. I did have that response to discovering I'm an ambivert.

Most people think of introversion and extroversion as an either/or proposal, which it was in Carl Jung's original theories. Like most of Jung's theories, that's been refined more recently and the possibility and a name for being in the middle of the spectrum was introduced. (Thanks, again, Wikipedia.)

There isn't much information about ambiversion that I could find. It doesn't even have it's own page on Wikipedia. I did find a few personal experience essays about being ambiverted, but they were kind of dumb. What I was really wondering is if anyone else who is ambiverted thinks in conversation, but I haven't found anything pertaining to that. (Note: Even Blogger's spellcheck doesn't recognize "ambivert," while it does recognize "introvert" and "extrovert.")

Oh well. It's still satisfying to learn something about myself, and a new word to use when I talk to myself about myself.