Did you know that it’s not just social interactions that drain an introvert’s energy? Overly stimulating environments exhaust us as well. With their flashing lights and constant noise pollution, what could be more stimulating than big cities (rhetorical question, please don’t answer)?
Most introverts feel overwhelmed by bustling metropolises. The towering buildings; the symphony of obnoxious construction tools and cars; the never-ending traffic and crowded sidewalks –It’s enough to make any introvert feel drained. I’m nauseated just thinking about it.
The opposite is true as well. Introverts find quiet refuge in nature and smaller cities. Personally, I have no idea why everyone talks about being a big fish in a small pond as if it were a bad thing. It sure sounds good to me. In fact, in the future I plan to settle in a small village where the residents allow me to rule as their queen (if you’ve found such a place, please let me know).
Another way of looking at it is to use Susan Cain’s (author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking) comparison of an introvert to an orchid: we can grow strong and beautiful under the right conditions, but wilt and fade otherwise. We’re not like dandelions that annoyingly sprout up anywhere and draw lots of attention while doing so.
Despite my disdain for over-crowded cities, I’ve lived in my fair share of them. Not too long ago, I spent seven months living and working in Brisbane, Australia. Brisbane has a population of about two million people – not big by most people’s standards. The thing is, I had been living in a city about a quarter that size before moving Down Under.
If I’d had a cute little dog named Toto, I would’ve told it, we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Aussies often asked me why I chose Brisbane as my home away from home. They suggested I move to a bigger, more action-packed city like Sydney or Melbourne. No thank you!
Luckily, I managed to carve out a nice life for myself in a quiet suburb of the city. I waitressed at a small café about ten minutes walk from home. Thus, I only had to venture into the big, bad heart of the city for social activities.
After three months, I landed a well-paying job with a large mining company located downtown. Everyday, I rode a crowded bus along a congested road toward the towering building where I worked. I felt flustered and overwhelmed before my workday even began.
I tried leaving the house at 6 a.m. to avoid the traffic, but that only helped a little. I couldn’t escape the afternoon rush, which began around 3p.m. and seemed never-ending. I arrived home each night resembling a drooping and faded orchid. I was miserable.
I’m comforted to know I’m not the only one who wilts beneath the harsh glare of a big city. Many introverts react similarly. Unfortunately, like loud people, shouty environments can’t always be avoided. The silver lining is that we introverts are pretty good at finding ways to adapt (how else would we survive a culture that’s hooked on electronic music and neon lights?).
- Headphones (Check)
- Extra-large book to bury my nose in (Check)
- Cute little dog named Toto who will stick by me and accept me no matter what (not yet, but working on it)
Hey! I’m from Melbourne! It’s not THAT bad here…! LOL
I do hear it’s beautiful. Maybe I’ll go there next time I’m on that side of the world 😉
OMG Michaela, I’m wilting at this very moment! A little over a year ago I moved from my beloved quiet, could hear a pin drop suburbia to a booming metropolis. Daily I deal with constant construction. At one point there were 4 different construction sites within 2 blocks of my apt and they are currently building a Dunkin’ Donuts outside my bedroom window complete with drive thru… ugh! I’ll be able to hear every coffee and doughnut order yelled and invariably re-yelled until it’s correctly understood. There’s always yelling and loud music in the street plus a healthy dose of horns and sirens… ugh the sirens! I live between a police station and a firehouse so its absolutely brutal. Some days my nerves are just fried. Winter is a bit better because, well, inclement weather keeps people indoors. But the summer is just unbearable. The only saving grace is the steady hum of my air conditioner that drowns out a lot of the noise. But as soon as I can manage it, I will make this place a distant nightmare… er, memory. When you find that small, quiet village let me know… I think the life of a minion might be preferable at this point. 🙂
By the way, I included your blog in my link roundup. It’s been really great to get more insight into my introversion and I’m always game for anything done with humor.
Thanks so much for the link, Cheryl 🙂 Your environment definitely does sound like a nightmare. Noise pollution can be so aggravating! Thank you for sharing your experience. And of course, I would be happy to have a fellow, sensitive introvert join me in my future village! haha 😉
“Aussies often asked me why I chose Brisbane as my home away from home. They suggested I move to a bigger, more action-packed city like Sydney or Melbourne. No thank you!”
Haha, I get that alllll the time! I live in a small city in an outlying part of Japan and I often get people asking if I’d rather live in Tokyo. Um, HELL NO!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7kor5nHtZQ
Look at it. Just LOOK AT IT.
Plus the cost of living is so much higher there – I like my cheap rent, ta!
I live in the countryside in Japan after declining so many job offers in Tokyo. No regrets! I feel I could bear living and working in Tokyo! Too crowded, too many people. It will drain me.
Found your blog via a Facebook recommendation and so much of it resonates with me. I’m very much an introvert (not shy–I’m a lecturer and performance poet and happy to stand up in front of crowds–not socially awkward, though I find small talk difficult–reserved in groups and a “little monster” with my closest friends–well, you know the drill.) But I have to say, I love big cities. The anonymity of them suits me just fine, and I’m good at filtering noise to a comfortable level. My introvert nightmare is actually living in a village or small town where you sort of know just about everyone, and are obliged to interact with them on superficial levels: where you can’t cross the street without having a conversation about the weather or the price of fish with someone you barely know but can’t ignore. Extroverts always say exasperatedly, it’s just being friendly, it costs nothing, but it actually does cost me huge amounts of energy. I often come away from an obligatory small talk interaction feeling weird, foolish and awkward and the emotion can last for hours. What I like about cities is that for the most part people ignore you, but if a spontaneous conversation does begin, it’s because you actually have something to say or feel a connection (however brief) to that person. That I don’t mind at all, because I’m not unfriendly: I just find socially mandated interactions incredibly exhausting. Hairdressers and taxi-journeys are not my finest hour.
Thanks for sharing your perspective on this, Kit. “Hairdressers and taxi-journeys are not my finest hour,” haha – I hear you 🙂
Yes! Me exactly. Thanks for articulating my love of big cities and dismay of chatty hairdressers. 🙂
and when I came across this article, I was like “no wonder” I am so tried living in the city. Thanks for this!
Great article, can definitely relate to some of these challenges myself with being introverted in an urban environment. I grew up in the suburbs of a mid-sized city and moved downtown almost 11 years ago. I haven’t looked back since. The funny part was that I originally moved downtown thinking that I’d enjoy the nightlife (ha!), but the reason I stayed downtown was for the sheer convenience of not having to own a car and getting that automatic feeling of anonymity, like others mentioned here.
It took several years, but eventually I learned to “tune out” the noises of city life, almost as if you can teach your brain not to respond to the stimuli when you don’t want to. I suppose it might be my own version of exposure therapy 🙂
Thanks for sharing your stories Michaela, always look forward to reading them.
Thanks for sharing your experience with this, Philip. I agree that we can desensitize ourselves to the noise, but I think it affects us subconsciously. I, too, have lived in the busy downtown area of various cities for convenience. I’ve found that it is really fun to be where all the action is … for a month or two. And then I want more green, open spaces. Ideally, I like to live in a neighborhood that is quiet and has lots of shops, but isn’t too far from downtown.
I can’t accept to this.The most overlooked place where you can find a silence far beyond isolation is in the heart of all the noise of the city.Though hectic,city life actually helps introverts.Having said this I like Tokyo.
I detest crowds. I detest noise pollution. I detest cities. They drain me. They disturb me. I like nature. I like trees. I like architecture. I like anonymity. I don’t like meeting new people. I don’t like making small talk. I don’t like traveling.
I’m surprised. Before I realized I was a full-blown introvert, I cherished living in big cities: Córdoba (Argentina), my hometown, is slightly smaller than Cleveland, OH, but it’s a historical and cultural hotspot. Just walking around from plaza to plaza, up to a bakery or down to a movie theater, was just the thing for me.
New York City, my second hometown, is my kind of place; you can find it very hard to land a more cosmopolitan and exciting city than the Big Apple. Sure, the screeching noise of subway cars, the endless horns and car alarms, the incessant parades down 5th Avenue every other Sunday were a drain, but I would refresh my mind by walking around, being a flâneur.
Now I live in a small bedroom city called Westlake, in Ohio. While I like many things about my environs (the thrifstores and half-price bookstores), I don’t like the social milieu: too conservative, too provincial, not mannerly enough for my taste. So I’m considering moving to a more “social” town. My paradox and irony, I know.
I spent my teen years to mid 30s living in Chicago. Took the el to work everyday, and worked in a high rise. It took me a long time to realize a lot of my angst and anxieties were a direct result of my environment. Eight months ago, I relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It has just the right mix of calm, quirky and adventure. My disposition has improved dramatically. I feel free!
I grew up in Chicago, moved away to Maryland for years, and now I’m back. I’m about ready to pack up and return to Maryland. Chicago is way too hectic, fast, and competitive for me. I used to really enjoy it here, but I found out the hard way, as an adult, it can be an incredibly hard place to “make it”, especially if your more on the quiet introverted side of things.
I’m glad I read this after keyword searching “I hate living in a big city.” I’m a life long Queens New Yorker and I have worked in an insanely busy public building for 12 years. I feel beyond drained and my blood pressure rises every morning I get on the subway. I daydream about space and quiet all the time.
Glad you stumbled upon it Mary! 🙂
I have lived in London for 7 months so far and I have never felt a lost as I am now. Coming from a little tropical island in the Indian Ocean, I made the jump to here by love for an English lady. It was all wonderful in the beginning but I quickly felt pressurised by no air to breathe, no space to find quietness and no friend as well. I will not deny London is a marvellous city with tons of things going on. It is very lively and constantly busy but I could not find myself in this incessantly moving crowd, noise and movement. However, I have realised that this has only got me down with time. I felt some sort of depression at some point dealing with a poorly rewarding, hard working, time consuming job, a rent I could barely pay. The crowd, the noise…. It was utterly motivating in the beginning to see so much life around but I felt drained little by little by this experience until reaching a breaking point. I talked and met a lot of people but none of them has become my friend. They are just acquaintances in the end. Whilst I prefer real relationships based on te understanding on the other and a true connection, I multiply meetings which seem meaningless to me. My friends, over Skype and many other means of communication saw the changes operating on my person. I changed without even noticing and my every day smile went away. I even turned more cynical up to the point where I avoided encounters as much as I could. I only realised a couple of weeks ago that I was an introvert thriving in a place where I have time to think by myself. I muster energy from loneliness and doing things than other people would possibly qualify as asocial. I know now I am not but I cherish these moments where I can grab my guitar or banjo and play, alone. I honnestly feel comfortable searching random things on the Internet. I know a lot of things mostly which are useless in the every day life but I do not feel akward doing these sort of things.
Yet, my ex-girlfriend, colleagues and other people could not understand why I was acting with such solitude whereas there is so much going out and it is “so fun to be out and about in the best city in the world”. I honestly felt like a creep when I heard that I eventually came to the conclusion that I was not normal. I am normal in a way, but in a world that can’t stop moving, talking, making experience, being out and about, we leave little place to those who need quietness and often qualify them as asocial, weird and lazy people. I am truly sensitive and maybe too emotional but that’s me and how I react to stimuli.
I discovered Introverspring.com, Susan Cain, even the MBTI test (turns out I am an INFP – I did the test four times in three weeks in two different languages) and that waived a lot of questions about myself. I thank you a lot for what you do Michaela. That had really helped me understand that everywhere does not suit everyone and that acting in a different way than the majority is fine as long as there is no harm to anyone and you truly feel yourself doing so.
Thank-you.
Hi Michaela, interesting article but I’m a bit confused now. I’ve always considered my self as an introvert like those who thinks (and listens) a lot more than speaks and I have no problem with that!
I live in Melbourne and I really like the city – apart for the cold – and I’ve recently been to Sydney: a huge, busy and vibrant city! I’m still amazed with everything in there.
Even though it was crowded due to the Vivid Festival, for some reason it didn’t bothered me. I felt more connected as if I belong there. I enjoyed the differences, the dimensions and the variety of everything.
So, I’m not so introvert as I was thinking or the metropolis’s individualism made me feel free because of the people’s apparent disconnection?
I don’t know if it was just a first impression and if I live there I’ll think differently.
Who knows! =)
Hi Guil, thanks for your comment. Every introvert is different, and as you can see from other comments, plenty of other innies do like big cities. It may just be that you are not highly sensitive and introverted, like I am. 🙂 xo
That’s funny. I found this because I was browsing facebook and a friend linked it. It’s old, I know. I am introverted enough that I can go days without talking to anyone and actually enjoy it. I’m also pretty sensitive to things. But, I lived in big cities all my life until now, when I wound up in a small town (not on purpose.) I’m going back to the city soon and couldn’t be happier. I love the city because there’s so much to take in and observe, I love the anonymity of it, I love the culture. All kinds of people like all kinds of things.
Really big cities are a definite drain on energy. Depending on who you are as an introvert living in a small town can be nice, but, it can also feel draining if you don’t conform to the norms of the town. For instance, I’m introverted but I’m also a member of the LGBT community, growing up in a small, very conservative, farming town in rural America, this wasn’t easy, while I didn’t have the big crowds to deal with small hostile groups were just as threatening. I enjoy being in nature, mountains, woods, etc… but being in a reasonable sized city (with a university) is much preferable. I love the inclusivity and anonymity I have to be myself on my terms and not feel harassed, and I have plenty of options to keep me busy despite being around people.
Hello, I know I am several years late. I just stumbled into your blog after typing in the search engine
” I don’t want to live in a metropolitan area anymore” . Being in the lockdown, has made me look at what I want the rest of my life to be like, and I want to live in a small town, that has town fairs and festivals. Unfortunately, I live in the U.S.A., The small towns have this no outsider attitude, also there are not a lot of job opportunities in those towns. What’s a introvert to do.