Reaction formation is...

[bad_best_friend]

when I'm at Big Apple Bagel (or anywhere for that matter) and the lady waiting on me is so nice and we have our superficial conversation - then I go into solitary mode when I start eating, and then reading and listening to music - but when I leave and she's saying goodbye to me, I now find it terribly annoying and with more energy than even when I

Comments

[anonymous]

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

[bad_best_friend]

Thank you for this quote. If you have a journal you should share it. I agree with this almost entirely, and if you know me, you know my thesis was on "being inauthentic to avoid embarrassment" ;)

[secretpineapple]

This sounds like something straight out of Jonathan Rauch's article on introversion!

[bad_best_friend]

Haha, I guess it would have been just as effective to title it, "Introversion is"!