‘I can’t explain it. He is a sweetheart. A beautiful boy inside and out, and so brilliant.” This was how a session with N, a longtime patient of mine, began some years ago. Her son, A, was a young teenager, and in spite of coming from a warm, loving family with attentive parents, he had started having social difficulties.
He wasn’t being bullied or left out at school. He wasn’t depressed, moody or anxious. In fact, he was popular, well liked and constantly being invited to parties, to basketball games, and to hang out with groups of young people. The problem was, he turned all these invitations down, and N couldn’t understand why.
Three weeks later, I sat with A in my office. I asked him to describe his experience of attending parties and other social events. “I just feel weird,” he said, “like I’m not part of it, which is odd as these are all my friends. I know they like me and are happy I’m there, but I still don’t feel connected. I only feel lonely or bored when I’m with many people, and not when I’m with one or two close friends or when I’m alone.” Then he added: “I don’t like to say those things because it makes me sound like an alien. Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”
I did not. In my 40-plus years as a practising physician and psychiatrist, I have worked with world leaders, performing artists and professionals at the top of their fields. It often emerges that they have gone through life feeling just as A described.
These are people who always prefer to have dinner with a friend one-on-one rather than attend a dinner party. When they have to attend large gatherings, they are the figure standing off to the side, deep in conversation with another person, rather than “working the room”. They would rather do work assignments individually than in a group, despise playing team sports, and find the shared traditions or rituals of communal life – office parties, graduation ceremonies, even religious holidays – difficult and even baffling. They are soloists who cannot play in an orchestra. And I count myself as one of them.
The vast majority of these people have no psychiatric diagnosis. They aren’t socially maladjusted or even socially anxious. After many years spent observing and researching these characteristics, I have come to understand that they are rooted in a trait present in people of every ethnicity, culture and gender: one distinguished by the lack of a communal impulse – in other words, non-belonging.
As I started writing about what I discovered, I searched for a word to describe this deeply misunderstood personality type. Most people are familiar with Carl Jung’s concepts of extrovert (“one who faces outward”) and introvert (“one who faces inward”). But the fundamental orientation of a non-belonger is defined by the fact that it is rarely the same direction that everyone else is facing. That is how I came up with the term “otrovert” (in Spanish, “otro” means “other”).
Many otroverts have gone through life assuming that their lack of interest in parties and other such social activities must mean they are an introvert. But otroverts differ from introverts in a number of key ways: whereas introverts tend to be quiet and reserved, otroverts, like my patient A, can be quite gregarious and outgoing. An introvert wouldn’t typically be the first person to speak up assertively at a work meeting. But otroverts have no trouble standing up and confidently stating their point of view. Unlike introverts, most of whom would be completely drained from hours spent in a quiet corner of a pub talking with their closest friend, otroverts tend to gain energy from these kinds of deep conversations. Otroverts enjoy solitary time just like introverts do, but not out of the need to detach or recharge; rather, to avoid the loneliness and disconnection they feel when surrounded by others.
For parents, children like A are often source of confusion and concern. Given that most have themselves been conditioned to view group membership as the foundation of a successful life, many such parents push their children to be more “social.” At school, where teachers are trained to take notice of students who seem “socially maladjusted”, a child who doesn’t join others in the playground will often trigger phone calls home, visits to school counsellors or even a therapist.
Our culture puts a premium on joining. Evidence of this priority begins very early in life, when we are taught to share, play nicely with other children, and align our behaviour with the behaviour of those around us. When others form a line, we are directed to stand in it. When others are talking quietly, we are told to lower our voices. Throughout our lives, our social conditioning reinforces the one immutable cultural principle in our society: that group membership is a prerequisite for a rich and rewarding life. And while this is true for many people, it is not true for otroverts.
We put so much stock in communality that a different stance is understood as pathology. Otroverts are perceived as weird and wrong for preferring solitude over socialising, and subjected to peer pressure from well-meaning people who genuinely desire their companionship or who would hate for them to “miss out” on all the fun. What these people fail to realise is that for otroverts, there is great freedom and fulfilment in sitting on the sidelines.
In recent years, there has been much hand-wringing about the record levels of loneliness, alienation, and polarisation that plague our society. Writers, thinkers, policymakers, and even the US surgeon general have cited the decline of communal life as a principal cause of poor mental health and proposed solutions ranging from getting off social media to expanding our social support networks. In theory, these ideas are not without merit. But in practice, we are having more and more conversations about the importance of community, while continuing to become lonelier and more divided than ever.
Otroverts are well equipped not only to thrive in our fractured, angry world, but also to show others the way. The reason is simple: they see people, including themselves, as individuals, not just faceless members of a tribe. It is easy to hate a formless group that you are taught to perceive as different, inferior, or threatening. But it is much harder to generalise your hostility when you view people for who they actually are.
Because they don’t feel an obligation to endorse the collective position, opinion, or point of view, otroverts are fiercely independent, outside-the-box thinkers who approach problems from new angles, often leading to creative discoveries and unique contributions. And because they define success by what they achieve, not what they achieve in relation to others, they are more fulfilled creatively and professionally too.
For an otrovert, accepting what we think of as the cliched statement “It’s OK to be you” is a monumental shift. So many of us otroverts have lived our whole lives with the experience of being misunderstood. When we finally understand that there is nothing wrong with who we are, it is cathartic in a truly profound way.
With this realisation, we can give ourselves permission to opt out of things that cause discomfort, forge even deeper and more loving relationships with those we feel close to, and embrace our authentic selves. We discover that, as Friedrich Nietzsche, the quintessential otrovert, once wrote; “No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.”
Today, A has truly blossomed. Now 24, he is getting a PhD in psychology, recently got engaged to his college girlfriend, and remains close with his best childhood friends. In some ways, he’ll always remain an observer of the group and never a true participant. But he is a full participant in his own life: deeply satisfied in the things he chooses to do and the people he chooses to be with. In a world designed for joiners, this is the otrovert’s ideal path.
Dr Rami Kaminski is a psychiatrist and author of The Gift of Not Belonging (Scribe).
Further reading
Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew Lieberman (Oxford, £15.49)
The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Study on Happiness by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz (Rider, £12.99)
Insight: How to Succeed by Seeing Yourself Clearly by Tasha Eurich (Pan, £12.99)