The Social Muscle and Its Atrophy

You might not actually be an introvert

I’ve been in a gaming drought for the better part of a year. It’s been probably 8 months since my last in-person game and about 6 weeks since my last online session. I work a full 40 hours a week 8 to 5 as a salesman and tend to wake up between 5-6:30 AM during the week depending on whether or not I’m going to the gym that morning. Needless to say, this schedule rules out games in the middle of the day or late into the night on Sunday through Thursday. It turns out that this schedule is not conducive to a regular game. I find this surprising since there was a time where I was gaming on a weekly basis after I got off work, but this seems to be a recurring problem for me. As a result, I just haven’t gamed regularly for almost a year which is something of a problem for someone who writes about and publishes games. Like a steering wheel belt-buckle, it drives me nuts. Now I may be a small-town gaming blogger, but I have a theory about this overblown phenomenon of introversion that I believe makes it difficult to get a regular group together for gaming. It relates directly to another interest of mine, weightlifting. It is my theory that people who are naturally more introverted don’t need less social interaction but actually need more to train themselves into a healthy mindset. The traditional idea of the introvert is one born out of a desire to minimize discomfort no matter how healthy and is exploited by modern consumer products. Today I’ll discuss this theory and how I believe gaming can be used to train up your atrophied social muscles.

Some of my earliest articles were on the subject of RPGs as a regular weekly occurrence and how I don’t understand why games continuously lose out to seemingly everything. I will take the rap for this myself too. I’ve had to cancel on the online game I’ve been playing in multiple times although, in my defense, I have been in the process of moving states over the past month and a half. That aside, there is a cultural phenomenon of small social events throughout the week that’s just evaporated from modern life. You can watch any sitcom from I Love Lucy all the way up to Malcolm in the Middle and see the phenomenon of the weekly adult gathering around a recreational activity, usually a game. Bridge, Canasta, Euchre, Poker, Cribbage, Billiards, and Bowling are all known for bringing groups of working adults together during the week and all serve as a means for these people to bond socially and blow off steam. Why can’t RPGs fill a similar roll? They can, but unfortunately nobody seem to want to prioritize these social hobbies as a part of the weekly routine these days. So far, so Bowling Alone, but I think that even Robert Putnam couldn’t foresee the weaponized introversion of many in my generation. Being a flake is treated as a cute little quirk that too many people share and the expectation that people carve a few hours a week on the same night to come together is treated like one of Hercules’ Twelve Labors. Everyone’s an introvert I guess, but introversion is something that has been turned against people into a weapon of atomization.

I’m going to say something that will be controversial to many of you; the fact that you’re introverted does not mean you should avoid social events like the plague. Introversion has been pathologized and our society has adopted the ethics of utilitarianism that, in all cases, pleasure should be maximized and pain should be minimized. I think the social polarities are poorly understood by people. The fact of the matter is that, whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, social interaction is an exhausting but necessary thing. Introversion and extroversion are just measurements of social endurance. Everybody needs time spent alone in quiet contemplation or doing solitary activities and everybody also needs social interaction. However, I believe that social adaptation is like a muscle. Some people are stronger socially, some are weaker, but both can train to expand their capacity. There’s probably a threshold at which you plateau just as there is with strength training but, like with strength training, that threshold is way higher than most people think it is. Just as your muscles tear and require recovery during a heavy set, your comfort zone is ruptured when you push beyond it. However, both are rebuilt with greater capacity following some rest so long as there’s no serious trauma. You grow more comfortable the more you push yourself and then you can push beyond what you previously thought was impossible.

There’s a common excuse thrown around by people who don’t exercise regularly, “I’m too tired to exercise.” They complain that when they’ve tried to exercise in the past, they were more tired than ever the next day so they just can’t do it. It doesn’t work for them. This excuse is echoed in the terminal introvert’s “People are so exhausting. I can’t deal with them anymore,” diatribes that we all endure from them. In both cases, this is nothing short of a load of crap. You are not too tired to exercise and you are not too mentally worn out to socialize. Both are revitalizing activities that will give you more energy so long as you don’t try to do too much. Yes, you may be exhausted all the next day after trying to sprint a mile, but that’s because your body is not ready for the strain of that activity yet. Try walking that mile and see how you feel the next day. Then try jogging for part of it, then for all of it, then try interval sprinting, then try consistent running. If you’re regular and disciplined in this application, you’ll begin to improve and suddenly running that mile that knocked you on your ass for a day is nothing. The key is what lifters call progressive overload though. This is the practice of adding a small amount of weight or a couple additional reps to a movement when you reach a certain point. If you can bench 135 (a barbell with two 45 lbs plates) for 4 sets of 8 reps, then you need to go up to either ten reps or 140 lbs to keep progressing. It’s perfectly doable, but it comes with a set of compromises that you have to make. You need to make sure you’re eating right, you need to consistently work out, and you need to endure the discomfort in the moment of doing the exercise. There are similar compromises for social endurance training. You’ll have to sacrifice time, risk embarrassment and endure discomfort throughout the truly taxing stretches.

A lack of physical exercise can lead to increased fatigue. This is where the fatigue spiral of being “too tired to exercise” ultimately comes from. The only way out is through and allowing yourself to fall into lethargy will only make the inevitable snap out of it all the more painful. Still, it’s an easy cycle to get on. The same is true of social isolation. The less you socialize, the more daunting that even the most basic social interaction becomes. How many people do you know that can’t even talk on the phone without a spike of anxiety? It only gets worse the more you turn insular. This is the pathway to intense agoraphobia. The answer to both fatigue spirals is to slowly increase your exposure starting small and then building gradually until you no longer feel tired just walking up stairs or afraid to use the checkout at the grocery store. This is the kind of thing that gaming can help with. Two to four hours a week with 3-5 people. That’s about as low-stakes as you can get. The attention is not solely on you, so there’s room for little micro-breaks. There’s an activity going on so everyone’s focused on that primarily, not necessarily you. As a matter of fact, this activity is one that allows you to dissociate from yourself for a little while so there’s another degree of separation there. Games are not therapy, but they are therapeutic and many people have benefited greatly from in-person group gaming. This is what I yearn for. I am a more social person naturally, so this feels like a bare minimum to me. However, it’s a bare minimum that I feel is constantly denied me by others. This is where I have to walk a delicate line because I am bitter about my lack of gaming. I’m upset that it seems like everything in my life conspires to keep me from having this time. It feels like a piece of me is missing because I’m not able to participate in good-quality regular gaming. I imagine that many of you are feeling the same way. The problem is that our society pushes people into a self-imposed isolation. The reasons are myriad and don’t particularly matter. People in the past had jobs, families, solitary hobbies, and responsibilities but still made time for these little social gatherings on a regular basis because that’s the most fundamentally human thing you can do. Do not let those things keep you confined.

To conclude, I want to assure more introverted readers that I know it’s hard to do things like this. You’re a beginner and you don’t have much of a genetic advantage here. To be comfortable in your own skin in a social environment, even a small one, will take great effort. I get it. The effort will be worth it. You will be a happier, healthier person if you undergo this arduous task. You’re fighting a lot of things to do this. You’re fighting your mind, you’re fighting your schedule, and you’re fighting your society which tells you that all pleasure is good and all discomfort is evil. These are demons trying to drag you down and you need to put them to the sword. You will need help and a good group of friends all focused on the same goals will help you do it. You know what that sounds like to me? A good RPG group.