Losing Friends from Chronic Illness: Extrovert on Loneliness, Adult Friendship & Social Media | Ep 62
"You can use your spoons for corn flakes, but you cannot waste spoons on people flakes."
What I, an extrovert, learned about friendship after 6 years off social media. A solo episode on spoon theory applied to people, cliquey Californians, and how I ended up keeping my circle elite:
Read Full Transcript
00:00 The Extrovert Paradox
Sophia Chang (00:00)
Welcome to The Sophia Chang Show.
It is me, Sophia Chang, the extrovert with no friends. Actually, I am misleading you. I do have a very small, elite group of friends, and this is my love letter to them.
So my five listeners — who are all my friends that I blackmailed into listening to this podcast — are like, Sophia, no one knows who you are. And I'm like, offensive. I'm the Sophia Chang. Not the cool Sophia Chang, not the one with the fully shaved head. I only have a partially shaved head because I'm not that cool. I'm just partial cool.
There was a time that I superseded her in Google rankings, purely — and this is conjecture — purely because she's Gen X and I'm a geriatric millennial, and so I think I just managed to get online sooner and earlier. Then I got subsumed by a Zoomer, which annoys me to no end. So I'm very happy. I would rather the coolest of us be out there. You know, hey, you paved the way. Sophia Chang walked so that this Sophia Chang could hobble.
I went to LeakyCon last year with one of my best friends who was a Hufflepuff. Technically, she's a Slytherpuff, but that's a really gross name. And she was like, you are such a Gryffindor. You just walk up to everybody. And it is true. I am a prototypical — like if you took the Gryffindor, which is the most extroverted house at Hogwarts, and you were like, how can we describe a Gryffindor? You can just be like, Sophia Chang, you know, like everything about me.
I probably have a little bit more bravery than I do brains, like a little bit more courage than I do common sense. But you know, you win some and you just have fun while you lose some.
I've been seeing a lot of posts on Reddit lately — which, shockingly, has turned into the last bastion of actually good social media. Don't tell people I said that. Of extroverts who are like, it is so hard to be an extrovert. And I'm like, thank you! Thank you! Oh my god! I'm so sick of living in the introvert hegemony and the whole world has gone to introvertism, and it's killer on us.
For me, I'm talking today about the extrovert paradox known as chronic illness, and how the desire for connection has become quite conflicted these days. There's been so much weirdness about what an extrovert is. Now an extrovert is defined as somebody who gains energy from socializing.
And that's completely true for me. I will talk to anybody, and I will talk to you like you are my new best friend. I have a tendency to get people to open up really quickly. In fact, the male in my house hates going grocery shopping with me because the cashier will always start telling me her or his life story, and then we're stuck there forever. And unlike me, he hates people. And so he's like, can we go? Don't talk to this person.
Whereas I love being around people, and talking to people gives me so much energy.
02:57 The Introverts Doth Protest Too Much
I once heard this Hufflepuff introvert say — that was like, I'm not an extrovert. I don't need to be around people all the time. I don't know why I put on a British accent. I think what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to cover up the country she's actually from. So my brain was like, quick, don't do the country she's really from. Do another country. Okay, anyway.
So I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard, because I know so many introverts who are literally surrounded by people 24/7 and they still claim to be the biggest — and they're like, oh, I'm such an introvert. Except that I have a job that like talks to people from sun up till sundown. And then I go for this hour-long walk with my coworkers and we chat the whole time. Then I go and have dinner with my loud and raucous family, and then I get on the phone with my — and ugh, it's just so exhausting being an introvert. And I'm like, get out of here.
Whereas that would probably drive me nuts. I spend an enormous amount of time alone as a writer. Most of my day is spent facing a computer rather than speaking to actual people. Yet there is no doubt that I'm an extrovert. So I think it's ridiculous, the kind of things that people think extrovertism is about. I saw this post online on Reddit that was like, do you not trust extroverts that have no close friends? And I was like, I don't trust anyone that has no close friends, including you, clearly.
04:34 Chronic Illness as a Great Filter
I joke a lot about losing friends after chronic illness, but it is actually true, in the sense that it has given me tremendous discernment. You know, some of it is losing the fake friends, but some of it is me sloughing them off intentionally. When your health and your days are so unpredictable, you cannot brook any more unpredictability in life.
You need your friends and the people in your life to be stable and consistent. Like, you can use your spoons for corn flakes, but you cannot waste spoons on people flakes. Trademark, the Sophia Chang. There is nothing I hate more than reaching out to people over and over and them not responding or returning in kind. That is not just a waste of my already limited energy, but it is just plain rude.
05:25 California vs. New York Friend Culture
You get that a lot out here in California. Californians are super cliquey and distrustful of outsiders. Nearly every single one of them, at least down here in Southern California, are friends with people that they went to preschool with. It's kind of horrifying to me, because I went to high school in the suburbs of New York and I got away as quickly as I could. It was just terrible, racist, provincial people.
Californians, however, live five minutes from where they grew up and they don't want to talk to anybody new. Whereas New Yorkers, especially in the city, are super friendly and always willing to be friends with you.
I've met so many friends in New York just off the street, on the bus, in restaurants, and we invite each other over right away. I remember telling this one actor — I don't know if I can name names. You'll know him from, let's just say, he starred as a Korean dictator in a James Franco movie. I'm just going to say that. So, 20 years ago when we were in the industry together, I was telling him about this experience of these cliquey Californians, and he said — he grew up, he was born and raised in SoCal — and he said, LA can be a really lonely place even for people from here.
06:39 I Want To be...Popular!
When I was young, I thought being popular would solve all my problems, because I was so unpopular that I was basically anti-popular. I was like anti-matter. I repelled popularity. Making fun of me was the school-wide daily pastime. And so I thought, if I could just be popular and everybody liked me, I could be protected from the bullies.
Yeah, maybe back then. Nowadays when you're popular you get ten times the backlash. I guess you can't win now either way. So again, you might as well have fun with it. Now I am very happy with the friends I have. I am unbelievably grateful for the level of friendship and the caliber of people who are my friends. Like, the way they support me is unlike anything I've ever experienced in my entire life — certainly more than a family of origin could do, unless you're from Minnesota and you have these like really nice white parents. Let's just say my friends are my family.
07:44 Lessons Chronic Illness Teaches about Friendship
I think that that's the solution to me for extroverts right now in this really fragmented age, is what I had to learn through having a chronic illness.
Having a painful chronic illness is one of the worst things that's ever happened to me. But the best lesson I had to learn from it is quality over quantity. The benefit of having fewer friends is that I am a better friend to the ones I do have. Like, these are the same women who immediately jumped into supporting me, no questions asked, when I restarted this podcast.
After five years off social media and being offline, I am at my lowest level of reach and influence right now. You can't be more of a nobody than I am right now. And these women listened to my first whack ass episode. They said nice things about it. They volunteered to recommend it. One of them even signed up for Substack to follow me, even though she has a house full of children and zero time to be doing something as inane as social media.
The level of support these women provide me is humbling. Their friendship changes who I am. It elevates me and it makes me still believe in goodness in the world.
No amount of popularity or followers or trying to please the public could ever come close to what I have gained. That these few select incredible women in my life have made me a better person.
09:01 Embracing Unimportance
And I think another thing that really helps is coming to grips with the level of unimportance that you have in this world. No one will ever question you about having a small social circle, because no one gives a shit about you. You need to get used to the fact that you are not that important. If you went off social media today, people would forget you existed in five minutes flat.
My favorite Cal Newport saying is, you are not the director of FEMA. You don't need to be available every second. Like, people are glued to their phones, and the funniest is when people are like, you guys, I'm gonna go off social media. I'm taking a break. And it's like, nobody cares. Just go. Like, you are so attention hungry. It's disgusting. And then I think the sooner you can realize how gross you're being, it gets you that step closer to not needing that constant shallow validation, and one step closer to the real friendship that really will sustain you.
Sophia Chang (09:58)
Thanks for joining us for this episode of The Sophia Chang Show. If you got something out of what you heard, please share it with your friends. Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music — apparently I'm on YouTube Music now. Wherever you listen, I'll be there. I'd love a five-star rating, and I'll chat with you next time.
Prefer audio? Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music.
I edit and produce everything myself, no team. ☕ Buy me a boba to help me keep creating.
Sophia Chang is a Reese's Book Club LitUp fellow, disabled dancer, and extroverted writer. She hosts The Sophia Chang Show podcast where she shares No B.S. publishing stories and advice she wished she'd known. Subscribe if you don't want to cry alone.
