Mindful Drinking & Moderation in Midlife: Low No Drinker Podcast

106: Introvert, Extrovert, Ambivert: 4 Steps to Match Your Drinking Style to Your Social Energy

• Denise Hamilton-Mace • Episode 106

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Changing the way we drink can reveal who we really are. In this episode, I explore how introverts, extroverts, and ambiverts approach alcohol differently – and how understanding your personality type can help you drink in ways that genuinely suit you.

I introduce my Four I’s Framework (Identify, Investigate, Implement, Iterate) to help you match your social energy to your drinking style, so you can enjoy your nights out (or nights in) without draining your social battery or relying on Dutch courage to get you through.


0:00 Dutch courage
2:29 Personality types spectrum
4:22 Ambiverts
8:00 Discovering my type
11:47 The Four I's Framework
15:29 Mindful drinking for your personality type


Best episode to check out to next:
#103. No One Tells You This About Drinking Less in Midlife

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Speaker 1:

Changing the way that I drink has given me more clarity on my true personality now in my mid-40s than I have ever had in my entire drinking career. If you've ever wondered if the way that you're drinking actually complements who you are as a person, then this episode is for you, and in it I'm going to be sharing with you my Four Eyes Framework not the most glamorous name I know, but it gets the job done to help you find ways to better match your drinking experiences with who you are as a person, rather than just using alcohol to play a role that might not fit you. Hello, hello and welcome to the show. My name is Denise Hamilton-Mace and I am your mindful drinking and moderation in midlife mentor here to help you build a life less intoxicated on your own terms. Now, as a little aside, I do have some big news and big announcements coming up over the next couple of weeks. The eagle eared among you will have noticed a slight change in the introduction, so I do recommend that you hit that subscribe button if you haven't yet, just so that you can make sure you don't miss the announcements about what is coming up for me here at Lone-Eyed Drinker over the next few weeks. But today we are here to talk personality types.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure you've heard the phrase Dutch courage. It actually dates back to war times between the English and the Dutch, and the British used to use the term to mock the Dutch who would have a tipple of Geneva before entering into battle, to say that they didn't have real courage. They were just using the alcohol to give them a false sense of bravado. Therefore, dutch courage and it's a term that we still use. In a similar way today, a lot of people will say that they're about to do something nervy and they need a little bit of Dutch courage before Now. That might be going into a new social situation. It might be meeting a new group of people. It might be doing something big, maybe proposing to the love of your life in a hot air balloon. Whatever it is, we often use the phrase Dutch courage to signify using alcohol to help us perpetuate a side of our personality that we want to be more prevalent in that situation. But have you ever stopped to wonder whether or not that Dutch courage is actually masking your real personality and if you might be more effective if you would just be yourself?

Speaker 1:

We've all heard of the two main personality types. We talk about introverts and extroverts, but actually introversion and extroversion live on a spectrum and right in the middle of that spectrum is something called an ambivert. Now, I remember having a conversation about discovering that I myself was actually more of an introvert. And I remember having this conversation with my mum about a year or so ago, and she looked at me with shock and horror as I described myself as an introvert, because she said but you've never been shy, denise, you're always out, always socializing. And that's a mistake that a lot of people make when we talk about introverts. So we'll start there.

Speaker 1:

Often it's thought that an introvert is somebody who is shy, who perhaps isn't very confident when it comes to communicating with people, but actually that's not what an introvert is. An introvert is somebody who is energized by spending time either on their own or with a very small group of close, trusted people. An extrovert, on the other end of the scale, is someone who is energized by spending time in large crowds or with lots of people or in busy situations. So whether you're introvert or extrovert has nothing to do at all with your confidence, whether or not you're shy or whether or not you're loud. It's about what energizes you and what makes you feel refilled and fulfilled and ready to tackle your next set of tasks. It's about whether or not, when things are getting too much, if you find that you get more comfort from taking a step back and spending some time on your own or just with a small group of trusted people, or whether you feel more energized and more supported if you're in a large crowd, if you're in a busy environment, if there's lots going on.

Speaker 1:

Now, right in the middle of that sits something called an ambivert, and ambiverts, as I'm sure you can guess, are people who can traverse either side of that spectrum. So an ambivert is somebody who is far more, perhaps, flexible, perhaps more adaptable, somebody who, in situations where they're with ambiverts, can take their energy levels down to a more calm, more relaxing, more serene state and can find that they feel energized by taking some quiet time with those people, perhaps just enjoying a drink with two or three people, rather than necessarily needing the whole pub to join in. But when an ambivert is with a group of extroverts, they can also adapt to that situation and they may find that they are more likely to be themselves more lively, more outgoing, more outspoken. Extroverts and introverts can find themselves on a spectrum of using alcohol to help them perform in social situations. It just looks different for those different types of people. So how does this all work? Connect to your drinking personality type.

Speaker 1:

So introverts, you'll often find, will perhaps prefer to spend their time drinking with smaller groups of trusted people. It might be that you can quite happily sit on the sofa with your other half, or perhaps round at a friend's house, or maybe you're at the pub, but it's just the two of you in a nice, you know, secluded table in the corner rather than right in the throw of the thick of things. But this doesn't mean that you're not going to drink. Introverts will quite happily sit and make their way through two or three bottles of wine with just a small group of people, quite possibly drinking more than they intend to. Because you feel so comfortable and so safe with the people that are around you that it's quite easy to slip into this habit of not recognizing how much you're drinking and just letting the wine flow or the beers pour, whatever it is that happens to be in your glass. Extroverts, on the other hand, are far more likely to partake in more boisterous for want of a better word drinking activities, they will be far more likely to be in the thick of things. They'll be standing at the bar, they'll be getting the shots in, they'll be getting other people involved in the drinking situation, they might be playing drinking games. And then your ambiverts, those who sit in the middle, as I said, will find that they can slip into one side of things or the other. Now, this can be a lot more stressful for an ambivert, because if you find that actually you could drink just as much in any situation, then it's very hard to find a situation in which you're not going to drink, perhaps more than you would have intended to. And before we go any further, I must say that neither drinking as an introvert nor as an extrovert, or somewhere in the middle, as an ambivert, is the better or worse way to do things. I'm not saying that one way of doing things is better than the other. It's just about what fits in with your personality type and who you are. The risk for ambiverts, however, is that as alcohol becomes a however, is that as alcohol becomes a tool for changing gears in different situations, you can quite easily go from one group to another group, to another group, to another group in any given social situation and find ways and reasons to continue to drink in ways that might not be serving you as much as you would like them to.

Speaker 1:

For me personally, I always considered myself to be an extrovert, always. I worked in hospitality for 24 years and in that game, it's all about people. It's all about talking to people and being in groups and being in social situations. Your entire workplace of work is a social situation, and then after work, you go to another venue, another bar, with more people that you know, with more people that you meet, and you're trained to be able to deliver good times to other people by talking to them, by socializing, by making that part of your personality and who you are. For me, I always assumed that I was this really extrovert person that I loved being around other people, but now that I have the clarity and the 2020 vision of hindsight, I can recognize that my drinking habits were very much a case of employing a lot of Dutch courage, very often to enable me to be as extrovert as I could in a situation. Before, unfortunately, sometimes it went too far in the other direction. We've all been there. That's not what we're here to to beat anybody up for for the things that we may have done in our past. We've all had some crazy times. That's okay.

Speaker 1:

What I discovered as I started to change the amount of alcohol that I consumed was that actually I'm quite an introvert. So you might think that's a bit odd me having a podcast, me being on YouTube, me being a public speaker. I do flow on that ambivert scale, but actually I'm an introvert. I am energized by spending time at home on my sofa with my husband and with my kids. I find now being around lots of people, large groups, busy situations I find extremely draining, and when I need to re-energize myself, when I need to get back to being the best version of myself, I require alone time. It's not something I ever recognized before. So I was constantly going through this extrovert lifestyle, feeling completely drained because I didn't realize what I actually needed to give myself in order to rejuvenate my social battery, instead of it always running on empty and therefore topping up that energy with alcohol as a way to give me some false courage, some false energy, those extra socialization skills when I didn't necessarily feel like being the chattiest person in the room, when I didn't feel like motivating my teams, when I didn't feel like doing another 16-hour shift. It was alcohol that gave me the Dutch courage to be able to continue to do that in an extroverted manner.

Speaker 1:

One of the joys of being in midlife is that, I'm sure you'll notice, if you have old people in your life. The older you get, the less fucks you give about anything. As you get to know yourself better, you worry less about impressing other people. You worry less about keeping up with the Joneses. You worry less about how you're seen by random people that you don't know. What you care about is how you're seen by the people that you know and that you love.

Speaker 1:

I think we all naturally tend to become slightly more introverted as we get older. We simply aren't looking for as much external validation as we were when we were younger. I'm not suggesting that everybody, as they get older, becomes an introvert. I'm simply saying that as we move through that spectrum of extroversion, ambiversion, introversion we recognize that in different situations, we present different sides of ourselves and different levels of extroversion and introversion, and that applies to our drinking as well. So, when it comes to making authentic connections, when it comes to being true to yourself, when it comes to being able to support the life that you've decided that you want to lead, which has led you to finding a podcast like this and many of the others that are out there.

Speaker 1:

Then I've developed a framework which is glamorously called the Four Eyes Framework, to make it easy to remember, because the name isn't important. What's important is about how you can use a framework like this to help you identify where you are on that spectrum and how your drinking habits fit into that, so that you can make choices that serve you better. Okay, so the first I in our framework is identify, and this is about understanding what your core social energy is really derived from. This isn't about boxing yourself in and it's not about you. I don't want you to say, oh okay, well, I'm an extrovert, so therefore, this is everything I do is within that extrovert frame. As I said, this is a spectrum and people extrovert because it helps you get through the work day. I don't know, only you know, but what you need to do is identify which of these states is your true self.

Speaker 1:

What is it that makes you feel the most energized, the most restored? What is it that builds your social battery back up when you are feeling exhausted and drained battery back up when you are feeling exhausted and drained. Is it being around other people and feeding off the energy and the good vibes and the social winds and excitement of other people? Is it spending time with just a few close friends or family and really having deep, intimate conversations? Or is it spending time on your own, sat on the sofa or in the park with a book or binging on a series? Whatever it is, there is no right or wrong. It's just about what makes you feel most socially restored, most energized and most yourself.

Speaker 1:

The next I is investigate. So this is about examining your current drinking patterns to see what habits you are perpetuating, looking closely at when, where, why and, most importantly, how you're drinking. Do you notice that when you're with a group of people, you are generally drinking more or less than makes you feel comfortable? Are you trying to fit in with the crowd and keep up with what everybody else is doing? Do you find that when you're sitting in a group of just your best friends, that you're the one that's saying, oh, come on, let's have another drink. Are you using the alcohol to enhance a situation that you're already enjoying, or are you using it to push yourself into something that you don't naturally feel is a fit for you. Pay attention to the triggers that lead you to drinking more than you normally would, to the people that are around you when you feel like that, to the mood that you're in and, therefore, the choices that that leads you to make.

Speaker 1:

Your next I is to implement. It is to match your drinking style to your energy style. Now, this could be about choosing drinks and settings and a pacing that works with your personality. If you're in a big group and you find that you're an extrovert and you are energized by lots of people around you and everybody is having a drink, you are more likely to want to drink, to keep up with everyone and to feel like you are fitting in. So in that situation, what do you need to do instead? Do you need to remove yourself from there entirely? Well, that's probably going to feel at odds to who you are as a person. So instead, you've got to find ways that you can remain within that group but still remain true to your desire to build a better life for yourself. So in that situation, you'd want to be looking at times when you can find other ways to help you feel that you are just as much a part of the group.

Speaker 1:

Now, first and foremost obviously coming from me it's going to be a case of finding drinks that you can enjoy. That might be alcohol free, so low or no, or non-alcoholic drinks or perhaps mid-strength drinks, so that you can either zebra stripe, so alternating between alcohol free and alcohol full throughout the night, or perhaps coast with mid-strength drinks through the evening or stick to completely alcohol-free versions of your drink throughout the night. The most important thing in those situations is usually the ritual rather than the alcohol. It's having something in your hand. It's how you've got something to do with your hands. It's not feeling like you look like you're not part of the group because everyone else has got a drinking hand and you're standing there with a glass of water. So finding an alcohol-free beer or a sparkling wine or an alcohol-free gin and tonic that gives you that same drinking experience, just without the alcohol, means you can still be part of the group and not have to miss out on anything, but you can still wake up with a clearer head in the morning.

Speaker 1:

If you're more of an introvert, it might mean pacing yourself in terms of your drinks by choosing a more mindful way to drink. It can be quite easy when you're sitting with just a group of three or four of you and everyone's taking it in turns to order another bottle or to suggest that we get another drink, to mindlessly just go along with it. But if you could take the time to think more mindfully about your drinking experience, you'll find that you're able to pace yourself a little bit better. Now there's the obvious things in that situation, such as having a glass of water in between every glass of wine or between every beer, looking at low-no options again. But also it's about taking the time to drink mindfully. So consider the drink in your glass. Make sure that you are paying attention to how it looks, how it tastes, how it smells, how it's making you feel Sip slowly rather than guzzling quickly, and think about how that drink is impacting your experience with your friends. Is it adding to the time that you're having together or do you feel like it might be starting to take away as you slip away from your friends because you're not able to be as present and participate as deeply as truly matters to you?

Speaker 1:

And then the fourth I is to iterate Throughout your entire low-no drinking process, throughout your entire journey to a life less intoxicated. Iteration is your friend, I really want you to understand that this is not a case of all or nothing. This is not a case of immediate and absolute change. If you're in any situation, you have the ability to assess how your choices have impacted the outcome of that situation and to change things accordingly. Now you might, for example, in a group situation, decided that you wanted to coast with mid-strength drinks throughout the evening, but the next morning you might find that you feel just as bad as you usually do, because you actually just had twice as many mid-strength drinks as you would have had full-strength drinks. In that case, iterate, think again about the way that you're doing it and next time perhaps that's not the way for you to move forward. Perhaps you might want a zebra stripe by mixing alcohol-free and alcohol-full drinks. Perhaps you might want to bookend and just give yourself one or two alcohol-full drinks in the evening, but the rest of the time, the start and the end you have alcohol-free.

Speaker 1:

There are lots of ways that you can iterate your mindful drinking and moderation processes. You have to find what works for you Now. They might not necessarily work for everyone, and perhaps moderation isn't the way that suits you best, but the only way you're going to know is if you try it. If it doesn't work, then that's fine. You've learned something and you can use that knowledge to make informed decisions the next time you are in a similar social situation. Perhaps the answer for you isn't moderation, perhaps it is just alcohol-free drinks all night long. That's absolutely fine. Give that a try as well and see how you feel.

Speaker 1:

This is all about a learning process and finding a drinking style that complements your personality as well as the lifestyle that you are trying to build. So there you have it the four I's of mindfully drinking for your personality, type Identify, investigate, implement and iterate. That's it from me for this week. Thank you for joining me. If you found this episode helpful, then I suggest you head to minddrinkingresetcom. There you can download my why you can't drink like you used to guide for free, and that will get you onto the mailing list so that you will be the first to know about the new announcements coming up for low no drinker in the next few weeks. Until next time, cheers to a life less intoxicated.

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Denise Hamilton-Mace

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