Vocabulary: Otrovert
Aug. 3rd, 2026 10:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithOtrovert is a neologism coined by New York psychiatrist Rami Kaminski for a proposed personality type described in popular media as involving a persistent sense of being an outsider in group settings, even when the person is socially included, and a preference for selective, one-to-one connections over group affiliation.
In some regards this fits me, in others really not. I am definitely an outsider; it is obvious to most people at first glance; and I routinely tell people "I'm not a joiner." I am particularly alert to things that make other people feel included but make me feel excluded -- even if I was just thinking that we were a loose group of people doing a thing together.
The number of settings in which I am socially included and want to be involved is small. My first encounter with a group space that I actually enjoyed was startling and disorienting. I rarely feel attracted to groups, and prefer activities with one or a few other people, but there have been a few groups that resonated with me. I still have certain aspects of tribal culture; they just rarely have anything to latch onto.
The Otherness Institute
We are all singular entities at birth. When we begin to use language, most of us make the shift from solitary to communal beings. Our entire life from then on is driven by innate desire to belong, finding safety in groups and fear in isolation. A minority of humans do not make this transition and remain non-belongers; otroverts are eternal outsiders.
I do not feel the drive to belong that defines most people. Few groups have any real appeal for me. But if I find one that I really like, I am capable of relating to it. This is largely a density problem. I am weird, my interests are mostly rare, so usually there aren't enough people sharing a given interest to form a group in the first place. Hence why so much of my social life is online: with a much larger pool of friend candidates to search through, I actually can get enough matches to develop an audience or find a venue that interests me. Locally? I went to a permaculture club meeting and there were 2 other people there; I love the concept but it is at a time which will rarely allow me to attend.
Otherness is a personality trait. Otroverts are empathic and friendly, with no problem creating loving relationships. In fact, there is no obvious distinction from any well-adjusted individual. The distinction lies in the inability to belong.
It can be a personality trait, in that some people simply don't feel a drive to belong. But it often grows from some other trait(s) which causes people to recognize that you aren't one of them, and there is little or nothing you can do about that. I can only fake being normal for a few hours at a time, with maximum effort; it is exhausting and unrewarding for me. I need a space where I can be myself, and most people are uninterested in sharing that with me. I'm empathic, all right, but that's one of the things that makes me NOT want to be around most people and makes most groups really uncomfortable for me. I am friendly under limited circumstances. And the distinction between me and other people is extremely obvious. Think of it like the ecliptic plane. Most heavenly bodies orbit in line with it, but some have a tilted orbit that only intersects it briefly.
It is never too late to live your life as you and nobody else.
\o/
It is the balance between your individuality and your function as part of the social matrix that determines your well-being.
I would say that well-being is determined by your ability to find a context where you can thrive. You are safe and productive; you can meet your needs. That doesn't necessarily have much to do with your interactions. A hermit can have high well-being living alone, and would be miserable in a social matrix.
The experience of otherness in a togetherness-minded world can be emotionally bruising. Often misunderstood and misdiagnosed, otherness may lead individuals to feel strange, lonely, and unwelcome in groups. Left unidentified, otroverts' non-belonging can result in a frustrating, futile lifetime effort of trying to “fit in”.
I figured out very quickly that most people don't like me and don't want me around, and nothing I did would ever change that. But I also observed that I don't like most people, don't want to be around them, and don't enjoy the same things. It is a mutual agreement that I am an outsider; I don't wish to fit in most places. However, if I find other people who share enough traits and interests in common, then I can feel welcome there.
Are you an Otrovert?
You cannot fathom how a group collectively thinks.
Often I can, I just don't share it. But there are other times that leave me wondering how or why people share a common thought pattern. I really don't have the groupthink pattern that seems to lock people into whatever the group says. Facts remain obvious to me. Indeed my reliance on facts over emotions or longing is among my most othering traits, and irritates people sometimes to the point of violence. Because when everyone is arguing over a measurable thing, I dismiss all the opinions and say, "Just get a ruler and measure it." This confuses and aggravates normal people, they don't want to do it, and they all collectively stare at me for being an outsider.
You are comfortable being alone and feel lonely in group settings.
Definitely. I can't recall feeling lonely while by myself. For me, loneliness happens when I am in a group of people who are all enjoying themselves doing things I don't enjoy. I'm uncomfortable and unhappy, I start resenting that everyone else gets to be happy with their friends and I don't, and I feel downright bitter that they won't even leave me alone to amuse myself elsewhere, but insist on dragging me along. I do my best to avoid such situations as they are toxic for everyone and risk explosions. And that is definitely a thing that rules me out of groups and most social connection.
Working as part of a team is difficult for you.
Prevailingly true, although not universally true. Among the issues here are that I rarely want to do the same things as others, my innate instincts for how to do things often point in different directions, and for many things my intelligence and skills are so much higher than average that involving other people in a task just slows me down. I learned to say "Do your own fucking homework" very early. But with one or two people I like, where we have a common goal, I do fine. I can assemble an item with my partner or make a group craft like a wicker man with covenmates. The process of teamwork isn't the problem; it's finding both people I get along with a project we want to do together.
My experiences in school gave me a very negative impression of what teamwork typically is like in mainstream situations. That might've gone better if anyone ever bothered to teach teamwork skills instead of just dumping students together and expecting that to work. Hell, it didn't even work well for normal people.
You do not ask for advice. You make your own decisions.
Yep. Because I rarely need advice, and even if I do, the chance of anyone else knowing more than I do or having a better solution is very low. Not zero, but a very difficult state to achieve. When normal people go to an expert, that expert almost always knows more than they do and following their advice will give better results than solving a problem alone. By the time I can't solve a problem, it usually isn't going to get solved. I rarely find advice reassuring the way other people seem to.
The really maddening part is that this applies even in my worst subject areas. I will spot a flaw in someone's plan, point it out, they ignore me, and the undesirable outcome I predicted will promptly emerge. Frex, I am so bad at math that I'm lucky to get the right answer three times in a row on a calculator. Yet placement tests said I was better than two-thirds of the population. What the hell are they doing, taking off their shoes to count to 20? Then I encountered things like most cities being broke because they only count infrastructure as assets and completely disregard the liabilities of maintenance and replacement costs. To me it is obvious that you must account for those expenses, but apparently this is a thing most normal people cannot see even when it is pointed out to them. I couldn't do the math myself, but I can tell at a glance that it urgently needs to get done, whereas the municipal budget setters and accountants whose jobs are about balancing those numbers just ... don't get it.
I'd love to be able to consult experts. On rare occasions, when I find someone who knows vastly more than I do about a subject of interest, I glom onto them and go into sponge mode. I ask a few leading questions to wind them up, give them an occasional poke if they start to slow down, but mostly just stay there absorbing input. I've inhaled whole libraries. If I encounter a new topic I wish to use but don't know much about, then I pick a few books and consume those. "Three books makes you an expert" is how I got to this place. Sure, on any given topic, there exist people who know vastly more about it than I do -- but statistically speaking, I rarely encounter them. I am far more likely to encounter a pest control person who cannot tell the difference between ants and termites than to find one who agrees, "Yep, that's a termite, good for you spotting it," even when I can point to the field marks on the insect I have brought to them.
You fear being “outed” as a perpetual outsider.
That would be like worrying that people will notice I have a head. It is obvious at first glance and cannot be hidden for long, so there is no point trying or worrying about it. The above statement is for people who are living a fake life. It's not imposter syndrome, which is an inaccurate feeling of not deserving one's place in a job or other group. It's more a matter of Prolonged Adaptive Stress Syndrome, which is all about doing things that don't match one's nature. In both cases, however, people constantly worry that others will "find them out" and eject them from the group. I already know that I don't belong in most groups, it doesn't bother me, and if I feel unsure about my qualifications then I just check them. It's okay if I don't have knowledge or skills yet; I can usually learn them. If it's a thing I truly suck at, then no amount of trying will change that and it's not my fault; nobody is good at everything.
You are considerate to a fault, very sensitive to other people's feelings. You tend to be gentle and unobtrusive.
Definitely not me. I'm capable of being gentle and unobtrusive, but I have to exert a lot of effort to be considerate of others. It's not that I can't sense emotions. It's that my needs are instincts are so different from others that they rarely help me respond in ways other people appreciate. This is exacerbated by other people's tendency to lie outright. If I say "I want to be alone" then that's exactly what I mean; when other people say it, they usually mean "I want you to come after me to prove you care." I am bad at decoding social lies and usually have no interest in trying to do so. I have to ask people what they want, memorize that, and then remember to perform it in the future, which also includes guessing which situations it even applies to. I am bad at this. After decades of effort with my partner, who is well worth said effort, I have gotten somewhat better at it. But it's not my first thought. Part of that is innate, but part is because I spent so much time by myself growing up that I simply don't expect other people around me and thus it doesn't occur to me to account for them unless prompted. Plus of course, few people are ever considerate of my needs or feelings, so why should I give a flying fuck about theirs?
You are a person of habit. You do not like transitions.
Half true.
I have routines, most of which are built around needs or having found the most effective way to do something. Frex, my morning routine accommodates the fact that I only have about 5-10 minutes after waking up to get food in my mouth, or my stomach begins fomenting a rebellion, plus it takes about an hour for my brain to boot up. :/ Thus changing a routine often requires working around or dealing with concrete issues. I do have an "emergency start" function for waking up fast in an emergency, but it only lasts for about an hour and then I'm toast for the rest of the day, and it also means that random abilities completely fail to boot up at all.
Transitions are difficult if I have locked my attention onto something. It requires a process to disengage after completing a task or at least getting to a good stopping point. Without that, bits of energy and ideas spill out to clutter my thinking and impair my ability to do other things. Again, I can build a separate routine for urgent interruptions. "Knight in Shining Armor Pest Control Service!" causes me to drop what I'm doing and rush to deal with the pest, because that code phrase tells me the matter is urgent. But if you just drag me away from something I'm doing, the results will please nobody. I am capable of running multiple things at once, but only if they are all trivial, or if at least one requires only intermittent attention and I have a reminder to check it. Frequent interruptions, or even a possible need to drop what I'm doing to handle something else, mean I can't do important work.
On the other hoof, I get bored easily. I require novelty. I require an appropriate level of challenge. I require tasks that I can reasonably accomplish. If I am stuck with repetitive tasks and/or routinely pressured to do things that I am not good at, problems build up quickly. My brain is very powerful, and if not occupied with something constructive, it's very prone to find something to do, which may be destructive. Like getting bored and swinging a wrecking ball at someone else's reality tunnel just to have something interesting to do.
This is, obviously, another reason that most people don't want me around. It's also part of why I don't try to fit into groups that I don't belong in; it wouldn't work and would just make everyone unhappy. It's much better for me to do things on my own, with one or a few other folks, or in a rare group that I actually do fit. The problem is when some people persistently try to shove a pentagonal peg into a square hole.
Does anyone else find it hilarious that, even with a description of outsiders I don't fit it precisely? :D
In some regards this fits me, in others really not. I am definitely an outsider; it is obvious to most people at first glance; and I routinely tell people "I'm not a joiner." I am particularly alert to things that make other people feel included but make me feel excluded -- even if I was just thinking that we were a loose group of people doing a thing together.
The number of settings in which I am socially included and want to be involved is small. My first encounter with a group space that I actually enjoyed was startling and disorienting. I rarely feel attracted to groups, and prefer activities with one or a few other people, but there have been a few groups that resonated with me. I still have certain aspects of tribal culture; they just rarely have anything to latch onto.
The Otherness Institute
We are all singular entities at birth. When we begin to use language, most of us make the shift from solitary to communal beings. Our entire life from then on is driven by innate desire to belong, finding safety in groups and fear in isolation. A minority of humans do not make this transition and remain non-belongers; otroverts are eternal outsiders.
I do not feel the drive to belong that defines most people. Few groups have any real appeal for me. But if I find one that I really like, I am capable of relating to it. This is largely a density problem. I am weird, my interests are mostly rare, so usually there aren't enough people sharing a given interest to form a group in the first place. Hence why so much of my social life is online: with a much larger pool of friend candidates to search through, I actually can get enough matches to develop an audience or find a venue that interests me. Locally? I went to a permaculture club meeting and there were 2 other people there; I love the concept but it is at a time which will rarely allow me to attend.
Otherness is a personality trait. Otroverts are empathic and friendly, with no problem creating loving relationships. In fact, there is no obvious distinction from any well-adjusted individual. The distinction lies in the inability to belong.
It can be a personality trait, in that some people simply don't feel a drive to belong. But it often grows from some other trait(s) which causes people to recognize that you aren't one of them, and there is little or nothing you can do about that. I can only fake being normal for a few hours at a time, with maximum effort; it is exhausting and unrewarding for me. I need a space where I can be myself, and most people are uninterested in sharing that with me. I'm empathic, all right, but that's one of the things that makes me NOT want to be around most people and makes most groups really uncomfortable for me. I am friendly under limited circumstances. And the distinction between me and other people is extremely obvious. Think of it like the ecliptic plane. Most heavenly bodies orbit in line with it, but some have a tilted orbit that only intersects it briefly.
It is never too late to live your life as you and nobody else.
\o/
It is the balance between your individuality and your function as part of the social matrix that determines your well-being.
I would say that well-being is determined by your ability to find a context where you can thrive. You are safe and productive; you can meet your needs. That doesn't necessarily have much to do with your interactions. A hermit can have high well-being living alone, and would be miserable in a social matrix.
The experience of otherness in a togetherness-minded world can be emotionally bruising. Often misunderstood and misdiagnosed, otherness may lead individuals to feel strange, lonely, and unwelcome in groups. Left unidentified, otroverts' non-belonging can result in a frustrating, futile lifetime effort of trying to “fit in”.
I figured out very quickly that most people don't like me and don't want me around, and nothing I did would ever change that. But I also observed that I don't like most people, don't want to be around them, and don't enjoy the same things. It is a mutual agreement that I am an outsider; I don't wish to fit in most places. However, if I find other people who share enough traits and interests in common, then I can feel welcome there.
Are you an Otrovert?
You cannot fathom how a group collectively thinks.
Often I can, I just don't share it. But there are other times that leave me wondering how or why people share a common thought pattern. I really don't have the groupthink pattern that seems to lock people into whatever the group says. Facts remain obvious to me. Indeed my reliance on facts over emotions or longing is among my most othering traits, and irritates people sometimes to the point of violence. Because when everyone is arguing over a measurable thing, I dismiss all the opinions and say, "Just get a ruler and measure it." This confuses and aggravates normal people, they don't want to do it, and they all collectively stare at me for being an outsider.
You are comfortable being alone and feel lonely in group settings.
Definitely. I can't recall feeling lonely while by myself. For me, loneliness happens when I am in a group of people who are all enjoying themselves doing things I don't enjoy. I'm uncomfortable and unhappy, I start resenting that everyone else gets to be happy with their friends and I don't, and I feel downright bitter that they won't even leave me alone to amuse myself elsewhere, but insist on dragging me along. I do my best to avoid such situations as they are toxic for everyone and risk explosions. And that is definitely a thing that rules me out of groups and most social connection.
Working as part of a team is difficult for you.
Prevailingly true, although not universally true. Among the issues here are that I rarely want to do the same things as others, my innate instincts for how to do things often point in different directions, and for many things my intelligence and skills are so much higher than average that involving other people in a task just slows me down. I learned to say "Do your own fucking homework" very early. But with one or two people I like, where we have a common goal, I do fine. I can assemble an item with my partner or make a group craft like a wicker man with covenmates. The process of teamwork isn't the problem; it's finding both people I get along with a project we want to do together.
My experiences in school gave me a very negative impression of what teamwork typically is like in mainstream situations. That might've gone better if anyone ever bothered to teach teamwork skills instead of just dumping students together and expecting that to work. Hell, it didn't even work well for normal people.
You do not ask for advice. You make your own decisions.
Yep. Because I rarely need advice, and even if I do, the chance of anyone else knowing more than I do or having a better solution is very low. Not zero, but a very difficult state to achieve. When normal people go to an expert, that expert almost always knows more than they do and following their advice will give better results than solving a problem alone. By the time I can't solve a problem, it usually isn't going to get solved. I rarely find advice reassuring the way other people seem to.
The really maddening part is that this applies even in my worst subject areas. I will spot a flaw in someone's plan, point it out, they ignore me, and the undesirable outcome I predicted will promptly emerge. Frex, I am so bad at math that I'm lucky to get the right answer three times in a row on a calculator. Yet placement tests said I was better than two-thirds of the population. What the hell are they doing, taking off their shoes to count to 20? Then I encountered things like most cities being broke because they only count infrastructure as assets and completely disregard the liabilities of maintenance and replacement costs. To me it is obvious that you must account for those expenses, but apparently this is a thing most normal people cannot see even when it is pointed out to them. I couldn't do the math myself, but I can tell at a glance that it urgently needs to get done, whereas the municipal budget setters and accountants whose jobs are about balancing those numbers just ... don't get it.
I'd love to be able to consult experts. On rare occasions, when I find someone who knows vastly more than I do about a subject of interest, I glom onto them and go into sponge mode. I ask a few leading questions to wind them up, give them an occasional poke if they start to slow down, but mostly just stay there absorbing input. I've inhaled whole libraries. If I encounter a new topic I wish to use but don't know much about, then I pick a few books and consume those. "Three books makes you an expert" is how I got to this place. Sure, on any given topic, there exist people who know vastly more about it than I do -- but statistically speaking, I rarely encounter them. I am far more likely to encounter a pest control person who cannot tell the difference between ants and termites than to find one who agrees, "Yep, that's a termite, good for you spotting it," even when I can point to the field marks on the insect I have brought to them.
You fear being “outed” as a perpetual outsider.
That would be like worrying that people will notice I have a head. It is obvious at first glance and cannot be hidden for long, so there is no point trying or worrying about it. The above statement is for people who are living a fake life. It's not imposter syndrome, which is an inaccurate feeling of not deserving one's place in a job or other group. It's more a matter of Prolonged Adaptive Stress Syndrome, which is all about doing things that don't match one's nature. In both cases, however, people constantly worry that others will "find them out" and eject them from the group. I already know that I don't belong in most groups, it doesn't bother me, and if I feel unsure about my qualifications then I just check them. It's okay if I don't have knowledge or skills yet; I can usually learn them. If it's a thing I truly suck at, then no amount of trying will change that and it's not my fault; nobody is good at everything.
You are considerate to a fault, very sensitive to other people's feelings. You tend to be gentle and unobtrusive.
Definitely not me. I'm capable of being gentle and unobtrusive, but I have to exert a lot of effort to be considerate of others. It's not that I can't sense emotions. It's that my needs are instincts are so different from others that they rarely help me respond in ways other people appreciate. This is exacerbated by other people's tendency to lie outright. If I say "I want to be alone" then that's exactly what I mean; when other people say it, they usually mean "I want you to come after me to prove you care." I am bad at decoding social lies and usually have no interest in trying to do so. I have to ask people what they want, memorize that, and then remember to perform it in the future, which also includes guessing which situations it even applies to. I am bad at this. After decades of effort with my partner, who is well worth said effort, I have gotten somewhat better at it. But it's not my first thought. Part of that is innate, but part is because I spent so much time by myself growing up that I simply don't expect other people around me and thus it doesn't occur to me to account for them unless prompted. Plus of course, few people are ever considerate of my needs or feelings, so why should I give a flying fuck about theirs?
You are a person of habit. You do not like transitions.
Half true.
I have routines, most of which are built around needs or having found the most effective way to do something. Frex, my morning routine accommodates the fact that I only have about 5-10 minutes after waking up to get food in my mouth, or my stomach begins fomenting a rebellion, plus it takes about an hour for my brain to boot up. :/ Thus changing a routine often requires working around or dealing with concrete issues. I do have an "emergency start" function for waking up fast in an emergency, but it only lasts for about an hour and then I'm toast for the rest of the day, and it also means that random abilities completely fail to boot up at all.
Transitions are difficult if I have locked my attention onto something. It requires a process to disengage after completing a task or at least getting to a good stopping point. Without that, bits of energy and ideas spill out to clutter my thinking and impair my ability to do other things. Again, I can build a separate routine for urgent interruptions. "Knight in Shining Armor Pest Control Service!" causes me to drop what I'm doing and rush to deal with the pest, because that code phrase tells me the matter is urgent. But if you just drag me away from something I'm doing, the results will please nobody. I am capable of running multiple things at once, but only if they are all trivial, or if at least one requires only intermittent attention and I have a reminder to check it. Frequent interruptions, or even a possible need to drop what I'm doing to handle something else, mean I can't do important work.
On the other hoof, I get bored easily. I require novelty. I require an appropriate level of challenge. I require tasks that I can reasonably accomplish. If I am stuck with repetitive tasks and/or routinely pressured to do things that I am not good at, problems build up quickly. My brain is very powerful, and if not occupied with something constructive, it's very prone to find something to do, which may be destructive. Like getting bored and swinging a wrecking ball at someone else's reality tunnel just to have something interesting to do.
This is, obviously, another reason that most people don't want me around. It's also part of why I don't try to fit into groups that I don't belong in; it wouldn't work and would just make everyone unhappy. It's much better for me to do things on my own, with one or a few other folks, or in a rare group that I actually do fit. The problem is when some people persistently try to shove a pentagonal peg into a square hole.
Does anyone else find it hilarious that, even with a description of outsiders I don't fit it precisely? :D
(no subject)
Date: 2026-08-04 01:47 am (UTC)Well ...
Date: 2026-08-04 01:57 am (UTC)Amusingly, cultures divide the color spectrum different. The first two words in any language are black/dark and white/light. If there is a third word, it is red. The fourth will be either green, blue, or a word meaning both. From there it spreads out more. English considers red and pink to be different colors. Russian considers dark blue and light blue different colors. And so on.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2026-08-04 02:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-08-04 09:08 am (UTC)This fits me fairly well as well. (I don't think any definition fits anyone precisely - people are too weird in general, even those who as so called 'normal'.) I am gentle and unobtrusive, so that it always surprises people when they encounter one of those things where I will not budge an inch. (Like you, I'm not going to be bullied out of facts.)
I always used to try very hard to fit in, and succeeded for a while before inevitably the group and I would drift apart. Often just because I didn't want to be with the group all the time. (I did want to want it though!) But nowadays I go into groups expecting to be the weird odd one out, and that's liberating in its way. I speak my mind and generally people laugh because they weren't expecting anyone to say that (but possibly many of them are thinking it.) And we're all companionable enough so that it's nice, and in an hour or so I go home and recover.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-08-13 03:38 am (UTC)I joke about having lived in Maryland and formed the habit of sitting on any available fence. When people want to draw lines between this OR that, I tend to be thinking of a bit of this and a bit of that. There've been a few groups in which I've felt *comfortable*--my family, the odd jobs network, the social crowd I was accused of being the leader of in college--but I think we are individuals first and group members later, OF COURSE we are different from others in a group, and if we start to lose sight of the difference we need to withdraw from the group for a while and check for signs of toxic groupthink.
No idea whether this makes me an "otrovert" who's taken full ownership of the trait, or whether "otrovert" is a useful concept...I suspect it's just not a useful concept. We already have the word "individualist."