y, D., & Bates, M. 1984, p. 25). They are interested in the internal life, and recent brain-mapping research indicates that introverts' brains are much more stimulated by the outside world, making it too loud, too demanding of action, and too intrusive (Quenk, 2000, p. 103). Introverts want very much for events to have meaning.
Nolen-Hoeksema and Larson compiled many interviews of persons experiencing loss, and Jonelle, a 45-year old woman who lost her 65-year old mother to lung cancer was most likely an introvert. Here is how she described her process of grief:
I remember making a conscious choice, a month or so after the funeral
that I would not discuss it with my friends·they'd heart it, and they didn't
need to keep hearing it, although I needed to keep processing it. So that's
when I began to write. So the word processor got used a lot for a while.
and that worked. That was fine. What I needed to do was just keep the
process going. I felt that I could keep talking and talking, but I wasn't saying
anything different. I wasn't offering insights to me or to them. But when I
sit down to write, I begin to go back into the family stuff, and I begin to
get in my own mind more understanding and more process of some of the family problems, and how I wanted to deal with them; how it related to the death; how the resources I learned going through that could help me continue with some of the family stuff, and the estate settlement and so on. So it was like synthesizing the experiences of before (Nolan-Hoeksema & Larson, 2000, p. 63).
This woman needed to withdraw from friends a bit, stop talking about the loss, and write, a task that is easier for introverts than speaking. She needed to work out the significance of her mother's death in terms of the family relationships, to extract meaning from the loss. This kind of reappraisal involves thinking through the loss, trying to find something intrins...