Here’s what we’ve been told about introversion: Introversion and extraversion are hardwired. They’re one of the OCEAN—five factors: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—that we’re more or less born with and then refine throughout our lives. Do you find social situations an enlivening opportunity to meet new friends and expand your horizons? Then you’re likely an extravert and have been since birth. Do you find social situations draining, full of opportunities for social judgment, and not a lot of the alone time you crave? Then you’re an introvert, and you came that way out of the box.

But this understanding of temperament and personality doesn’t make much room for our trauma history. We know that children are born hardwired with certain temperament traits, and those traits are fairly stable in their lifetime. But we also know temperament is only one factor that leads to adult personality. It’s temperament life experience that equal personality.

A child can be born with a cautious/slow to warm temperament, experience supportive parenting, and grow up to become a person more inclined to introversion than extraversion, but also a person with good social skills, adaptive thoughts about social judgment, and a fulfilling social life. They might even think of themselves as an extravert, or perhaps an ambivert because the social world holds no terrors.

Imagine that same child in what Marsha Linehan, creator of dialectical behavior theory, would call an invalidating environment, what temperament researchers would call a “poor fit” for her temperament. In that situation, the child........

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