Introverts have a few very close friends. They aren't interested in joining clubs, learning to dance, getting on pep squad or other activities which they consider superficial and a waste of time. Please don't send your introverted child out to play with other kids. Let them go to their room and shut door!

The good news is that percentage of introverts increases as you go up intellectual scale. There are usually more introverts in college, among Phi Beta Kappa students and recipients of Rhodes Scholar awards than their 30% distribution in population as a whole.

It's important to understand as well how damaging it is for you and other relatives to covertly expect your introverted child to "turn into" an extrovert. This puts an impossible burden on an introverted child and does much to destroy their sense of self worth.

Introversion is a legitimate personality type. Your child couldn't change even they wanted to and many an introverted child has been crushed under this expectation. Instead, learn positive attirbutes of introverts and then help your child to learn them as well.

Introverts can focus and concentrate. They are able to tune out distractions. They listen beautifully and remember well.

Introverts have a rich inner world and need not be lonely. Many are content to read for hours and should be allowed, even encouraged, to do so.

Some famous introverts can be used to point out to your child that success is not related to introversion or extroversion but to hard work, learning, preparation and personal achievement. Famous introverts such as Michael Jordan, Queen Elizabeth II, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Warren Buffett and Steven Spielberg prove that introverts make contributions to world we live in far greater proportion than their numbers.

Speaking of famous introverts, Hans Christian Andersen is an introvert who wrote a story all introverted children should read. There are few who will not relate emotionally to "The Ugly Duckling". Read this story to your child!

There is another thing you can help your introverted child with and that is to acquire enough of a "personality" that they can cope in social situations. A "personality" in this sense is a set of social behaviors that allows them to cope with minimum societal expectations.

But never expect them to be someting they are not. The great analyst Karl Jung makes it very clear that way for introverts to win is to become more consciously introverted rather than to try and be something they are not. Every spiritual teaching in world would agree ... find yourself and be yourself. Your introverted child can do this with your help!

How could Sherry find her way out of this stuck place?

Before she could change it, she needed to become aware of it rather than continue to operate on automatic pilot. We can’t change something that we don’t know we are doing. Sherry needed to become aware of both inner voices - adolescent bossy, controlling voice of her father, and younger voice of her resistant child. She needed to choose to be controlling and resistant - rather than doing it unconsciously - before she could have other chooses available to her.

"But why would I choose this?" she asked.

"Good question! Yet this is what you are choosing every day. But until you are aware of choosing this, you can’t choose anything else. How can you change it if you are doing it unconsciously? Just keep doing what you are doing, but now do it consciously. Watch yourself making this choice."

Sherry agreed to try this for a week. She was ecstatic at our next session. "I actually got apartment cleaned!"

"That’s great! Now I want you to start of become aware of what you want to do and what is really in your highest good, rather than what you think you have to do. The challenge here is for you to develop a loving Adult part of you that is neither controlling nor resistant, but concerned with taking loving action that supports your highest good. This will take time and practice, but when you are thinking of what is really loving to yourself rather than controlling and resisting being controlled, you will be unstuck in all areas of your life."

Sherry did practice and found that more she thought about what was in her highest good and took loving action for herself, easier it became to get things done.

In course of our work together, Sherry learned to develop a connection with a personal source of spiritual guidance to help her understand what was in her highest good and to follow through with loving action. She found that more she stayed connected with her spiritual guidance, more powerful she felt within. When controlling and resistant parts of her were no longer in charge of her choices, procrastination became a thing of past.