Almighty Dad | A stay at home dad blog

We live in an anal expulsive society that rewards the outlandish and bold.  People who are loud, dominant and sometimes narcissistic are deemed normal, healthy and even enviable while deep thinking, reserved and sensitive people are slapped with a medical condition, Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD).  I’m the parent of one of each of these personality traits.  Neil is extroverted to the degree that he barely thinks before he jumps into the middle of a crowd and starts making friends.  He’s loud, sometimes obnoxious and always noticed.  He is so strong willed that parenting him is a chore.  But, he’s not a bad kid, that’s his personality and I wouldn’t change it if I could.  To his credit, he is not so self absorbed that he doesn’t notice other people feelings.  However, he isn’t nearly as empathetic as Alan.  Alan doesn’t care to make friends.  He prefers to play alone and make up imaginary scenarios in which to play with his action figures.  He doesn’t have many friends, and he doesn’t seem to care.  He hardly ever needs to be disciplined; a stern word is enough to make him cry.  He asks deep questions with the sort of sincerity you’d expect from a philosopher.  In short, I have one extrovert and one introvert.  Which is better?  

Neither is Necessarily Better:  Shyness Rooted in Brain Processing  

Elaine and Arthur Aron and a number of other scientists from Stony Brook University, Southwest University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have found that being highly sensitive is an inborn trait affecting 20% of us.  Children who fall into this sensitive category are described as needing little discipline. They are kids who cry easily and ask unusual questions or who have especially deep thoughts.  The researchers used fMRI (functional MRI) scanning on the brains of sensitive and non-sensitive people.  Both groups looked at photographs and tried to identify small changes in the pictures that ranged from subtle to obvious.  The sensitive participants spent more time looking at the changes than did the non-sensitive.  The sensitive group had more activity in two parts of the brain, the part of the brain associated with high-order visual processing and attention and the right cerebellum which detected the subtle photograph changes.  The researchers say that this same part of the brain, the right cerebellum, is used for deeper thought processing of input, suggesting that sensitive people are pre-programmed to think more deeply than non-sensitive people.    

The research is published in the Journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.  

Social disorders have a variety of causes.  While 20% of us are naturally introverted there are others who have become unnaturally shy because of abuse or neglect.  Those people should be distinguished from the ones who’s choice it is to be shy.  In other words, there are people who want to be outgoing and socially plugged-in but can’t because they have a stumbling block of some sort.  There are others who are comfortable being alone and prefer it because that’s how they can best express themselves and thrive.  Our society doesn’t value enough the contributions made by introverted, sensitive people.  We value the loud and brash, the athletes and actors who are talented and well liked but not always the deepest thinkers.  There is a place for both and they should both be given their due.

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