Snap By Snap

You might have heard us say this. We are quiet people. I'm moderately quiet, Mark is very quiet, and Amy is the youngest quiet. Kind of like the three bears. Three quiet bears.

Mark and I have been reading the book "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking" and it is very compelling (so much so that I can't stop talking about it - HA!). The author makes the case that although one out of every two or three people you know are introverts, our society exalts the extrovert as the ideal personality and considers "introversion a second-class personality trait -somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology." That was just one of many quotes gave me a "Yes!" moment. Susan Cain also ties in the related pesonality traits of sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness quite well, distinguishing these from each other but seeing them as correllated traits.

I am an introvert, but Mark and Amy are even more so. Our home is filled with books and music, and the best seats are the ones with great reading light. Mark has chosen an introvert's career - he counsels people mostly one on one all day long. I am a librarian, which is also an introvert's career, although not as much as you might think. Our daughter is also planning on becoming a psychologist and prefers outings with a few friends to large groups. We ALL wish we were writers.

When I was growing up, I regularly heard "you are too sensitive!" or my favorite, "you are too sensitive for your own good." I always wondered what the right amount of sensitive would be, but found I could not willfully switch my sensitivity level. Amy inherited my sensitivity. If Mark or I dropped her off in a nursery of howling babies, or if the caretaker in charge seemed cranky we could be sure we'd be paged to come get her within 20 minutes. She seemed to absorb the mood of a place and pretty soon the other babies would be calm but Amy would be inconsolable.

We are often square pegs in the round holes of our culture. The popular trend of noisy restaurants is one mismatch - and a difficult one since we eat out frequently. Noisy seems to be associated with 'having a good time' but for us it just doesn't work. If we are out with a group, I can deal with the noise but will be exhausted at the end of the night. Mark and Amy, on the other hand, cannot deal with it at all. Mark becomes very quiet and wants to leave - Amy is the same way. They describe the experience as assaultive and even painful. I have tended to believe that we are all three introverts and that they should try harder in those situations to deal with it just for the short term, just to enjoy the time with friends. But they can't. Susan Cain's book has really helped me understand the difference between myself and Mark and Amy.

On the Meyer's Briggs Personality Inventory, Mark and Amy consistently score as strong introverts, with Mark's score being in the "oh my goodness, what an introvert" range and Amy's not far behind. By contrast, I am just barely an introvert - a few points to the introvert side of the middle.

While all of us are very aware of the ways in which our introversion sets us apart from our talkative culture, we are fortunate. Mark grew up with two introverted parents who valued who he was and never pressured him to be more like anyone else. He is a confident introvert who has always resisted outside pressures to change him. Amy has also benefitted from parents who value her uniqueness. But as I've been reading this book, I've been more aware of the many, many ways in which our culture ignores and devalues the sensitive, the thinker, and the introvert. So many forces and situations we get used to getting along with, overcoming, or just muddling through. I am not yet finished with the book - but I'm wondering if the author has any answers for us. Where you draw the line between adaptation and selling out to the pressure of the extrovert false self that so many introverts create and lug around? What would western civilization be like if we again valued the authenticity, honesty, and leadership whether packaged as an extrovert or an introvert? Where sensitivity was a gift?