Day 7 of 365 - On Being Quiet
Sometimes it's just better to be quiet and to have a quiet environment. I personally have a pretty quiet home environment during the day. I'm not someone who has the TV, radio or stereo on for background sound as I go about my activities. I seldom turn the radio on when I drive the car. I like quiet.
It's not that I never enjoy those things, but I prefer them in small controlled doses and usually paired with a specific purpose. We usually have music playing during our dinner hour for example. The meditations I listen to nearly everyday have a musical background. And, one of my favorite fitness classes, NIA, is music based. (Another whole post will be devoted to talking about that class.) Likewise, I am not a person who enjoys a noisy party atmosphere or any kind of group where there is constant loud talking going on.
The reason for these preferences is likely both biological and environmental. Some of us are born with a more reactive nervous system, specifically the limbic system of the brain. We become more aware of and attentive to different stimuli in our environment. We are more likely to become what is classified as an introvert personality type. The environment such an infant is raised in also contributes to the coping strategies developed to be comfortable in the world.
I grew up in a big, noisy family. Being near the youngest end of the age range of eight children it was a challenge to get a word in and often easier just to be quiet. I learned to be very attentive and observant, how to analyze behaviors and assess the best way to respond, or not. I loved the structure of going to school and learning from teachers and books, so was a very good student.
These skills carried forward into my adult life and surely contributed to my choice of career as an occupational therapist. I became very good at analyzing situations, assessing functional skills and problem solving with clients to create interventions that would help them progress.
I'd be one of those people you might describe as slow to warm up, or who takes a long time to get to know. That's because, in new situations I take quite awhile just observing the dynamics and interactions before really engaging in interactions. Then, once I'm comfortable with people I may have a lot to say; some might think I say too much once I get going!
I did not really understand all this as a child or young adult; it's just how I naturally learned to function in the world. But I did learn a lot about it over the years in my work as an infant development therapist and in the related training and reading.
How does this contribute to my health and vitality? I think as my understanding has grown over the years it has made me a more astute and intuitive observer not only of what is going on in my environment, but what is going on inside of me. Thus, I may be able to attend to body, mind or emotional responses before they become a serious problem and figure out how to deal with them.
In 2012 a book was published which brought more about this topic to popular literature. It is called Quiet - The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. The author is Susan Cain. It's a very good read if you are interested in learning more on this topic. We all develop our own strategies for how to be in this world, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. It's really quite fascinating.
It's not that I never enjoy those things, but I prefer them in small controlled doses and usually paired with a specific purpose. We usually have music playing during our dinner hour for example. The meditations I listen to nearly everyday have a musical background. And, one of my favorite fitness classes, NIA, is music based. (Another whole post will be devoted to talking about that class.) Likewise, I am not a person who enjoys a noisy party atmosphere or any kind of group where there is constant loud talking going on.
The reason for these preferences is likely both biological and environmental. Some of us are born with a more reactive nervous system, specifically the limbic system of the brain. We become more aware of and attentive to different stimuli in our environment. We are more likely to become what is classified as an introvert personality type. The environment such an infant is raised in also contributes to the coping strategies developed to be comfortable in the world.
I grew up in a big, noisy family. Being near the youngest end of the age range of eight children it was a challenge to get a word in and often easier just to be quiet. I learned to be very attentive and observant, how to analyze behaviors and assess the best way to respond, or not. I loved the structure of going to school and learning from teachers and books, so was a very good student.
These skills carried forward into my adult life and surely contributed to my choice of career as an occupational therapist. I became very good at analyzing situations, assessing functional skills and problem solving with clients to create interventions that would help them progress.
I'd be one of those people you might describe as slow to warm up, or who takes a long time to get to know. That's because, in new situations I take quite awhile just observing the dynamics and interactions before really engaging in interactions. Then, once I'm comfortable with people I may have a lot to say; some might think I say too much once I get going!
I did not really understand all this as a child or young adult; it's just how I naturally learned to function in the world. But I did learn a lot about it over the years in my work as an infant development therapist and in the related training and reading.
How does this contribute to my health and vitality? I think as my understanding has grown over the years it has made me a more astute and intuitive observer not only of what is going on in my environment, but what is going on inside of me. Thus, I may be able to attend to body, mind or emotional responses before they become a serious problem and figure out how to deal with them.
In 2012 a book was published which brought more about this topic to popular literature. It is called Quiet - The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. The author is Susan Cain. It's a very good read if you are interested in learning more on this topic. We all develop our own strategies for how to be in this world, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. It's really quite fascinating.
Joan I was so happy to find a link to this blog post on FB today and the post really resonated with me. I am a very quiet person with a very quiet house. The funny thing is that before my fire in 2014 I often had music on, usually classical music or other soft soothing music. But I loved all kinds of music, jazz, blues, the oldies I grew up with. I had a huge cd collection which I lost in the fire, and after I came back home 8 months later when the house was rebuilt I could barely stand any kind of sound at all. I rarely listen to any music, I don't have tv or radio on during the day, got rid of cable tv a year and a half ago as prices rose higher and higher because I seldom watched it and now will watch something streaming at bedtime on Netflix which I usually fall asleep to and never finish watching. I do like to watch something with my daughter or a friend once in awhile but mostly the sound I love best is the sound my little pugs make when they are sleeping and snore. The older I get the more quiet I require. So I found this post interesting. I see that your need for quiet seems to have come from your family situation and that makes sense. I haven't been able to figure out why my love of music left me with the fire (I had classical voice training and met my husband in a jazz class in college, I was singing, he was playing the piano, and they paired us up! I was a musical theater major. Music had always been a huge part of my life. Now I rarely ever listen at all. In the car I listen to talk radio on NPR...) This is very curious to me and a puzzle. I'd love to know if you have any thoughts about this.
ReplyDeleteIt's wonderful that you have taken up the 365 day blogging challenge. Feel free to share links to your blog when you comment on mine... :)
Why thank you Maitri; you are the first person to comment on my blog page!
ReplyDeleteI used to have more sound and music in my home too until recent years. For me, I think part of keeping the radio off was two things. First, there got to be SO many noisy ads which were grating to me, and secondly I did not want to hear the dramatic reports of whatever current awful thing was going on in the world. Just seeing the occasional headline or news story on my internet feed is plenty for me. We also gave up cable a few years ago, partly due to cost but also for a similar reason. All the commercials really irritated me as well as TV being another way to instantly disseminate mostly bad news.
So I think I just wanted a more peaceful home life. I still do enjoy and appreciate music but in smaller doses. My husband is more tolerant than me and will have the radio on in the car, usually on a news and culture channel, or, if I've been away from home for awhile and come home he may have turned the radio on while I'm out. He would also like to listen to music a lot more often than me and when listening online will use headphones at home.
I agree that the older I get, the more quiet I crave, so maybe it has something to do with our ageing nervous systems.
Also, it makes sense to me that after the huge trauma of your fire and all the aftermath that your nervous system has been overly sensitized so that music seems like too much for now. I believe it's related to the limbic system, which I referred to in the post.
I'm enjoying the blogging challenge and am glad to be doing it. I may feel differently on a day when I can't think of anything to write about, but so far so good. :)