Читать книгу The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping our children thrive when the world overwhelms them - Elaine N. Aron, Elaine N. Aron Ph.D. - Страница 24

Another reason for the variations in the behavior of HSCs is suggested by one of the scientific models for the cause of sensitivity, which is that sensitive persons have a very active “behavioral inhibition system.” All brains have this system, but in the highly sensitive it is thought to be especially strong or active. For example, this system is associated with an active right hemisphere of the thinking part of the brain (the frontal cortex), and babies with more electrical activity and blood flow on the right side of the brain are more likely to be HSCs.

I prefer to call this system in the brain the “pause-to-check system” because that is what it really does. It is designed to look at the situation you are in and see if it is similar to any past situations stored in your memory. So it only causes “inhibition” for a moment—unless, of course, the prior similar situation was threatening. Otherwise, after a brief pause to check, one could just as easily decide to rush ahead.

For the highly sensitive, the pause-to-check urge is probably strong because they have so much input to process from every situation. Consider the two deer pausing at the edge of the meadow. The highly sensitive deer is noticing subtle scents, shadows, shades of color, tiny movements caused by the wind—or perhaps not caused by wind but by a predator. The less sensitive deer is not noticing all of this so has less to process, less reason to pause.

What the less sensitive deer has is a stronger “behavioral activation system”—it sees some good grass in the meadow and after a very brief check, it heads for it. This system, which I will call the “go-for-it system,” causes us to be eager to explore, succeed, and pursue the good things in life. It makes us want new experiences, try new things, all in the interest of knowing, acquiring, thriving.

Again, everyone has both systems, and these two systems are controlled by separate genes. Thus one can have a very strong inhibition system or a strong activation system, or both, or neither. HSCs who are high on both are like Ann or Chuck—always exploring, trying new things, climbing higher. But being HSCs, too, they do it carefully, usually without taking big risks. They know their limits.

So, another major source of variation among HSCs is the relative strength of these two systems. I will discuss this more in Chapter 3.