Being a Highly Sensitive Person
And ways to deal with it.
Published in
Jul 5
About a week ago, after listening to an informative podcast, I realized I am a “highly sensitive person” (HSP). This was quite a revelation to me.
Here are the ways I know I am a HSP:
1) I feel oddly guilty because I grew up in a family where I was always loved and appreciated by the family members closest to me (except for the glaring exception of my father, who wasn’t really in my life). I had parents (mother and stepfather) who accepted my quirky character traits with glee. I had parents who catered to every educational opportunity I wanted to pursue. They made sure I was well fed and clothed and kept clean and healthy. My mom made sure my teeth were taken care of from a young age.
I think often of all the kids out there from my generation up to the present who had family who didn’t show them love and even showed them hate and even hostility.
It makes me wonder how I got so lucky. I have to force my mind not to wander to thoughts of the trauma that other children may have endured at the hands of their own families.
Do I have memories of a past life, or is this sensitivity just a personality trait that I gained genetically, or cosmically?
2) I know I could never work in an animal shelter or with foster kids. Because I could never deal emotionally with the thought of what they may have already been through, much less the thought of the possibility of them later going into the home of someone who mistreats them. And heaven forbid if I ever found out that after I took care of them and got to know them, that they had been harmed in some way. It would dig into my soul forever. So I have avoided those types of jobs or volunteerships.
Photo by Nicole Baster on Unsplash
3) I can think of several incidents when someone, a family member or friend, told me of a real life incident or something from a movie depicting extreme trauma or extreme death and I was FURIOUS with them for relaying that unneeded information to me! My mom showed me a clip from a Breaking Bad episode where the guy gruesomely slit the other guy’s throat. One of my friends told me about the son of someone he knows whose deranged child killed two cats. Another friend told me about a real-life documentary of a child in Los Angeles who was severely tortured and killed by his mother and her boyfriend ostensibly because they thought he might be gay.
All these retellings of bad events took me several weeks to get over emotionally. I will think about what I saw over and over many times throughout the day, until some later time when the memory is distant enough that it no longer assaults my mind. I know it’s very different than if I were to go through those types of events myself, but even after just hearing of these events, a part of my soul had to heal. So now I must limit my knowledge of these types of incidents, that is if I have any warning that I’m about to be exposed to these types of things.
4) I feel guilty for the neglect or mistreatment of children I never had. I wonder if I had “accidentally” had a child in my twenties if I would have been resentful of my responsibility to them, and thus would have been neglectful or unloving, and then I would have to live with the guilt of my behavior, and not be able to make it up to my child for my poor parenting. And I repeat I actually have no children.
For others who are highly sensitive like me, this is what I recommend:
1You must set up your own boundaries for what types of negativity you will allow to be ingested into your soul. You should not watch things that you know will be disturbing. If you are watching something that is a true tragic story, you should not necessarily feel that you “owe it to the real-life victims” to watch it if it bothers you too much. There was nothing you could have done to prevent it from happening to those victims and there is certainly nothing you can do about it now. Watching a depiction of those events serves no real purpose to you if it will cause you too much trauma.
2You must not allow people to treat you rudely in ways that make you feel inadequate or guilty. You can’t allow people to raise their voice at you or threaten you inappropriately. And you can’t allow people to cast blame on you for things that you are not responsible for, or for actions that you may have taken to protect your own interests.
3If you watch or hear something that bothers you and is causing you prolonged angst, you should find uplifting movies or books to take your mind off of what you watched or heard. You can find an inspiring book that makes you feel good, or at least better about the world. When I google “uplifting movies”, I find options such as Last Holiday, Julie & Julia, The Bucket List, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Remember the Titans. Or you could just find a straight-up comedy like Yes Day (I highly recommend), The Other Guys, Horrible Bosses, or Girls Trip!
4Another piece of advice I’ve heard is to use a bad event as an opportunity to grow. Pick up a self-improvement book that you’ve delayed reading. Attend a class or a social event where you learn something new or develop new connections. Use the emotional trauma that you feel as a way to improve your standing in life. So at least something positive will come out of your negative feelings.
5Release the guilt of things that you never did. You have to realize that if you didn’t do those things, then that means you couldn’t have done them.
6Release the guilt of things that are out of your control. This one is pretty obvious. You can only affect things that you have the power to control or that you are aware of. For other things, you have to let them go. This is may be hard to do, but try to remember and focus on times in the past where you had the power to make a difference and you did! Such as when you planned a party for someone and it turned out well, when your child or your parent was sick and you took care of them, when you gave money to someone on the street, or when you babysat a child or a pet for someone. Focus on the good that you’ve done over your life and not the bad things that happened in the world that you were not present for or that you didn’t even know about.
With the spate of shootings in America right now, it might cause copious amounts of distress that you will then over-internalize it into your psyche. You might have pain in your heart constantly thinking about what victims went through. Or you may even feel a sense of guilt because you have never come close to experiencing such unsafety and violence.
But you must moderate your distress because it was not in your power to prevent most bad events or to warn anyone in advance. Therefore you must focus on protecting your part of the Universe and release any responsibility or guilt for the vast parts of the Universe that you have no control over.
