Make a Difference: Accept Your Emotional Sensitivity By KARYN HALL, PHD sparkling heart - have a sparkling weekend ;) Emotionally sensitive people are among the most compassionate and passionate people in the world. Often creative, you have talents as artists, writers, and musicians. You add to the caring and beauty of the world. Many times you also struggle with self-hatred, depression, anxiety, and horrible feelings of alienation. Those struggles are likely not due to your being emotionally sensitive. Much of your suffering may come from self-doubt and from an agonizing experience of being broken. That likely comes from what you are told and experience as a child. If others had accepted your emotional sensitivity when you were a child, how different your life might be today. Maybe you would be the most fabulous person that you were meant to be. Maybe we can make that experience different for the emotionally sensitive children who are growing up today. There can be so much pain just in feeling different from those around you. Others do not usually view emotional sensitivity as a gift, something special about you. Being emotionally sensitive is not even usually seen as a personality characteristic, such as having red hair or being a fast runner. When you are a child who is emotionally sensitive, you’re seen as different in a weird way, different in a way that others don’t understand and don’t accept. You’re teased and ostracized. You’re told that you’re not going to make it in life or to stop feeling sorry for yourself or called names like crybaby. Maybe the lack of acceptance by others is more the cause of so much of your suffering, not just being emotionally sensitive. Many emotionally sensitive people spend much of their lives seeing themselves as different from others and being fearful of those differences. Self-doubt starts early and continues through the years. Trying to hide who you are because of shame about your sensitivity leads to more self-hatred and self-rejection. When you are told from a young age that you overreact, make a big deal out of everything, are manipulative or couldn’t really feel they way you say you do makes you question your view of the world and yourself. What’s wrong with you that your experience is so different and so off-track? Information that others take for granted, such as “She makes me so angry when takes my clothes without asking,” you analyze and think about. Are you really upset? Do you have a right to be upset? Are you too upset for the situation? This lack of trust of your internal experience, your thoughts, your feelings, your sensations and urges, means you struggle with situations that others don’t think twice about. Self-doubt starts early and continues through the years. It’s natural for people to be fearful of differences that they don’t understand. Maybe it’s time to build more understanding. Sharing books, videos, and your own experiences with emotional sensitivity could be a start. Maybe emotional sensitivity and validation could be part of educating teachers. Most of all though, self-acceptance can make a difference, for you, those who love you, and other emotionally sensitive people. You can make that difference starting today.
Posted on: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 14:03:49 +0000
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