Highly sensitive people

[Laynelove]

So I seem to have all the traits of being a highly sensitive person. This is a huge set back and kick in the guts.

If this is an inherited trait then:
1. It's going to cause problems in any relationship I ever have
2. There is no point "healing" because I'm so easily traumatised that my cptsd is guaranteed to be triggered again and again.
3. I have to "adjust" my life around unwanted traits. Avoid shopping centre at peak hour etc.

The thing I'm finding hard to get my head around though is why should I adjust my life to suit personality traits that are causing significant pain, impairment and dysfunction in my life. Why should I accept these things if they are causing so much distress?? Am I a child?? Do I honestly need people to baby me my whole life? Just because "it's inherited and just the way I am"?

its a total burden. I don't see why I have to spend the rest of my life getting offended by everything people say to me, and I really don't see why I have to spend the rest of my life feeling other people's pain. If we all have neural pathways that can be changed, why would I accept that over sensitivity is something I have to live with??

I have a different theory. If our foo constantly dump their feelings on us as kids of course we would learn to "look" for emotions in others. Eg. If mums disappointment causes unpleasant feelings in us, doesnt it make sense that we would learn to look for disappointment in people to try and make them feel better so we can avoid the pain? I don't think we "feel" other people's pain more intensely, we just associate it with pain in ourselves so that we can avoid feeling it if we can.

Research shows that 20% of the population are highly sensitive. I'd be interested to see how many of these people had parental feelings forced on them, or were smothered by over bearing and over protective parents as children.

Thoughts?

[Pieces]

If this is an inherited trait then:
1. It's going to cause problems in any relationship I ever have

How you view yourself, your attitude, how your respond to life and how okay you are with being who you are will define your all relationships; being a highly sensitive person doesn't.

2. There is no point "healing" because I'm so easily traumatized that my cptsd is guaranteed to be triggered again and again.

Healing would mean not getting (re)traumatized so healing is the only point there is really.

3. I have to "adjust" my life around unwanted traits. Avoid shopping centre at peak hour etc.

Why? If those situations are where the problems arise than those are the places where you can work on yourself.

The thing I'm finding hard to get my head around though is why should I adjust my life to suit personality traits that are causing significant pain, impairment and dysfunction in my life. Why should I accept these things if they are causing so much distress?? Am I a child?? Do I honestly need people to baby me my whole life? Just because "it's inherited and just the way I am"?

Who is telling you to accept all these things? You accept that they're here now but you also have to accept that you have to work on them to get better. Maybe you're confusing accepting with giving up?

its a total burden. I don't see why I have to spend the rest of my life getting offended by everything people say to me, and I really don't see why I have to spend the rest of my life feeling other people's pain. If we all have neural pathways that can be changed, why would I accept that over sensitivity is something I have to live with??

What I'm about to say is in my opinion the most important thing someone who is in the state you're in can hear; no one can offend you but you. Other people's words/opinions about you can only hurt when they resonate with painful words/opinions you believe about yourself.

It's a burden, no doubt,  but the main point is that you get to a point where you feel you deserve to work on and shift to burden to freedom.

Thoughts?

I don't want to be blunt or disrespectful but I feel this is good to put out there because this topic comes up a lot; I think that you like some/a lot of people use the word 'highly sensitive' as an excuse to not have to look at the facts that you feeling offended has to do with you viewing yourself in a negative way. It's wanting to blame other people for how you feel about yourself.

Being sensitive is a quality; believing in painfully negative thought about yourself (and making who you are a painful experience) is unawareness of identifying with your inner critic. Towards yourself that is highly UNsensitive.

Also very important; let's say you heal your CPTSD, would you still have the same result on the test for being highly sensitive? Follow up question; if you would change how you think and feel about yourself in a positive way, would you get the same result on the test for being highly sensitive?

[Kizzie]

Hi Laynelove - I too have reached the conclusion recently that I am a HSP as you may have read elsewhere.  I have to say that I see HSP as a propensity to being sensitive based on intergenerational abuse in our FOO, much like alcoholism in one's family gives one a propensity to addiction. This doesn't necessarily mean we will become HSPs, just that the likelihood is higher for us.

Unfortunately given that abuse does tend to happen in successive generations, we are more likely to become HSPs than the general population.  My point here is that I totally agree that it is the conditions we grew up in that ignites the development of being HSPs.  I used to tell my H that I felt like all the lining on my nerves and neurons were worn away, that I was made raw and susceptible by the trauma because that is what it feels like.

I don't happen to agree with those who would say we are stuck with this for life though. One of the reasons I'm doing the neurofeedback (have you started yet?) is because the brain is quite plastic and can renew damaged areas or create new pathways to work around them.  What my brain mapping showed was that some areas are hyperaroused and others hypoaroused and these can be trained to calm down and rev up.  The NF also helps to strengthen/ build connections between parts of the brain; trauma shuts down or weakens certain connections so we're not working on all burners so to speak.   

I have found that  my sensitivity is receding and not just because of the NF which I haven't done a lot of. We were trained to be other referenced, and I have been working on becoming self-referenced meaning I check in regularly to see what it is I feel, want, think, etc rather than being concerned with others as much as I was.  I have also been using cognitive behavioural therapy to question that part of me that imbues others with negative judgements about me. I do  avoid situations in which I would become overstimulated (for now), and think of it as giving my system a chance to relax and renew.  It all helps. 

So in the end what I wanted to say is that I honestly don't think HSP is a life sentence myself and I hope you can take much heart from this  . 

[healingjourney]

I also consider myself a highly sensitive person. I can be in a Starbucks line and notice a customer being rude to a worker, the worker's reaction, the person next in line behaving a certain way, and question how I would act all in the same moment. When your brain is that hyper-active your sensations are very high. The other day I was at a Whole foods and a customer slammed his hand on the bar and I almost jumped out of my seat. I looked around and nobody else seemed to notice it.

[Kizzie]

Hi Healingjourney - I have a strong startle reaction too and it's worse when I am busy.  I won't hear someone coming up to me (a clerk in a store), and will jump when they speak.  The same at home when I'm working - my H and S try to make noise as they approach me so I don't jump.  It's a symptom we share with PTSD - hyperarousal that is, and no wonder when we are primed for threat constantly.    

[healingjourney]

Thanks for your reply, Kizzie. Yes- I think we are primed for conflict...never free of the readiness for harm to come our way...scared to relax.

[Kizzie]

The good news HJ is that I notice as I recover I am not as hypervigilant nor do I startle as much as I used to. So perhaps we aren't condemned to a lifetime of hypervigilance, that our bodies/brains can change (dial down/reset?) in recovery.   

[healingjourney]

Hi Kizzie,

That's interesting. I'm still hypervigilant. If you harm me emotionally, I can do 8 hours of work the same day  to undo the harm I feel you caused me. And I'll even tell you "this means war" in very clear words and tone. Wow, I need to work on this! I'm at least spotting this in myself. Some days I can go to the gym and release the hostility, other days there's no chance I'm avoiding obsessing about work to control the slight I feel has been done to me. I'm like a puppet- at least I'm learning to laugh at myself. Puppet can laugh

[healingjourney]

Kizzie- what do you attribute most of your improvement to? Time or a specific few activities?

[Tewaz]

I'm not sure if it's the same thing as what you're talking about, but I've been called "over-sensitive" my whole life.
Even in a crowded room, I can tell a person in pain, even if they're trying to hide it behind a smile.
I sometimes think it is more painful for me to see someone else suffer, than to suffer that same thing myself.
It is certainly exhausting, and often excruciating, and it does affect my anxiety levels, but I've never considered it a weakness or malady, but a strength.
In such a cruel, callous world I can spot pain and I can often times ammeliorate it. Sometimes just giving someone an opportunity to drop the mask, sometimes sympathizing/empathising can not only heal wounds in others, but in me too.
We're a social species. We evolved to care for each other, to aid in each other's survival. I consider it a weakness of our society that we have become so crowded and busy and self oriented that we no longer care for each other. I consider what people these days so often call "over-sensitivity" to be an adaptive trait, and one that shows strength and resilience and character and integrity and courage.
I apologize if I'm talking about something else entirely, but if not, I recognize it can be hard and it can be painful, and self care is absolutely necessary to manage the additional strain, but it is something not a lot of people have, and something that can do a lot of good in the world if embraced.

[Kizzie]

 

Kizzie- what do you attribute most of your improvement to? Time or a specific few activities?

Sorry HJ, I missed your post. I think it's the whole recovery process: getting in touch with my Inner Child and trying to help her build trust and be less reactive; going NC and LC with triggering FOO; not overstressing myself and taking breaks when I feel overstimulated;  trying to determine what is truly threatening and what are echoes/remnants of past trauma.  Mostly it has been calming my system, seeing less in the way of external threats, and working on integrating (so there is more of me available in daily life and I don't have to rely on being hypervigilant to stay safe).

Tewaz you wrote:

Even in a crowded room, I can tell a person in pain, even if they're trying to hide it behind a smile. I sometimes think it is more painful for me to see someone else suffer, than to suffer that same thing myself. It is certainly exhausting, and often excruciating, and it does affect my anxiety levels, but I've never considered it a weakness or malady, but a strength.

This is me to a "T" or it was.  Now I scan much less than I did (something I got very good at in my FOO because I had to read my cNPDMs subtle signals), and there is a more of a 'buffer' between myself and others.  I think it was totally a strength or a plus in the past when I was a child as it helped me to survive. And certainly as an adult I am a very empathetic person, but personally I'm happy to be able to turn the volume down when I want to as it allows me to focus on me more (in a non-N way  hopefully ) without getting pulled outside of myself when there is tension or pain in a room.  That was exhausting and I felt like I didn't have control so I would avoid social situations.   

[The Moon Hare]

I too am an HSP. I  was lucky to have found a great HSP board, this was 11 years ago and I  learnt a lot about myself.  I also met my H who I thought was an HSP too but turned out eventually that he was ASD.

[Braindead]

Hi all, I'm new here 

I kinda like my HPS. Maybe the only thing I trained myself on how to handle.
I find it makes me a better person.  I go out of my way in my worst moments to help others in more need then me. It gave me my humanity back.
At times I felt so disconnected from the world (and HPS did not help) that analyzing it made me reconnect.
To place it in context, while others walked away and pretended not to see, I intervened many a times in situations  were "normal" people  choose not to see an can walk away from.  (i.e. Guys hits girl, father PUNCHES 6 year old)
It also saves lives, holiday in London, woman on underground looking strange, flustered, no one notices or even seems to care, I approach and ask if she is OK, she answers that she is, I miss my train to walk slightly behind and catch her as she goes down with a heart attack. I was doing CPR as she hit the floor. She lived.
So... if you manage to control your own affectation to other people words and attitudes, I kinda like my HPS

[sanmagic7]

i'm with braindead.  i don't mind being HPS.  my startle reflex is overactive, yes, and i am more sensitive than i may like at times, especially when opening a new door to explore issues that had otherwise been hidden.  that can be rough, and it may take me some extra time to get through whatever's going on.  but, my h-s has also come in handy when i've found myself in potentially dangerous situations, and helped me problem-solve how to retreat from them intact.  i've met many shady characters, and my hsp-ism has helped me to determine which are truly harmful and which are benign.  i've also been to parties where i didn't like the 'vibe' and left.  and, it's also helped me in other areas of my life, especially my creativity (i'm a writer) and my work (i'm a therapist).  especially working with clients, i was able, more times than not, to 'know' what type of technique or intervention was called for in the situation presenting itself according to the personality of the client.  with my writing, words come to me, as if i'm merely the channel, and i am able to write them down in a coherent fashion. 

the hyper-sensitivity that has bothered me the most is uncontrollable crying at images, words, actions, especially around something kind, caring , and loving.  i've discovered that these are triggers for me to look at what i've been missing from my past, and do a grieving ritual around it.  so, in many ways, even when the h-s seems to get in the way, i have learned to recognize it as a message to me of some loss i've experienced, or something i haven't gotten enough of in my own life.  and, it's been serving me well.

for these reasons, i don't want to give up or eradicate my hyper-sensitivity altogether.  hyper-sensitive to triggers? i'm learning how to avoid, manage, or resolve them.  but, i have discovered that it's not an all-or-nothing type of phenomenon.  parts of it have served me well in my life, parts are leading me to issues that need to be explored further, and parts are simply warning signals. 

i don't know of any genetic predisposition to my h-s. i do know that i was held up to unrealistic expectations as a baby/toddler, and was always looking outside myself to find out if i was being good or not.  but, along this journey, i continue to learn, and i suspect you will, too, laynelove. 

[Contessa]

Braindead and Sanmagic7, very pleasing to read how the perceived negative  state of being can be embraced and used for greater personal expression and social empathy.

Braindead, you just reminded me of a time I had a lengthy end-of-work, very light hearted and polite conversation with a coworker one day. When we said our goodbyes and I left the office I felt horrible because even though she gave absolutely no allusion to it, my newly aquired Sherlock skills told me she and her husband had just separated, and I was scanning what I said in case of inadvertant upset on my part. Long story short, she told very few people and others did not find out until years down the track.