2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Several times I started writing this article. And each time it started differently. And this led me to a dead end. Each time, new thoughts and memories appeared. This morning, when I came to the quiet lake, I realized how great the influence of the environment on my thoughts. So much so that I get lost and move away from the essence - this affects the meaning and form of the text. And I decided to write an article here, by the pond.
I often seek solitude and peace in order to hear myself and get in touch with my inner world. Any external irritation causes anxiety and forces you to defend yourself. And then my inner world hides.
In this article, I would like to describe my experience of communicating with similar people, also hypersensitive to the outside world, and show some ways how you can support yourself in society. It intrudes and confuses, evoking strong emotions and provoking spontaneous defensive reactions. These actions are similar to the reactions of people with borderline, autistic, or narcissistic disorders. Noise, smells, intonation of voices, topics of conversation, a large amount of information, people, events, deeds - all this makes it impossible to stay in contact with oneself.
Supersensitive people are sensitive to - manipulation, falsehood, feelings, even sensations of other people. These are people who are too sensitive to the beauty of meanings, actions, intonations. Ugliness hurts them and plunges them into transcendental feelings: melancholy, horror, shame, rage. But, lacking sufficient self-support, understanding and respect for their feelings, hypersensitive people perceive their reactions to the world as that they are not all right. It’s not that this environment doesn’t suit them or that the actions of other people don’t suit them.
Such thoughts are a consequence of the influence of upbringing in a narcissistic society, forcing them to meet certain standards of beauty and order, rejecting everything that manifests itself otherwise.
Individuality did not have the opportunity to be born and formed. Therefore, many people could not feel their strength and deal with their own characteristics. And find your own style, rhythm of life and form your own psychological handwriting of being.
“When I was fifteen years old, I decided that I would never marry - I could not bear the shame of my parents' behavior in front of my future husband. At that time they were getting divorced, and I suffered a lot from their scandals. They never paid attention to me. The only concern for them is my anorexia and regular loss of consciousness. At the first opportunity, I left home. But until now I do not feel myself. As if I was not yet born in this life"
“I am extremely sensitive to food. I can't eat at a party. Only tea can be candy. I can only eat food prepared by me or those I trust and know that they love me. Otherwise, I can easily get poisoned. This is all because I feel the mood and energy of other people too much. It has always been this way, as long as I can remember. My parents never supported me in this and forced me to eat, observing decency at a party. I always got sick after that"
“In high school I decided that I would become a hitman. I knew how to turn off my feelings completely. In this state, my head worked so quickly and clearly that I could solve any problem instantly. I could clearly give an answer to any question, without the slightest hesitation. I dreamed of a military career. Only recently did my sensitivity return when I fell in love. And I am learning to live anew"
“I remember the horror of waiting for parents from the parent meeting at school. Sitting in the corridor, I listened to the sounds of the entrance. I listened to the noise of the elevator and waited in cold sweat for the elevator to stop on my floor and I would hear their footsteps. Until now, I am terrified of screaming. Any criticism directed at me makes me doubt the right to my existence. To recover, I eat. I eat a lot, and then I vomit and eat again"
“I clearly remember my wish to die. I was fourteen years old. Then I had dreams where I saw myself in a coffin. Life around me was so uninteresting and alien that I didn't want to wake up in the morning. I went into my paintings and fiction. Unbeknownst to my parents, I could paint all night - that was my time, and in the morning I went to school with disgust. I hid my drawings to avoid ridicule and censure. My hobbies by my parents were regarded as stupidity"
The formation of hypersensitivity is influenced by both the innate features of the feeling of the world (in my family, my grandfather and uncle were artists, and my grandmother was a fashion designer), and the influence of emotional, mental and physical violence from the outside.
“I remember how I hid all my drawings and diaries from my mother, fearing her ridicule. It seemed to me that all my hobbies are nonsense"
"My father beat me severely for any actions that did not coincide with his expectations."
“I sang all my childhood. The vocal teacher suggested that I enter a music school and build a career as a singer. But my father was totally against it. For him, singing is a frivolous profession, for which no money is paid. I stopped singing. I learned to be an economist"
“I liked one boy in the yard. I was five years old, and he was a year older. We walked together. I remember the mocking looks of my grandmother and her condemning words: "What, do you want to get married?" I was extremely ashamed"
When I meet such people, I immediately recognize them. They are able to subtly feel the slightest fluctuations of emotions in contact, capturing the feelings hovering in the atmosphere. Mimicry, intonation, glance - it is all read by them automatically. They are like parabolic antennas tuned to scan the outside world. Many of them have allergic reactions not only to food or the environment, but also to the actions of others.
These people themselves often consider themselves crazy and unadapted to the world. Sensitivity and receptivity is becoming a problem in today's culture, especially in metropolitan areas.
Oversensitive people are afraid of hurting others by their actions, because, by causing inconvenience to another, they injure themselves. But since the emotional threshold is different, those around them simply cannot understand the suffering of a hypersensitive person. It looks as if they have green blood instead of the usual red. And when others see her, but do not understand that it is blood. Therefore, sensitive people prefer to minimize contacts. It is difficult for them to work in open space offices, to build close relationships. They choose places of work with a minimum of contacts or create their own projects, becoming leaders. The minimum dose of violence is perceived by them as an allergen, including defensive reactions.
I myself have tried for many years to change and become less sensitive to the ugliness (to the imperfection and pragmatism of the existing) world. My vulnerability and ability to notice emotions that “float in the atmosphere” made me suffer during my work in offices and in the circle of people who are not as sensitive to the world as I am. I tried to forcibly go out into the world and “be like everyone else,” but the panic and the desire to run were stronger than the desire for money and all the blessings that they promised.
In infancy, all children are very sensitive to the outside world. This is a feature of human nature. At four or five years old, children go out into society with their inner worlds. Everyone at this age has a favorite teddy bear, to whom children tell all their sorrows and secrets. If an adult does not appear nearby, who can become a guide of the child into the big world, giving support in self-expression, splitting occurs under unfavorable conditions. And the child's inner world is reliably hiding inside, without the strength and knowledge of how it will manifest itself in the outside. People become adults, but they cannot fully present their inner world in human society. Sometimes energy from the inside breaks through the boundaries to the outside, but more often it happens unconsciously and can be destructive for a person, for his environment, for relationships. This is perceived as a pathological manifestation.
To protect their individuality, some people go “wide” - they build empires, institutions in the material world, or create a high status. And then it is difficult to get to them, and difficult to hurt.
Some go into the "depth" - in reasoning, in analysis, in explanations. It seems to me that many psychologists, trying to find the reasons for this or that behavior, go this way. In this way, experiencing internal crises.
Still others fall into suspended animation. The emotional life inside them seems to freeze until better times. The defense mechanism against excessive pain is anesthesia - shutting off all senses. Although from the outside, these people may seem almost the same as always.
Someone goes into fantasy (or the Internet) and there, in the sky-high, creates their own worlds and fantastic spaces.
People, in order to save themselves, learn to hide their inner world from others, showing themselves only from their strengths.
Bulimia, anorexia, alexithymia, drug addiction, gambling addiction, overeating and many other disorders are a consequence of the inability to be oneself, these are ways to drown out the pain that occurs in contact with the environment. But there are more socialized ways of placing the beauty of your inner world in society: writing poems, prose, paintings, caring for homeless animals, charity, etc.
The fear of condemnation, shame, rejection forces people to maintain their split. To get around all fears, I ask my hypersensitive clients to pretend they are crazy. What would they look like then? How did you live? Where? What would you do?
“I would be a wandering philosopher. I would walk among people and talk to them about everything"
“I would live in a forest and constantly have contact with the wind, trees, clouds. I would not feel lonely, but in contact with nature"
“I would be a homeless woman. Wouldn't worry about anything. I would do what I wanted: I wanted to - went to the city center, I wanted to - to the forest. I would sleep on a park bench. And in the afternoon I would sit in the flower beds and smell the flowers"
“I would definitely dance. Everywhere and whenever I would like to"
“I would be a city fool. I would have many dogs. I would pick them up on the street and take them to my one-room apartment. We would wander around the city and its surroundings all day long in search of food or just walking."
“I would live on the outskirts in a small house made of colorful bottles. The sun would penetrate through the glass walls, and I would always be happy with this beauty. I would have a small greenhouse in my house and a neglected garden around, and I would definitely sing. Always"
These fantasies give a feeling of freedom from restrictions and bring them closer to their nature. It helps to consider your talents, rhythms, dreams and your beauty.
These fantasies can become those stable islands where you can relax and find access to yourself, your self at any time. Then these islands can be expanded, planted with flowers and trees, and inhabited by living creatures. In reality, this is a gradual formation of one's habitat (favorite places, business, people with whom it is good, etc.), which can gradually be incorporated into everyday life. It's one thing when you enter the “alien world” alone, and you can feel completely differently when you have your own universe with you. Even if it is very small.
In addition, hypersensitive people are all the time in search of "their pack". Since in communication with their own kind, they have the opportunity to receive support and show their rich inner world. In contact with each other, they have the freedom to be themselves and give birth to amazing thoughts and ideas.
Many hypersensitive people have professional implementation difficulties. Under pressure from society, they were unable to understand their talents, abilities and desires. And they lost themselves even more under the asphalt of a pragmatic environment.
In search of my professional path, I can offer them an experiment with life lines (the experiment was proposed by my colleague Aralia Kokhanovskaya). I ask you to draw a life line and remember what you loved to do from your earliest years to the present day. All these memories are recorded in detail along the line. In the same place, write all the dreams that were at different times. And then I ask you to draw another line of life on another sheet of paper, where you indicate what I was forced to do in reality. And by comparing these two lines, you can find the place where you lost your dream.
By finding moments where dreams have been lost, we may have more opportunities to regain the vision of our self-realization and look for ways to achieve it. Often this happens through creativity, a change of place of work, sometimes people are helped by a change of place or country of residence, which may more correspond to their natural sensitivity.
Children have an intuitive sense of activities that can relieve and help convey through action their mental suffering and their inner beauty. What children love to do at an early age is healing for them. It is important for parents to notice and help the child develop in his hobby. This will help him in professional realization and in personal becoming himself.
I want to give an example of the story of a young woman. She came to see me because she suspected she was mentally ill. She was a social worker for a successful community organization. Communication with strangers terrified her. But she did violence to herself and came into contact, conducted business negotiations. She was almost always fatigued and had a fever, although all studies showed she was healthy.
She grew up in a family where loving and caring relationships were not accepted. From an early age she was forced to take care of herself: she went to school, to doctor's appointments, cooked food. The institute chose the one in which she was able to enter for free. Horror and panic tormented her since her school days. She tried to find comfort in taking drugs, but this experience only aggravated her mental anguish. Here is her story from one of the first sessions:
“In my fantasies, I live several parallel lives at the same time. Each of them is inhabited by its own creatures and has its own stories. When there is time, I go into every life and put things in order there.
How to combine them into one? Is it worth it? Or maybe I don't know how to live one life? Maybe I'm not normal?"
We worked with phenomenology, corporeality, grounding. And at one of the sessions, I offered her a futuro-practical experiment - to see herself in five years. She was dismayed when a vision came that she was singing in the street. But after that, something began to change in her life. She bought a guitar, wrote several songs and signed up for a vocal studio. And at night she began to write simple websites, which she gave out to friends for free.
She applied for dismissal. She was very scared of losing her job due to financial problems. For two months she completed business in this organization, and in the evenings and weekends she received education on creating websites. Then she was invited to work in the company as a programmer. Her parallel lives gradually ceased to exist. I remember her grief that now these worlds have left her. But at the same time, its reality has acquired more joyful and pleasant shades.
Conclusion
From my experience and sensations, a romantic era with depressive tendencies is coming to replace the pragmatic, material-oriented narcissistic society. When the beauty of the soul begins to rule people driven to despair by fears of poverty, condemnation and calculation. The unaestheticness of rationalism is what wounds human souls. Many, very many of my clients, like me, are in search of their beauty, looking for forms to express emotions and their intentionality. They, unexpectedly for themselves, begin to compose poems, paint pictures, novels, create beautiful things with their own hands, otherwise build relationships with themselves and others. More sensuality and human warmth appear in their relationship.
Acceptance of yourself with your inner world, your individuality, vision of beauty and finding eco-friendly ways of self-manifestation in the environment is the way to co-existence with other people. This is the foundation for the formation of the next round of evolution. I am more inclined to regard psychological deviations in human behavior as an evolution of the beauty of human nature, and not as a pathology.
“Beauty is Life … Feel the beauty within yourself and allow it to spread throughout your being, pulsing to the beat of your heart. As you allow this beauty to enter deeply into your consciousness, it will change you, touch the very foundations of your being, and you will begin to work for the sake of the beauty of the planet.”Khalil Gibran
