Sensitivity
2007-11-16 16:03![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexibeastFurther to my earlier post about being a sensitive person, reading Elaine Aron's The Highly Sensitive Person led to a number of things falling into place for me.
i imagine that most of us have had the experience of feeling overwhelmed, of feeling like there are so many things going on at once that we can't deal with them all. We feel stressed, we can't concentrate, and our fuse becomes particularly short.
Of course, the point at which one feels overwhelmed varies from person to person. Crowds can represent a positive, exhilarating experience for one person, and an overabundance of stimuli for another. Our society, however, is extremely biased towards the preferences of extroverts: if one isn't energised by going to an event with lots of people, loud music, bright lights, etc. then one is presumed to have psychological problems. (As Anneli S. Rufus notes in her marvellous book Party of One - some of my favourite quotes from which i posted previously - the 'Loner' figure is a staple of fictional and non-fictional psychopathology; it's often used as shorthand for "Person who doesn't socialise with other people, therefore has little to no positive feelings for others, therefore is obviously predisposed towards harming others".)
So people such as myself, who are aware of things more subtle than most people seem to be aware of, are therefore chided for being "over-sensitive". "You're too sensitive!" we're told. "You need to get a thicker skin!" It never seems to occur to these people that maybe they are not sensitive enough, that maybe a lot of the social problems in the world today are a result of people not caring enough about the feelings of others. (Perhaps because, having latched onto the 'Loner' stereotype, they don't want to consider the possibility that there might be non-extroverted people who are less likely than average to want to inflict harm on others.) And they also seem to think that our sensitivity is something that not only should be 'corrected', but can be 'corrected'. Yet for me, trying to not notice the stimuli that i do is akin to asking the average person to not hear their native language as language, but as a mere series of sounds. Even assuming that it can be done without a considerable amount of effort, why would one want to do so, given that it would mean missing out on important information?
Still, it can take a lot of work to constantly process all the information we're receiving, particularly in the extrovert-oriented, "can't get enough sensory input" world in which we live. So we sensitive people need more 'quiet time' to catch up with the backlog of input that builds up in our heads over time. And i don't think it's unreasonable to speculate that constant over-stimulation, without a requisite amount of 'down time', might well lead to the constant activation of the fight-or-flight response, which in turn might well lead to paranoia as one remains in such a hyper-aware state for extended periods of time (remembering that sensitive people are already in what might be called a 'super-aware' state compared to most people).
So i can't help but wonder if that's been the source of my paranoia (and by paranoia, i mean actual paranoia, not the paranoia that people claim i have despite it turning out that i've been accurate in my assessment of certain people's personalities / attitudes / behaviours etc.), and my overly brusque-to-plain-rude social interactions of years past, both of which have decreased noticeably in recent times - i suspect because i've considerably decreased the number of social environments i'm involved with, which has correspondingly decreased the number of people i have to deal with, which has correspondingly decreased the quantity of other people's emotions i have to deal with (my partners will tell you that it's difficult to hide their feelings from me. :-) ). All this has permitted me to devote more time and energy to my own internal life, which is crucial to me being able to process all the information i have received; and feeling that i'm able to 'digest' life in my own way, instead of being force-fed by an extroverted world which regards me as some kind of sensory anorexic, has led me to feeling increasingly well-balanced internally.
i don't regard myself as over-sensitive anymore. i'm simply more sensitive than most, which has consequences i'm learning to manage. And anyone who continues to tell me that i'm "over-sensitive" can expect to get a corresponding "No, you're under-sensitive" shot across their bows in response. :-)
i imagine that most of us have had the experience of feeling overwhelmed, of feeling like there are so many things going on at once that we can't deal with them all. We feel stressed, we can't concentrate, and our fuse becomes particularly short.
Of course, the point at which one feels overwhelmed varies from person to person. Crowds can represent a positive, exhilarating experience for one person, and an overabundance of stimuli for another. Our society, however, is extremely biased towards the preferences of extroverts: if one isn't energised by going to an event with lots of people, loud music, bright lights, etc. then one is presumed to have psychological problems. (As Anneli S. Rufus notes in her marvellous book Party of One - some of my favourite quotes from which i posted previously - the 'Loner' figure is a staple of fictional and non-fictional psychopathology; it's often used as shorthand for "Person who doesn't socialise with other people, therefore has little to no positive feelings for others, therefore is obviously predisposed towards harming others".)
So people such as myself, who are aware of things more subtle than most people seem to be aware of, are therefore chided for being "over-sensitive". "You're too sensitive!" we're told. "You need to get a thicker skin!" It never seems to occur to these people that maybe they are not sensitive enough, that maybe a lot of the social problems in the world today are a result of people not caring enough about the feelings of others. (Perhaps because, having latched onto the 'Loner' stereotype, they don't want to consider the possibility that there might be non-extroverted people who are less likely than average to want to inflict harm on others.) And they also seem to think that our sensitivity is something that not only should be 'corrected', but can be 'corrected'. Yet for me, trying to not notice the stimuli that i do is akin to asking the average person to not hear their native language as language, but as a mere series of sounds. Even assuming that it can be done without a considerable amount of effort, why would one want to do so, given that it would mean missing out on important information?
Still, it can take a lot of work to constantly process all the information we're receiving, particularly in the extrovert-oriented, "can't get enough sensory input" world in which we live. So we sensitive people need more 'quiet time' to catch up with the backlog of input that builds up in our heads over time. And i don't think it's unreasonable to speculate that constant over-stimulation, without a requisite amount of 'down time', might well lead to the constant activation of the fight-or-flight response, which in turn might well lead to paranoia as one remains in such a hyper-aware state for extended periods of time (remembering that sensitive people are already in what might be called a 'super-aware' state compared to most people).
So i can't help but wonder if that's been the source of my paranoia (and by paranoia, i mean actual paranoia, not the paranoia that people claim i have despite it turning out that i've been accurate in my assessment of certain people's personalities / attitudes / behaviours etc.), and my overly brusque-to-plain-rude social interactions of years past, both of which have decreased noticeably in recent times - i suspect because i've considerably decreased the number of social environments i'm involved with, which has correspondingly decreased the number of people i have to deal with, which has correspondingly decreased the quantity of other people's emotions i have to deal with (my partners will tell you that it's difficult to hide their feelings from me. :-) ). All this has permitted me to devote more time and energy to my own internal life, which is crucial to me being able to process all the information i have received; and feeling that i'm able to 'digest' life in my own way, instead of being force-fed by an extroverted world which regards me as some kind of sensory anorexic, has led me to feeling increasingly well-balanced internally.
i don't regard myself as over-sensitive anymore. i'm simply more sensitive than most, which has consequences i'm learning to manage. And anyone who continues to tell me that i'm "over-sensitive" can expect to get a corresponding "No, you're under-sensitive" shot across their bows in response. :-)
