Hypersensitive? I Gotta Be Me

I have been called overly emotional my whole life.  Melo-dramatic, drama queen, Sandra Bernhard (which I don’t mind) too sensitive, and highly emotional just to name a few.  These are all adjectives that seemed to be synonymous with my being.  I seemed to endlessly irritate those who chastised me for being sensitive and I had no idea why.

For years I’ve fought against my hyper-sensitivity, dumbing it down to the point of numbness which ironically, also came with a slew of criticisms;  You’re so cut off, you don’t care, you’re so arrogant, you’re in your head all the time.

It would seem that no matter which way I went, up or down, I was being criticized for being ME.  So for the next few years I set out to become something, anything other than myself.  I’d created a public persona I could share to the world, a people pleasing, helpful to-the-detriment-of-my-own-happiness persona who stood rigid, and unfeeling on the front lines of emotional conflict while I secretly cried my over sensitive eyes out when no one was watching.

Everyone around me was allowed to express themselves BUT me.  Tantrums, game playing, punishing, ignoring, you name it, all the wonderfully overindulgent emotional games petulant adults play when trying to torture one another.  Yet somehow if you are sensitive to any of this, YOU are the problem.

My hyper-sensitivity (which I was born with) is due in part to my openness and connection with the divine.  Being an empath I can feel everything.  Most often, I feel things that are not really my emotions, but of those around me.  When I watch a movie that tears at my heart strings, I react.  When someone tells me a gut-wrenching story, I react. When someone tells me about some sort of injustice that was done to them, I react.  I am literally an orchestra of emotions constantly being played with no end in sight.

Then there are my emotions which play out dramatically on the stage of my life. When I am in a place where I am going through something emotionally intense, I have a defense system which for years I had been told was weak.  For example, my constant need to talk things out so I can get it out of my energetic system. This manifests as an inability to let things go but really is preventing me from internalizing things that bother me which then turns into repressed emotion.  Thank God for my best friend who has often pointed this out to me as she is literally the ONLY human on the planet that truly gets me.

Why is it so bad to be sensitive?  Why do we have to feel as though somehow we can’t be upset, or hurt, or emotional if a situation calls for it?  Why is is bad to love with all our hearts?  More over, why are we constantly criticized for it?

There is nothing “wrong” with being sensitive.  It’s just how we are wired.  I like to compare it to a Ferrari.  When you tap the gas the car literally flies.  It’s the same with our emotions.  We hyper-sensitives are the Ferraris of emotional beings.  We accelerate quickly, and at speeds others are unable to handle which makes them uncomfortable and therefore critical.

Highly sensitive beings suffer more but they also love harder, dream wider, and experience deeper horizons and bliss.  When you’re sensitive, you’re alive in every sense of this wildly beautiful world.  Sensitivity is your strength.  Keep soaking in the light and spreading it to others.”

~Victoria Erickson

After many years of trying to suppress my emotions, I paid the ultimate price.  I suffered from such debilitating panic/anxiety attacks I was trapped in my life. I had allowed years of repressed emotions to say stagnant, instead of releasing in the way I am designed to do.  So as a result, my body detoxed in the only way it knew how, a nervous breakdown.

Those of us that are super sensitive are prone to depression and anxiety a bit more than the average person.  We are designed to release our negative emotions in order to maintain our emotional health. When we fail to express our emotions, all those traumas get stored in our cell memory and can turn into horrible illness if not properly released.

In the past when my anxiety would flare up, I would panic, and feel like I was somehow a broken mess.  Now I know that it is my body’s way of telling me that I am on emotional overload and I need to slow down and address what’s bothering me.  It took years to realize that this doesn’t make me weak, it is incredibly empowering to be so tuned into this phenomenal machine we call a body.

While it can sometimes be a struggle, especially dealing with people that seek acceptance of their being but offer none for yours, I no longer care what people think.  I embrace my sensitivity, my ability to connect to humans on a level that is in my opinion a gift.

I am proud to be sensitive.  Sensitivity is not synonymous with weakness, it’s synonymous with great strength  We love too much, give too much and hurt too much but somehow we are built to withstand any emotional storm and come out the better for it.  So for those who can’t deal with my sensitive nature, BE GONE! Because like the great Sammy Davis Jr. once sang “I gotta be me.”

Keep Seeking,

TPJ