Sensitive insensitive

Have you ever noticed how it’s very often the most insensitive people who are the most sensitive? How they can be insensitive to others feelings but are really sensitive themselves?

Well it may not come as a surprise that the two go together.

When you’re sensitive, there’s sometimes just too much stuff coming in. Too much noise, light, activity, emotion (yours and other people’s). Overstimulation.

So you block it out. You numb down. You go INsensitive.

But it goes further than than.

You go insensitive to other people. You tread on toes. You make a comment that comes out ruder than intended. Or you didn’t even realise it could be rude or hurtful. And you get into trouble.

The people you’ve hurt in one of your numbed-out phases then have a go at you. You’re under attack. You batten down the hatches and retreat, wondering why everyone has it in for you.

Turning on your sensitivity, you find your own pain, emotions and irritations (the things that caused you to numb-out in the first place). But you also have to deal with the outside attacks, and the inside hurt they caused.

It’s all too much.

So you stay numb, tuning out your own experience, the outside world, everything. You retreat into your rational intellect and declare that you “don’t do emotions”. The path to depression, anxiety, living in robot-mode.

Or you explode in a cathartic mess of emotions, reach neutral and start the cycle again, with those around you even more wary of your moods, explosions and insensitivity. And you don’t trust yourself to keep your temper either, so even you’re scared of yourself, if you really admit it.

Or you get into angry protestations at some outside enemy: the state, politics, environmental change, or animal testing, throwing your unresolved emotions at an external target.

Not fragile like a flower, fragile like a bomb.

Some of it is present-day: overstimulation and being over-stressed can lead us to put the blinkers on, ignore our impact in the world.

But some – perhaps most – of it is the underground stuff. The historical stuff.

It’s the emotions you’ve not processed before. It’s the ill-treatment at the hand of people, in your childhood, in your teenage years, in your adulthood. School bullies, workplace bullies, or people bigoted against whichever minorities you belong to. For some people, our parents and siblings are our first bullies – or neglectful towards us.

Sustained, unrelenting ill-treatment, with nowhere to run to, can lead to cPTSD – complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Complex, because it builds up from hundreds and thousands of smaller events.

And complex, because we develop a whole raft of interconnected coping strategies and internalised responses that help us survive. Including, but not limited to, depression, anxiety, self-limiting behaviours (self-protection often misread as self-sabotage), and difficulties in relationships.

I will add in a note here about abusive and coercively controlling people. If you’re trying to figure out why someone close to you behaves like this to you: stop. Stop figuring them out. Get support for yourself, if you’re on the end of erratic, scary, and/or damaging behaviour. With these kinds of people you have two realistic options – stay with them as they are, or leave. But staying with them and expecting, encouraging, hoping them to one day see the light and treat you better is long, draining, and often devastating route, with no guarantee of success.

But if this is you puzzling your sensitive-insensitive self out, trying to manage your intense emotions, there’s another way to deal with it. It’s a slow and steady journey, necessarily so, but with dedication and support, you get to a place of peace with and in yourself, with enough sensitivity to be alive to your world and the worlds of other people, and enough self-management that you don’t get overwhelmed and begin the rollercoaster cycle again.

This is the journey of discovering your sensitivities. Of understanding yourself more. Of understanding others. Of feeling, experiencing, and letting emotions pass through you, instead of stuffing them into hiding places or exploding them messily. Of awareness and compassion.

What’s next?

1. Do nothing

As you were. Though that might not be exactly true: every time we learn something new, we change. Just a tiny bit, or lot, if our gifted minds do their ripples-of-implications-and-consequences thing.

2. Do it yourself

Learn some mindfulness meditation, read up on emotional management, figure out your overstimulation triggers. You’ll make definite headway with effort. But you might also find roadblocks, especially when dealing with your underground emotions,. Most people (even gifted folk) need a guide and support for this stage of the journey.

3. Do it with some people

I support gifted people to get a hold on their emotional world and inner intensities. Take a look and see if we’re a fit.