"Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears."
Edgar Allan Poe
I am, for sure, "way too sensitive".
I notice things other people don't - now I don't mean that "I see dead people" or anything like that. I just see/hear/smell etc. things that many people don't notice. Not un-real things, cos when I notice them and point them out, they do too. Same goes for patterns of activity/behaviour, thought this isn't always so cut and dried (can lead to "false positives", an awesome piece of phraseology which lets me admit sometimes I am wrong without actually saying I am wrong ;-). There is a plus side to this - I do tend to be quite empathic, noticing body language and voice tones without even realising. And it fuels my thought processes and imagination, so I can be very creative - helps in my photography when on location I often see a wee detail that isn't so obvious, or in relationships or yoga therapy when I pick up on something being amiss.
But perhaps the more noticeable part is the downside. Things annoy me that should just roll off me, little matters that I should be above (and beyond). And I hold on to things, as part of my deep internal world, often finding it difficult to let go, especially where conflict or rejection was involved. I have a tendency to cut people off or write them off for very minor reasons, and to do so utterly and completely.
I kind of put this down to depression until recently - like depression was the cause and these facets of my personality (or lack thereof ;-) were symptoms. A couple of days ago I read something that has made me doubt this. I am still exploring it, researching, but it makes a lot of sense.
What I found was a website by a psychologist/psychotherapist Dr. Elaine Aron, and her idea of the "Highly Sensitive Person". Her description of the HSP rang out a lot of truths for me - a few gaps were even filled when I read more, where she states that HSP's can also be High Sensation Seeking individuals, a part of my personality I had difficulty reconciling with her idea on first reading. I now have an acronym to describe myself easily, I am very proud to be a HSP/HSS.
The big difference in Dr. Aron's idea is that she expressly states that if you are a HSP your traits are both normal (they are found in 15-20% of the population, too great to be considered a disorder) and innate (it is a result of the way your nervous system is hard-wired, not of any experiences or problems you encountered).
This is, I must confess, an attractive proposition to me. I have struggled to understand my depression given other models available, it just doesn't make much sense. I have nothing wrong in my life, had no great traumatic events, and the mood swings I have found myself subjected to just seem so random at times. I often contradict myself in that I am a remarkably strong and resilient person in one sense, but seem so fragile and reactive in another. I have researched such extreme conditions as Bipolar Syndrome and ME/Chronic Fatigue because I have experienced similar symptoms, but happily didn't ift in with may other aspects - but this has all been fueled by this whole concept of "what is wrong with me?"
But the most attractive part of her ideas, which seem to have found widespread accceptance in modern psychology, is that it means there is nothing wrong with me.
So why does it often feel like crap to be me? Because I am trying to live in the world of the other 80-85% of people in this world who are not so sensitive, am not accomodating my own individuality and am confused that I am "not like 'everyone' else". I have of course noticed that I only truly seem to feel at home with other Yoga people or similar types, although I learned remarkable chameleon abilities in my time as a police officer for sure. But I always put it down to me being 'different' in a not-so-good way, and thought that my efforts in self-improvement should be to move towards other people, to try to be like them.
Which of course is stupid as I write it, but it's true. So her ideas have me wondering... what if there is nothing wrong with me? Maybe I am simply trying to match myself up to the wrong standards, dance to a drumbeat that is wrong for me. It doesn't mean I have nothing left to do, I still need to realise how I can live my life without coming into conflict with the structure of my nervous system AND to put that into effect. Luckily for me, most of the ways of doing this lie well within the realm of Yoga. Patanjali talks about the "Vivekinah" (Yoga Sutra II.15), who is the 'discerning' person, the minority in society who realise that they are suffering. It makes me wonder if in fact he was merely making an observation that certain people were Highly Sensitive Persons in an age before medical knowledge would have told him that this was a genetic and structural feature of the person's nervous system.And of course, such people are drawn to Yoga because its tools/system offer respite from the non-HSP world.
Perhaps this is only an external (scientific) validation of something I already knew from Yoga, but even so I think it has helped and hope it may help other people to consider this perspective. With a final reminder that I am still investigating this whole idea, I will undoubtedly have much more to say about it all.
retro India
8 hours ago
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