Soo I’ve been trying to work on my videos all week, but the heat is driving me mad, so I started thinking and surprisingly it wasn’t my videos that was on mind this time.
It was being a highly sensitive.
I’ve written about being a highly sensitive person before, one of my first post’s when I started blogging a few years ago, but I never went into detail about this.
Thing is, yes it did change my life finding out I was a highly sensitive person.
It was an explanation to why I’ve always felt so different.
Being told that you are too sensitive, too emotional all your life, and suddenly realising that around 30 % of the world’s population are the same, it’s a comfort.
The feeling I’ve been getting my whole life is basically.
Imagine you travel to a country so different to your country, with a completely different culture, and you try to fit in, to blend in, but everyone acts so different to you, that you feel more alienated than you feel like you belong. You try so hard to fit in. You learn the language, but you can’t escape the accent you have, and everyone that you meet comments on this.
You try to eventually in time embrace that you are different, but it’s hard, because everyone expects more from you. They expect without words that you know how to act, that you speak their language fluently, so it’s a constant battle balancing trying to fit in and trying to accept that you are different.
Since I can remember, I’ve always been told I’m too nice, too emotional, too sensitive, too caring. Problem isn’t in the nice, emotional, and sensitive side. It’s the TOO that’s the issue. When you put a too behind a word, it takes the positive meaning out of the word and turns it into a negative one.
I’ve often not understood and still to this day have issues understanding how one can be TOO nice or TOO caring?
Isn’t caring a good thing?
The people in my life in my past and present who tells me this, doesn’t do it to be mean, they do it because they care.
Thing is that I have a hard time communicating, it’s that for me, I can’t just turn off these things.
Trust me I’ve tried.
It’s not a switch you can turn off or put the volume down on.
Being a highly sensitive person is something you are born with, it’s who you are.
Being a highly sensitive person has a lot of good qualities, and I will go over those in another blog post soon, but it does have a shadow side too.
The shadow side of being a highly sensitive person, for me is that no matter how much you try to fit in, you will always feel out of place and misunderstood.
I’ll give you a few examples.
Moments in my life where I just wanted to tear my hair off trying to explain why I couldn’t just turn the sensitive side off.
Overstimulation
I always had a lot of friends, and always loved spending time with them in big groups.
When we went out to meet up, we planned to meet up again next day, and I promised I would defo be there, until the day arrived and I realised that I was completely knackered, so I cancelled.
This would often happen, and back then I failed to explain why I cancelled.
I was so ashamed of feeling drained, because I was the only one, I felt in the group of friends that had this issue.
Sometimes I would just go anyway, but if I did push myself to go out even though I didn’t feel like it, I was in a mood all night, with zero energy. Sometimes I would even push through this to hide how I really felt and ended up being hyper instead. Zooming around, talking too loudly, consuming too much alcohol, and ended up doing stupid things.
My friends did not understand my sudden mood swings, being hyper or cancelling an hour before a meet up.
And I failed back then to explain why. I came up with excuses, that only explained maybe 20 % of what was really going on.
I was seen as the crazy Fay. That still sticks amongst my friends today. That I’m a little crazy.
But how do you explain you get overstimulated to the point where it just affects you too much.
When I got overstimulated as a child, I got told off by the adults around me. I learned quickly then that it was a bad thing and to hide it when I felt it.
Overstimulation for me is too much sound, too many lights, too many people in a tight space.
Let’s dive deep into this.
Let’s take sound first.
Imagine you sitting in a classroom and the teacher uses chalk on the board. You hear the screeching sound, over and over again.
It’s annoying, and you want to put your hands to your ears or ask the teacher to stop making that horrible sound.
But you don’t, you look around and no one around is affected by this, only you.
So, you pretend you are fine, and that all is good.
You stomach the sound for what feels like hours on end.
Feel what this does to you.
Let’s take lights next.
Imagine you go into a room and instead of just one light bulb lighting the room, imagine there are 5. Its super bright and you feel your eyes strain from this, you feel the discomfort it brings. You walk into another room and it’s so dark you can hardly see where you are walking. You stumble your way through and don’t understand why anyone would set the lights at these settings.
You look around and you see people near you smiling, chatting, like everything is right with the world.
It really bugs you that no one seems to notice this, so you pretend that everything is fine, and you smile and chat the best you can.
How does this make you feel?
Let’s take the last one, people.
You sit in a room full of people.
You all watch a movie together.
The movie contains horrible things. You feel disgusted by the cruelty of what is happening on the screen.
Imagine the worst horror movie you have ever seen, the chills on your back, the feeling of just wanting to close your eyes.
In the back someone is crying. So heavily that you feel moved too, your immediate instinct is to go over and see if you can help. Suddenly the crying stops, and the movie changes. You see beautiful pictures on the screen, you hear the most beautiful heartfelt song from the speakers. It reminds you of your wedding day, watching your new-born for the first time, being in love for the first time. You can’t help but shed a tear, you look around and realise no one else seemed affected at all by the pictures on screen. No one but you, had noticed the horror, the crying, the beautiful moments, and you sit in the room and feel alone.
You try to hide this to fit in. So, you wipe the tear from your cheek and smile.
It was a little overdramatized, but this is what I feel, when I get overstimulated.
I learned to hide it, but the feeling still sticks, and you feel out of place.
You can’t just turn the sound off; you can’t just correct the light settings in every room, and you can’t just react to every emotion you feel or see around you.
Only thing you can do is stomach it most days.
What I never learned is to take better care of my highly sensitive side.
I drowned out my own needs trying too hard to just fit in.
Its only in the last few years that I practise taking better care of my sensitive self, and in doing so, I’m no longer as stressed as I used to be, I am better at being in the present.
But in doing this I have to say no to a lot of appointments and meetups.
My rule is to never do anything 2 days in a row, and to try to minimise the inputs I get by taking small breaks from time to time.
Another moment in my life where I felt out of place, and very different, was the time I experienced heartbreak.
My boyfriend and me had ended our 5-year relationship and I took it hard.
Like very hard.
Heartbreak is never easy, and for the sensitive side of me, its constant self-care.
Heartbreak doesn’t just hurt emotionally. For me it hurts physically too.
Before my first heartbreak I never understood why it was called heartbreak. It’s not like a heart can break, not physically anyway. That’s what I thought.
Thing is, that’s exactly what it feels like.
My heart hurt constantly for a week. My chest felt heavy, I cried nonstop with small breaks thinking I literally had no tears left to then my surprise starting again at full volume the second time. It didn’t matter I was sitting amongst friends in public, no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t control my tears and my emotional sobs.
My friends understood, for a time, thinking it would pass in a weeks’ time.
The worst of it did, but I was far from okay. A month later, sometimes 2 I would still be having my uncontrolled outbursts.
Eventually I did feel okay, but not before my friends and my family had repeatedly told me to get over it in the nicest way possible. They didn’t understand why 6 months later I would still be crying about it.
I didn’t understand it myself.
It wasn’t like I didn’t understand why the breakup had to happen. It wasn’t because I wasn’t okay with it, but I just felt the emotions of a loss so deeply, that I couldn’t help it.
I’ve later learned to go through strong emotions like that in a more controlled space.
I let myself feel it instead of trying to force myself to feel less of it.
So, I cry while listening to music, and I walk through the emotion. I let it pass through me until I feel a bit better, and I walk back to talk to friends and family after that, where I can better manage at being present.
It’s not just heartbreak that feels overwhelming.
Ask my friends and family when I’m in love. I drive them nuts.
I laugh all the time, and my smile is turned up all the way up to my ears. It’s a nice feeling but can also be super annoying. Imagine if you smile all day long, your face feels pretty weird after it.
I don’t eat or sleep during that time, I can’t. Too much going on in my body and mind.
So, to my friends I’m just running around like a bird on speed, twirping all day.
I understand why they might find it annoying; thing is I find it to be annoying.
It does feel great to be on cloud 9 all the time, but not being able to eat or sleep much and being in a constant state of dreamy happiness for a month it’s a lot.
When I have explained what being a highly sensitive person means to me, to people close to me, most have always hit me with this sentence…
“It sounds like being a highly sensitive person isn’t a good thing! It sounds like it’s a burden”
Thing is, it can be, but I think it’s because we live in a world where it’s hard to take breaks from the impressions all around you.
It’s hard to explain your emotions to others that don’t feel them as deeply.
It’s hard to try to explain why it’s so hard to stop overthinking.
Basically, to me, what makes it the hardest to deal with being a highly sensitive, is the feeling of being misunderstood, of feeling like being an alien visiting planet earth.
It’s hard trying to drown down emotions and your own reaction to things.
It’s hard to say no and disappoint people close to you because you have to put your own health and mental health first.
It’s hard not being able to talk to others who understand what being highly sensitive means.
Do I wish I was born differently knowing this?
Absolutely not.
The good sides I got from being a highly sensitive person outweighs the bad.
I think the only thing I really wish is that people would stop putting TOO into every word that is the good things about being a highly sensitive person.
I wish we would be a bit more understood in the society we live in, and don’t get asked to drown down half off ourselves just because we are different.
Would you feel comfortable in your skin if you had to drown down yourself your entire life? Just because you are TOO much yourself?
Feel free to comment down below if you can relate or know anyone who is a highly sensitive person 😊
I will post more on this subject when inspiration hits me.
Missfaylyn 