Born Highly Sensitive?
Are folks born highly sensitive? Or, does time and
circumstance make them that way?
Probably, some of both.
Elaine Aron, in her book The Highly Sensitive Person, suggests that’s
the case. Certainly I’ve seen children who from birth seemed fragile and
delicately sensible. Another book cites research that shows that at
birth there are 3 characteristic types. One, of these is a sensitive: very
aware of their environment and AFFECTED by it.
I don’t know if I was a sensitive child or not. Pictures seem to suggest I was
happy and content.
I do know that I was verbal — some have suggested loud and too extraverted but
hey, what do they know.
Even if I wasn’t born sensitive, events conspired to create sensitivity in me.
I’ve done a lot of reading on Fibromyalgia and one factor caught my eye. A
significant proportion of folks who have Fibromyalgia were abused as children,
usually sexually, sometimes both physically and sexually. That factor caught my
eye because by the time I found that information I had been in therapy for
more than 10 years and knew that I had been abused as a child.
Since then readings about trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have helped
me understand that my sensitivity comes from shifts in my brain and body caused
by the trauma. My body/mind is exquisitely sensitive to anything and anyone in
the environment who ‘reminds’ me of the past.
The gift, as I said last post, in this sensitivity is the ability to tune into
other’s pain and hurt.
The bad news is I get overwhelmed and ambushed by the negative energy of
others.
I’m working on learning how to shield myself from the later. So, I can better deal with the former.
