ZenRaiden
One atom of me
First, lots of new ideas and concepts in psychology that exist today or were described, are relatively misunderstood or still being explored, so do take all of this as something not yet well understood and fairly liable to be mistaken for something it is not.
Second a link to wiki that explains the theory and stuff worth reading about... but theory and reality where they connect?
en.wikipedia.org
I am actually surprised that I discovered I am HSP, I used to study and read about it, but the idea I am it is hard to grasp.
One important fact is that we don't always feel or are aware of our emotions. We can numb out.
What is also hard is that you cannot really tell how other people feel.
Like a dog barking, can you really measure how strong the dog really feels? Is he angry or is he just barking out of habit?
So since there is no measure for depth and breath of feelings how can we really tell someone is HSP?
Well there is no real way objectively measure emotions other then inference.
We take people who experience emotions and we can ask them how it felt, maybe observe some distress or excitation etc.
But even in early childhood I would experience things differently, and by inference I knew that I feel something is off.
For instance people would not feel anything when I felt something strongly.
I could be super distraught and they would just shake it off.
This does not mean I was a fragile little fluff ball, but it is very intense in any negative or positive emotions.
You can experience anger, sadness, happiness and sensual stuff and injuries with greater intensity.
I am relatively new to emotions, but I always had great deal of empathy.
Empathy does not mean you care about stuff always or that you feeling empathy makes you care about others.
Empathy just means you pick up vibes and emotions more strongly.
Its like having a passive radar that can see smaller objects that are not visible to others or you pick up vibes from greater distance.
When it comes to empathy - it does not equal understanding. So needless to say having empathy does not prevent you from hurting other people or being asshole.
Empathy can be a burden too. You cannot or I cannot personally turn it off. The way I dealt with this I just numbed out my emotions completely repressing my emotional side.
Being HSP I could feel emotions with super intensity and feel them lasting.
I usually never thought about others feeling differently.
All my life I just took it as me being me.
But over time evidence, though I never knew what it means, accumulated that I tend to feel things way more.
More importantly, though how does this differ from normal people experiencing emotions in normal range?
Well I believe I cannot say for sure, but generally I think normal people experience emotions strongly, but perhaps most of the time they have more mellow emotional bandwidth.
It just means your emotional needle would be more steady on normal days, whereas HSP people would have emotions all over the place.
I also have trouble with lingering feelings, experience great deal of emotions in short span of time.
Recently had a break through in emotions and it might be the first time I felt something.
Let me tell you I was exhausted from the intense emotions.
It was like being in car crash where everything goes slow mo.
I was only eating fries.
I felt happy, I felt anxiety, I felt my teeth, I felt every chew I made, I felt like on a roller coaster ride.
My whole body was vibing in many ways.
I also cried watching a sun rise. Although exceptionally beautiful sun rise.
It was dawn, and I went hiking, I was walking up hill and saw the sky, hills covered in haze, and felt crisp and light cold air in my nose, the smell of dew and grass of a meadow, and looked upon a highlighted square cloud covering most of the visible horizon. The cloud was bluish grey, with stripes of white, illuminated by orange, red, violet color, mostly violet and red.
The sky was pale blue, and a breeze ran through my body. I watched for few minutes and the sun rise changed the colors.
Realistically words cannot really paint a good picture of what I felt.
That being said it is said some 10 percent of people are HSP.
I love art, chocolate, women(even looking is intense etc. )
The point is its a multi facet thing.
Objectively you wake up HSP everyday, so you cannot really tell you are HSP.
It just becomes more clear later in life, when you feel shit and people just don't seem to.
I am not sure where to go with this more, but for nerds Akira has touched on this subject and so did matrix.
In Akira HSP are called ESPERs which is sci fi version of HSP. In scifi they supposed to have telekinesis and mind reading abilites etc. Of course this is sci fi, but being INTP as kid I tried training my self in telekinsesis just to be sure. You never know right? LOL
You feel fear intensely.
But being HSP sometimes you mask what you feel.
In my case my own mother would not know what I am thinking or feeling. Since feeling felt dangerous in my life I did what is called masking. Which just means you don't show emotions.
Also some notes.
Not all HSP people have high empathy.
You can be super sensitive, but not necessarily have high empathy.
When it comes to empathy its fairly hard thing to work with.
Empathy requires also understanding of feelings, and situations.
You can get overwhelmed by feelings of others and even so much you can identify them as your own, before you even realize they are there.
I think in psychoanalysis this is sometimes called countertransference.
So being around others can feel like invasion. Like their vibes don't know boundaries.
So being HSP and having extra high empathy can actually be burden in many situations, especailly if you don't learn to work with it.
Second a link to wiki that explains the theory and stuff worth reading about... but theory and reality where they connect?
Sensory processing sensitivity - Wikipedia
I am actually surprised that I discovered I am HSP, I used to study and read about it, but the idea I am it is hard to grasp.
One important fact is that we don't always feel or are aware of our emotions. We can numb out.
What is also hard is that you cannot really tell how other people feel.
Like a dog barking, can you really measure how strong the dog really feels? Is he angry or is he just barking out of habit?
So since there is no measure for depth and breath of feelings how can we really tell someone is HSP?
Well there is no real way objectively measure emotions other then inference.
We take people who experience emotions and we can ask them how it felt, maybe observe some distress or excitation etc.
But even in early childhood I would experience things differently, and by inference I knew that I feel something is off.
For instance people would not feel anything when I felt something strongly.
I could be super distraught and they would just shake it off.
This does not mean I was a fragile little fluff ball, but it is very intense in any negative or positive emotions.
You can experience anger, sadness, happiness and sensual stuff and injuries with greater intensity.
I am relatively new to emotions, but I always had great deal of empathy.
Empathy does not mean you care about stuff always or that you feeling empathy makes you care about others.
Empathy just means you pick up vibes and emotions more strongly.
Its like having a passive radar that can see smaller objects that are not visible to others or you pick up vibes from greater distance.
When it comes to empathy - it does not equal understanding. So needless to say having empathy does not prevent you from hurting other people or being asshole.
Empathy can be a burden too. You cannot or I cannot personally turn it off. The way I dealt with this I just numbed out my emotions completely repressing my emotional side.
Being HSP I could feel emotions with super intensity and feel them lasting.
I usually never thought about others feeling differently.
All my life I just took it as me being me.
But over time evidence, though I never knew what it means, accumulated that I tend to feel things way more.
More importantly, though how does this differ from normal people experiencing emotions in normal range?
Well I believe I cannot say for sure, but generally I think normal people experience emotions strongly, but perhaps most of the time they have more mellow emotional bandwidth.
It just means your emotional needle would be more steady on normal days, whereas HSP people would have emotions all over the place.
I also have trouble with lingering feelings, experience great deal of emotions in short span of time.
Recently had a break through in emotions and it might be the first time I felt something.
Let me tell you I was exhausted from the intense emotions.
It was like being in car crash where everything goes slow mo.
I was only eating fries.
I felt happy, I felt anxiety, I felt my teeth, I felt every chew I made, I felt like on a roller coaster ride.
My whole body was vibing in many ways.
I also cried watching a sun rise. Although exceptionally beautiful sun rise.
It was dawn, and I went hiking, I was walking up hill and saw the sky, hills covered in haze, and felt crisp and light cold air in my nose, the smell of dew and grass of a meadow, and looked upon a highlighted square cloud covering most of the visible horizon. The cloud was bluish grey, with stripes of white, illuminated by orange, red, violet color, mostly violet and red.
The sky was pale blue, and a breeze ran through my body. I watched for few minutes and the sun rise changed the colors.
Realistically words cannot really paint a good picture of what I felt.
That being said it is said some 10 percent of people are HSP.
I love art, chocolate, women(even looking is intense etc. )
The point is its a multi facet thing.
Objectively you wake up HSP everyday, so you cannot really tell you are HSP.
It just becomes more clear later in life, when you feel shit and people just don't seem to.
I am not sure where to go with this more, but for nerds Akira has touched on this subject and so did matrix.
In Akira HSP are called ESPERs which is sci fi version of HSP. In scifi they supposed to have telekinesis and mind reading abilites etc. Of course this is sci fi, but being INTP as kid I tried training my self in telekinsesis just to be sure. You never know right? LOL
You feel fear intensely.
But being HSP sometimes you mask what you feel.
In my case my own mother would not know what I am thinking or feeling. Since feeling felt dangerous in my life I did what is called masking. Which just means you don't show emotions.
Also some notes.
Not all HSP people have high empathy.
You can be super sensitive, but not necessarily have high empathy.
When it comes to empathy its fairly hard thing to work with.
Empathy requires also understanding of feelings, and situations.
You can get overwhelmed by feelings of others and even so much you can identify them as your own, before you even realize they are there.
I think in psychoanalysis this is sometimes called countertransference.
So being around others can feel like invasion. Like their vibes don't know boundaries.
So being HSP and having extra high empathy can actually be burden in many situations, especailly if you don't learn to work with it.
