Highly Sensitive
Highly Sensitive
A person who is often overwhelmed by the world.
I couldn’t sleep Monday night because someone asked me if am I nervous about officiating a friend’s wedding. I didn’t think about how I am perfectly comfortable I am with the two betrothed and how I have already officiated her mother’s wedding, I thought about all that can go wrong. What I could stumble on or not meet their needs? This kept my brain going and going last night a full day and a half after the remark.
I am highly sensitive on top of being ADHD, dyslexic, and a migraineur.
Little things get to me more than they should. My mom would tell me to just let the words roll off me like ‘water off a duck’s back.” Sadly, I am not a duck. I didn’t know that there was such a thing as being highly sensitive. I just marked myself as a sap who cries when watching movies or reading books that touch my heart. A person who often feels every body part that is touching against skin or clothing. A person who takes responsibility for things that are clearly not my fault.
I remember how I would react when my brothers physically fought as kids… I would melt down and sob. I hated seeing my brothers so angry at one another that they would result to violence.
What is a highly sensitive person (HSP)?
Highly sensitive persons are those who can often be overwhelmed by the sensory inputs of the world around them including the emotions of others around them beyond what the average person experiences.
They often have challenges with textures and the way their clothes feel on their bodies. Bright lights and chaotic environments overwhelm them quickly. Many also have a heightened sense of pain.
They require downtime to recover from highly stimulating environments.
I remember in first-grade music class we had to throw our handbells back into the box as the teacher raced by. Anyone who missed would have to sit in the trash can and sing jingle bells. I remember this sweet person, the only person who missed, sitting and sobbing while singing jingle bells and I didn’t know what to do at the time. It seemed so unfair and cruel, but I was just a 6 or 7-year-old kid. I didn’t have the words or the power to address it. Still, here at 53 years old, I remember it vividly.
When I accidentally shut a girl’s fingers in the door, because I didn’t know she was there, I cried as much as she did. I still feel sad for making that mistake and causing her pain.
This made me an easy target.
One day walking home from school some older kids were picking on me, about what I can no longer recall, just remember how I felt. That was the one time, as a kid, I remember someone, my own age, sticking up for me. It may have been because one of the kids was her brother. My brothers were off doing their own thing if I recall. I remember being in tears all the way home and not understanding why they came after me.
After a boy shoved my face in the snow during a snowball fight, I remember walking home with tears running down my face, then sitting outside my house crying until I felt I had collected myself enough to go inside. I can still remember the feeling of my snowsuit on my legs as I knelt on the snowy front lawn.
My friend’s older brother called my friendship with his sister, who was just 6 months younger than me, queer. I had no idea what that meant at the time, but I did know that it was considered an attack on the two of us. We were typical friends in elementary school. We were the best of friends. We played games, played with dolls, wrote and recorded silly ‘ads’, and tried to make stop-motion videos with her camera. We were typical friends who enjoyed hanging out together.
One day we were bouncing on their trampoline and her brother encouraged us, and a number of friends, to participate in rounds of trampoline boxing. It was fun until he took me aside and told me to hate her, to get me in the right headspace, and punch her hard. Her sister was whispering the same thing in her ear and we didn’t want to hate each other. We ended up in tears because it was like they were trying to end our friendship. That day still brings up tears.
As an undiagnosed ADHD kid who could sit still, I was the “nice kid who didn’t finish her work.” I still had the chaos in my brain. I was disorganized and my school desk was a shambles. Still, I knew where everything was. One day, I was home, sick, and my sixth-grade teacher had other students take my desk out of the classroom and clean it up. When I got back to school my papers were in the trash and everything was not where I left it. I felt so betrayed by my teacher and fellow students. I felt like everyone saw me as the messy kid that had to be cleaned up after. It killed my self-esteem and it didn’t motivate me to be better. It just embarrassed me and set me apart from my fellow students.
I was so worried about middle school, I cried every night the week before school started. I was afraid of meeting new people, not finding my classes, and repeating some of the terrible things from elementary school. My mom did make sure I was able to attend an orientation where we got to go from class to class in order. That was a help.
When my grades dropped after elementary school, instead of helping me figure out a better way to manage my time and focus, my mom chose to tell any stranger willing to listen about my poor grades right in front of me. I can only assume that she thought that the embarrassment would light a fire. It had the opposite result. I decided I couldn’t do what was required, so why try? From that point on, I managed my education through my resource teachers: “This teacher won’t help me succeed, but this teacher (a class with a friend) would.” I did enough to get through school and nothing more. I only learned how I study best in college.
While middle school wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be, I did experience a kid in my math class who kept poking my back and pulling my bra. When I complained to my mom about it, she told me to make a scene. Stand up and bellow “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” I didn’t stand up but I did turn around and loudly say that. To which he responded with a laugh. The teacher told us both to quiet down, and he just got worse. He even mocked me in the hallway that day. Clearly, it bothered me. I still remember that day and the weeks that followed it, where I was sitting in the room, and how I dreaded going to class every day.
I did make some friends in middle school. I reconnected with my kindergarten best friends in middle school… and through 10th grade, we were almost inseparable. This was a friend that I didn’t have to be anything in particular around. We could just be.
My freshman year of high school wasn’t too bad. I was making some friends and just being a kid. Then in 10th grade, my brother went into drug treatment. There is a long story to tell here, but suffice it to say, I had an incident that labeled me as a NARC. This made going to school every day a nightmare. Did I regret what I was forced to do, of course, but it was done and that really set me apart, not in a good way.
I don’t think I ate lunch in the cafeteria one single day after the incident for the rest of my high school days. I ate in the hallway and, luckily after some time, I was able to find a few friends thanks to a large student body.
Working at McDonald’s at age 15 I was hit on and sexually harassed by my supervisors. One supervisor inquired about my interest in him, through another employee, and I replied as any 15-year-old girl might, that he was not my type. He then came up to me wishing me a terrible rest of my life with lots of illness. (He wasn’t totally wrong on the illness front.)
Another supervisor kept calling me “babe” and “honey” to the point I stopped following his directions. One day I had had enough so, so he said, “grab me the buns, honey.” I refused. When he stopped and looked at me with a WTF look, I told him, “my name is Karen (that is how it was spelled then), I am not your babe or honey.” Once again, he laughed at me. Then he over-emphasized “Karen, would you please pass me the buns.”
Still another manager kept asking me to go home with him. He was handsome and drove a Scirroco, but it gave me the creeps to have a 27-year-old man ask a 15-year-old to go home with him. I learned later this was his M.O. and it got him in some serious trouble.
One thing, where being highly sensitive helped me, in that job, was when I was acting like a know-it-all teenager, another boss called me out on it. He was offering to show me how to wring out the mop best, and I replied “I know, I know.” to which he replied, “show me.” That stopped me in my tracks. I realized maybe I didn’t know the best way and I tried to wring out the mop the best way I knew. He then asked, “may I show you a different way?” When he did I understood that there are some things I don’t yet know and I can learn from others. I still use that “show me” to this day when someone is attempting to cut off my instructions.
I have failed to listen to this highly sensitive inner voice more times than I would like to admit.
When I was 18, I bought my first car. I went through someone I thought was my friend. During the sales process, I had the “gut feeling” I was being ripped off. But, my brain told me, “no, this guy won’t steer you wrong. He’s your friend…” So, I bought the vehicle. Six months later, the new model year came out and it was $1500 cheaper than what I paid. They even just dumped my trade-in on the side of the road, it ended up in an auction after being impounded.
Does being highly sensitive have its drawbacks? Sure, but it also has its benefits. I think of it as my “bulls#t” detector. Even today, I often see the challenging person for who they are way before the rest of the group. This allows me to prepare for when they do reveal themselves. This often marks me as contrary.
There is a delicate balance between fear and intuition for someone who is highly sensitive, I often let fear rule the roost instead of listening to my intuition. My rational mind can make any argument, and my body's reactions have been wrong before so I don’t always trust them.
All this being said, I am who I am because of my experiences and while there are times in my life that I wish I had made different choices, every choice got me to this place where I am discovering more and more about my life experiences and how my neurodivergence informed them. Had I not had the childhood, teen, and young adult experiences I did, I would never have found my way to Florida to meet the man who has been my partner for 29 years and my husband for 26.
Being highly sensitive isn’t a superpower, but it is a power I possess. I feel things strongly and I care deeply about the world around me. While it is hard taking things in with so many stimuli, I am slowly learning how to build a buffer around myself as needed. I hope this helps you understand me a bit better.