Its natural to feel sad and vulnerable if we have wounds : some thoughts on high sensitivity and the trauma of childhood

Its hard to be told you shouldn’t feel sad when something really sad is happening to you. Sadness is really only a feeling and its one that can be difficult for many to acknowledge. Getting stuck in deep sadness can be paralysing though but when it comes to the deeply rooted sadness and deeper sense of powerlessness over intense past hurts (which often play a huge part in depression) where really is the cure beyond acknowledging painful truths? Being told to think differently about it? True we can have a change of perspective which may lessen the intensity a bit but that does not mean the sad or powerless underlying facts disappear? Maybe it just means we learn to self soothe and not magnify the hurt.

Denying our feelings comes at a price. I recently shared a vlog from Teal Swan on why its no use being told not to be upset or triggered by something, what Teal recommends is owning your feelings and even your sense of low self esteem which leads to hypersensitivity rather than just reacting from the place. I just posted a reblog on narcissism and high sensitivity and where it becomes damaging is when the highly sensitive person does not acknowledge the roots of their over reactions which lie in a WOUND often one they did not cause and played no part in, in childhood. Its not easy living with such an intense hair trigger response. The Jungian analyst Robert Johnson explained it in a mythical way in a talk on the myth of One Two Man, a boy abandoned by both parents and raised by a grandmother who had a hair shirt with an eye on the end of one of many fibres that came out of it. That explained in symbolic way his state of hypervigilance which is typical of a childhood where you had to be on guard against a volatile, controlling or perfectionistic parent who could cut you down with a sneer or sideways glance.

Living with such a sense of being unsafe is not easy. Learning its okay to be vulnerable is better though than over reacting, blocking and deflecting or defending all over the place against further projected injury. And sometimes we do need to be wary as others don’t always have our best interests at heart. Hypersensitivity is not easy. The sadness of such a kind of emotional abandonment can carry on for a long time in adulthood until we learn to reparent ourselves and hold that hurting child safely without acting out all over the place and making life miserable for ourselves and others.

I struggle a lot with anger when I feel I have been treated unfairly. It happened in therapy on Thursday and my default is to want to cut off contact all together. I am still struggling with this one and trying to listen to what my inner child needs. On some level I feel she wants adult me to hold me in future and no longer have to rely on my therapist to do it. I never miss sessions and I missed two before Christmas due to events out of my control and my therapist now wants me to pay for missed sessions which makes me feel really strangled. Its not the first time I have wanted to end therapy and I am adding this final paragraph now. Its a tough decision because I am so isolated that often my therapist is the only person I see all week outside people who serve me in shops or at cafes. Its making me really sad and twisted about at present.