Tag

sensitivity

Follow-up

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I feel the need to follow-up, to clarify, about yesterday’s post. After the post published on Facebook, I got a bunch of texts and messages asking if I was okay. And at first, I didn’t totally understand that. Why would people think I’m not okay? I thought. But then I re-read the post and tried to see it from someone else’s perspective. Someone who doesn’t live a hyper-sensitive life, who doesn’t feel with every molecule of their being.

I can understand how, if something isn’t a part of you, or you don’t know that it exists, you don’t know what it’s like. In a simple example: I don’t live with hearing loss. So I might know people with hearing loss, hear stories about it, imagine what it’s like, but I can’t KNOW what it’s like. I don’t live it. And maybe the same thing is with this sensitive soul that I have. The interesting thing is that a few texts and messages that I got were from people who are wired in a similar fashion, who do live a hyper-sensitive life. And their comments were less panicky (Are you okay?!) and more empathetic (Ohhh, I so get that.) Which again, makes sense. If you live it, you get it. If you don’t, it’s foreign, and it’s confusing. 

A few clarifications for those who don’t live it: a raw, porous day is not the same as depression. I do not have depression. I have days where I feel every molecule of the universe inside of me and that fills me up a lot and makes me heavy. But that’s not the same as clinical depression. A raw, porous day Now is not a return to Then. A day like that doesn’t destroy or ruin me. Because it’s a part of me, because sometimes I feel it all, I DO ride it out, even when it feels consuming. I write and I talk and I might cry and I might go out to get some dairy-free, coconut-based ice cream and then it lifts and I get my outer coverings of skin back and I breathe a little easier. So – despite how it might seem, or how I might convey it, it truly isn’t permanently all-consuming. Again, it’s like the weather. The tides. The season. Coming and going. Stronger and weaker. Colder and warmer. Windier and calmer. And it doesn’t really bother me, though in the moment it may be unpleasant. Because again, I live it, so it’s familiar, and not scary. Does that make sense at all???

Also. Sometimes a day like that has nothing to do with feelings at all. Sometimes when the colors are crisp and the temperature is just right and the birds are chirping and the grass is so green and the air is so intense, it’s the visual and auditory sensations that fill me up. Which, again, is why this is not a mental health, depression thing. And sometimes I get filled up from happy things. Because any feeling, no matter what it is, can overtake if it’s felt So Much. A cup is going to run over no matter if it’s filled with water or soda or chocolate milk. The content doesn’t matter, it’s the capacity that does.

I think that’s all the rambles I have for 6:00 in the morning. But I would love to hear thoughts. 

Do you get this? Do you Live It, or do you not understand because it’s not innately a part of you? What do you think?

So raw

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Today I am raw.
Like there is no outer layer of skin protecting me and everything is getting through. I’m hyper-porous and permeable and feelings, thoughts, memories, are all swirling around inside, filling me up up up and I think I might burst. Tears have pricked my eyes so many times today, threatening to spill over into sobs. It’s all too much.

As with the weather, the seasons, the tide, it just happens. I have an idea of a few contributing factors, but the factors are influential, not causal. Which is hard to accept, because it means accepting that this is my wiring. That I can’t control it. That I can’t make it start or stop.

So what do I do? Do I fight the feelings, the memories, the frustration, the disappointment, the fear, the sadness, the heaviness? Do I ride it out until it recedes (as it always does, but I always fear it won’t)? That’s the constant struggle – try to feel it and ride it even as I feel consumed. Even as it weighs so much I’m pulled down. To just…..be.

If only I could capture it

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Do you ever wish that you could capture other senses, the way we are able to capture sight with photographs?

I take so many pictures of flowers, sunsets, the sky – and I can always go back to them, which I do, and look at them – remembering what those colors and that light looked like. Anytime I want to.

But I wish I could bottle the other senses, too. I wish I could capture what spring air smells like, what a warm breeze feels like. When I step outside and the air is just….perfect, I drink it in. I take deep breaths and gulp in the sweet air, allowing it to course through my body. If only there was a way to put that smell, that feeling, into a cup or a bottle or a picture or a something, so that on a cold, dreary day, or when I feel run down or discouraged, I could have that air back, the same way I can go to my pictures and look at that sunset.

Tangled

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When I think about my sensitivity, my permeability, my inability to take in an emotion and let it go, and my inability to think/feel/remember one thing without bringing up ten other feelings/thoughts/emotions, here’s how I think about it:

I imagine that many people’s brains have maps of loosely connected events. Here and there, one thing is connected to another. So something may bring up a memory, but it’s a loose connection, and it’s only one, so they remember it and move on.

But my brain? I imagine it like a tightly knotted ball of yarn. A maze of interconnected everything, so that when I hear one thing? It instantly makes me feel every single other thing it’s connected to. Every single event in my life is connected to multiple other ones, so tightly woven that it’s near impossible to just feel one thing. Or think one thing. Or remember one thing.

On my mind right now

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-Am I useless? Am I accomplishing anything with my life? What purpose do I serve?

-How was there another school shooting? My heart hurts so much.

-Thoughts and emotions are flying around my soul and I can’t close off to them. It’s been a long stretch of increased permeability and it hurts.

-Am I an awful fiance/daughter/sister/friend? Because I feel like it.

-Am I responsible for everyone? Can everything be traced back to me? Do I hold the world’s suffering in my hands?

Sensitive soul

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Today I feel sad.

Maybe it’s due to boredom and feelings of I-am-doing-nothing-with-these-days-and-letting-time-slip-away, which inevitably leads to guilt, and more sadness. Maybe it’s because it’s been 10 days of relaxing over winter vacation, and due to a big storm, work was cancelled for today and tomorrow also. And I’m home on my own, which would usually be appealing and inviting, but after many days of being home, sitting on the couch watching t.v. and even reading don’t seem so appealing. 

Maybe it’s because I’m feeling raw, and I have been since yesterday — where I have no filter and every thought, emotion, feeling, worry, whether mine or someone else’s, whether real or perceived or imagined, are permeating my soul and all I can do is let all that energy swirl around inside of me and ride it out.

And I know, it doesn’t totally matter why. It’s not hugely purposeful or successful to think about why I feel sad, especially when the reasons are likely tenfold and indescribable. But it’s hard to just accept it and ride it out.

Here are things I want to write about.

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In no particular order:

  • My intuition and sensitivity
  • Being a speech-language pathologist
  • Working with kids with autism
  • Anxiety
  • Quantum physics and energy healing
  • Books I’m reading
  • Relationships
  • Tragedies in the world

Where on earth do I start?