Being sensitive OR NOT!

lifes trauma’s create higher levels of sensitivity.

healing trauma creates lower levels of sensitivity.

Trauma is not the only thing that creates highly sensitive people. Some people are born that way.

And while becoming more sensitive has it’s advantages and is critical in some situations (like nerve damage) for healing, it is not the solution to spread to the masses.

Asking others to change in order for me to be comfortable is not a workable solution. Because I have no control over them, it is unreliable and therefor not good solution. I only have control over me. So changing me is much more reliable than trying to change others. Digging into why I am this way one method to becoming less sensitive. Working on myself, healing myself, is another method.

The truth of my journey is that my own high levels of sensitivity have been healed by following the path of healing myself not asking others to change.

When I read the highly sensitive people book I quickly and easily identified with this category. (HSP). I was involved in and concerned with getting others to accommodate my sensitivities and my needs. I did not know it was possible to change my HSP nature.

After my stroke I became even more involved in self-care, self-healing and the multitude of ideas of working on myself. It is during this stroke healing process that I experienced different sensitivities become less and some even went away totally. Like my sensitivity to being cold, and my overly reactive nature to people whose opinions/beliefs were different than mine.

Now when I experience as being super sensitive, I am much more likely to look at myself and wonder what is the cause of this.

As a self identified person on the Asperger/autism scale, I have also experienced some of the symptoms going away. For example I was never able to read non-verbal communication. But now I have started to see it and read it even though I'm nowhere near adept at it or interpreting it correctly. Just the fact that I can't begin to read and see non-verbal communication is a change most people would say is impossible.

Because of this even though I cannot identify the cause of any sensitivity or any perceived lack and who I am, I no longer assume that it is not changeable. Instead I look for ways that I might create change in myself.

I am not 100% successful at this. Nor am I even 100% able to look at myself and think this is something I can change.

But due to my experience I also no longer believe that all things are impossible to change. More importantly when it comes to being sensitive I know that the healing path forward for me is to become less sensitive and wonder how to achieve that.

All of my success so far has come about through healing processes.

I know better than to say that just because I was able to do this everyone else can. Just because some people are able to run a four minute mile does that mean that I can or that you should. We each have individual and unique lives to live.

I am experiencing things which other people would say is impossible. Healing from a stroke is not normal nor common. Having some of my Asperger's/autism symptoms decline and even go away is not normal nor common. But just like some people thought it was impossible to run a four minute mile until somebody did it. I am living proof that these things are not impossible. But that does not mean that you can do it too.

What have I done that is different or made it possible? I held the belief that was possible. I experimented a lot with my own healing and self-care. I pursued those healing avenues which gave me results and I did not stop. I looked at and tried healing modalities that others would dismiss without even trying. Are use their holistic approach.

In other words I was willing to try different angles of attack. This boiled down to 3 categories of attack. Physical. mental and spiritual. One could also call it chemical, psychological and energetic. Everything that I tried that worked fell onto one of the three categories. Changing my angle of attack was especially useful when my healing journey stagnated.

Who is my experience that sometimes a physical issue was healed or maybe erased by having a corresponding energetic or mental issue resolved. And the same was in reverse. Sometime is a negative mental or negative belief issue was resolved by working with a physical healing modality. The point to get here is there is no one formula that is replicatable and every situation. The point is that your healing path will be unique to you. But the three categories of mental physical and spiritual are common ground that we can both stand on and share experiences from. The other common ground is to change your approach to healing when you get stuck and try something that comes at it from a different category.

There is the saying that if you want to get different results you must do things that are different from what others are doing.

If you are not able to sustain standing on your own opinions and doing things which others are not doing it seems unlikely that you are following your own unique healing path.

This has informed my personal opinion about Comedy and politics. That catering to other people sensitivities is NOT a long-term solution nor a solution for the masses to adopt.

Now within the dynamics of a personal relationship some sensitivity is required to accommodate the other persons sensitivities that are not able or ready to be changed yet.

But within the dynamics of a social culture or large-scale politics there is such a thing as being too sensitive. Finding the middle ground here is bound to create lots of disturbing conversations and disagreements. But finding the middle ground is important because the extremes of being super sensitive and being super callous are not viable solutions. Super sensitive and super callous are NOT solutions on a small scale or a large scale nor even when trying to find a middle ground.

I say this from my perspective where I have been both in this one lifetime. In my early life years I believe I was super callous and that created just as many problems as did my supersensitivity in later life. Finding some middle ground through my healing journey has been more of an art form than a formula. I still get it wrong all the time and make mistakes that I think I should not have.

To state this with more clarity because of my experience I do not believe that we should be telling comedians what they can and cannot make jokes about. Nor do I think we should adapt politics that continually push all solution into to being more and mote sensitive to some group.

I was once told a story about 2 towns. This town is having problems with its boundaries. One town thought the solution was to build a wall. And another town thought the solution was the never have a wall at all.

The town that built the wall kept everyone and everything out but eventually died due to things never changing and in breeding.

The town that had no walls and invited everyone and was eventually overrun and died due to resources being used up and not being able to enforce any rules about what people were allowed to do.

This is very much the same on a personal level. If I have no self-care and give my self away to everyone I will eventually have no self. But if I focus 100% on my self-care and have nothing left to give to anyone else then I eventually have no community assist my survival.

I currently have a super sensitive housemate. She is chemically supersensitive and electromagnetically supersensitive. This makes all sorts of decisions and household plans subject to the consideration of my housemates needs. I acknowledge that these are needs are not just preferences. I acknowledge that these are not things that she can easily change nor heal.

What makes this work is how she constantly takes responsibility for trying to take care of herself without imposing her needs on the house or me. What also makes this work is how I constantly try to accommodate her needs when she is not successful in doing it on her own. I am amazed at how well she does on her own. I am impressed by how often she finds a unique or unusual solution to her problem. I sometimes forget that a solution I have does not work for her and she has to let me know. She sometimes forgets that it is okay to ask me for help. I know she does not want to be a burden on me and I appreciate that she tries not to.

Are we best friends? No. Do we get along quite well? Yes. Especially given the gaps in our sensitivities. Is this type of relationship normal and easy for any two other people to accomplish? NO!

We are definitely both fortunate that our combined personalities actually work well together.

It helps that I was already trying to eliminate chemical solutions from my life. It helps that even though I have almost 0 electromagnetic sensitivity I am aware and I believe that electromagnetics do interfere with our health.

Because I have this life experience with my housemate. I have this opinion that it should be possible for people in the political and the other realms to also find common ground (ways of living together) without either side insisting things be all their way.