Sad
Have you ever had something that happened but you don't really want to talk about it... It would just open up such a can of worms...questions...etc... I have that now. Something happened that I am very sad about. Saturday was a bit of an emotional disaster day for me. This weekend has been a lot of strange feelings. Feelings I am having great difficulty processing. Something happened that probably was good in the long term, but upsetting to me nonetheless.
But I did want to answer a couple of questions that have been brought up by a few comments posts. #1 - Under "More Empathy Musings" My Mom is another hypersensitive person, just in different ways than me. The gecko was not mine...just one of the little harmless ones that run rampant in Florida. She lived in Florida for 8 years prior to this stint. She knows they exist in FL. She just gets highly irrational towards the little creature that can't hurt her, but rolls her eyes when I get freaked out by a spider. I suppose it is a simple case of different phobic people not understanding other people's phobias. I guess this is just complicated because she knows how sensitive I am and how I have very little ability to deal with people yelling...especially for what I consider no good reason. Whatever though. It is my mom. She is a very delicate person in many respects.
Sociopaths...I read a statistic somewhere that 1 in every 20 or so people actually has sociopathic tendencies. That is, deficiencies in their emotional spectrum. I worked for a woman that I sincerely believe was a sociopath. A high functioning and adaptable one, but a sociopath nonetheless. She did not have "normal" reactions to anything. She would express verbal sympathy, whip up the proper facial cues, but I would feel NOTHING off of her. In private she would say AWFUL things. She had two children: one in college and one in high school. My boss would come to work complaining about her overly sensitive children. She was also just subtly cruel to them. E.g. Her daughter got a hampster. My boss hated that "f-cking, disgusting hampster." Instead of dealing with it like any other mother, she waited until her daughter left for camp and "got rid of it." She came to work absolutely gleeful about it. Then a week later when her daughter came home, she came to work saying that she told her daughter the hampster had escaped and she had looked all over for it. None of us could believe she would do something like that. That's just one example of how SICK she was. She was only happy when she was screwing someone over somehow. So yes, she was someone that definitely PLAYED people.
And just to clarify, I do not LIKE being around sociopaths...especially when I encounter them in my everyday life. It creeps me out for hours afterward when I feel nothing off of someone I have been in contact with. It is fascinating in the fact it is completely opposite of me. I cannot even comprehend what it would be like to exist without real feelings. That everything is manufactured based on the moment and giving people what you think they want to hear, see, etc...
Last comment of the night involving telepathy. Said person that "pings" me simply sends a message saying something very simple. At one point, I felt that she had just sent me an email. The message I got was "Sent email. Not bad. Please check." I looked down and my email alert noted that I had a new message. Without opening it, I knew who it was from and that it was ok to open it (as opposed to other awful emails I had received) because it wasn't negative. It was a letter of concern about someone. I just wonder that the few times she "pinged" me opened up some sort of emotional connection that I can't close. I hesitate to contact her to ask/talk to her about this.
Oh yeah, one other thing... Today was Easter Sunday. I walked into church this morning and immediately felt people in pain. I looked around wondering who it was. It was so apparent to me because Easter is supposed to be a day of joy in a church. But yet, a cloud of sadness and concern hit me. During the opening songs, I noticed one of the pastors off to the side on a cell phone. After the song was over, she began the prayers but wanted to first give an update on a parishioner that was in the hospital having brain surgery. This was the 2nd and it wasn't going well. There were several people very upset about this. Incidents like this are what illustrate what I now know to be something in me that makes me VERY hypersensitive to people and what's going on within them.
I am trying to accept this now and figure out how to put it to good use instead of being overwhelmed by it. I think the most important thing I have learned is that this is unique and that just because I don't have to have people tell me how they are feeling, that ability is rarely reciprocated. Other people cannot read me and therefore I have to tell people that I am happy, sad, depressed, etc... instead of assuming they know which I admittedly did for a LONG time.
But I did want to answer a couple of questions that have been brought up by a few comments posts. #1 - Under "More Empathy Musings" My Mom is another hypersensitive person, just in different ways than me. The gecko was not mine...just one of the little harmless ones that run rampant in Florida. She lived in Florida for 8 years prior to this stint. She knows they exist in FL. She just gets highly irrational towards the little creature that can't hurt her, but rolls her eyes when I get freaked out by a spider. I suppose it is a simple case of different phobic people not understanding other people's phobias. I guess this is just complicated because she knows how sensitive I am and how I have very little ability to deal with people yelling...especially for what I consider no good reason. Whatever though. It is my mom. She is a very delicate person in many respects.
Sociopaths...I read a statistic somewhere that 1 in every 20 or so people actually has sociopathic tendencies. That is, deficiencies in their emotional spectrum. I worked for a woman that I sincerely believe was a sociopath. A high functioning and adaptable one, but a sociopath nonetheless. She did not have "normal" reactions to anything. She would express verbal sympathy, whip up the proper facial cues, but I would feel NOTHING off of her. In private she would say AWFUL things. She had two children: one in college and one in high school. My boss would come to work complaining about her overly sensitive children. She was also just subtly cruel to them. E.g. Her daughter got a hampster. My boss hated that "f-cking, disgusting hampster." Instead of dealing with it like any other mother, she waited until her daughter left for camp and "got rid of it." She came to work absolutely gleeful about it. Then a week later when her daughter came home, she came to work saying that she told her daughter the hampster had escaped and she had looked all over for it. None of us could believe she would do something like that. That's just one example of how SICK she was. She was only happy when she was screwing someone over somehow. So yes, she was someone that definitely PLAYED people.
And just to clarify, I do not LIKE being around sociopaths...especially when I encounter them in my everyday life. It creeps me out for hours afterward when I feel nothing off of someone I have been in contact with. It is fascinating in the fact it is completely opposite of me. I cannot even comprehend what it would be like to exist without real feelings. That everything is manufactured based on the moment and giving people what you think they want to hear, see, etc...
Last comment of the night involving telepathy. Said person that "pings" me simply sends a message saying something very simple. At one point, I felt that she had just sent me an email. The message I got was "Sent email. Not bad. Please check." I looked down and my email alert noted that I had a new message. Without opening it, I knew who it was from and that it was ok to open it (as opposed to other awful emails I had received) because it wasn't negative. It was a letter of concern about someone. I just wonder that the few times she "pinged" me opened up some sort of emotional connection that I can't close. I hesitate to contact her to ask/talk to her about this.
Oh yeah, one other thing... Today was Easter Sunday. I walked into church this morning and immediately felt people in pain. I looked around wondering who it was. It was so apparent to me because Easter is supposed to be a day of joy in a church. But yet, a cloud of sadness and concern hit me. During the opening songs, I noticed one of the pastors off to the side on a cell phone. After the song was over, she began the prayers but wanted to first give an update on a parishioner that was in the hospital having brain surgery. This was the 2nd and it wasn't going well. There were several people very upset about this. Incidents like this are what illustrate what I now know to be something in me that makes me VERY hypersensitive to people and what's going on within them.
I am trying to accept this now and figure out how to put it to good use instead of being overwhelmed by it. I think the most important thing I have learned is that this is unique and that just because I don't have to have people tell me how they are feeling, that ability is rarely reciprocated. Other people cannot read me and therefore I have to tell people that I am happy, sad, depressed, etc... instead of assuming they know which I admittedly did for a LONG time.
posted by Self Therapy | 6:32 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks for clarifying about the gecko. I agree with you. Your mom's reaction was an overreaction due to her phobia of them. What is interesting seems to be her inability to empathize with you over your phobia of spiders. I wonder if that is true in other areas? If so, I wonder if your ability to "read" people because of your mom's inability to do developed as a way to anticipate/react to what she might say/do??
Sensitivity is not the same as empathy. A person can be highly sensitive to their own needs/wants but totally oblivious to someone elses. Many narcisstic people are like that.
Your ability to pick up on people's feelings is a good one. Maybe you should consider becoming a therapist or social worker :) A "gift" like that could really help others. Even if I could pick up on how you might be feeling at any given moment, I'd probably want to make sure by checking with you to find out if what I am picking up is accurate.
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