Extreme Emotional Sensitivity

I have finally truly figured out where I get my ideas that people expect so much out of me...even if they really don't. I read an article and the lightbulb went off.

The article is entitled "Gifted Children and Sensitivity" (I was considered a gifted child.)

Your gifted child may very well be both emotionally sensitive and intellectually sensitive; that is, acutely aware of everything in his environment and within himself.

Intellectual sensitivity refers to an openness to ideas, which allows your child to be receptive to his own imaginative creativity and that of others. Emotional and social sensitivity -- an acute awareness of other people and the environment -- allows a child to sense the emotional temperature in a room, heightened tension, for example.

Heightened emotional and social sensitivity affects your child's perception of expectations from peers, parents, and other adults, and may be accompanied by heightened vulnerability to criticism, suggestions, and emotional appeals from others. One problem is that well-meaning parents, relatives, friends, siblings, and teachers are often eager to add their own expectations to the bright child's own dreams, plans, and goals. Sometimes, the greater the child's talent, the greater the expectations and outside interference.

Keep in mind that although your child may be emotionally sensitive, it does not make him emotionally mature. His reactions and behavior to people and events may be age appropriate but seem immature when compared to his sophisticated intellectual and emotional awareness. When we understand just how much gifted children absorb from every environment, we can support them in times of stress.

I not only am abnormally sensitive to other's emotions but I take things so hard on a level that most people cannot understand. I have been asked repeatedly why I take things so hard and why I dwell on things that other's say...even if know them to not be true. I truly have an inability or deficiency to process criticism. I also react poorly to emotional appeals and fall prey to giving into things because I can't stand hurting someone else. I get pain two-fold because I already feel bad about hurting them, but then I literally get their hurt back too.

I would still gather that even though I am very emotionally sensitive, I still am very emotionally immature in a lot of respects. I used my eating disorder as an outlet for not having to deal with my emotions...or feeling other's emotions for that matter.

I'm going to end this post with a quote about us sensitive types:

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.
To him...
a touch is a blow,
a sound is a noise,
a misfortune is a tragedy,
a joy is an ecstasy,
a friend is a lover,
a lover is a god,
and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - - - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating."

-Pearl Buck-