To feel too deeply

[SoFED]

I’m incredibly sensitive. I worry too much. I carry a huge load all the time, I have a stressful job, DH has a stressful job.

I absorb too much, i take on too much of other people’s pain. I worry a lot.

Im in therapy have been for 11 months. I need to accept this is party just my nature. How do others cope with being sensitive and feeling deeply?

It’s shit sometimes! But also have come to see it as a gift too.

https://youtube.com/shorts/7Fafxcb8tqE?feature=share

I have found that talking anti depressants (for pnd) have helped with this as well actually

DBT helped me a lot. Particularly the emotion regulation stuff. It can get better - and like a PP said, it's not an entirely bad trait.

I hate it. I hate how it tips me over and takes days to recover from something.

Venlafaxine got rid of it all, and my life is much less sensitive.

Thank you. It’s just so deep what I feel. I can’t describe it.

yesterday I went to a funeral to support my friend. And I didn’t know her mother well at all. This is quite an extreme example as funerals are very draining. But I felt so deeply, I’m exhausted today. I know it’ll take me a long time to recover.

i have to be careful as to what I watch on TV. My colleague who I speak to sometimes says I carry a lot of stress for my husband, I have a very busy life (don’t we all). I’m just exhausted.

i think my therapist sees it as a gift actually as @Heroicallyfound said. She has said I need to work on my spiritual identity this will support me and help me cope.

So it could be depression. Do you think a therapist would say you’re depressed?

She has said I need to work on my spiritual identity this will support me and help me cope

???

As you work with your therapist you’ll hopefully develop a bigger capacity for feeling. It’s called widening the window of tolerance.

And also you may learn to differentiate between your feelings and other’s feelings so you don’t take on so much of other people’s stuff.

And you might come round to seeing it as a gift!

So there’s lots of little ways to feel a bit more comfortable in life in future.

Depression can be repressed anger - the more you express the well of anger the more the depression lifts. If you don’t have so many repressed feelings stored up that can help too, as you won’t be living so close to the edge of your capacity all the time.

The rest of us are mere shallow puddles in comparison

Hi Op

My take on it, I think a lot more often people are sensitive they are just a lot better at disguising it/faking it, putting on a front,

I think it's finding a healthy balance, between both spectrums of the Pendulum

I don't inherently think it's wrong to be senistive,
I think it's a good thing, good qualities go with it,

I am on senistive side,
But the down side can be getting easily hurt and perhaps if someone is hyper senistive spectrum ,
Not I am saying you are,

I have had a friend well former friend, who is on extremely hyper senistive and its obvious and as clear as night follows day , that's it's a reaction to struggling with trauma/ or traumas from her childhood, which haven't fully been addressed only partially

Hi 👋 Op

I think Ted Talks on youtube and other interests Talks on youtube would be beneficial to you...

Hi OP

There's also interesting self help 📚 books be beneficial to yourself.

Hyper senistive range of spectrum , can like former friend, downside, she often misunderstand stuff, even the most innocent of things.and takes it the wrong way, or reads far too much into something wrong way..

Yes, I have childhood trauma. Lots sadly.

@Heroicallyfound yes i think that’s what we’re getting at. Part of it has been putting in boundaries so I don’t take on so much from others.

i often feel ‘small’ around people and read a lot into what they say. If I particularly look up to a person (why I don’t know, validation perhaps?) and they say something to me and it makes me feel bad it affects me for days.

my mum said I’m a worrier, j worry too much for people.

I physically carry pain too, in my neck, chest and head. Therapist has suggested yoga.

100% @Goodread1 although I am highly intuitive. I can see a ‘bad’ person from a mile off. I sense people very deeply. I easily pick up on signs.

There's a saying, "Observe, don't absorb" which can be quite helpful.
Also you only need to validate yourself, it's what you say about yourself that matters, don't be at the mercy of other peoples opinions. When you don't need validation/approval it's very freeing, if they like you that's ok, if they don't like you that's ok. It doesn't matter.
When you feel very deeply, you love very deeply so those around you are incredibly lucky, and if you can love/ like / approve yourself in the same way, that's when everything changes. Most women are at war with themselves, without even realising it. They focus too deeply on what they perceive as imperfections. each and everyone of us has our very own quirks, l have plenty of my own, the main thing is l like myself, l value myself and l know myself where as other people only often get a glimpse of who am really am.
There is a lovely group on Facebook called The Empath, some of it may reasonate. Absolutely nothing wrong with being a sensitive soul.

What is DBT?

Thank you @SwimmingAgainstTheTides and thank you to everyone. I will look at the Facebook page. There is a big piece around approval, I am much better than I used to be.

Im reading on generational trauma too (a huge amount with immigration (both my parents were abandoned by their mothers in their ‘home country’ and lived in absolute poverty, murder, abuse, suicide etc etc addiction) none of this was covered up or hidden from us as children. I lost my father to his addiction.

I just feel like I’m carrying so much and I feel around me so deeply like in my bones in my muscles. But definitely at the funeral I should have observed, I felt the pain of the family so acutely as I too have suffered deep close loss.

Do you ever wait around to see if you are wrong though? Or consider that we are all a complex mix of traits, as are you? After spending a lot of time wondering if I feel things too deeply OP I have come to the conclusion that since I can never know truly how others feel, simply because none of us can ever 100% know the life of another, I will simply crack on and do my thing, rather than deciding I have a burden or a special gift. I am just me. I wish you luck in therapy and also remind you that no therapist has all the answers. Therapists are companions but the work is your own.

I wouldn’t say I wait around as such but then for example - an uncle who used to abuse my cousins I sensed as a child to say away from him. My friend’s husband I knew the first time I met him - when others thought he was charming, 5 years later he pinned me against a wall and molested me. Another friend’s boyfriend who everyone loved, he is/was the life and soul - I kept away from him, he and his drugged another friend of mine.

my Grandfather’s friend, I never wanted to go to his house, told my mum he was a nasty man as a small child, no one saw it. He murdered his friend.

So yeah, I sense a lot, I see a lot. I feel a lot and it’s hard.

More often than not it’s small things. My therapist has said I don’t ‘collapse’ the way I used to- so I’m definitely stronger.

i am less like this after I read one line in a magazine. It said something like, ‘it’s one thing to feel sad for someone else’s pain. It’s another thing to actually feel their pain’.

This gave me the self insight I needed and I started to be firm about stopping myself from imagining , and obsessively re-imagining, what someone else might be feeling.

I don’t think reframing this over-identification as a positive is helpful. After all, you are in therapy as it is having a profoundly negative effect on you. You need to get better at recognizing the thinking patterns that are not working for you, and being determined with yourself about changing them.

Absolutely @Flyingticket. 100%, these thinking patterns are intertwined with deep set trauma. It’s kind of left me in a whirlwind of just surviving. When I don’t have to feel this way, neither do I have to make myself ill feeling so deeply for people.

I don’t ever think I can feel someone else’s pain, but as I’ve felt a lot of pain, I end up relating too deeply if that makes sense.