Hypersensitive and resilient: Is hypersensitivity a force that allows resilience?
A hypersensitive person is generally perceived in our European culture as a weak being, strongly affected by the events of life. This is not the case in other cultures, as in Japan, where sensitivity is valued. Conversely, a resilient person is seen as someone who is able to go through difficult, pain-free ordeals and who is recovering quickly.
These two notions have in common that they have become more and more fashionable in recent years.
[Evolution of research in France since 2004 on the terms "resilience" and "hypersensitivity"]
Hypersensitive and resilient: Is hypersensitivity a force that allows resilience?
Some media have quickly seized a topic "trend" and vulgarize it to the utmost to throw it to the public. But by simplification, we obtain generalist descriptions, emptied of meaning, which forget that human nature is complex and that each human being is unique.
As a person intimately concerned by these two topics, I am going in this article to give my specific and counter-current point of view on the relationship between hypersensitivity and resilience.
This opinion comes from a synthesis between my personal life experience, my professional research, my exchanges with my audience and my reading on these topics.
Despite his subjectivity, some will find their happiness.
And if thanks to these words, you hypersensitive who read me, can be encouraged to become yourself, without denying your beautiful sensitivity, then I will have taken a step further in my mission of life.
What are sensitivity and hypersensitivity?
Sensitivity is an innate quality in the human species
Our culture generally associates sensitivity with weakness.
However, whether it is exacerbated as in hypersensitive or not, sensitivity is a quality inherent to the human being.
It is developed, sufficiently or not, according to the circumstances of the life, the family environment, cultural and social.
According to the CNRTL dictionary, sensitivity is:
Viewed from this angle, sensibility should therefore, on the contrary, be regarded as normality.
Hypersensitivity is a different sensitivity
I do not really like the term "hypersensitivity". I use it because it is evocative and known to the general public. The people concerned recognize each other immediately.
But the prefix "hyper" is used to indicate the superiority or exaggeration of a quality.
Which could result in a person "above the others" or an "abnormal" person. Which is wrong in both cases.
So when I use the words "different sensitivity", I do not mean to suggest a notion of superiority or inferiority as to the overall worth of a person.
Each person has its specificities, each human being is singular, hypersensitive or not.
However, the feeling of being "different" is a finding that I always make when I know of a new hypersensitive person and that I lived myself.
Yes, when one is hypersensitive, one feels out of step with one's social environment. Yes, you usually feel different and misunderstood.
And fortunately, yes, there are solutions to neutralize these unpleasant feelings.
Hypersensitivity is a natural sensitivity
The main reason for hypersensitivity is physiological, so natural.
A hypersensitive person is someone whose nervous system reacts more strongly than average to internal and external stimuli.
She will be assailed by a host of sensory messages. They are emotional, verbal, behavioral, intuitive ... This makes the treatment of this information will be more important and will generate hyperstimulation of the nervous system (a form of "bad" stress).
These messages are not perceived by the majority of people, they may be surprised that hypersensitive people are affected.
The hyperstimulation experienced by the hypersensitive persons resulting from their physiological constitution, one can thus speak of a hypersensitive temperament.
The hypersensitive person will also be affected by anxious automatic thoughts that cause uncomfortable emotions.
It will intuitively process information in a semi-conscious or even unconscious way. What makes it
the will "know", without understanding why and therefore without being able to explain (Source: book "Hypersensitive - Better understand each other to accept" Elaine N. Aron).
These emotions and intuitions are often perceived by the social environment as "exaggerated" or even invented. What will give the hypersensitive person the impression of being judged or denigrated in his feelings and in his being.
Because of these reactions of his environment, the hypersensitive person will experience feelings of helplessness and loneliness. These feelings will reinforce his overall feeling of being "different". This can keep him away from people who do not understand his particular sensitivity and encourage him to isolate himself.
Hypersensitive and resilient: Is hypersensitivity a force that allows resilience?
Is hypersensitivity an asset?
What I deeply believe is that daring to be vulnerable and revealing one's emotions is evidence of emotional courage and intellectual honesty that few people have.
From the moment when we consider hypersensitivity as a temperament, it inevitably induces appreciable aspects and others that are less so. Like any other human being
It is up to us, as a responsible individual, to leverage our strengths, which we "elect", recognize as such and develop. They may be different for each of us.
Hypersensitivity is not in itself the problem, it is the lack of acceptance that we have of it which is one of it. From the moment when we learn about our temperament, develop our skills and respect our needs, then our hypersensitivity reveals its most appreciable aspects. She becomes a force.
To be hypersensitive and in harmony with one's temperament
The confusion between weakness and hypersensitivity comes from the fact that our brain is designed to first see what is "wrong". We only think of the negative aspects.
We only mention hypersensitive people who:
• do not know enough about their temperament (so their needs);
• who suffer from a lack of self-esteem;
• or who have not yet bandaged old wounds ...
Hypersensitive people can, like anyone, suffer from pathological disorders such as depression, bipolarity, etc.
Hypersensitivity is still little known to doctors, amalgam is sometimes quickly made between these mental disorders and hypersensitivity. To confuse it with illness, which it is not!
My message is that we can be in harmony with our temperament and make the most of it for ourselves and our surroundings.
A balanced hypersensitive is someone who knows and respects his essential needs. He knows how to listen to his emotions and extract valuable information, instead of trying to repel them.
In my opinion, this hypersensitive person who has learned to develop social skills and self-confidence is anything but a weak person!
In this article, I want to talk about one of these forces that we can develop, which seems to me to stem from our hypersensitive temperament: resilience.
Resilience: Brief History of the Evolution of the Word
Before discussing the relationship between hypersensitivity and resilience, I would like to clarify the meaning that I place behind this last term.
The research director at the Paris X University and psychoanalyst Serge Tisseron explains (In his book "Resilience" - Collection "What do I know?" Published in 2007) that resilience is generally perceived as a kind of psychic vaccine that would protect traumas.
Declinations of the word "resilience" are multiple. Several disciplines use it:
• the resistance of the materials - which is at its origin -;
• the geographical risks;
• Sustainable development ;
• urban planning;
• and of course: the human sciences.
Its significance has thus been passed in a few years to the designation of a rebound, then to the ability to instantly mobilize effective defenses in case of stress.
Yet the Latin root of the word resilire offers us another meaning: to loosen the effects of a trauma on oneself.
The resilience thus envisioned is no longer a kind of power to resist everything but the capacity to rebuild itself in case of shock.
In practice, both meanings coexist.
What is resilience?
Resilience could be said to be an intrapersonal skill. And that, like any skill, she can learn.
But it would give an incomplete view of this complex phenomenon.
Above all, this truncated definition would be guilty of guilt for people who have suffered trauma and who fail to recover.
On the basis of the belief "when we want we can", we would have to admit that if we want toWe will not really get away with it, if we put some effort and determination then, it will happen.
But the reality is less simple.
I think we have to fight the absurd idea that a resilient person could continue life after a traumatic experience without showing any signs of psychological disorganization.
Trauma always leaves a trace!
Resilience means being able to continue on your journey and find meaning in your life despite the traumatic experience.
This does not mean that you can overcome all subsequent difficulties as if nothing had happened! It does not mean that one does not suffer by living these painful experiences.
To be resilient is to be able to get up after falling, to make a fresh start, to rebuild. Not as the same, but with and despite its cracks.
This ability is not a magic power but a complex assembly of psychological processes and skills that develop over time.
Hypersensitive and resilient: Is hypersensitivity a force that allows resilience?
To be resilient is to take care of one's wound, not to hide it but rather to value it.
In the style of "Kintsugi" (Kintsugi, the art of resilience - Book of Céline Santini), this ancestral Japanese art that invites to repair a broken object by highlighting its scars of gold powder.
This technique, discovered in the 15th century is, more than a craft practice, a symbol of healing and resilience.
Neat, honored, the resilient person's injury allows him to assume his past and become - paradoxically - more beautiful, more resilient, and more valuable than before the shock.
This art symbolizes the long process of healing that requires any physical or emotional injury.
Like a living kintsugi, you too can be transformed and strengthened by your trials. Your scars, visible or invisible, are proof that you have survived, they bring you a soul supplement.
"Blessed are they, for they will let the light pass. "
Michel Audiard
Four proofs that hypersensitive people are naturally resilient
A hypersensitive person experiences emotional ups and downs. We often talk about downs rather than highs.
Yet the ability that we have to strongly feel the emotions and feelings and a valuable asset and participates in our resilience.
Little joys
The intensity of the emotions we feel allows us to move from an emotional state to its opposite state with ease. Even if we are very sad, by focusing on something that balances our heart, we can break away from our sadness and go to appeasement.
We are looking forward to very little things. Things that seem mostly innocuous for people with less sensitivity.
This benefit comes from a mix of what I call personally:
• "my sense of aesthetics" (the attraction for what seems to me beautiful, harmonious);
• A childish curiosity for everything that happens around us;
• The attention we give to details;
• A positive state of mind for those of us who have developed it.
My little pleasures can be:
• To observe the sparrows swim in the saucer of water that I leave them on my terrace. To see them jiggle in the water and bickering to enter their bath makes me happy.
Birds in general and passerines in particular, fascinate me (the logo of my site is not trivial).
I am impressed by these little living creatures that weigh only a few grams and resist the worst weather, cold, long-distance travel that some species are needed ...
If I had to find an example of resilience in nature, that's the one I would choose!
• Hiking in the mountains, observe colorful insects, cloud shapes, different tones of green or brown that harmonize so well.
In spite of the years, I am never blasé of the beauties of the Nature. It is a pleasure and a renewal constantly renewed.
• Eat fresh bread for breakfast.
• Bike out the car lanes ...
And so many other little joys that cost nothing and that no one savor ... except for you perhaps? 😉
The explosions of happiness
I have often felt an incredibly intense sense of freedom when traveling by bike.
When I found myself in the wilderness, in the middle of a preserved landscape, an extraordinary natural environment. Knowing that I was free to go where I wanted.
The emotion was so strong that I had to scream to free her. Someone passing by chance would have taken me for a crazy one! But fortunately, I was alone.
Think about the moments in your life when you felt such intensity
'Secure' attachment within their biological family, can develop their resilience later.
Love, in the broad sense (loving, fraternal, friendly) is fundamental in the life of a very sensitive person. Feeling accepted by another person contributes to the healing of wounds and therefore to resilience.
It is not necessary for the person to fully understand our specificities. But that she loves us for who we are, even if some of our needs leave her puzzled 😉
A supportive environment increases the self-esteem of a very sensitive individual. The more it increases, the more the risk of being affected by trauma decreases.
The ability to adapt and consider the challenges of a painful situation as a challenge, the vision of failure as a learning experience, also contribute to resilience.
Conclusion
Although very sensitive, I know I have a strong rebound ability. Of course, it took a long time, which is never finished in my opinion 😉
Based on my scientific research, and from my own experience, self-awareness and social skills make the difference between a hypersensitive balanced person and a hypersensitive person in pain.
We can not annihilate our high sensitivity because it is biological. We must not do it because it is precious.
But we can work on its unpleasant aspects (anxiety, susceptibility ...) by developing our intra and interpersonal skills.
I hope I have convinced you through this article that being highly sensitive and responsive does not condemn you to emotional fragility. Conversely, it opens the door to more emotional intelligence and well-being with yourself and others.
You are no less able than anyone to develop emotional resilience.
On the contrary.
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