Overly Sensitive
Do people tell you you are too sensitive
Do you have big reactions to small things and wonder why? Are people always telling you you are overly sensitive? Being overly sensitive may be a trauma response rooted in the belief that your safety depends on how others perceive you. For example, as a child, you may have grown up with a critical or unpredictable caregiver, and this may have taught you to stay hyper-aware of other people’s feelings to avoid conflict or rejection. The heightened sensitivity was your brain’s way of keeping you safe and helped you avoid conflict. However, now, as an adult, if you do not re-train your brain and let your brain know you are safe and you are no longer in that circumstance, the alarm system from your past will trigger you when it is not needed, causing you to be oversensitive. For example, as a child, you may have experienced criticism or neglect, your mind may internalize negative beliefs like, “I’m not enough or I’m too much.” This makes even small comments or situations feel like a personal attack. These reactions make it hard to separate the past from the present.
In contrast to over-sensitivity, empathy is the ability to relate to and understand another person’s emotions without being overwhelmed by them. While sensitivity is about how much someone reacts to external stimuli, empathy is about how deeply they can imagine and connect with others’ feelings. Over-sensitivity makes it difficult to separate one’s own emotions from the others, while empathy allows for a grounded understanding without losing oneself.
When someone is empathetic, they can understand and connect with others’ emotions, but they don’t take those emotions on as their own. Empathy allows space for both the other person and oneself. While trauma-driven sensitivity often leads to emotional overwhelm, loss of self, and difficulty setting boundaries. Empathy is about other people’s feelings, oversensitivity is about our own emotional survival. Over-sensitivity keeps your brain in high alert, over-activating the amygdala and making every interaction feel like a threat. This constant stress rewires your nervous system for hypervigilance, making it harder to regulate emotions.
In order to rewire your nervous system, you need to first notice when this is happening in your body, and you need to be able to determine what is happening, empathy or oversensitivity. Once you name it you can work with it. Contact Therapy Solutions to talk to one our our mental health counselors and Take Your Life Back!