Sensitive people often have more troubles than ordinary people. The following sensitivity is good, I want to share with you. Welcome to browse.
There are many reasons for a person's psychological unhappiness, and one of them is very common in counseling, that is, "sensitivity." There is a somewhat controversial question: "Is it sensitive? 」
In fact, one of the reasons why this problem has attracted people's attention is that it is easy to use words like "good" or "bad" to blur the problem and cause controversy. After all, who wants to be classified as the bad side? Therefore, I tend to change the question to "does sensitivity cause a person's trouble?" 」
Another reason is that we are often not clear about sensitivity. As the name implies, it generally refers to the sensitivity of psychological counseling, which is what psychologist Elaine Aron calls "highly sensitive" [1]. After all, everyone is sensitive, but the degree is different, and the objects that are easy to stimulate and induce are different.
Elaine Aron also said in her works that sensitivity is not necessarily good or bad, but depends on how we guide our sensitivity. Wrong guidance will make our sensitivity bring our own pain. On the contrary, correct guidance makes sensitivity an advantage in life.
This is why I think "trouble" is easier to explain the pain caused by sensitivity than simple "good or bad", because sensitivity should not belong to a moral evaluation.
Two aspects of trouble
There are two kinds of troubles caused by sensitivity, one is self-caused. When we are sensitive, we will have some inner troubles, which will make us feel bad and even affect our mental health because of long-term bad mood.
On the other hand, sometimes our psychological troubles come from the sensitivity of others. Like a relationship, I have heard a boy or girl complain to me many times about her lover, saying that the other person is like a highly sensitive alarm. As long as WeChat doesn't return for a second, or his dress changes today, the other party will be suspicious and make him uncomfortable.
In view of sensitivity, the following four common cognitive misunderstandings are sorted out, hoping to help friends who are troubled by sensitivity reflect on whether sensitivity bothers people or misperceives sensitivity.
Sensitive cognitive misunderstanding
First, sensitivity does not mean "introversion"
The systematic classification of introversion and extroversion can be traced back to psychologist Jung, who divided people into introversion and extroversion and matched them with "thinking", "feeling" and "intuition" to form the theory of "eight personality types".
In fact, these eight personalities can be distinguished according to the sensitivity of individuals. For example, the ultimate type of extroverted thinking is scientists, who pay attention to the laws of the external world and gain insight into the logic of natural phenomena; Philosophers are the representatives of inner thinking types. Their research focuses more on the inner world, and they complete interesting topics through meditation rather than experiments.
Another cognitive misunderstanding of adding introversion to sensitivity lies in confusing the way of emotional expression. A sensitive person can be good at expressing external feelings, and even if he is not good at it, his expressive ability can be improved through training. Another example is Sir Robinson, who is actively engaged in education and speech, and Mother Teresa, who is quietly engaged in service. They are quite sensitive to the crowd, but due to different expressions, they are extroverted and introverted.
On the contrary, introverted people are not equal to sensitive people. Introversion or extroversion is sometimes only a temporary state, not a permanent display of personality.
I once met parents who brought their children to ask for help. He thinks their children are too introverted and alienated from others, but when they are alone, their mood fluctuates greatly, and it takes a long time to eat a meal. After the talks, in fact, the child is normal according to the inspection results. Because of the contradiction between his parents, he is more outgoing at school and at home. Faced with the confusion of parents' contradictions, children do not have enough ability to solve their parents' contradictions, but make them feel uncomfortable. In order to relieve discomfort, he had to choose to keep his distance from his parents. Eating sth over and over again is a' means' to make parents "reconciled", because only in this way will parents turn from contradiction to cooperation, just to let him have a good meal.
Second, sensitivity does not mean "insight"
The philosopher Aristotle thinks that there are four most important things in morality: wisdom, justice, courage and temperance. Among them, "wisdom" ranks first.
In Aristotle's view, wisdom depends on nurture and must be properly educated. This concept is still the core concept of today's education system, but it is gradually shifting from the perspective of IQ to psychologist howard gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. A person's success is no longer only associated with intelligence. A person's emotional intelligence, social skills and so on have become the basis for us to understand and judge a person, and this foundation also makes our education more convenient to teach students in accordance with their aptitude, and will not subvert the future of a boatload of children with a standard.
Highly sensitive people, some pay more attention to the inside, and some pay more attention to the outside. But attention is only one direction, just like casting a net in the sea, you can catch many fish, but the processing of these fish, that is, the analysis of information content, is two different cognitive stages.
A sensitive person can get a lot of information online, but it doesn't mean that he is smart enough to deal with it. So sometimes a sensitive person can perceive the slight emotional changes of others, but if he doesn't fully understand these emotions, it will easily make him uneasy. However, if a highly sensitive person is fully studied, trained in psychology theory and practice, and improved in understanding, his sensitivity will no longer become a series of doubts and speculations, a net without discriminating ability.
This also explains why some highly sensitive people are particularly worried or bring trouble to others. On the one hand, doubts and guesses make me uneasy. On the other hand, the lack of sensitivity to event analysis and interpretation and the cultivation of social skills are likely to bring further trouble to others.
More importantly, sensitivity can be cultivated, which is not a lifelong patent of a specific person. For example, a social worker who works in a service institution for the elderly expands his sensitivity to the physiology and psychology of the elderly through acquired experience.
Third, sensitivity does not mean "empathy"
Following the second point, it is obviously a cognitive stereotype to link sensitivity with empathy. It is true that when we are depressed, one person can detect our hidden dissatisfaction, which will make us feel "seen", gain a sense of existence, and have a good impression on the person who "sees us".
However, empathy is not equal to compassion. Empathy is based on "empathy". Sensitivity is just seeing, not empathizing.
For example, what is the difference between psychological counseling and ordinary people chatting? The difference is that the counselor has the ability of empathy. It can be said that some people's sensitivity is not combined with others' observation.
For example, there is an uncle who loves to fight against injustice. As long as someone seems to have done something that might upset his colleagues in the office, he will ask that person out to talk as an elder and "mention" the truth of his behavior. But no one appreciates him, and even more and more people alienate him.
My uncle asked me why. During the interview, I found that my uncle was also involved in these conflicts, but he knew nothing about both sides of the conflict and didn't really understand what happened. His intervention is more about satisfying his sense of justice and looking at others from his own moral standards.
My uncle told me, "I can't just sit back and watch. However, during the interview, he also found that even if some colleagues have disputes, they will naturally make up after a while, and he does not need to intervene in large and small issues.
Back to life history, we talked about my uncle's childhood. My uncle's parents are very busy, so he has been disciplining his younger brothers and sisters instead of his parents for many years. He has long discovered his sensitivity to adults' sense of language, but in order to satisfy adults' praise of his "understanding" and "maturity", he actually ignored his duty and suppressed his demand for care.
When I grow up, my uncle's needs to be taken care of by his parents have never really been met, so "seeking satisfaction" is derived from interpersonal groups, that is, seeking to be praised as "sensible" and "mature" But he is no longer a child, but a middle-aged man. Therefore, seeking recognition from colleagues and even young people that he should have received from his parents will cause a lot of interpersonal unhappiness. Because he didn't really listen and understand others, his motivation and purpose was to ask parents to identify with their children.
Fourth, sensitivity does not mean "pessimism"
From the third point, we find that sensitivity and pessimism are not necessarily combined. Elaine Allen talked about the importance of the environment to sensitive person in Highly Sensitive Children. Self-psychology is about the influence of a person's personality on others, which is better than that of a person's behavior. It shows that although a person has a highly sensitive trait today, this trait can move towards optimism and pessimism, a positive and outgoing life, or an introverted but not persistent way of thinking with the guidance of the environment and others.
Conclusion: Appropriate, not counterproductive.
How can we guide our own sensitivity so that it will not cause our own troubles or others' troubles?
Method 1: Try to write.
When thinking about problems, concretization can make us see the problems more clearly and then deal with them more easily. Part of the foundation of narrative therapy is developed under this kind of thinking, and it is internalized and externalized through writing.
So, when we feel something that makes us feel uneasy, we can try to write down what we see and how we feel inside. Then we check what we have written, which can prolong our reaction time and avoid making inappropriate reactions without knowing the overall situation. Long-term collection of writing records can also help us to examine our own thinking mode and understand whether we are particularly sensitive to certain things or other people's emotions, so as to find out possible reasons and seek ways to deal with them.
Method 2: Ask more questions and talk more.
In order to prove the existence of truth, sociologist Alfred Schutz explained the concept of "intersubjectivity". When we understand something, we are too subjective or too dependent on objectivity, and there is no way to reach the point where we want to understand it. But to communicate constantly between the subjective and the objective, in order to go deep into the object we want to discuss, the time and situation we were in at that time, and thus produce a kind of meaning that * * * enjoys the same as * * *.
For example, if you think no one likes you today, it may be the spotlight effect. In fact, everyone is no different from you, but behind this sense of shame, it needs objective verification to be established. If it is what happened to the uncle mentioned above, to reach the greatest understanding, we must "restore" the situation at that time to the greatest extent. Otherwise, we just mix our thoughts into the incident, and we are just discussing the extension of our thoughts and deviating from the facts.
Therefore, it is necessary to examine the appropriateness of today's sensitive thoughts and behaviors. Before making a judgment, we should ask more questions and know as much as possible the ins and outs of things, which will help us to give our own sensitivity a rational reply. Through a rational reply, we can fully understand the situation and relieve anxiety.
In short, today's sensitive behavior, no matter how well-intentioned your motives are, if you "don't understand the process of things", your understanding of the participants in the event will not increase afterwards. The only thing that changes is your personal sense of justice, even vanity, and others are "uneducated", so you are still angry, so this seemingly justified behavior is basically negotiable.
Method 3: Let sensitivity grow with the growth of personality.
What a pity it is to "turn yourself into a sensitive tool and let your emotions and thoughts be sensitively manipulated, causing anxiety and uneasiness, and losing the happiness of life and the harmony of interpersonal relationships".
Especially if you still use "natural sensitivity" as an excuse for your misfortune, you may underestimate your ability to change your destiny.
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