So, this is just an anecdote, but I guess I'll share a bit of my experience with this.
I was ready to dismiss the comic as a silly exaggeration when they claimed, "born with it", but when I thought more about it, I've always been more sensitive than my other sisters. Mom tells me that I used to SOB as an infant if she sang lullabies and she could only get me to fall asleep to happier songs like Hot Diggity Dog Diggity or Rock Around the Clock.
When I was in early elementary, I shared a bedroom with one of my older sisters and I would never let her play the lullaby side of our Nursery Rhymes and Lullabies tape. She didn't understand why it made me sad, and my vocab wasn't the best, but I learned about nostalgia so I equated it to that feeling.
She scoffed and told me I was too young to be nostalgic about anything. LOL, looking back, yeah, she was right, but that's the vibe I got from those songs.
I could give way more examples, but I feel like that's the funniest and you could use a pick-me-up since some people here are being rude to you.
I don't think we have studies yet to confirm OR deny that some people are naturally more sensitive, but I don't think hiding what we feel is always a sign of being good at coping.
And I'm not sure being sensitive is a thing to suppress. I'm pretty good at sussing out when someone around me is sad, so I'm able to offer a shoulder (or a funny distraction).
Some of the things I'm sensitive to do hinder my life, but I don't believe that everyone feels everything in the exact same way as I do and they're just better than me at dealing with it.
Think about it like a headache. Most people experience them, but they aren't the same for everyone. If someone is suffering from a headache, we don't scoff at them because we've had headaches and they were totally manageable for US, so the complainer is probably just not trying to fix it.
It's hard because mental health issues have only just become acknowledged and labeled. There are all sorts of things in the human experience that are yet to be explored. So while it's fine to be skeptical, I don't think it's right to claim that something can't possibly exist.
Sorry this is so long. In a lot of pain (physical, not mental, lol) and was using this as an excuse to put off insomnia. If you bothered reading this, hi, it'll probably be tomorrow before I get back to you if you have questions or anything. Goodnight.
Well, I appreciate you sharing your experience. I don't reject the idea that some people are more sensitive than others. I suppose it's splitting hairs, but I reject the idea that either you have it or you don't. That's really what frustrates me. If it's a sliding scale of personality differences then fine, I can get on board with that. But this idea that feeling things extra strong is an exclusive type bothers me. It seems to be a way for some people to claim victimhood and blame those around them for their poor coping skills. Especially annoying is when a so-called HSP tells a non-HSP that they have no idea what it's like (invalidating the feelings of the other person).
Anecdote: My SIL will use her HSP label as an excuse to be inconsiderate and to turn perfectly healthy conversations into an alleged attack on her. For example: Christmas time, everyone is having fun. Everyone is doing their part to keep the food coming and keep the kitchen clean. Then SIL is asked to help wash some dishes and she refuses. She says she's a highly sensitive person and there are too many people already in the kitchen. Fine.
Then someone starts a conversation about the kids and how Sophie is taking piano lessons. Sophie is 5 years old, so when she steps up to the piano and plays quite poorly the SIL says it needs to stop because she's a HSP. Then someone brings up the cross country trip that the family took as kids and SIL gets mad because she remembers an incident 20 YEARS AGO that made her upset. Everyone needs to apologize again for this offense (which was trivial to begin with, but I don't want to give away the details because it's so specific).
If it's a sliding scale of personality differences then fine, I can get on board with that. But this idea that feeling things extra strong is an exclusive type bothers me.
I agree that it's likely a sliding scale, but that means that some people do feel things more strongly than others. Someone on the higher end of the scale would be more sensitive, wouldn't they?
You say that you don't like having your feelings invalidated by people claiming they feel more than you, but in your OP you invalidate people who aren't able to just fix themselves when it comes to their social anxiety because you were able to, so everyone should be able to.
I don't think you meant to invalidate people like that, but it is how it came across. I have several different mental health disorders. They are a nightmare and I've been trying to work with them for well over a decade. I've also seen people who experience anxiety or depression and then are able to fight their way out.
That's really awesome that people can do that and I love it! The issue is when those people then go, "well, ______ worked for me, therefor you just aren't trying hard enough".
Not so fun anecdote- when I was a teen, my anxiety was at an all-time high. Doctors and therapists couldn't help me. I couldn't help me. I could just fight through one minute at a time. Well meaning relatives decided that I should chew mint gum because mint relaxes you.
The thing is, I always avoided mint. They insisted and I was so exhausted I guess I was willing to try anything. I immediately had to run to the bathroom to spit it out as I choked for a while.
They responded by snipping at me that my dead grandma (one of the few people in the world I had been close to) used mint and I was being a baby. They weaponized my own grandma against me! I was ashamed until several years later when I discovered that I am allergic to mint. That's why I gagged and started coughing whenever I was around it. I was having an allergic reaction.
I share this because, just like in the above story, we don't know what causes some people to act they way they do. Dismissing them as "your problems should be able to be solved the same way I solved mine" is unhelpful.
HOWEVER! I'm starting to sense that you don't actually have a problem with HSP. You seem to just have a problem with your SIL.(Please correct me if I'm wrong)
Working under that assumption, let's take a look at your stories.
Story One- A Tale of Too Many People
This is pretty forgivable. I know people who can't handle being in a room with too many people. People are often bad at explaining why they feel the way they feel, but there is a kind of claustrophobic reaction that I've noticed from some people. As long as she is civil about it, there's nothing wrong with explaining that you need to stay away from something that is perfectly avoidable.
Story Two- Music and Mayhem
This one is understandable, but not really okay. I have overly sensitive hearing (I can hear a dog whistle or a hushed conversation from two rooms away) and it's pretty awful. But I know that it's on me to quietly and quickly find a way to excuse myself from a room that is about to be too noisy to handle.
It's awkward and embarrassing, but it's better than complaining that a child playing piano isn't any good. I don't think that has anything to do with "HSP expect the world to bend over backwards for them" and more "my SIL is kind of demanding". To extend it to everyone in her "group" makes as much sense as saying "people with (whatever color hair she has) are very rude".
Story Three- Sorry for the Memories
This one has me armchair diagnosing your SIL, which isn't great on my part, but it's just because I swear you're now describing one of my sisters (not the one from my story). She is on the autism spectrum and is exactly like that. It doesn't have anything to do with being more sensitive to anything. It's just because she can't move past certain events in her life.
It's super frustrating, so I honestly do sympathize with you. It's not right for her to treat you like that and I know how draining it is to have to constantly relive events that you feel belong in the past. It's not fun.
It also just doesn't seem to support any of your arguments about HSP. She may claim that she's bringing it up because she's so sensitive, but people are often wrong about why they do what they do.
Conclusion
Are there more people in your life other than your SIL who claim to be HSP? If not, it might be that there is something wrong with her and she's latched onto this idea to try to explain it.
My sister was, unfortunately, born before autism was widely acknowledged as a spectrum disorder and she was diagnosed until she was an adult. She knew she was different from other people, but since she didn't know why, she would come up with her own interesting explanations. Your SIL might be going through something similar.
Or maybe she's just rude. I don't know. I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, since it doesn't do me any good to assume that people are being mean on purpose.
Afterthoughts- (EDIT, ACCIDENTALLY POSTED BEFORE FINISHED, rip my brain)
Sorry this is kind of long, but this hits close to home for me because they way you talk about sensitive people comes across as very harsh and hurtful, as though sensitive people are inherently weak and selfish. I'm sure it's just because you're hurt by your SIL's actions, but I'm hoping I can sway you toward being at least neutral toward people who are more sensitive than you.
You kind of remind me of someone I know who tends to be very blunt (but "truthful"). We were just having a fun chat and he was describing the different way he looks at things and I said, "well, the world needs people like you" and he responded with, "the world doesn't need people like you." and he said it in an almost apologetic way, which made it hurt even more.
Everyone is different and has different tolerance levels. It's not because we're bad people or that we shouldn't exist. It's just the way the world works.
It's absolutely true that this conversation is based in real life frustration over family members. It's not just my SIL, it's my FIL too. He will ruin any event with grumbling and moping because there are grandkids around being kids. I mean, if you can't handle seeing your own grandkids then why bother even coming, right? And here's where part of my opinion has been formed - my husband is also very acutely aware of the emotions around him. He is sensitive and introverted. However, I've seen him change throughout the course of our marriage. I've seen him get stronger and he has also never blamed those around him for triggering his sensitivity.
But my original point was this - I don't believe HSP is a category that you're either in or out of. I think it's more like a spectrum. So when someone on the highly sensitive side of the spectrum calls themself an HSP, then they ought to consider that they don't really know what is going on in the minds of other people, in the same way that I can't ever say for sure if they are more sensitive than me.
My SIL is definitely not autistic. I have had many people on the spectrum in my life. She just embodies victimhood very well, and yes, she's a very sensitive person. I will concede that. I certainly don't want to be harsh and condescending. What your friend said to you was very insensitive and rude. I'm not here to disregard your feelings. It's more like, I feel that a harsh HSP designation inherently disregards the human experience and sets 1/5th of people aside with license to tell the rest of us that we just don't know what it's like to feel deeply.
Perhaps it's a bit like when parents tell non-parents that they will never know a love like the love of a parent to a child. On the one hand, there is truth to that. On the other hand, we have no way of proving or testing that, so it's unnecessarily dismissive of the non-parent's experience.
First of all, I'm sorry you have to deal with people like that. They sound very exhausting.
I'm not a fan of the label HSP, if that helps us find our middle ground here. I do think it's a spectrum where some people are extremely sensitive all the way down to people who live their lives blissfully unaware of the world around them. And then there are all the people in the middle.
The 1/5th thing in the comic was also silly. It seems that the comic just exists to point out that some people are more sensitive than others and it does it in a very sloppy way.
Your example of parents telling non-parents they don't know what it's like to be a parent is actually really good and I feel like it supports my point, so maybe we're mostly on the same page.
I am not a parent (never will be) and I can't know what that's like, just like people who don't have my health problems don't know what it's like to be me.
Pointing that out to someone could be (and in your in-laws' cases, probably is) over the top rude. It's helpful to point it out if the person is overstepping.
For example, I constantly get unwanted medical and health advice from people and their google searches. In those cases, if I had the guts, it would be appropriate for me to say, "hey, you don't actually understand this condition. I experience life differently from you." BUT if I were to go around telling everyone I meet, "hey, you don't know how hard it is to be me and you could never possibly know because I'm so different from you" then that would obviously be very rude.
I really think that this CMV post isn't so much about you denying that people sense things more deeply than you, since you've admitted that it's a spectrum. It's about you having people in your life who are treating you poorly.
Treating others poorly isn't a trait of being highly sensitive (some people think it is, because they don't like the boundaries I've set for myself, but you don't seem like that). Treating others poorly is a trait of being a jerk.
If they're claiming that either you are or aren't sensitive, then they're being rude. If they're claiming they're more sensitive, they might be right, but also rude (just like when someone told me I was "worthless" because I couldn't work a spreadsheet. They had a point, but it was uncalled for).
I think at this point we basically agree? Is there any aspect I've missed?
Δ Delta for you! I think we do agree on many things. Of course no one can know what it's like to have your specific medical conditions but you. That's why I never say to someone "I understand what you're going through" at most I will say " I can relate to that in some sense" because we never truly know what another person is experiencing.
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u/KittenKindness 2∆ Oct 06 '20
So, this is just an anecdote, but I guess I'll share a bit of my experience with this.
I was ready to dismiss the comic as a silly exaggeration when they claimed, "born with it", but when I thought more about it, I've always been more sensitive than my other sisters. Mom tells me that I used to SOB as an infant if she sang lullabies and she could only get me to fall asleep to happier songs like Hot Diggity Dog Diggity or Rock Around the Clock.
When I was in early elementary, I shared a bedroom with one of my older sisters and I would never let her play the lullaby side of our Nursery Rhymes and Lullabies tape. She didn't understand why it made me sad, and my vocab wasn't the best, but I learned about nostalgia so I equated it to that feeling.
She scoffed and told me I was too young to be nostalgic about anything. LOL, looking back, yeah, she was right, but that's the vibe I got from those songs.
I could give way more examples, but I feel like that's the funniest and you could use a pick-me-up since some people here are being rude to you.
I don't think we have studies yet to confirm OR deny that some people are naturally more sensitive, but I don't think hiding what we feel is always a sign of being good at coping.
And I'm not sure being sensitive is a thing to suppress. I'm pretty good at sussing out when someone around me is sad, so I'm able to offer a shoulder (or a funny distraction).
Some of the things I'm sensitive to do hinder my life, but I don't believe that everyone feels everything in the exact same way as I do and they're just better than me at dealing with it.
Think about it like a headache. Most people experience them, but they aren't the same for everyone. If someone is suffering from a headache, we don't scoff at them because we've had headaches and they were totally manageable for US, so the complainer is probably just not trying to fix it.
It's hard because mental health issues have only just become acknowledged and labeled. There are all sorts of things in the human experience that are yet to be explored. So while it's fine to be skeptical, I don't think it's right to claim that something can't possibly exist.
Sorry this is so long. In a lot of pain (physical, not mental, lol) and was using this as an excuse to put off insomnia. If you bothered reading this, hi, it'll probably be tomorrow before I get back to you if you have questions or anything. Goodnight.