Our lived experiences of sensitivity
A conversation between two mothers...
Ellie and I recently connect over Zoom and decided we want to write something together. Our lives have been marked by a lot of similar events…losing a parent at a young age, drinking to cope, and a great amount of sensitivity that lives within us. We decided we wanted to touch upon our experiences of being sensitive humans in this world, and there will be a follow up piece about how being sensitive humans impact how we show up as mothers.
We have been working on this piece since before I learned I am autistic. I chose to keep my original answers, because I am not sure I can give different answers yet as I am still processing what it all means. I do know exploring sensitivity and neurological differences feels essential to me because I felt lost to understanding myself for so long.
I hope you enjoy this interview!
What does sensitivity feel like in your body and your experiences?
Ellie: For me it means I feel emotions very intensely. This includes feelings that can be hard to be with like sadness and grief, and also feelings that are easier to welcome such as wonder and joy. I can feel the most expansive, soaring high and sense of wellbeing from seeing a beautiful sunset, as if I’m charged with electric bliss.
And I can fall to the kitchen floor, sobbing, overwhelmed with sadness, grief, and often despair, my heart aching, after reading about a tragedy in the world. I connect deeply to what other people are expressing and what I sense they’re feeling, which sometimes means I well up with tears if someone is sharing something painful, or moving, with me. I feel deeply connected to the experience of suffering in other living beings, and so have to limit how much I read the news and even what films I watch or music I listen to as it can be too painful for me to connect to these feelings.
Emma: Sensitivity in my body feels differently depending on the incoming stimulus. Loud piercing noises can make my ears ring. Loud slamming noises make my heart rate pick up. Noise in general tends to overstimulate my body. When I feel something deeply, it goes straight to my core, I feel it with my whole body before the emotion passes through me. Sensitivity requires me to rest more, listen more, slow down a lot more.
How have you understood and responded to your sensitivity in the past?
Ellie: Unfortunately in my childhood and young adult years, most people didn’t seem to understand or be comfortable with my sensitivity. This was sometimes explicitly expressed as ‘you’re too sensitive’ or ‘what’s the point of getting upset?’, to just the facial expressions and body languages of extreme discomfort, disgust and even fear from another person if I was, say, crying or sharing with them that I was in emotional pain.
Because of this, I came to believe that there was something deeply wrong with me. I believed I was weak and pathetic for not being ‘stronger’ and I was deeply ashamed that I was not able to repress my feelings. I developed a fear of my feelings: they felt overwhelming and dangerous to me and something I had to stop at all costs.
This was a huge reason that I began drinking regularly from the age of 19. Alcohol seemed to be a way for me to numb my feelings and escape from them temporarily. I responded to my sensitivity with cruelty and judgement for a long, long time. I’ve now been free from alcohol since 2019, but I am still very much on the path of learning how to accept and welcome all my feelings, and to trust that they are safe to feel and express.
Emma: I am not sure I understood my sensitivity until I became a mother. Sure, looking back I can see how sensitivity has always been a part of my life, a part of me, but it was my son coming into this world which really began to open my eyes to myself. I used to dismiss the sensitive nature I hold. I used to bury my feelings under layers of numbness, alcohol, TV, control, etc. I did not want to feel the pain that lived deep in my body from losing my father at a young age and my complex and abusive relationship with my mother.
I could not acknowledge my sensitivity until I allowed myself to feel all the repressed feelings of the first two plus decades of my life. It took time to be comfortable saying I am sensitive. I had a fear of being different, I strived to be normal. Anything that looked like it could be in the ballpark of mental illness, I would do my best to banish from my being, anything I could do to be nothing like my mother. But burying and ignoring my sensitivity did not make it go away, there is a possibility it only made it grow stronger.
What do you think are the gifts of being highly sensitive?
Ellie: It’s thanks to being sensitive that I am an empathetic and caring person. It means I feel deeply connected to people, I check in on them, and when people are in need I show up for them as much as I can. Thanks to this gift, and my journey to sobriety, I can now share my experiences with others to help them, too, have a life where they treat themselves with love rather than cruelty.
Being highly sensitive is also the reason I can write creatively. I experience beauty and art in intensely moving ways. Sometimes I find it almost unbearable to listen to beautiful music or look at a beautiful painting, because I feel it so strongly in my body and I am moved to tears at the sense of wonder and aliveness…
And also grief. I often feel grief at only being able to touch on beauty and not be totally subsumed by it, not be able to come one with it. Beauty is always fleeting. Autumn fades into winter, a sunset darkens into night, and even when I see a painting I know I cannot look at it forever. I must move past it; life must continue.
But being so in touch with and attuned to grief is a gift, truly. It’s only been in the past couple of years I have realised this. Because grief is so intertwined with love. They exist as the two wings of the same bird. When we allow ourselves to feel both, we are truly connecting to the bittersweet truth of life.
Emma: Most of my life feeling and sensing deeply have felt like a curse, it has felt unbearable to constantly be overwhelmed by life. But I also know being sensitive allows me to write, to paint, to create, to mother from a deep place of love and intuition. Sensitivity is part of who I am, maybe it is all of who I am, I am not sure. Labels are tricky for me, but I know I feel more than most people. I know environments overwhelm me more than most people. And motherhood has helped me to stop running from that, to stop forcing myself (and my child) into a box.
The greatest gift of my sensitivity lately has been embracing it and letting myself feel softer because of it. It is exhausting to pretend you are not impacted by the world. I find my sensitivity less overwhelming when I include it in my life and listen to it, from there I can create beautiful and magical things.
Thank you for reading.
You can connect with Ellie over on her Substack - A Little Fantastic.
And if you are new to my space - I’m Emma, a mother, writer, and artist. Through my writing, I explore nurturing a relationship with myself and the present moment as I navigate motherhood.
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I just spent 10 mins writing a long comment because I really resonated with this post… and then I accidentally pressed back and lost the whole damn thing and now I am annoyed! I will write it out properly again later. Thank you for sharing. From another highly sensitive person navigating this very stimulating world through the very stimulating season of motherhood ❤️
This beautiful to read and so resonant with parts of myself. I can never get over how validating it is to read my heart and body’s experience in someone else’s words.