How do you stop being oversensitive?
Seriously. How do you not let yourself be hurt by things which were not meant to hurt? Also, how do you stop being hurt that you’re excluded from something you don’t want to be included in anyhow?
I don’t want to give examples: I have them dating back for years, anyhow, and I think most people do, probably. But I don’t really know how to respond, either to myself or to others.
January 26th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
Hey, when you figure this out, let me know. I can be so ridiculously hypersensitive at times. And even when I know I am being ridiculous, I cannot stop myself.
The only thing that ever works at all is a change of scenery — going for a hike or something like that. Something that helps me put everything into perspective.
January 27th, 2006 at 12:38 am
I honestly think that the answer is to figure out how to not fight it: to say, “I’m hurt by that,” and then to figure out *why*. Not in terms of the issues it brings up or whatever, but in a kind of literary analysis kind of way: so-and-so’s saying that bothers me because I think it implies ___. To kind of analyze the statement and emotional effect as if they were, say, a passage from a poem. And then, maybe, to ask so-and-so if they feel the thing you think they are implying, or to recognize that you know they don’t.
Or something like that.
January 27th, 2006 at 1:22 am
If you’re sensitive, it’s really hard to not be hurt. The challenge is to learn how to feel the pain, and then figure out how to go on from there. I’m still working on this myself.
January 27th, 2006 at 1:44 am
I’m still trying to figure out how to tell people I am hurt. It does complicate it when it falls under the — I didn’t want to be included anyhow.
No answers.
January 27th, 2006 at 3:00 am
All of the advice above is terrific. The way I learned to get past such feelings was by living with someone who too frequently felt hurt by things I said or did, even though I never intended for them to wound him. I saw how it could cripple him emotionally and in some senses physically for a day or even a week, and I felt its effects in our relationship, and it frightened me that I might eventually head down that same path if I didn’t think through my own sensitivity. Now when something gets said that bothers me, I focus on the image of water rolling off a duck’s feathers (usually it’s a mallard). Strange but true, and it helps me get through some tough situations where on a bad day I might just haul myself into a corner for a good cry.
January 27th, 2006 at 9:50 am
Well, a friend ended up coming for dinner, so I got distracted from a lot of it.
And usually I know why I am hurt, and know too it wasn’t intended that way, and that my taking it that way would be surprising. (Sometimes this is an honest not intended to hurt, sometimes it’s a careless of feelings-you-hurt-me-anyhow kind of thing.) It just doesn’t help. Probably the issue is that I do not always mention it to the person involved. Or maybe it’s not the issue. But I do rarely say anything. I don’t hold it against people, but also I don’t forget, really.
Trillwing, I hope it’s not that bad for me. But I have always been sensitive, though I don’t think it’s any worse than it ever was. It varies on bad days and good, obviously, but I think that if I know it wasn’t intentional, I am able to go on fine — except I’m hurt *anyhow*, and I can’t turn it off.
January 27th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
The solution is to build up your self-esteem with a strong support group of good friends so when you don’t get an unwanted invitation and feel bad about it you can think of all the unwanted invitations you did get and be consoled. You already have a group of good friends who read your blog but we have been remiss in not giving you enough unwanted invitations. No longer! I will be the first to invite you …
~
You are cordially invited to:
an Ice-Fishing Party
Where:
On (and possibly In) Lake Pleasant
When:
3am tomorrow morning
Dress:
Warm (wind chill is forecast to be -40)
Bring:
A Towel (so you can dry off after we all fall through the ice)
January 30th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
I’m with Cougar Allen on this one–I went through exhausting self-esteem work and after I was done, I was much less sensitive than before. It just gets too exhausting to be easily hurt.
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:39 am
How does one go thru self esteem work? I nit pick at every little detail thinking there is an ulterior motive to everything and everyone’s actions. It’s ruining my life.
February 11th, 2007 at 12:48 am
My best friend told me tonight I am over sensitive. I know he is right but he is always saying things that I think are oriented in value judgment. I think if he were senstive at all, he wouldn’t say things like, our problem is that you (me) are not logical like I (him) am. Whether he really means it to be denigrating or not, that is how I take it. I tell him because we are friends. If he weren’t, I would not invest time in telling him.
The other thing I do is this. I am always so prepared to be on the defensive, I have to remind myself when I go in a new setting, there is no fight in there, it is unnecessary to go in and start one.
Somebody shed some light on a brother, please.