Today we are exploring how easy it can be for highly sensitive, empathic individuals to get stuck in childhood relationship patterns (spoiler alert - I am guilty of this).
Watch the video, listen to the audio version, or read the full transcript below.
Transcript:
I have this experience sometimes at my job - I work evenings as a server in a in a very busy restaurant. During the days I'm a writer and I work on writing books and creative things, but in the nights when I'm working as a server, I'm in an environment that's very noisy - there's a lot going on. It's extremely busy and I'm used to hearing things crashing in the distance and having people bump into me - you just get very used to it.
And yet sometimes - maybe even more so in that busy environment - I will approach somebody that I'm serving or a coworker and I'll say something like: Hey, is there anything I can get you right now? Or: Hey do you know what's going on with those people over there? And my coworker or the guest will be incredibly startled - they'll be really spooked and they'll say: “MILES! Oh my God you almost killed me!” And it will be fascinating, because we're in such a busy environment with so much noise and so much chaotic socialization - - that it's a fascinating thing how someone would be so startled by another part of the flow of socialization in that environment. But it happens often and I've learned to try and be very smooth in my vocal delivery when I think I might startle someone. I've learned to approach them from a certain angle, so I'm in their eye-line. Sometimes that doesn't make a difference.
And when I started working there 5 years ago, whenever I would spook somebody, I would - - somehow some inner child part of my mind would make it mean something very particular about myself. That child part of me would think: “Oh - there's something bad about me and my energy that they're reacting to - - their reaction is actually some honest subconscious reflection of my energy and who I am and some bad part of me.”
Which, um, is not the healthiest interpretation of simply just saying high and someone getting startled. It's a very - - self-deprecating, self-loathing interpretation or story-making out of something where that story really isn't implied. And this part of me is just kind of gratuitously filling a canvas in with its own sense of worthlessness - or its sense of “Something's off about me and this is it this is showing me that.”
And as a child, I think I did that a lot an example would be: My father might come home from work some days really tense, and it could have been because of the stress of his job - the stress of things I didn't and don't know about. You know, he was a dad, he's got a marriage, he's got, responsibilities - - he's carrying a lot of weight on his shoulders.
So he comes home really tense. And I - as a child - would start making that mean something very specific. And I would make it mean something about me: “Oh he's carrying that frustration - - he must not like me. It must be about me.”
And that's a very common thing for sensitive children to do. A sensitive child is extremely tuned in to their environment. They're picking up the emotions and the tensions that all of the adults and everybody is carrying. And perhaps telling themselves some stories about that, which are part of their imagination.
The feelings are real. The subtle energies and emotions that they're picking up on are real. And they might - because the emotions aren't being named and talked about all the time - they might just start telling stories internally. That's certainly what I did. And I think it's natural for us to start just making up stories if we feel things really strongly.
And for me as a child I did that a lot. I think I've read books about children and divorce - my parents are still together to this day - but I think that when parents are being divorced it's a really common thing for a child to think that it was because of them.
Maybe the the child will remember that night when they were supposed to go to bed and they didn’t, and then they'll wonder: “Oh man, is that why mommy and daddy broke up? Because I didn't go to bed and I lied to them and I stole that thing?”
That's the innocence of a sensitive child 's heart and mind. To feel things so deeply, care so much, and then think: “Oh my God - it's because of me!” And create this story about what those feelings in the environment mean.
In my life now, for the past several years, I've been in this slow process of unraveling and understanding that childlike part of me that will feel things so intensely and then make up a story about it. “Oh that's about me. That person doesn't like me that's why they have that tension…”
And it's been a beautiful thing over the past several years to start peeling the layers off of that to understand that often people's feelings are much more complex and they have very little to do with me. They often have to do with a deep and storied personal history or, perhaps something very acute.
Like, another great example from my workplace, is sometimes when I go and greet a table initially they will be very snappy or rude and have this kind of edge or angst. And when when I started that job, I would often make a lot of assumptions based on this - judgments - maybe I’d think: “Oh, that table hates me. Those people are mean - they're jerks. But what I have learned is that when people eat some food they often radically transform, and the person who seemed like an insufferable jerk can suddenly seem like an incredibly grateful, kind, and generous soul. They just happened to have been hungry when they were moody. And again, the child part of me will feel that initial emotional dynamic and it'll just jump to conclusions.
It will feel like: “Oh my gosh this means something very specific and very intense!”
Whereas the adult ‘me’ has been learning to study human behavior and study people's emotions. And I think all of us do that - all of us are kind of studying psychology and human behavior. We're social beings - we kind of have to do that in order to be successful in life. Whatever we're doing - to have a successful friendship or job or relationship, you have to kind of learn how we work, because we need to get along with one another.
So as I've been learning how to get along with one another, little things like that hunger trick have become very apparent. When people are very rude right off the bat in that particular context, I will I will try to suspend my judgment and meaning making, because it's very possible - and it's even probable - that they're just hungry, and they're just a little grouchy. And as soon as they get some food in them it will change (and if they associate me with that delicious food they're going to like me even more than normal, because I'm the person who brought them the food that made them feel better).
Anyhow, this distinction that I've noticed in myself of the child - the highly sensitive empathic empathetic child in me who is so innocent and he's so tuned in to real empathic impressions of the people around him - -that sensitivity is so beautiful. But some of the stories that I tell myself when I feel strong feelings in others - they're not true.
And I've seen some of my most beautiful friends, who are extremely sensitive intelligent people - - sometimes their sensitivity can be a curse, because they feel all of this stuff in the people around them and they react to it from that child place of: “Oh no they don't like me! I'm a bad person!”
They're taking on other people's feelings, and they're making it mean something very specific about them, instead of having a more grown understanding of how, well, most people are carrying a lot from the past. We're all very complicated beings. And usually when someone's carrying a heavy chip on their shoulder, it's got very little to do with us, and a lot to do with them and their their experiences in life.
Anyhow I've just seen how coming from that that child place and believing it can be well a real loss of power.
Because as a child I mean there is powerlessness. As a child we are very vulnerable. Then as we we grow, we become less and less vulnerable. The child is kind of at the mercy of their parents and the adults around them. And so maybe they do need to really pay attention and attune themselves to the temperament or the the moods of the adults around them. That's kind of a survival strategy.
But now, for me as an adult, that doesn't really serve me - because I'm an autonomous person. I live under a roof that I pay for or I live a fairly independent adult life. And so having those same kind of intense childlike reactions to people no longer serves me it's a loss of power.
Having that sensitivity and noticing what's going on - I feel like that's one of the most beautiful things in life. But reacting to everything as though I'm a disempowered child - that seems sometimes just like an old habit that I I have been slowly growing and evolving through. It's a very human thing.
And in some ways one of the great places for me to learn how to outgrow that is my work - both in a restaurant and then as a writer. They are each these environments that kind of force me to be a responsible adult and to not take criticism too seriously, and to let other people have their opinions and their beliefs and to just let it all be and try to maintain my own stability and my center of gravity around all of that.
And I definitely still have my - - what you might call my pressure points, those certain places in life where I will just turn to mush if if they get pushed in the right way, where my power is lost.
And to me that's one of the best ways of thinking about this type of dynamic: The child part of me that can be highly reactive, it's got its bright sides. But when it makes me lose my power and it makes me forget how much power I really do have in my life, then it's not really helping me. And I think that's a constructive thing for all of us to consider - how much power we really do have in our lives. Because there can be a sensitive hyperreactive part of us that sometimes forgets how much power we have.
Of course it's a cliche that there are many things we have no power over: How people think about us. What the weather's going to do tomorrow. There are certain external things that we have no control over. But the inner stuff we have some control over. I certainly don't have complete control over it, and there are factors that I certainly don't understand about it. But it's important to remember how much power we really do have. Especially when certain younger parts of us can easily forget.
Anyhow, that's all I wanted to share today. I hope you enjoyed this, and if you're interested check out my books. I've written a couple books in the last few years, both of which are raw autobiographical stories sharing from my personal experiences related to the stuff that we were talking about today.
Things like reclaiming personal power, relationships, love, loss, all the juicy human experience stuff.
Thank you so much for joining me everybody. Until next time, have a beautiful day.