Dear Anita, you talk about emotional understanding regarding “re-visiting childhood so to correct our understanding”.

How do you interpret emotional understanding as opposed to rational understanding?

How do you integrate the need of evolving emotional understanding in self-management of sensory issues?

I’m also interested in hearing your reason of grouping me with most people whose emotional understanding is lagging behind 🙂 I refer to this phrasing:  “I noticed in your writing that your rational brain is very strong, highly evolved. But as is true to most, the emotional understanding is lagging behind.” Bear in mind that it’s practically impossible to offend me. I’m interested in your honest impression. It helps me understand how people interpret my communication!

It’s a tricky subject, isn’t it? Sensory sensitivity isn’t a problem in itself, it can even be an asset depending on how you use it. Sensory sensitivity becomes a problem when the mind can’t handle the amount of sensations bombarding our body every day.

Your idea makes all sense. Since sensory sensitivity isn’t the only thing occupying my stress coping mind, a good approach is to reduce stressors that I can have more control over. That is, every anxiety issue that come from within. Anxiety over relationship drama. Future plans and mispleasure with the current situation. Anxiety over not having a neat home, having a sink full of unwashed dishes because of that dang broken dishwasher and the repairman won’t come for another two weeks, and I don’t have enough energy to play with my daughter or exercise, and not having enough time to getting ready in the morning stresses the heck out of me… Etcetera. Loosening on all of these self-made requirements would surely make up more space for stress management regarding the sensory sensitivity. Less of a backpack to carry, so to say.

Another thing that I know makes my mind more stress tolerant, and therefore also more tolerant to sensory input, is exercise. Running is the most effective for me since it wakes positive memories, you get fresh air from running in the nature, and you choose your own pace depending on daymood… So, despite that I know this, I still don’t exercise on a regular basis. Why? Because of tiredness. And what would running help me with in the long run? Reducing turedness! So I’m practically just stupid. Or lazy. or both.

I’ll try the removing shame and guilt part,  but unfortunately I’ve already enlightened my father about my hard feelings towards his behaviour, and his contrabehaviour is very classic for a perpetrator: He´s neglecting my emotions about the event, as though they’d not be true. “No, that’s not what happened, I remember that as if it was yesterday… We had little nice night moments reading bedtime stories.”

Sorry Dad, but you stopped reading me bedtime stories when I was eleven. This was years after that.

A little bitterness needed to air out there.

Thank you for your advice Anita, I’ll make the best out of it.

Supernovas are probably, just as you say, there because they are a normal component in the bodily reaction. I notice and refrain from judging. Noticing a body reaction without seeing it as “wrong” and something needed to be worked out and corrected, is actually pretty relieving too.

A fun fact that might not have much to do with this situation, is that I am that kind of person who, in contrast to getting stuck, tend to be a little too unattached. This is a part explanation of why I am so stunned and surprized that I get these reactions. Seems like I am a human like anybody, and that I can be sad about a separation too. Which is actually also pretty nice to have knowledge of.

XenopusTex and Monklet80: Thank you, thank you, thank you! A little broader perspective is exactly what I need in this, and that handy multiple step process..! Beautiful!
I really don't want to walk around and feel bad about myself that I didn't choose a carreer path that could instantly earn me that pile of gold that I'm craving in my current situation. I do have a picture about that gold solving all my problems, and making life so much easier to live. I've recently been so blinded about that picture that I've actually forgot what other values my current life situation is able to give me.

About impressing people. Before, I used to be the one that showed how much you can have and do even when you're economically living on the edge. I think that I recently switched that attitude towards one of injustice, like "I'm at this age and this stage in life, I should have succeeded better by now" (e.g. earn more money). I realize I want to start measure success in another currency than income – like, for example, how much learning you've gained from your experiences in life. How much you can inspire other people to make great outcome from their lives. How much time you have to care for your close ones. How well you take care of your vehicle in this world – your body. How you feel. How much happiness you can give.

Can you guys think of more things to raise in life to increase wealth and success, other than actual numbers on your bank account?

Now you are assuming two things that are both off-topic and untrue (in my case). One, I actually don’t desperately need their approval. I have the approval from my boyfriend and that’s enough for me. I also have approval from other sides, but I see that as irrelevant. As irrelevant as I see the approval from his family, but because of my feelings connected with the desire to be accepted as a person and accepted within a family, my feelings go haywire in this matter only because I “don’t get the double-helix striped ice cream I want”. Unlike the spoiled screaming child in the ice cream line who is used to always get his will through, I put the love in our relationship before this desire – I know that you shouldn’t neglect your desires too much either, but this particular desire is something that’s interfering with us having an elsewise magic relationship.

The other assumption you just made is that I expect relationship advise (“I would exit the relationship”), when I actually only ask for help with managing the emotion this topic causes me. I now realise this thread might be in the wrong forum since there’s nothing with the relationship I want to change, only my chemical response to one side-effect of this relationship. I’ll ask Admin to move it to Emotional Mastery.

DavidGoliath: Oh yes, his parents are strict and affect him in, as he expresses it, good and not-that-good ways. And it might very well be that they would benefit from having a deeper mindset! But,the problem from my angle is that their rejection of me affect me in a destructive way, and I need to get away from that. I need a positive way of looking at this situation, because at the moment I’m feeling an anger of how unfair this is, that they can’t embrace me and that there seems to be nothing I can do about it. It’s frustrating.

Inky: An interesting twist, and a challenging one too! I love that. Just the thought of the possibility to “accidentally” bump into those parents is thrilling, and makes my fantasy strive away about how this could be arranged, what would happen, what I would say, how I could turn their picture of me (if they remember me, but I would actually think they do..) And no matter if this actually would happen or not, it is a way to work the subject out mentally, creating a constructive, “this-will-have-a-positive-outcome”-image that is so much nicer to have in mind than the passive-destructive “there-is-nothing-to-do-about-it”. Thank you!

Another way I’ve started to treat this, is through the acceptance that some people are more difficult to reach but it doesn’t matter what happened in the past and upon what events people build their image of you. The only thing that matters is how you respond to the people around you right now, in the present. I’ve started to try to love everyone and everything (competors at work, the air I breathe, trees, butterflies, strangers, tricky relatives, screaming annoying babies and so on…) and I’ve realized that all this loving makes it more difficult to make space for negative feelings. Problems are still there, but they don’t take my energy in the same way as before.

What would you do if you felt resistance against you in relationships, in families, with friends or lovers, or in formal occations?