Beware of your hypersensitive traits that make you a high risk in the workplace!

Words to write.

The visitor, Ethan (pseudonym), had an appointment with a counselor on our side for one-to-one career counseling a while ago.

This past Friday, our in-house counselor held a regular network meeting to review the counseling cases at this stage.

The counselor talked about Ethan's case and found it very representative.

Ethan represents a group of people in the workplace who, due to their highly sensitive nature, often experience discomfort and even frustration in the workplace.

With the consent of the person concerned, I have withheld his private information and processed the case in a literary way, which I present here in the hope that it will bring you some inspiration and help.

I.

Ethan, a male, is 28 years old and currently works in a company in logistics with a monthly salary of 3500.

Ethan's career path over the years has been quite bumpy.

Ethan was good at physics and geometry in high school, and he naively thought that mechanics + geometry = civil engineering, so he thought that civil engineering was a good major; he also learned that the tuition fee of a university (the university Ethan later attended) was relatively low, and considering that it was not easy for his parents to pay for his education, he chose the civil engineering major of this university.

Four years of university passed uneventfully.

After a few months of training, Ethan was assigned to a project site in a remote area as a trainee (for one year).

Ethan started as a technician on the site, working with others during the day to measure and layout lines, check and inspect, and at night to draw, review drawings and calculate quantities, and fill in construction documents and plans, with no holidays or days off, for three years.

At the end of the project, Ethan was transferred back to the Group's head office.

After being transferred back to the head office, Ethan felt uncomfortable.

It turned out that the interpersonal relationship in the head office was much more complicated than before, and he felt that his leaders and colleagues seemed to be very critical of him.

After a confrontation, Ethan decided that he could not stand it any longer and quit his job.

After leaving the job, Ethan decided that it would be better to take a sales job to make money than to work in an aggravating job and not make much money, so Ethan went to work for a company as a sales consultant.

Unfortunately, Ethan's personality was not suited to sales work and after a while, he was under a lot of pressure and never got any orders - a big blow to Ethan's self-confidence.

Ethan went around in circles and tried a few more positions, all of which failed.

It was last year, after his 28th birthday, that Ethan realized he was too old to be wandering around like this and decided to return to the construction industry, taking up a back-office job with a renovation company.

He was anxious about the fact that in the six years since he graduated, he hadn't built anything up and was working in an unskilled job with a miserable monthly salary.

II.

During the consultation, Ethan mentioned an incident that happened last month.

On that day, the leader sent a message to Ethan, saying that because the company would soon resume work, Ethan should look for resources for masks and buy as many as possible so that he could distribute them to his colleagues when he resumed work.

After receiving the instruction, Ethan started to look around for sources to buy masks.

It turned out that masks were a scarce resource at this time, and even ordinary cotton masks were in short supply, not to mention medical masks and KN95 masks.

On the other end of the phone, the leader listened for a few seconds in silence and then said, "Hey, forget it."

After hanging up the phone, Ethan's disgruntled tone echoed in his ears and he became a bit restless, with many thoughts running through his mind -

Would he think that he was not doing a good job and could not get this little thing done?

Oops, I forgot to tell him that I tried my best, but I've asked around and there are no masks available.

Maybe I should ask the leader if there are any channels I can use to find out more.

......

Ethan had been working for six years and was no longer a newcomer to the workplace, but it was clear to the consultant from the tone of his account that...

Ethan is typically 'hypersensitive', and this hypersensitivity is a major reason why Ethan has been unsuccessful over the years.

What is a 'hypersensitive' trait?

They seem to live in a different world, where an ordinary event becomes a more "pixelated" work of art, like a "filter", as they become aware of it. as if a "filter" had been added.

This sensitivity is what is often referred to as "sensitivity" and, in general, these people show an unusual ability to perceive; if conditions permit and this ability is sufficiently developed, the ideal place for these people is often related to artistic creation

The general impression of these people is that they are uncommunicative, unsociable, sentimental, or even introverted and depressed.

Examples of highly sensitive people include Gu Cheng, who was in a desperate situation in his marriage, Zhang Eiling, who had a tumultuous life of love affairs, and Ding Ling, who had several shocking relationships ......

If you analyze these people's experiences carefully, you will find that the pleasure they received was as intense as the pain they suffered and that this intensity was their most striking characteristic: the intensity of their feelings and encounters was high.

III.

There is no doubt that highly sensitive people have a higher perceptual capacity than the average person: they experience more information in a very short time, and they can comprehend and associate very well, finding certain connections among many people and events and then integrating them, thus forming a unique thinking characteristic.

This makes them quicker to understand emotions, more accurate in details, and more sensitive to potential dangers.

This is why, in an efficient and results-oriented workplace, this 'high sensitivity is often not understood and is referred to as 'careful', 'overthinking', 'glassy-eyed', and so on. "glassy-eyed" and other such terms.

I have worked with many 'hypersensitive' clients, and generally speaking, these people have much stronger feelings and experiences in the workplace than the average person, but that doesn't mean that hypersensitivity is necessarily something that we need to eliminate or even stifle.

According to Danish psychotherapist Ilse Sander, sensitivity is not a defect, but a special gift.

The therapist reveals the fact that hypersensitivity is a physical trait, and that people with this trait often sense subtle things that others miss; they are naturally in a state of arousal and are aroused more quickly than others, making themselves uncomfortable.

However, if you can see it from the other side, you may also be one step ahead of others.

There are two sides to everything, and the same thing can be experienced in a completely different way with a different perspective.

Take the characteristic of being highly sensitive.

1. The positive aspects are: having a fine mind and having the insight and sensibility to make the work perfect.

It is important to know that highly sensitive people come with the gift of seeing things clearly and having the foresight to plan.

In the workplace, if you can make good use of this characteristic, you will be able to see the smallest things and know what to do, so that you know exactly what your clients need and what your leaders want.

2. Negative aspects include: being glassy-eyed, easily broken down, and overwhelmed by the words of others.

From the career counseling cases, I have handled, some of my clients always have a "don't care" attitude toward their work, but this is not the case when you dig deeper.

In other words, behind the attitude of indifference lies a sense of concern and resentment.

This apparent indifference is a symptom of a high level of sensitivity, which can lead to a wounded sense of self-esteem and a choice to avoid the truth.

If we look at it from an objective point of view, one of the more heartbreaking truths is that the more incompetent a person is, the more likely he or she is to be glassy-eyed.

"Incompetence" covers many aspects, such as knowledge, expertise, skills, connections, and resources, and it is the lack of these abilities and resources that makes highly sensitive people at the grassroots level so vulnerable and glassy-eyed.

Therefore, to get rid of the negative effects of highly sensitive traits at work, we need to understand how the negative emotions of high sensitivity are generated.

IV.

In a nutshell, the negative emotions generated by high sensitivity are ultimately due to the person's loss of resources to cope.

In the workplace, when a highly sensitive employee feels anxious about a comment from a leader or a comment from a client, it is because the TA lacks sufficient resources to cope and is prone to heavy baggage.

In this case, Ethan was unable to find a way to buy a mask, which made him feel guilty: from Ethan's point of view, he was a logistician who was supposed to provide material support to his colleagues, but it turned out that he lacked the coping resources to prove that he was capable of doing the job well, which is why he fell into a deep sense of guilt and self-doubt.

Digging deeper, people with highly sensitive traits grow up with conditional love; in general, they have to meet their parents' requirements to receive attention and love from them.

Such an upbringing has made them extremely insecure from a young age, so much so that when they arrive in the workplace, their nerves become extremely sensitive, fearing that what they do is not good enough and will provoke the discontent of their leaders and the side-eye of their colleagues, thus affecting their career development.

The problem, however, is that if one maintains a high enough sensitivity to the outside world at all times, one will naturally be distracted from oneself and often neglect to build one's strengths, and so the result will often be that

The more one cares, the more easily one loses.

So, how can highly sensitive people improve their workplace resilience?

The key approach: step out of your focus illusion and focus on yourself.

There is a saying that if you take too much care of other people's feelings, you are doomed to feel bad about yourself.

In "Strategies for clear thinking", there is a term called the "focus illusion", which refers to the habit of focusing on one point and linking it to other things, intentionally or unintentionally, while ignoring the things around you.

This is a time when you can.

Change your mindset, try new things, and don't expect perfection from the start, but learn to optimize and improve in the process.

Change your behavior, do it first, and use your actions to dispel the fears of your mind's guesswork, even if it doesn't work out that well, don't beat yourself up, and analyze why and what you can do to remedy the situation.

Change your mind, consciously improve your ability to think holistically, and be emotionally charged and intellectually strong enough.

Change your habits, consciously make plans and complete them against them, and find your values and strengths, the only way to get out of the habit of catering to the preferences or needs of others is to rebuild your self-confidence ......

I would like to conclude by saying that being highly sensitive is not an inherent pretension; rather, it may be your nature.

Acknowledge its existence, try to bring out its positive side, and make yourself more efficient and sharp in handling your work, while improving your rational thinking and learning to control your emotions, you will be able to control your workplace and even your life.