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Fully Alive in a Half-living World

The struggle with being highly sensitive in a maladaptive society

By Lakrisha RaymondPublished 2 years ago 5 min read
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I guess I've always felt this way and forgot. I wish our economy and structure supported connection, comraderie and expansion in ways that people like me could flourish and feel accepted, heard, valued and respected. The only way this will actually come to fruition is if my purpose starts to get included in the day to day monotony of life. And no one gets to tell me what my purpose is. The more I'm forced to reject myself to get something done or make ends meet - the more I lose my sense of purpose.

Without a sense of purpose or something to look forward to that brings me my truth and fills my cup; I'm more prone to getting severely depressed, angry, anxious, suicidal ideations and thoughts and physical pain that's always been a 10/10 with the severe damage done to my nervous systems. I go past dorsal shutdown and into "play dead," my PTSD is so bad my body and organs start to shut down if I get too overwhelmed or overstimulated. This is a PHYSICAL response I have no control over even though I've been through a decade of therapy and a decade of programs that focus on looking within and changing mindsets and behaviors.

Yet, I still want to be able to function and exist in the world without being treated like I'm a degenerate. I'm not subhuman or beneath anyone for being different. In fact, I'm just the equal opposite.

I didn't look good enough to be accepted or helped when I was 300lbs so I lost 150lbs in 20 months in hopes that my health issues could be taken seriously, and now I "look fine you're just overreacting, a hypochondriac, just calm down."

Cool. Thanks.

Stress causes pain. Feeling unseen and unheard while surrounded by those you love, causes pain. Emotions cause pain. Rejecting yourself causes pain. Suppressing emotions and trauma causes pain. Being forced into fight or flight to make ends meet or meet basic needs, causes pain, and over time, chronic pain causes serious health and mental health decline.

If I don't matter because I'm just one person, ask your sensitive friends, family and especially your children if they have ever felt similar. Start talking about it.

The younger and younger someone is, the more they feel and experience pain. They aren't as blocked, aren't as subjected to chemicals and toxins and our bodies evolve over time. Every time you ingest something your molecular structure changes so your kids can 100% have a different perspective and experience than you. No one individual is exactly the same, even neurologically, because the contributing factors are vast and unmeasurable as it stands.

Ask doctors what they really experience and if they would help stand up and do what's right for wholeness in healthcare if they had a way to do so that didn't threaten their basic needs and indebt them endlessly to the loans they took out; while forcing them to forgo the art of medicine and operate under the micromanaged structure of corporate america. Just because one dream dies doesn't mean everyone's has to.

To me it's like we're all still in fight or flight and too worried about speaking up because if we do, maybe we'll lose our jobs or our income or our abilities to care for ourselves and then what? We would have to look within? How?! We've never been taught or had time to slow down to look.

Interesting. Very interesting to me.

The war has always been right under our noses. It's just hard to smell when all our senses are dimmed, dulled and cut off.

It's always been every man for himself and the survival of the fittest I suppose, but as a humanity we have evolved and don't actually have to live there anymore.

If we're safe, why are we all still in trauma responses and making sure we get ours before the next person?

People of color, indigenous people and those who have struggled with addictions, mental illnesses and the like, those defiant or stubborn or freethinking, have always been right. They get defiled for having a strong spirit and will while they watch their loved ones turn on them for not falling in line because the language doesn't exist.

The scapegoat in me is tired and I'm no longer staying quiet, I'm no longer accepting things that cause me harm just because it hasn't been updated. It is just sitting on someone's desk buried beneath bureaucratic red tape.

"Stop being lazy and get your asses moving, right? That's how I'm treated at corporate jobs so let's go and pick that pace up. I don't want to hear the why, just make it happen."

If we want those generations after us to be respectful, proactive, caring, genuine, and a part of the economy built, make sure it hasn't been defiled and turned into something that proves we're rooted in hypocrisy.

The only reason kids are "lazy and entitled" is because they're all mirrors of the environments they're forced to survive in.

Give them a future to look forward to or understand they're just expressing the lazy and entitled nature of all those in power, refusing to innovate and change with human evolution because it wouldn't be convenient and it may hurt the bottom line.

The problem is our leadership. Someone needs to speak up, and I guess that's me. I'm working on plans to make a real impact too, don't worry. I just have to get my health in line first and well, that's nearly impossible given the options I'm offered.

Let's come together, please. We don't need leaders, we are the leaders.

Wake yourself up and look. The future generations deserve a shot and so do you.

healing
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About the Creator

Lakrisha Raymond

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