When you're in denial that you're a Highly Sensitive Person

There are some Highly Sensitive People out there that were always aware they were and found ways to adapt to this fairly early on. Even though environments and people could cause overstimulation they knew the skills to deal with that. That wouldn’t be the type of HSP I am.

I am the sort that was very aware of my sensitivity to a lot of environments and completely ignore it. Mostly because I felt that is what was expected. Also to achieve my goals. And then was constantly surprised by the fact I had insane amounts of stress and burned out. How did that happen? Again? By doing the exact same thing I did last time? Such a shocker.

I’m the type that completely denied I was an HSP and blundered along through life ignoring every blaring signal my body gave me that an environment was causing some serious overstimulation. Such that it really affected me physically because I ignored all the minor signals one would take to calm my system down, take a break, do what needed to be done to relax.

Eventually, my body had some serious chronic stress, chronic pain, chronic migraine disease and depression. I’m not saying I could have avoided chronic pain given it started so young with joint issues due to hypermobility and progressed from there. No one can say one way or the other what impact stresses had on that… but it couldn’t have been good. I can say if I accepted I was an HSP I would have coped better and sooner.

I had some serious denial. Maybe due to my high expectations and perfectionism. I had the tendency to ignore my physical health and mental health. Yes, loud, bright and crowded environments are too much for me. But like most things in my life that cause overstimulation, I just ignored that fact and pushed through all that.

In trying to achieve the absolute perfection of my excessive standards, yes, I ignored the pain I was in and tried to ‘push through it’. I ignored the toxic workplace I was in that was so damned draining on me. I ignored the mental and emotional toll it was having on me. The fact my migraine attacks were getting way more intense and frequent the more I tried to push through. I was aware pain pushed back hard the more I pushed. I knew I had to pace and yet never seemed capable of actually doing it.

I am not sure I even know what I was trying to prove. That I was super strong? That I wasn’t sensitive? That I could control the pain? Or I have some insane pain tolerance? Instead, I earned no sleep, chronic stress and severely worsening chronic pain with a bonus of severe depression.

And you know what? No one cares that you have chronic pain. No one cares if you succeed with chronic pain either. Or the serious toll you pay for that success. They do care if you miss work. They care if you show up but are not fully functional. They care if you try extremely hard but just can’t quite pull it off. And that destroyed me. My self-worth was mutilated beyond repair. I felt like a complete failure as a human being. All because I couldn’t push through the pain every single day without effective pain management. Not forever. And that is what mattered. When I couldn’t pull it off anymore I burned out. Hard. So many people make you think that is your fault. Your weakness. So you try all over again to push through the pain. And the whole damn cycle repeats. And when you burn out again it is worse.

The things I have learned since I have been on disability are all the things I should have known as a Highly Sensitive Person to adapt to the world. Things I never paid attention to because I ardently would deny I was an HSP. That I was ‘sensitive’ which to me implied ‘weak’. That was my worst problem there. Maybe I could have adapted to the intensity of being an HSP a lot earlier if I didn’t have this impression that I needed to ignore all of that to prove to the world and myself I wasn’t.

Things I value about being an HSP with my personality type

Learning to manage being a Highly Sensitive Person didn’t come until I became disabled and began trying different ways to adjust to being so trigger sensitive to migraine attacks and being so sensitive to light, sound, touch and scent due to fibromyalgia.

There are things I have figured out:

1. Without work, I was able to try and have a routine sleep cycle. With work, it is a lot harder because my cycle doesn’t match most workplaces and chronic pain can be extremely disruptive to sleep. Sleep deprivation increases pain… which again makes it harder to sleep. Outside of work you can begin to actually get some sleep, or more than you ever have before.
2. I can get enough mental and emotional downtime now. I know how to manage my thoughts so I do not ruminate too long. I know ways to manage my mood as well.
3. I can de-stress my system with meditation and relaxation breathing as needed. This is pretty fundamental because overstimulation, as well as chronic pain, have physiological symptoms. Getting the body to chill out helps with that.
4. I know that in situations where I am overstimulated I sometimes have to leave it early. I sometimes need to take a lot of breaks. I sometimes need to go outdoors for a bit. Or otherwise acknowledge my body’s response and calm it down, because I know its response is not fear, it is not anxiety, it is just overstimulation.
5. I have to make and stick to boundaries in order to not exceed my limits. I am aware that my tendency to push beyond my limits is always there. I have ambitions. So I know I am tempted, always, to push my limits Too much. So I have to make sure I stay without those limits or only nudge them a little bit at a time.
6. I need to rest when needed. I have to listen to my body. Pace my energy. Listen to my pain limits. Rest when my body damn well says so.

I accept there is nothing broken or wrong with the way I am. Clearly, I thought that subconsciously to ignore it for so long. I picked up art again because I no longer resist my deeply creative self. It see the benefits of my personality type. Just like introversion comes with a lot of benefits even if society seems to think we are dysfunctional extroverts.

It is just HSP needs some attention and care. If you’re sensitive to light- don’t stare at the sun all day. Which was basically my approach to life. If I push through it, I can achieve what I want… but, oops, turns out there are a lot of mental, emotional and physical consequences to ignoring your body’s signals, ignoring pain and ignoring your need for downtime. That there is good advice even if you're not an HSP, by the way.

A lot of Highly Sensitive people are healthy and they listen to all those signals their body gives them. So they never had that constant stressor of pain I dealt with as a child. A stressor that unfortunately taught me I needed to push myself more. And therefore ignore a lot more signals my body was giving out than I ever should have. I have learned from that but it has taken a lot of time. If I recover my health enough to work again I now understand how that work will have to look and how I will have to be in order to succeed and thrive in a work environment. And that is not like a bull in a china shop, ignoring the subtle signs my body is throwing out but also completely obvious signs my body is giving me. Apparently, that doesn’t work out so well no matter how many times I repeat the process and expect different results.