A Sensitive Subject

That would be me. Sensitive: The Untold Story was fine. I would buy it and show it to people, which I think is what it’s for. I am still processing it (naturally!) and will have more to say about it later.

Photo of an inspirational wall plaque with the message "Don't let anyone EVER dull your sparkle."As for the premiere, nobody paid any attention to the dress code, as far as I could see. Guests arrived in everything from jeans to red carpet attire. I dressed for comfort more than display, and was glad I did. Several times during the discussion that followed the film, Elaine Aron advised HSPs to “do what you need to do” to take care of yourself, regardless of what people say, so that’s all good.

I’m still disgruntled that we were told how to dress. A reminder not to wear scents would’ve been a lot more useful. I had to change my seat due to a woman doused in so much perfume that it gave me an instant headache from 4 rows away. And then I felt bad about doing so, because she was also there alone, looking uncomfortable, and I didn’t want her to feel rejected!

I surveyed the crowd and tried to determine if there was anything different about it. This was hampered by the fact that I don’t have much basis for comparison, as I avoid crowds assiduously. Maybe there was a little more automatic consideration of others. Conversations were animated, but not loud. And only a very small handful of people came alone. Other than that, I couldn’t really tell I was in a roomful of HSPs. I’ll have to work on my sensitividar.

I recognize my fear was exacerbated by being an HSP. I knew it while I was I writing my last post, but that didn’t reduce my anxiety one iota!

As someone who has benefited so greatly from Elaine Aron’s work, I felt I was not being entirely nice to raise class issues in that post. I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings. Yet, the issue is a valid one, so would it be fair to myself not to raise it, out of fear of offending or swimming against the tide? Fair vs. nice, always a challenge!

Ultimately, I let the critique stand, along with the fear, as an example of HSP thinking. Aron knows this thinking all too well, so I think she will understand. She is, after all, a psychologist!

There are a couple of other things going on with me lately that I haven’t written about yet due to the impending premiere. I’ll talk about them in upcoming posts.

Are You Happy Now?

Four exactly alike smiling faces made from a banana mouth, orange slice eyes and a strawberry noseI view the “happiness movement” with skepticism. If you aren’t familiar with it, it argues that unhappiness comes from framing our experiences “negatively,” and if only we reframe them “positively,” we can be happy. Here’s a TED talk from one of its most visible proponents.

Note that our speaker, cruising on the silken waters of Harvard cachet, is marketing a service to large corporations. If your boss sent you to happiness school, would you dare to test less happy at the conclusion of the class? No wonder this guy is happy. He’s found himself a sure thing! Continue reading

Depression Inside Out

There are many depictions of non-usual mental states in story and song, including some excellent first-person representations of mental disorders. Edgar Allan Poe, for example, is famous for his accounts of psychotic breaks in the first person. Sometimes we know we are witnessing “madness,” as Poe called it, but sometimes these descriptions are framed as something else. Continue reading

Anxiety

A hand drawn picture of a smiling woman, with the writing: when anyone asks me about anxiety, I always compare it to...

Anxiety is often lumped in together with depression, but it’s its own separate thing. You can have either one without the other. However, one thing “depression” and “anxiety” have in common is that they are both words that refer to a passing mood in the general parlance, so that people who have never experienced the mental disorder think they know what it’s like when they really have no idea. Kind of like the way non-noise-sensitive non-HSPs think we hear what they hear, and can’t understand why their leaf blower or barking dog is driving us bonkers.

Check out this illustrated explanation of anxiety from the inside, by artist Sophie Wright.

We need to stop using the same words for passing moods and full-blown mental disorders.

We need to stop using the same words for passing moods and full-blown mental disorders. It not only keeps people who don’t have the mental disorder from understanding people who do, it keeps people who do have it from recognizing it. I thought (and spoke) of myself, deprecatingly, as “a worrier” for years, as if it was some kind of amusing personality quirk. Even now, I often forget that for most of my 35 years as an undiagnosed depressive, I was also racked with anxiety about pretty much everything, every single day.

If you agree, email this post to your favorite research psychologist, or better yet, to the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in which psychiatric conditions are named.

Depression and Self-Hypnosis

Here are a couple of great links I stumbled across recently.

Cognitive Distortions: The Lies Depression Tells is an excellent article about how depression affects our inner dialogues.

Are you prepared to be Hypnotized… by yourself? is a great ‘self-hypnosis “how-to” for beginners.’ I experimented with self-hypnosis recordings that I made myself a year or two ago. My scripts centered on self-understanding and settling anxiety. The effects were so gradual and natural that I hardly noticed them at the time (which is typical of hypnosis results), but in retrospect I can see that’s when I started making breakthroughs in self-discovery. Hypnosis was also very helpful for physical feelings of intense anxiety that I was experiencing at the time.

While this is a nice article in many respects, don’t worry too much about the recommendations (daily practice, an hour at a time, and never in bed). I broke all those rules and it still worked for me. The most important thing is just to do it.