I wonder if HSPs have an advantage in a crisis, as we are already very familiar with overwhelm. While that’s no guarantee that we are better equipped to deal with it, at least it’s not a new feeling. If we have learned to balance our sensitivities with a sense of perspective, perhaps we can rediscover sooner than others that our emotional reaction is not a measure of our capacity to cope.
Global pandemic really shouldn’t surprise anyone, as we have had a high level of rapid international travel for at least 70 years. What’s surprising is that it didn’t happen sooner. I don’t expect that to be a comfort, but I am ever-hopeful it will promote facing and planning for other future challenges (not holding my breath, though).
Over the past few months, my life has been touched by death repeatedly. Cultural icons of my youth are dropping left and right, and I’ve learned a new hesitation to track down old friends and acquaintances. I’ve known elders who commented that everyone they knew was dead or dying, but I hadn’t expected to experience that in middle age. It has suddenly become difficult to ignore the inevitability of my own death, which I had fully expected to go on denying for another two or three decades, at minimum.
sensitive type 