How do i stop being so damn sensitive!!!!

[Omario]

Over sensitivity definition:

Over sensitivity is the trait that lets you become overly affected by an external influence that can hardly affect normal people.

 

I'm a teenager, my past doesn't matter. What does is the way i choose to live NOW.

I'm over sensitive, the tiniest things can have a humongous influence over my confidence, mood and thought patterns. 

I am engaged in negative thinking 24/7 Literally! Even in my sleep! My dreams are a self destructive imagination , this is due to the fact that all i do is negative think. Its heavily engraved into my subconscious. So my imagination doesn't know how to imagine positively . 

I've been looking for the reason behind all my : Negative thinking, Frustration, People pleasing, Mood swings etc.. basically low self esteem  for years now. Turns out that when i first started looking for a reason i had assumed it was over sensitivity but I felt as if though it was a dull reason. I thought i needed to learn to be confident... charismatic... but it turns out i was right in my assumption. 

So my question for you is as follows:

How do i stop being over sensitive?

If you have any knowledge on this subject please write me.

Edited January 31, 2018 by Omario

[Shin]

Stop taking your thoughts so seriously.

[sarapr]

@Omario You can stop over thinking with meditation and gain more awareness around your negative thoughts and becoming more mindful of what happens in your head when you encounter sth that affects you . 

Leo's video on awareness alone is curitive might be good for you.

[Monkey-man]

Me too sensitive, so what I do is:

Accepting whats' happening in the moment and don't identify with your self-image, thoughts, emotions, feelings, opinions.

You'll realize that sensitivity exists, but its not you who are sensitive, its just sensitivity. Eventually, sensitivity won't reproduce itself into vicious cycle where it produces negative consequences. Sensitivity will just be without trouble-making, that would be ideal.

Emotions, thoughts, senses are expressions for your body to survive and simultaneously to have experience of life, these are two sides of the same coin. Ultimately they are not here for you to identify yourself with them, they are here to experience life. Don't identify with anything.

[RichardY]

Alcohol, Heroin, Violence.

Could try raising conscientiousness as an alternative.

Edited January 31, 2018 by RichardY

[The White Belt]

You're over-sensitive because you're defending yourself. 

People are saying things about you that you already suspect about yourself but keep lying to yourself about,

then when people threaten to uncover your lies, you go on the full attack.

Be brutally self-honest and stop defending your neuroses and lies. 

[Gabriel Antonio]

i think a good word for what you are going through is fragility. everything breaks you. 

you need to go through a process of desensitivity. the fastest way to do this is through exposure. 

you expose yourself in small dosages until you become comfortable with the things that used to freak you out. 

[Elisabeth]

Your sensitivity, although you now perceive it as a curse, can also be a great tool. People who aren't emotionally sensitive can't feel nuance. Layers and layers of relating and introspection stay hidden to them.  

I'm not sure how you arrived at the conclusion that it's sensitivity that's making you negative, can you elaborate? 

In my experience, while sensitivity can easily throw me out of my emotional baseline if I don't take care of myself (you don't want to interact with me if I'm hungry or didn't get sleep or didn't have me-time to calm down, hehe), it's something else that alters the baseline and determines if the place that I return to once I'm rested is positive or negative. 

If you're negative all the time, you have a very low baseline. Gotta do shadow work, but also focus on the positives, follow your passions, actively seek what gives you joy, practice gratitude and stillness. 

By all means, do exposure or whatever practice allows you do deal better with the negative emotions which come up as a reaction to your daily life. But also accept your sensitivity. Don't numb. Treat what it tells you as useful information, and be kind to yourself (self acceptance, self love). The very same traits that bring you down the most are just the dark side of you greatest strengths. 

[Omario]

@Elisabeth You're simply talking about E Q . Which is similar to over sensitivity in the way that you can be empathetic and understand layers and layers of emotions. But again being heavily influenced by little things that happen in your daily life is a complete waste of life, for example: I ask my friend  James for cigarette , which i saw him give one to  Larry earlier but now he denies even having any. This completely crushes me. I start to over think and self destruct. I begin to feel worthless.

Basically yes emotional sensitivity is one of the most profound skills when it comes to understanding and dealing with others. 

But its not that in this case. In this case its being heavily influenced by the tiniest of things. 

Also i would like to point out how over sensitivity can completely destroy whats left of your self esteem simply because you let everything have an influence on you. Whether good or bad but in this case bad and in many other cases as well. And no you cant shift the focus of your influence to the things that are good simply because there are going to be days where there isn't any.

Over sensitivity has what i call the snowball effect where emotions generate more emotions and those even more in an endless loop. 

 

 

Edited January 31, 2018 by Omario

[Elisabeth]

5 hours ago, Omario said:

@Elisabeth You're simply talking about E Q . Which is similar to over sensitivity in the way that you can be empathetic and understand layers and layers of emotions.

1

Point taken, I may be viewing the two as very connected when in reality maybe that's not the case for everyone.   

In fact, thinking about it, maybe there should be one more distinction. I'd say there is the broad umbrella of EQ that allows you to make sense of emotions. Then there is what I have called sensitivity which is the ability to feel emotion or get aware of them - if highly sensitive, you can discern even subtle emotion to great detail and nuance. And then there is what you've called oversensitivity and I would call it reactivity - which is having strong reactions to even slight stimuli. That's what you wanna get rid of, and I guess the point of my post should have been (had I made the distinction) not to lose sensitivity together with reactivity if possible. 

5 hours ago, Omario said:

Over sensitivity has what i call the snowball effect where emotions generate more emotions and those even more in an endless loop. 

2

I'm aware of this effect. I call it "the spiral". It's true that you have to deal with those somehow. Have you got some tools already? Distracting yourself (shifting focus), relaxation, journaling, reframing your thoughts, humour, reaching out to people? Totally surrendering (paradoxical) to the loop that's going on? All of these work sometimes (sometimes nothing works, but hey, that's ok). I'm sure you have moments when you deal with a small snowball successfully. It's worth noticing those. 

5 hours ago, Omario said:

@Elisabeth for example: I ask my friend  James for cigarette , which i saw him give one to  Larry earlier but now he denies even having any. This completely crushes me. I start to over think and self destruct. I begin to feel worthless. (...)

Also i would like to point out how over sensitivity can completely destroy whats left of your self esteem simply because you let everything have an influence on you. Whether good or bad but in this case bad and in many other cases as well.

9

You're naming something here - although it seems like a reaction happens totally on its own, it's not quite so. It's somehow YOU who's reacting, and if you catch the stimulus and the starting reaction right away, some amount of conscious control can be gained.  As far as I understand, that's what vipassana is designed to teach you. With enough mindfulness you're able to catch the tiny gap between stimulus and reaction and insert a conscious decision whether to react or not. When you sit there in meditation and don't scratch your itches and observe your emotional reactions you get a bit of detachment. 

So have a formal meditation practice, but that's like the longterm project. More basic changes like getting good sleep and reducing sugar intake can produce significant changes sooner. 

Btw you chose your example from the social area, is that where the most problems lie? In your example it's obvious how beliefs come into play. The equation is something like: he denies me cigarettes = he doesn't like me = I'm a terrible person or nobody will ever like me. While if you believed that him having his own agenda (keeping cigarettes) is neither wrong nor saying anything about you, you wouldn't have the reaction. These shifts of mindset can be done - I've had a few in the last years just from reading a lot of the right stuff. So that's also something to pay attention to. 

5 hours ago, Omario said:

And no you cant shift the focus of your influence to the things that are good simply because there are going to be days where there isn't any.

 

I will strongly disagree. You don't have to shift to positive events per se, you could shift to something as neutral as your breath or body. There's always something that's less negative than your loop of low self-esteem. It's a skill to practice. 

It's true though that I had patches of depression where I had negative emotion present all day every day and, at that moment, it wasn't possible to feel anything positive. It's also true that I still can't drop anxiety when it comes to me. But the way out of my depression was mostly finding all these different mini-solutions which help me jump out of negative loops, and also what I wrote in my first post - follow passions, actively seek what gives you joy, practice gratitude and stillness. For many years that just meant actively planning events that I could look forward to - for me it was mostly meeting likeminded people, but whatever you have in your life that does give you joy, emphasize that . (If there's indeed nothing, go seek professional help asap.)

I've written a lot. Just take what resonates or seems doable and feel free to disregard the rest. 

Edited February 1, 2018 by Elisabeth

[Omario]

@Elisabeth Gonna take a nap then read that, i need mental strength .

Im Ready for some insights

[Joseph Maynor]

Stop clinging to that Ego.  That's takes a lot of work to get to though.  But that's the answer.  The Ego is what makes you sensitive.  

 

Edited February 1, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Elisabeth]

On 1. 2. 2018 at 2:16 AM, Omario said:

@Elisabeth Gonna take a nap then read that, i need mental strength .

Im Ready for some insights

@Omario Well, did I make any sense? 

I'm actually very open to dialogue, since while I may have a few more years of experience, I for sure haven't solved all of the problem for myself. I also care how  I give advice, because there's no point in writing down stuff that goes completely over people's head.