Paths to Wholeness discussion

Aron's book The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You is one I wish had been written decades ago. It helped me understand that I'm a “highly sensitive person” – someone who takes in, on both a sensory and emotional level, more than most people do. There are a lot of us – some 20% of the population, according to Aron, a figure validated by an independent study done by Harvard and the University of Toronto a few years after Aron's book was published. Being "highly sensitive" is a blessing and a curse: We can’t screen much out, so all kinds of things bother us that don't bother most people, but we also have more data available at a conscious level, and sometimes we can do things with that data that people who automatically screen out more can't.

The simple screen for this type of sensitivity on Aron's website hsperson.com, and her practical advice for how to cope with this characteristic, are uniquely valuable resources for those of us who are highly sensitive, and for those in close relationship with us.

It's been quite a while since I read it, but a few things that stand out are the need for HSPs to have down time after being in a stimulating environment; the need for non-HSPs to understand that HSPs really do experience things more intensely than they do; and the need for HSPs to realize that others are probably not being rude or inconsiderate, they simply may not be connecting the dots that the HSPs think are obvious because they've automatically screened them out as not significant.

David

I can definitely relate to being overstimulated by noise and need for quality alone time. This one just went on the list...

I trained myself to be an HSP...and then I learned that people who grow up in a battleground usually become hyper-aware, having to gauge the danger level every time they enter a room.

But it's not a bad thing at all.

I was an award-winning journalist. I made a fine film about Bookbinder and his mandalas, and knew what was important to include. I knew that the last quote from him, that I included in the film, was the most important.

"I realized that," he said, "as a therapist, I was being paid to love people."

Not that he needs much prompting. David is an intellectual of a high calibre, which usually limits a person's ability to focus on their emotions; but through his near death experience and the 25 years of struggle that followed, he has become well acquainted with that side of himself, and the emotional lives of other people.

I have know him for over 25 years. I have seen him grow as a person and become someone totally different, gentler, kinder, more caring, and more intuitive.

Maybe we should start an institute that induces near death experiences. Then we can all be really checked out cats, like David Bookbinder.

Okay, so who wants to kill me...almost?

P.S. See the film here: http://www.davidbookbinder.com/healin...

It's hard to want to kill an old friend who so generously plugs my personality -- and anyway, I don't recommend a near-death experience as a voluntary path to wholeness. It may have launched me on a new path, but there are gentler ways to do that!

You can test your HSP-ness here: http://hsperson.com/test/

It's a rough screen, but in my therapy practice I have found that people who seem to show the characteristics score very high on the test. For instance, I scored 26 out of 27.

As for being an HSP, it seems to be a hard-wired trait. HSPs are born, not made. The Harvard/U. Toronto researchers found that it existed in other primates, too. The key seems to be what they called a "lowered threshold of disinhibition" -- unconsciously letting more stimuli reach the conscious level than the bulk of the population does. Hypervigilance, emotional sensitivity, sensitivity to the arts, and other characteristics typical of an HSP show up in many people who are not, technically, HSPs.

I scored a 25, which I don't find too surprising at all.

I agree with the battleground theory. I feel that most of my high sensitivity was inherited as collateral from a father who happened to be an explosive narcissist with unresolved PTSD from law enforcement. Of course, there are genetics, etc, but my money is on what it took me to survive a childhood where life or death hinged on one person's emotional reactivity to real or perceived slights, general crankiness, and/or psychopathic pranks. When you can't travel from room to room without seeing a loaded weapon, you begin to tread very carefully.

It raises an interesting idea: is society enriched by children growing up in families with different "styles"?

Do families like mine and Christine's engender children with unique gifts and talents? Is hyper-vigilance, a trait bred by difficult family environments, actually of benefit to society? Can children who are wounded in youth become adults able to make singular influences on culture?

Interesting line of thought. Are toxic families a way for culture to experiment and achieve a variety of ways of seeing the world?

It suggests to me that maybe, once those children are out on their own, they try to accept the circumstances of their upbringing, make peace with it, then turn to making their own unique tapestry to hang on the wall. Then the castle of culture will be beautified and a little warmer, and those children may find their own special niche or purpose.

What say? Aint that a damn funky idea?

Indeed it is a damn funky idea. And sometimes, that's how it works out, through a process that, these days, is called posttraumatic growth, as defined here: https://ptgi.uncc.edu/what-is-ptg/

But what does not kill you does not always make you stronger. I have seen people triumph in amazing ways over their trauma (for example, see Jon Morrow's story), and I have also seen people so shattered by it that they never recover. We mostly hear about the triumphs but as a therapist I see a wider variety of effects.

The attitude that seems to help more than any other is to look for the opportunity in the difficulty, to find - as a friend of mine puts it - the AFGO (Another F**king Growth Opportunity).

AFGO, I'm stealing that.

Funky idea, indeed. The Nazis, too, had some funky experimental ideas that, I'm fairly certain, if memory has it, didn't work out too well for the test subjects. There is a thing called "victim mentality," and it's a real measure. I received an QEEG report today that says in no uncertain terms that I do not experience victim mentality, at least not to any level worth reporting or which deviates from normal. That said, in no way do I feel enriched by being repeatedly, intentionally drowned, brought back to life to enhance someone's narcissism, or having suffered from any of the other unmentionable things I endured as part of what could be someone else's grand social experiment. Forgive me, but the entire idea makes me angry, and I am not an angry person, despite having every reason to be. I can say that now, because I can prove it quantitatively, with humor and paper evidence.

Let me add, however, that such an idea would actually make a decent post-apocalyptical coming of age story, as far as good endings could possibly occur in post-apocalyptic settings. Maybe it could be a Tim Burton-styled heroic end, which, on further thought, would probably resemble a tragic victory over dark, machined forces ablaze in the far distance as the so called heroes drag themselves up by the knuckles from shreds of the foreground's hot metallic waste.