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How to overcome sensitivity

Health Area(s): Anxiety, Are You Sensitive, Compassion Fatigue, Emotional, Emotional Abuse, General Health, Healthy Ageing, Mental Abuse, Sleep, Sleep Apnea, Social, Spiritual, Stress
Health Area(s): Anxiety, Are You Sensitive, Compassion Fatigue, Emotional, Emotional Abuse, General Health, Healthy Ageing, Mental Abuse, Sleep, Sleep Apnea, Social, Spiritual, Stress

field_5f0c304c72876 - is the title of the exercise

Exercise Summary

The following was written by Melissa Mazlan and published by EduAdvisor

Are You Too Sensitive? 8 Ways to Deal With Emotional Sensitivity
Do you react extremely negatively when someone makes a passing comment about you, whether it’s your hairstyle, a silly mistake you made or your choice of degree?

If the answer’s a hesitant “yes”, there’s no need to worry. Being sensitive is good as it’s part of emotional intelligence, but too much of a good thing isn’t great. Here’s how you can keep your emotions in check by turning your oversensitivity down a notch or two.

Main Activity

Study, educate and create an action plan of activity

The following was written by Melissa Mazlan and published by EduAdvisor

1. Write down your feelings
The first thing you should do after a sensitive episode is to write down how you feel. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have good writing skills; as long as you pen your emotions to paper or tap out a long Twitter thread, that should suffice. The key is to untangle the knot of feelings swirling about you to clearly understand what made you so affected.
2. Figure out what makes you sensitive
Now that you have everything in black-and-white, read through what you wrote and pinpoint the crux of the matter. Did you feel prickles of sensitivity when someone pointed out a mistake you made? Maybe you felt slightly offended that someone assumed you were ignorant about something. Now that you’ve figured out what’s bothering you, you can move on to fixing it.
3. Don’t be too hard on yourself
Remember, being sensitive is a good thing as it means you’re compassionate and empathetic to other people’s situations. Yours is just a little over the bar, verging on oversensitivity. This can affect your mental wellbeing, especially if you take things too personally and dwell on it for long periods of time.
However, before you start beating yourself up by saying how much of a cry-baby or a whiner you are, stop yourself. Focusing on negative labels will only put the spotlight on these traits, which can be problematic. Instead, immerse yourself in positive thoughts.
4. Limit overthinking
Do you overthink situations and comments, obsessing over the slightest action or words? Why, you even let your thoughts run into overdrive and fantasise about things that didn’t even happen!
Avoid making mountains out of molehills as you’ll find it difficult to be productive and calm. Yes, reflecting on the consequences of your actions is wise, but constantly gnawing away at it will not do you any good.
5. Think before you react
Before you jump to conclusions and get on the defensive, take a mental step back and think before you react. When you immediately assume something about a person’s intentions or behaviour, you’re filtering it negatively without any facts or evidence to support your hypothesis.
For example, your best friend doesn’t reply to your text about catching a movie over the weekend. Your emotions run high and you think she’s too busy spending time with her new college friends, resulting in you acting cold towards her and ultimately losing the friendship. Hey, presto! You’ve overblown the situation unnecessarily.
So, always think before you react.
6. Challenge yourself and ask for feedback
You nervously show your work-in-progress assignment to your lecturer, hoping for the best. Newsflash: She doesn’t think it’s good enough. Previously, you would’ve let your oversensitivity flare up. However, you’ve read this article and know that you need to keep it in check.
Instead of licking your wounds and not saying anything, do ask for feedback and constructive criticism. As long as you learn not to take things personally and remember that the comments are about your work and not who you are as a person, getting feedback will help desensitise you.
7. It’s not all about you
Think your lecturer hates you? They’re probably just not invested in your progress, which is a shame, but doesn’t classify as distinct hate. Being a sensitive person might make you believe that everyone’s behaviour is a reaction to you.
Realistically, most people are too busy thinking about their own struggles and problems, which means they frankly aren’t thinking of you at all. Instead of automatically reacting to their behaviour, have a think about what they are feeling instead. Remember, you aren’t the leading character in everyone’s life.
8. Be patient
It takes time to become less oversensitive, so don’t take it to heart if you still feel prickles of sensitivity every so often. You’ll learn how to manage your feelings in due time. Also, think of how this learning process will greatly help you as you get older and experience more emotionally-challenging situations. Patience is key when it comes to improving yourself.

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Signs Of A Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) & What To Do About It
If you or someone you know is dealing with a challenging situation and could benefit from additional support.A highly sensitive person (HSP) is an individual who feels deeply and can struggle to manage their sensitivity. This condition is also referred to as sensory processing sensitivity (SPS). People with this condition have high levels of empathy and can easily understand the feelings of others.These individuals are often sensitive to lights, sounds, and crowds of people. If they’re over-stimulated, they may need to step away from these overwhelming situations to decompress. Often highly sensitive individuals like to be alone to recharge and get back to a place of balance. For people who are highly sensitive it’s essential to engage in self-care and set boundaries with those people around them.Psychologist Elaine Aron and her husband Arthur Aron created the term highly sensitive person or HSP in the 1990’s. Elaine Aron published the book The Highly Sensitive Person to talk about how this condition affects this group of individuals. In the book, she outlines the character of an HSP and how to identify one. She also demonstrates social and emotional techniques that people with this condition can use to live a good quality of life.Sensitivity can be a gift. People with high levels of empathy can go on to become mental health professionals or caregivers and help others. However, it’s crucial to learn to manage sensitivity and not let it overwhelm you. If you believe you need help managing your sensitivity, a licensed therapist or counsellor can support you in figuring out the balance between being sensitive and having boundaries with others.
Click to play video
13 Problems Only Highly Sensitive People Will Understand
Do you consider yourself a deep thinker and feel things much more intensely than others? If you answered yes, then chances are you’re part of the small percentage of people who are highly sensitive. Being a Highly Sensitive Person – or HSP – means that you are naturally predisposed to process and perceive information on a much deeper level than most. You’re also likely perceptive, empathetic, intuitive, and self-aware. HSPs are also emotionally intelligent and incredibly creative, passionate, people. As you can imagine, though, feeling and processing more intensely has some downsides. So without further ado, here are 13 struggles only Highly Sensitive People will probably relate to
Click to play video

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All areas of health are interlinked

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Find your initial focus

You might think that physical, financial and mental health are quite separate, and for some people they are. However, often a problem in one area has a knock-on effect on others. Losing your job can lead to anxiety and depression, which can turn you to drink and impact your health.

You might have a severe issue in one area but that can lead to problems in other areas, and the people treating you for the first problem won’t be equipped to deal with these linked issues.

For example, doctors and nurses can treat you for a physical problem but can’t advise you about your job or finances.  Nor for the anxiety that comes with it, apart from prescribing some drugs, which might or might not be the best solution.

We encourage you to take a holistic view – we look at all areas and offer support across the whole spectrum.

health areas interlinked

Even this view of health is simplistic, as you’ll discover later if you go down that route.  You might want to consider overall health, or wellness or wellbeing, which include additional types of health, such as occupational health (how you are in your job).   Then there’s happiness and quality of life – how do these fit?

If you’re interested in that, click the link here to see more information.

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Health Areas in Domains

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Domains

We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about.  The first level we call health domains. 

We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.

1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community

Health Areas

Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle.  Within each health area, e.g. Depression, we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area. You can create your own Action Plan to address this area, and see

Emotional: Anxiety, Compassion Fatigue, Depression, Gambling, Laughter, Narcissistic, Personality Disorder, Sleep, Stress

Environmental: Environmental Issues, Greenness

Financial: Debt, Family Finance, Financial Planning, Financial Wellness

Intellectual: IQ, Personality, Procrastination

Occupational: Jobs for Different Personality Types, Retirement Income, Work Life Balance

Physical: Alcohol, Disabilities, Dizziness, Drugs, Fitness, Food Preferences, General Health, Healthy Ageing, Illness, Nutrition, Sleep Apnea, Smoking

Social: Communication Skills, Communication Styles, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Love Partnerships, Mental Abuse, Parenting Styles, Sexual Addiction

Spiritual: Are You Sensitive, Mystical Guidance, Spirituality

Each health area has supporting information and its own questionnaire.

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Understand Health

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Physical, financial and mental health

One definition of health is:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. 

The NHS define health as: ‘We use a broad definition of health that encompasses both physical and mental health, as well as wellbeing. This means we are not only interested in whether or not people are ill or have a health condition, but also in how healthy and well they are.’

We believe we also have to consider financial health, as this can easily impact physical and mental health. Click the button to see an example of how these are connected.

 It gets more complicated…

running physical health
See linkages between physical, financial and mental health

What is Health? How about Wellness, Wellbeing or Happiness?

The Active Wellbeing Society (TAWS) define Health as a state of the overall mental and physical state of a person; the absence of disease. They define Wellbeing or wellness as a way of life that aims to enhance well-being and refers to a more holistic whole-of-life experience which also includes emotional and spiritual aspects of life.  We expand on this definition of health to include financial health and mental health, to make it synonymous with wellbeing or wellness.  

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Health domains

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about.  The first level we call health domains.

We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.

1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community

wellness wheel

Health Areas

Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle.  Within each health area, e.g. Depression, once you have subscribed we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area.

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See which domains you should address

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Having established that we use 8 domains, you need to understand which you should concentrate on.

The 8 are:

  • Emotional
  • Environmental
  • Financial
  • Intellectual
  • Occupational
  • Physical
  • Social
  • Spiritual

 

You can take a questionnaire, which scores you in each domain.  You can decide which domains you are strong in, and which you need to improve.

Another analysis shows which domains you should look at, but also which domains you want to look at.

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Locus of Control

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  • We want to help people in all aspects of their health  – physical, financial and mental. We also provide detailed explanations of how overall health (or well-being) is measured.
  • We believe these things are often linked, so we try and address health holistically. We are building templates, questionnaires and exercises to help you identify what’s important to you.
  • We think people should try and take responsibility for  of their own health as much as they can.  See below for what that means.

People look at things differently.  Some people believe things happen to them, while others believe they can influence what happens to them. Technically this is called the ‘locus of control’.  People can have an Internal or external Locus of Control

So how do you see things?

Psychology Today have a 15 minute test which gives you a summary of your position you can buy the detailed results if you want to.

My Personality Test have a 10 minute test which gives you a summary.

People tend to take more responsibility (locus gets more internal) as they get older.  However, external isn’t always bad – for example if you are physically unable to do some things you can accept it and focus on the things you can do.  This American video explains the concept and gives examples of how this can affect relationships.

locus of control

Internal

  • More likely to take responsibility for actions
  • Tend to be less influenced by others

External

  • Blame outside forces for what happens
  • Don’t believe they can change their situation themselves

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Add your attitude to change - see how you view changes in your life

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Do you need to change?

No matter how healthy you are at the moment, the chances are that there are some areas you could improve. It may be that you have a real problem in one or more areas, and you would like to make some improvements.

At YouDrive we accept that there are many different degrees of ‘not wellness’ in a large number of different health areas, ranging from physical illness such as covid-19 through mental illness such as anxiety through to financial problems like debt.  We try and help where the problem ranges from ‘slight’ to quite bad’ – after this expert help and intervention may be needed.

However, especially in these times, we have to try and make these changes ourselves, possibly with some help from others, whether remotely or face to face.

The thing is, to make an improvement we have to change some things.

This involves changing our behaviour in some respects, and that’s not always easy.

Henry Ford, the creator of the assembly line, is quoted as saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.  

henry ford

Another way of looking at this: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – attributed to Albert Einstein.

Consequently we need to make some changes.  The problem is that we have already developed a lot of habits, some of which we need to break and replace by better ones.  Some of our bad habits have become entrenched, and the bad results they create in turn engender further bad habits to develop – in effect the bad habits can feed on themselves.

We need to understand how we can make changes and stick to them, and that’s what this part of your health profile is about.

It will involve some learning, through reading, some videos and some additional information and also seeing how you react to change currently.

It will also ask you to consider whether you feel you are in charge of your future, or whether you feel it’s all fate.

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Assess your overall health using a health questionnaire

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At YouDrive we try and help people improve their health. We use ‘health’ but we understand there are other terms such as wellbeing or even happiness that reflect how we are doing in our lives – if you’re interested in the different definitions and ideas see our page on the subject.

We want to help whether you have a particular problem – physical, financial or mental – or if you just want to improve some specific part of your life or just make some improvements overall.

You’d be surprised, but there has been a serious amount of scientific work done in this area over the last twenty years.

So first we allow you to assess your current health (or wellbeing, or happiness).  We do this by questionnaire.  Which one is determined by the type of person you are:

  1. You understand yourself well and want a quick overview of your health and wellness, and will drill down in any areas needing work
  2. You want to do a more detailed assessment and then focus on areas you’re already aware of
  3. You want to look at the whole situation in more detail across all the health domains.

By the way, we take your privacy seriously – we collect information that you choose to provide but we de-identify it as much as possible and will never share it with anyone without your explicit consent.

You can then drill down into some specific areas and there are more questionnaires to see your situation in these particular areas.  We provide you with specific information and refer you to other potential aspects of help. Our next step is to build a personalised action plan – for now we will make a suggestion for you to develop your own plan and then after a time you can see whether this has had a positive impact by retaking the test.

In future we will be engaging with medical and behavioural specialists to devise action plans for individual people with specific situations.

We have an overall questionnaire which you can complete which will assess your current state.

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Values, Attitudes and Beliefs

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We all have our beliefs, attitudes and values – these have developed throughout our life based on who we are and what we have done. Let’s look at what these are.

The University of Reading explain: “People’s values, beliefs and attitudes are formed and bonded over time through the influences of family, friends, society and life experiences. So, by the time you’re an adult, you can hold very definite views on just about everything with a sense of “no one is going to change my mind”.

The combination of your personal values, beliefs and attitudes are your moral principles that guide you in life and affect your behaviour. However, your views can wildly differ to others and in an institution such as a school, these beliefs may be counter to the values of the school, child development or indeed the law.” 

Let’s look more closely at the differences between beliefs, attitudes and values.

Beliefs

These come from real experiences – we think our beliefs are based on reality, but in fact our beliefs colour our experiences; also, an original experience e.g. when we were a child is not the same as what’s happening now. Beliefs can be moral, religious or cultural and reflect who we are. They can be rational (‘it gets colder in winter’) or irrational (‘I am never going to make something of myself’).

Attitudes

This is an immediate belief or disposition about something specific. It is a recurring group of beliefs and behaviours aimed at specific groups, people, ideas or objects. They will normally be positive or negative and we will always behave that way to the target group. Examples of attitudes include confidence (I can or can’t do something), grateful (I an entitled to / grateful for XXX) and cheerful (I am generally happy / miserable).

Values

These are things (principles or qualities) that we hold in high regard or consider to be worthwhile or right / wrong. They are formed by a belief related to the worth of something – an idea or behaviour. Some values are common (e.g. family comes first, the value of friendship) or cultural (which the whole community have – see video at Study.com here)

The theory

Links to Wikipedia

Expectancy Value Theory suggests you balance your beliefs about something with the value you attach to it. The Theory of Reasoned Action suggests that beliefs and evaluation about behavioural outcomes determine attitudes, and intentions lead directly to behaviour.

Beliefs

Expressions of confidence – can change over time

Attitudes

Learned predispositions to something – are subject to change

Values

Ideals that guide our behaviour – Generally long lasting and often need life changing experience to change

Iceberg demonstrating implicit and explicit bias – from Owlcation

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A Butterfly Life: 4 Keys to More Happiness, Better Health and Letting Your True Self Shine

Times of change can be a challenge, no doubt! Whether it’s a relationship breakup, job loss, or being diagnosed with a serious health issue. Or you may WANT things to be different, but it feels a little scary or overwhelming. The butterfly reminds us change can be beautiful, even necessary, in order to realize our full potential and live our best life.

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