THE BIGGER PICTURE Shalini SinhaI am a very sensitive person. I must be particularly so, or at least sensitive in a specific way to others, because I grew up most of my life being informed I had the quality.
It came to me in such a phrase as: "You're very good/ There's nothing wrong with you, except that you're too sensitive."
Yes, too sensitive is what I am. Not wonderfully sensitive or deeply sensitive, but too sensitive and certainly a form of "sensitive" that is somehow in opposition to "proper" or "good". A bad sensitive, if there was one.
As such, I spent a lot of my life confused, ashamed and often defensive over this. I had a terrible "weakness" - a piece broken, something gone wrong. And I saw how it worried people, making them feel uncomfortable, and caused my parents pain, that they didn't know how to save me or make it stop.
Yet, upon my own assessments, it never seemed to me I was anything particular.
It happened whenever I pointed out things that weren't going well. I would draw attention to a problem, saying, "this isn't right. . .that needs to change. . . that went wrong", and after some silence, the agreement would emerge that, in fact, it was me who was out of step - I was too sensitive.
The sentence was clear: none of my concerns was true. Instead, they were failures in my own sensitivities - a lack of access to good judgement, a flaw in my brain. And so, life went on, with me confused and frustrated, vocal and then silenced, gaining courage and meeting discouragement.
Even so, for unknown reasons, to this day I have maintained some shred of will to make it known when the Emperor is wearing no clothes. I have preserved some hope to continue to raise a struggle and expect that those around me will be pleased with me and be mobilised to help do something about it. "Having made things clear to us, we will now work together to make things right."
This, of course, rarely happens, and I continue on with my life being told it's me rather than a naked king who's causing upset. However, after all this time and all my work to "repair" myself, something altogether unexpected has happened.
Despite how deeply I might struggle, I find in myself a beauty - I have never lost hope. I think maybe because I didn't give into the facade, I have held onto my belief in humanity and understanding for each individual, as much as myself, that we can love each other above all else.
I have continued to understand that it is the struggle that needs rectifying, not me or each other. Most importantly, I seem to have found in myself the courage to look at what is going wrong - with concern for neither blame nor judgement - and to insist that we can decide to do something about it. From this, I have had the honour of feeling great optimism and hope. For these things, I am grateful and proud. I believe many of my regular readers will confirm that they have noticed this.
There is something important about being very sensitive. It is a strength, indeed a needed quality, in this world. A trend that has increasingly been gripping our society in the past 50 years is a pre-occupation with numbness.
Making us less sensitive, even insensitive, towards each other and life in general has been the only way to sustain the mass production and purchase of needless goods, the abuse and over-consumption of resources in our environment, and the killing of thousands of people in the world through war or poverty.
There is a real risk in supporting and encouraging us to feel what is going on in the world, and more so to look it straight in the face. And so, we work hard (if not unconstructively) to silence and limit anyone who dares to let on they notice.
The struggle for mental health is often one of reconciling the reality of the world we live in with the projection of what's acceptable. Our "very sensitive" people, who sometimes cannot or will not carry on with the prescribed "normal functioning" without acknowledgement that things are not going well, can find themselves isolated, discouraged and finally believing that indeed, there is some part of them that's just broken.
We offer drugs and distractions, isolation and doubt, in order to coerce them into an accepted, "automatic" functioning.
By doing so, we throw away one of the best resources we have in our society.
There are two sides to every story. As much as a well-developed "sensitivity" might bring someone to struggle when they cannot or will not turn away from injustice, it also brings with it fully felt excitement and joy when love and creativity are expressed before us - and this is the essence of being human.
It is a wonderful thing to let ourselves be sensitive - let ourselves be ourselves completely. Things go wrong because people and things are mistreated, not because one might notice the mistreatment.
Those who dare, among a sea of numbness, to speak up and name it must be loved.
Shalini Sinha works as a life coach and counsellor, practising the Bowen Technique and is part of The Health Squad on RTÉ.