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Trauma and relationship support for Empaths & Highly Sensitive Souls
WHEN LOVING HURTS YOUR EMPATHETIC HEART
"A THICKER SKIN WONT PROTECT MY TENDER, WARM AND BIG HEART"
Maybe you are one of the 15-20% of the population who are wired in such a way, that too much stimulation overwhelms you. The cross conversations, the hustle and bustle of shopping centres and eating in noisy restaurants does nothing for your appetite. You may struggle considerably travelling on congested freeways or trying to battle public transport, even parties and social gatherings become too much for you to cope with. Maybe you see a sick or injured animal or person (even on t.v) and you find yourself struggling with the intense feelings that overwhelm your body.
More importantly perhaps your high degree of empathy, causes you considerable angst when it comes to friendships and even more agony when it comes to negotiating romantic relationships. Your high empathy may very well keep you entwined in relationships that at best leave you feeling incredibly alone and misunderstood, or at worse, keep you tethered because you don't know how to leave regardless of how toxic things can get. Your mind says 'leave' and provides you with every rationale for doing so, but your heart appears to have another agenda.
Perhaps you know in your heart of hearts that your romantic relationship is beyond salvageable and that you have outgrown each other along with the excuses that you originally employed to stay. The illusory hope that things could or would improve no longer weaves its lucrative and seductive spell. Yet despite your 'inner knowing' your fear of leaving immobilizes you. It is highly probable that your heightened empathy and trusting nature regarding the good will of others, has resulted in you experiencing one or more destructive relationships in your life, that you may still be carrying battle scars from. Maybe you remained in relationship battle in a desperate attempt to salvage the relationship only to return a former shell of who you once were.
Those of us endowed with high empathy, struggle considerably when it comes to matters of the heart, the journey of love is anything but smooth sailing for many. It’s highly possible that on the background of relationship hardship, your anxiety is off the charts, your’ eating and sleeping habits are impacted and not surprisingly you maybe indulging in secret shadow comforts (including emotional eating) just to cope with the agony of it all. This could be at interplay because of a current relationship dilemma or the impact of a succession of relationships where the collateral damage of each of them has become overwhelming for you.
Maybe you are seeking to release yourself from your tendency to pursue emotionally unavailable people or toxic relationships that ultimately leave you hurt, vulnerable (or even traumatized). You may struggle to understand that whilst you have so much to give, the object of your affection is gazing off somewhere else emotionally distant, blowing hot and cold or even perhaps is in another relationship. Yet despite it all, you anxiously obsess over the absence of a returned text, you may find yourself devising all manner of reasons to try to remain in proximity to the person who appears to treat you like you are an afterthought or at worse is abusive in other ways.
When wearing your heart on your sleeve has unintentionally invited unhealthy people into your life.
You may openly wear your heart on your sleeve yet in doing so, somehow you find yourself attracting unhealed people including those who have avoidant or disorganized attachment styles. You may generally be puzzled as to how it is that in exposing yourself to love and trying to make relationships work, you inadvertently end up in emotional agony. Your own heart seems to repeatedly betray you when your blind hope, the pain of saying ‘good bye’, combined with failed relationship promises and any story you tell yourself about your love worthiness all becomes muddled.
"How do I keep getting this love thing so wrong?
Perhaps you spend considerable time reflecting on how your orientation towards seeking love only reinforces that love results in agonizing pain. “It must be me?” “How do I keep getting this so wrong?” In doing so, you perhaps expanded your excuse- making bandwidth leaving you making all sorts of concessions for what is effectively intolerable behaviour. Consequently you are left facing yourself in the mirror each day trying to reconcile an array of accumulating guilt and shame for staying way past the relationships use by date. Along with any maladaptive coping strategies you have employed in an attempt to cope and numb the pain along the way.
"You're just too Sensitive".. 'Too emotional".. "Too everything"
In seeking love, your current or former partners actions only confirm your worst case fears about your perceived self-worth, that to some extent you are indeed ‘unlovable’ or flawed’ in some way. Again we will do anything we can to comfort ourselves from the enormity of this ghastly possibility. And you can pretty much bet that if you have high sensitivity, high empathy and/or as a consequence of things like untreated ADHD, your prone to rejection sensitivity because you have probably felt (or been told), that you are ‘too much’, ‘too sensitive’ or ‘too emotional’ or a litany of other negative terms during the course of your life.
But that's not what happened....maybe I am going crazy?
You may be exhausted continually replaying relationship conversations in a desperate attempt to make sense of what is really going on and it only leaves you even more perplexed. You may find yourself being gas-lit whereby you’re questioning your mental stability, as you respond to some emotionally provocative behaviour (possibly witnessed by others), resulting in your ‘psychological well-being ’ being scrutinized by partners, friends and possibly family.