Story New here! Too sensitive for this world?

[andromeda14]

Hello everyone, I just wanted to add my voice to the mix

I'm a little hesitant to tell my 'full story' out of fears of identifying myself but very very long story short: suffered with various anxiety disorders since childhood...they worsened in my 20's, then came the end of an incredibly emotionally abusive relationship which triggered c-PTSD and caused me to develop agoraphobia...had a complete nervous breakdown where I lost all cognitive function and became a shell of a person and tried to ctb a few times during what can only be described as 'episodes' (I don't think I was suffering from psychosis as I was acutely aware of myself...it was just that my brain had completely switched off...difficult to describe...tried to run out in-front of cars impulsively ) and although I am recovered from the nervous breakdown and about 85% recovered from agoraphobia, I feel that I have no emotional resilience. I have always been a deep thinker and feeler and these have fundamentally been my problems throughout life. I feel everything much more deeply than I think I'm meant to and I find this impossible to bear. I genuinely can't handle the feelings anymore. It's just too much. All the pain and suffering in my own life and around me I feel like a giant weight on top of me and I feel completely powerless to do anything. Nobody around me is like this or feels the way I do, it's always made me feel abnormal. My emotional reactions to situations are usually really disproportionate.

Also I started a new relationship and all it has shown me is that I am so irreparably damaged and entirely unable to form healthy relationships due to overwhelming fears of abandonment and deep, deep attachment issues. I'm 30 years old and being left on read can trigger a meltdown in me...this is just not normal. I don't want to be this person.

I've been in and out of therapy for 15 years, counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists...no one can help.

I have a psychology degree...didn't help. Left me feeling more hopeless that it's not so much a mental illness but just my personality and therefore cannot be changed. i've looked into the whole Highly sensitive person thing and that looks like it's me. I'm also incredibly neurotic which is something I also can't change.

I don't even know if this is at all coherent but yeah...I've spent a good proportion of my life wishing I wouldn't wake up in the morning and the feelings have intensified so much recently that I now actively want to ctb because I'm exhausted. I just feel like I'm not meant for this world at all. The thought of having to deal with these feelings for the foreseeable is too overwhelming, I don't want to experience anymore pain or suffering or have to witness it around me anymore because life is absolutely awful. I don't want to carry on putting myself through the pain of relationships that just trigger me more. But I hate being alone. It's all just a mess...

Anyway. That's me. That's where I'm at...sorry for the ramble

 

[speck]

Welcome! I understand your position, I also lack emotional resiliency. Especially with situations that bring up abandonment issues- of all the traumas to be imprinted on a person, abandonment is the most difficult to treat and manage, I think. It's a very primal feeling when you see patterns that seem to culminate in your abandonment. I also think it's difficult to wake up and try to carry on day in and day out and just see the suffering in the world- although I am suffering myself, I feel as if I am carrying the weight of others as well. I hope you find some comfort in knowing that other people are here with similar situations and viewpoints!

 

[SoIntoYou]

I think you need to hear this. This deep thinking and sensitivity that you feel is a natural human condition. I don't know if you believe in evil non-human forces (think The Devil), but they exist and they put a top-down stress on the entire planet. Pretty much everybody's problems are related to this stress. It's not you that's the problem. Let that sink in and give you strength. You can do what I do and fight back, but if you can't, taking your own life is something that you shouldn't be ashamed of. In fact, it's the most powerful and responsible thing you can do. There is a life after death and I can explain it in detail if you want.

 

[Wisdom3_1-9]

Your comment about your relationship reminded me of this line from Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman:

We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new.

A lot of what you said resonates with me — the idea that some of us perhaps lack the emotional resiliency to handle what the world throws at us, both on a personal level and on the global level. Perhaps we are just so in-tune with the world that it's too much for us to bare. There's so much suffering, so much evil, so much heartbreak, so much hardship... how does anyone go on? We see others in situations we deem to be worse than ours, but they cling to life and have the strength to go on. We just want to get out.

 

[ebt88]

Have u picked a ctb method?

 

[draw a circle]

Hi! I'm also a psychology major, a little bit away from graduation but thesis is making me suicidal. Studying psychology in college doesn't help shit for me lol. i hope you can find what you're searching for here. Best of luck for you

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

I was thinking about this thread today because I'm experiencing some emotional suffering about things that other people did that felt really awful. It felt awful because it was awful.

I realized that when people say someone is too sensitive, they're desensistized. They're also unaware of when things are really awful. They seem to have protection, but I don't think it's armor, I think perhaps for some it's more protection that is dissociative, and so when someone else is sensitive, it triggers them because their way of coping is to feel safe by being unaware or to tell a different story about what's happening than what really is.

I realized that these awful-feeling feelings give me information. They relate to my moral compass and my boundaries. They are an alert to tell me when something is wrong and unsafe.

I realized I would rather have these feelings and know something is wrong than to be desensitized and unaware. In some ways, they keep me safe because they warn me when something is off before I'm consciously aware of it. I may not be able right away to figure out what it is, but my feelings are my friends and they seek to protect me. It would be easier if I wasn't feeling them as if the past were happening now, and that's probably in some ways related to PTSD, but I think making friends with the feelings like this and appreciating them serving me may help them to ease up a bit.

So thanks for posting, @andromeda14, because it may have helped contribute to my resilience and my ability to recover and be more present, even though the present is shit. It's so shit, I don't need it compounded with the past, which makes things more unmanageable. Maybe if my feelings know I appreciate them and am able to listen to them when I need them in the present, which will empower me, they won't be so strong about things that have already passed and in which I didn't have power.