Over-sensitivity: What it the point of it?

 

Dealing with Grief or; When you wear your heart on your sleeve but other people just don't get it & say you must toughen up.

All of my life I have been oversensitive.  I despise being over-sensitive & always have done.  I am that soppy person that will cry over the over-sentimental, children's programmes - even the Christmas Cartoons.   I have always hated being like this, as a child the smallest slight would set me off & certain programmes were banned in my childhood home. (Lassie for example, I was impossible after I watched that).  It wasn't until I was in late teens and early twenties that I learned to hold it together.

Just recently we lost our beloved cat, Shadow the Boot.  I have often talked about Shadow, she has been a constant companion for the past 12 - 13 years & a very good friend.  I was with her when she passed & afterwards it hit me very hard, there were lots of tears & these are still falling.  Grief is strange like that, it catches you out and it doesn't matter if the dearly departed is a person or a pet, the pain is much the same.

Today I happened across an acquaintance who said yes it is sad but it is an animal!  A human fair enough but an animal?  I did not mention it again but I thought; We are animals too, we are a different species but we are animals and why should we not grieve over a beloved pet? 

My mind, like my imagination tends to bounce everywhere, when I start cogitating, I explore corners that have light or darkness in them & I started to wonder where empathy and sensitivity became such a taboo subject. 

The Changing Goddess under the Wiccan Moon.  Trac Davies© 

I have already written the blog for this above painting, but it is Shadow that inspired me to paint her contented & purring presence,  asleep on the stairs.  She was with me during my creative moments, she would spend a lot of time with me when painting & was, in the truest of ways, my Shadow.  My son became an adult with her presence, my daughter knew her all of her life and she has been a staunch friend to both me and my husband.  So, at present, I feel very sad & miss her, this is what this blog is about, the over-sensitive souls that are always being told to get on with things, to toughen up, to get real, pull yourself together or grow up.

Many a time I have had people say to me that I shouldn't wear my heart on my sleeve, well-meaning friends that feel that emotions should be contained & to a point this is right.  Nothing would get done if we all went about bursting into tears or flying into fits of rage as we went about our daily life.  In truth, we as humans bottle a lot of stuff up, if this is not redressed later on and soon after it is bottled,  it will cause problems.  

The Grief & Rage of Boudica. Trac Davies© This is a WIP

However, there comes a time in life when bottling up is not an option, where our hearts are well and truly on our sleeves as they overflow with joy or sadness.  At these times, whatever we do we cannot stop emotions flowing.  Death is one of those times, when we lose someone we love the grief we feel is hard to bear, some of us just dissolve into floods of tears.  Although uncomfortable for many people, including the wailer this is actually healthy.  I have known those that do not grieve, cannot for some reason only to find later on, all those bottled emotions come out of nowhere & hits them like a truck.  The devastation that is caused by such emotions is very destructive.  The healing process then takes longer & is harder.  Unfortunately, with these bottled emotions of loss and grief come other feelings that have also been backed up by the main emotional blockage and in truth, these can make people really ill.


So, really, to sum it all up, sometimes over-sensitivity is a bonus & getting the emotions out into the open, getting it all out of your system is healthier & we heal faster, get over out grief faster.  It doesn't stop the dull ache of loss but it does help us come to terms with things better.  

But what if we can't stop?  What if our emotion is such that we never really accept the passing of a loved one?  I know people that are still in deep grief over a loved one that has passed many years after the event.  I feel this is usually over either the circumstances of the death or other things that has backed up behind the grief, things that are unresolved in that person or for that the two people involved in that relationship.  

It usually takes a while to start accepting that a person you love has passed on, but the ache gets less as time goes by.  I do not know if you really ever get over it all but you so eventually accept it and move on with your life.  Only once you have done this can we say that we have healed as best as we can but if the grief never ends & a passing is not accepted, there is more of a problem than grief alone.

The Tears of Benzaiten. - Trac Davies©

The issue can be that emotion, any emotion is addictive so people appear to become addicted to what they are feeling because it is feeding an inner part of them that feels loss or anger, any intense emotion feeds the ego.  All emotion is addictive and the more you feel it, the more addictive it is, which is why I always say every day is beautiful and try to be as contented as I can.  Life is hard, there are no illusions about that, even for us people that feel we should be riding about on an imaginary unicorn know it, so we might as well make the best of it and feed the inner person with contentment & strive to live for this ethos everyday.  

Ascension -Trac Davies©

It is easy to take a toxic route, in our lifetime we have all done it, everyone of us has this lesson to learn and it might take different forms in different people but it is there and it is one of the traps that Ego sets us.  

Nobody is perfect, so when you find yourself telling someone who is stricken with grief to get over themselves, if you find yourself advising a person with deep depression to pull themselves together, & if you find yourself belittling someone's grief with the "only an animal" attitude; take a good hard look in the mirror.  Then take a good look at the person who, despite appearances is really trying to deal with things the best they can & then try and work out who is the person that gains the most from these little pieces of advice & who is the person that does not.
  

Shadow The Boot.

In Memory of Shadow, The Moody old Boot that crossed Rainbow bridge Tuesday, 7 July, 7h20.

http://tracdaviesartist.blogspot.fr/2014/12/the-changing-goddess-under-wiccan-moon.html
http://tracdaviesartist.blogspot.fr/2015/02/emotions-accepting-rough-with-smooth.html

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Trac Davies - Artist ©