Living with this much feeling

My sensitivity: its shadow and its gift

stunning shot of her son by Sally Mann, American photographer

Others picked my words for me. Not out of cruelty, maybe not even full awareness, but still – they picked at my brave yet tender heart. The wide open flank of a child born porous. I translated the shockwaves of my emotions into the need to lock myself up in some deep well, a safe place to study how others moved through the world with seeming ease. Their words felt grown up and fluent, mine reluctant, only forming.

They echoed back a smaller version of me, made it sound flawed. “She is shy, silent, in deep waters,” they’d say, unaware of how hostile that sounded to me. Inside my childhood self, it became imperative to stay calm and collected on the outside, to only let the crisis quietly rage within. Did they ever sense danger the way I could, this critical need to retreat? Surely, this didn’t warrant a scene. All I had to do was survive one more terribly long moment and keep it together. Like this:

We sit down for lunch. My sister says something clever to my mother, some poignant opinion, presented with loud conviction. I add something, just to join in, but they don’t respond. Was there an exchange of glances, or did I just imagine that? Their quick banter continues toward a crescendo, followed by their laughter, rising like a tide, leaving me outside of its current. I’m unmoored; still at the table, but already floating elsewhere, far from shore.

This thing – this dreaded sensitivity – it arrived in waves. Gently, ongoing, or sudden and crushing, laying a heavy blanket of shame onto my heart. It was blinding me, disorienting me, obstructing clear thinking, making me wonder: How can I survive this much feeling?

I schlepped it through the years, like a heavy stone in my pocket weighing me down. Feeling fully was a danger to shield from and made me turn to strategies of hesitation. Surrendering to aliveness and joy could feel misplaced in the face of such heaviness, like light in a sealed room. Outwardly, I tried to smile instead of breaking down, reserving such defeat only for the times when I could no longer hold the barricades, when the center had to give way.

This was the call to insulate more and create yet better adaptations. This was my own race to tame this hard-to-control world and keep my sensitive core safe. And wow, it worked. I became the observer, the quiet thinker, the likable, the sweet one. The one to be chosen.

Only that there was this trouble: the more I achieved to insulate from emotional struggle, the more I shrank. In taming the world I also tamed myself, dulling the edge of my very own nature and aliveness. It was a Faustian deal for survival. Small, accumulating self-betrayals. A translation of myself into something legible, less wild and more palatable. Was the bargain worth it?

It took me time to grow to understand this. At first, there was a vague ache, a grief for something I couldn’t locate. Then I started to see the horrendous cost: how in emotionally retreating and abandoning parts of myself, I had also betrayed and locked away parts of my own truth. The dark inner shadow had turned me against my own innocent and noble self. The irony. In trying to escape the original ache, I was deepening the very void I was trying to outrun. Not just the pain itself, but my insulation from it. That was the real exile, the swamp of living out of integrity.

The ache swelling and my heart revolting, I got tired of my own strategies. And underneath it all, there was something beckoning. Now I know that this something was my future self whispering, subtly pulling me toward my wholeness and own adventures.

This journey carried me far from my homeland, onto a new continent, where I practiced the bravery of my wild becoming. I slowly grew into enough trust to continue to follow the North Star of my creative, authentic self. My eyes and heart opened to the beauty and love, all around me and within reach. And this is how I slowly saved myself: by building the precious life that had been waiting in store as my heart’s blueprint all along.

I came to understand that this sensitivity wasn’t just something to manage, but a kind of special intelligence. It kept me safe, let me listen carefully to others, and – maybe best of all – gave me embodied access to my own subtle intuition, plus the many synchronous nods the world offered to me.

In this way, the shadow I had tried to lock away hadn’t only guarded me, but had also been guarding something for me. The lock and key were the same: my own magic of seeing feelingly. My own deep river wasn’t buried, but flowed with quiet abundance, carving its path. Waiting for me to listen and let its current carry me toward what I value most. Attention, presence, language, love.

This connection to my core remains a sustaining mystery. Putting one true word after another for this piece felt vulnerable, and slow. It took me several weeks. Or, who knows, maybe a whole lifetime, after all. It’s both a release and return to something familiar, only that I can now live my life more in relation with and service to the world.

It’s as if my sensitivity has become something akin to a lifelong friend. And to my mother and sister: I love you so wildly, I may never find the words to properly express.