Living With Sensitivity: A Life of Running Hot and Cold

I don't generally talk a lot about the fact that I'm a "Highly Sensitive Person" (or HSP), meaning that I live with something called "Sensory-Processing Sensitivity."

It's not a "syndrome" or some kind of illness; SPS simply means that you feel a lot and you feel very intensely, but it's also a bit like being a very finely tuned piece of equipment... if you run too long and too hard, you also burn out and crash hard.

Someone once described it to me as being like a radio that can pick up 300 stations where most radios can pick up 50, on a good day. It's great in some respects, but it's also exhausting to track six times more signals than most people are tracking.

In terms of life, for me it has always meant that when I get into something I get into it with a great deal of enthusiasm energy and vigor, and I work extremely hard at it and at getting to know everything as thoroughly and as well as possible, always doing my best and trying my best to become an expert at it. And then? Then — all of a sudden — I get completely overwhelmed and overloaded by what I have been doing and I just more or less crash and disappear.

It's not that I suddenly hate what I'm doing and change direction, I'm just worn out and need a break.

I suppose that can be OK and understandable in some situations, but in other situations it can become a bit awkward. For a couple of months you're employee of the month by a wide margin and then all of a sudden you're getting chinged for excess absenteeism because you're barely showing up.

Oh, but Relationships...

But one of the trickiest places where this manifests as a problem is in interpersonal dynamics.

I've often been told that I can be "rather intense" to be around, and whereas that is definitely true I've also been told that I can be very intense and energetic... and then all of a sudden I disappear.

I don't mean physically; I just mean the intensity is replaced by something that might be described more as a "vague absent-minded avoidance."*

For the longest time, I thought there was something seriously wrong with me until one year I learned that this is actually a relatively common experience among Sensitives in that we go "all in" on a friendship or a new relationship and we're in it fully and around the clock until one day we just hit the energetic "wall" and we have to step away and take a break.

Doesn't mean I no longer like the people I was so intensely friendly or otherwise attracted to, it just means I ran too fast and now I'm worn out.

Of course, most people don't really understand that because they don't operate in that way. It is evidently not the "normal" way for the majority who are more slow but steady. In fact, I'd have to say that the only people who have ever seriously grokked the "running hot and cold" syndrome are fellow sensitives who experience exactly the same thing!

Of course, the recipe for making it work is to have the conversation relatively early on in the proceedings... that this is who you are and this is how you operate. And, above all, the fact that all of a sudden — after being scorching hot for a while — you suddenly cool off for a while doesn't mean that the feelings and the intent stop being there, it just means a chance to cool off and recover is needed!

And it's almost inevitable that this pattern happens except for the extraordinarily rare cases where you encounter someone with whom your bandwidth is so similar to almost identical that you're totally tuned into each other and the ebbs and flows just feel natural rather than awkward.

But finding such people is a bit like finding unicorns!

My cousin Lise — who, tragically, took her own life some years back — was one such person. We'd have long intense conversations for six months... and then suddenly vanish from each other's lives, and then pick up right where we left off, two months later, like nothing had happened.

I'm not sure why I felt compelled to share this here, but this is my personal blog, after all... not just a place where I "write for publication!"

Writing has long been my catharsis... it feels like the place I can formulate things I struggle to find the words to speak. And putting something in writing feels like a way to "remove it" from active thought and make space in my mind for new thought patterns.

And with that, I am going to take my leave and get some sleep. Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!

How about you? Do you tend to be very steady, emotionally? Or do you relate to "running hot and cold?" Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.04.01 00:46 PDT
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