Papa Coco's Recovery Journal

[SenseOrgan]

You're making sense to me Papa Coco. People who bully attempt to overcompensate for their insecurities by creating a sense of power over others, preferably in the form of terror, which means total power. It impacts those who are more sensitive more, so they are the low hanging fruit. I think perpetrators often perceive sensitivity as weakness. The aspect they despise about themselves and can't stand to be reminded of through others. Perhaps the jealousy is about seeing the actual strength in someone having the courage to be sensitive. If it can be defined/terrorized into a form of weakness, that gives the bully a sense that it can be kept out of awareness by force. It's all false, off course. Nobody has this kind of power.  What is so, isn't impacted by changing the story about it. Only the arrogance of the mind believes so. Narcs are actually extremely insecure behind their mask of grandiosity, which can't be stressed enough.
The battle really is between love and fear. The narc has fallen prey to fear completely. It may seem we have too. But that isn't the case if you're heart is still open. So often things aren't what they seem to be at first sight.

I believe HSP's are at higher risk for (C-)PTSD. As, in general, events impact us more deeply. So starting off life in a toxic environment has a profound impact.

One question, if you don't mind. Is there really anything to forgive for being sensitive?

Much love

[TheBigBlue]

Papa Coco, thank you - truly. What you wrote put words to something I've only recently begun to let myself believe: I wasn't weak growing up. I was perceptive and empathic. And yes ... that made me the easier one to hurt.

Your framing of sensitivity as an inherent trait - even a superpower - really hit home. It mirrors so much of my own story: feeling everything intensely, and then being told that this was the problem, instead of recognizing it as the very thing that helped me notice, adapt, survive.

It's incredibly validating to hear sensitivity described not as a flaw to fix, but as a way of being wired that becomes strength once it isn't living under threat.

Thank you for putting that into words today. It landed exactly where I needed it.

[Papa Coco]

Chart, Thanks for the hug emoji. Those things hold a lot of meaning for me.

Desert Flower, I personally see it as a tragedy that people like you and me who are more sensitive are insulted for it. It's a gift, not a curse. People who can't see that are the cursed. And they pour their own jealousy out on us to make us feel bad about something good.

SenseOrgan,  TO your question about whether I have anything to be forgiven for, I agree with you that rationally, none of us do. But irrationally, thanks to a trauma disorder and conditioning by the jealous adults that put their anger onto us to carry for them, we irrationally believe we can't be forgiven. I hear it a lot in movies, novels, and just plain conversations with peers: the most difficult person there is to forgive is our Selves.  Knowing I don't need to be forgiven doesn't always appease the feeling that I'm unforgivable.

An example from my own life, which I feel pretty sure that others on this forum might have had similar experiences was this story from when I was 7. I was being abused at school. When I was at home, I was caught up in not being good enough for my three adult teen siblings or my parents. One day, I said, "I hate myself." Maybe I was hoping someone would help me through the feeling. Instead, my family roared up and all started yelling at me, "That's a SIN!  God will send you to H--l for that!" Now...think this through: Is that a reaction that makes a child suddenly start loving himself? Not me. It made me even more sure that I was worthless and bad in "god"s eyes. For a child who had been taught that the old man version of god is a real old man who loves and hates whoever he chooses, that's about as bad as anything I could have ever heard. I used to go to sleep at night begging God...BEGGING God to love me, but every day, my church and family would prove he never would. I would go to church and school every single morning with the taste of fear in my mouth and throat. Disgusted at how ugly and stupid and unlovable I was. More proof that I didn't deserve to be forgiven for existing.

That's why I live with a chronic need to find reasons each day why I don't need to be forgiven for having been created in the first place. It's the healing that I manage each day. Any book that proves I'm just a normal person dealing with abuse, is a book that can give me a few days of feeling forgiven until I forget the book and return to my original wiring.

TheBigBlue, I can feel, through your writing, how closely your perceptions and empathy resonate with my experience too. I am glad that my words helped you too. I absolutely feel it is true that we are stronger when we are in step with our healing paths. I am sorry that it happened to both of us, and I'm glad that we are all here on this forum, learning that it wasn't just us. Knowing that we both resonate with the truth, that sensitivity, empathy and kindness are NOT something to be ashamed of, gives me more validation and power to be more okay with being who I am. Who we are.

We're stronger together.

[TheBigBlue]

     

 

[Desert Flower]