Being highly-sensitive - How to turn it into an asset - Therapeutic Support in Nice

For a long time I suffered because of my hyper-sensitivity and empathy. Teachers called me ‘too sensitive’, ‘too emotional’, ‘needs to develop a shell’, ‘touchy’, ‘too dreamy’, ‘too emotional’. In short, I was always too much or too little according to the standards of the person judging me. Feeling inadequate in most contexts, I grew to close in on myself, cutting myself off from this exponentially more powerful humanity. The repressed emotions of my childhood traumas coupled with this ability to feel the joy and suffering of the world in my gut were too much, especially for me.

 

So for years I adopted the behaviour I thought was expected of me: you don't ask yourself questions, you just go for it, you put your emotions and feelings aside, you succeed in your job at all costs, you live a normal life with a boyfriend and a house, you don't say what you think when it bothers you, you please people to be loved and above all you don't show your anger, sadness or joy because it's embarrassing for everyone... A non-exhaustive list of the criteria of a respectable and functional person according to our society. Then one day, having reached the height of the success I could achieve by living behind masks, I threw it all away (I'll tell you about it later) and started on the road back to myself, a long process of deconditioning that's well worth the loss of false selves it entails.
 

Hypersensitivity is first and foremost an ability to sense and interpret subtle energies. It's a finesse of perception that enables us to detect emotional substance and certain psychic information in the verbal and non-verbal fabric of places, relationships, people, nature and animals. It's a real superpower that requires you to work on yourself to make yourself aware of it, and to set up a special ecology to nurture it and develop its potential. Every hypersensitive person is different, but there are some things in common:
 

Hyperaesthesia: the openness of senses that are sharpened and pick up more information than the average person (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, smell, taste). Hence the discomfort caused by excessive noise, abrasive light, synthetic perfumes, crowds, itchy labels, etc.

Hypnosis can help to cleanse buried emotions associated with certain life traumas that worsen reactivity. When emotional reactivity drops, so does embarrassment. Hypnosis also helps to regulate reactions to stimuli in the moment by programming certain attitudes and behaviours that are adapted to protect oneself while clearly communicating one's needs to others. It is by respecting their own sensitivity and respecting others through communication that hypersensitive people cease to be ‘touchy aliens’ in the eyes of others. Well, in the eyes of some others, there will always be those who don't try to understand. You can't please everyone, and that too is harder for the hypersensitive person to accept, but acceptance is something you have to work at.

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Branching thinking: a very active brain that quickly establishes links between things and attributes a large number of possibilities to each thought. Hypersensitive people can sometimes be overwhelmed by this creative influx of possibilities and may find it difficult to prioritise things in an order of importance. As a result, they can freeze in the face of this panoply of choices produced by their brain, no longer knowing how to move forward in a linear fashion. This can result in a student with a wealth of ideas but completely frozen in the face of exam instructions. Or an employee unable to contribute actively to a meeting because they are so inundated with creative ideas that they are unable to prioritise and verbalise them. The influx of information can cause stress, and emotions that are already overflowing become difficult to manage: So we're embarrassed to show so little self-control, to stammer, to sweat, to appear illogical, emotional or crazy. Yet this creativity is a major asset in all circumstances: in your personal life with your partner, your children, your friends, at work. All we have to do is learn to channel it: breathe, move, bring the focus back to the present moment, on one thing, to find the Ariadne's thread that leads to the next action. And step by step, we hypersensitives find the right way to express the fascinating life that teems within us. Hypnosis is an excellent way to develop this self-presence, to create a fertile and reliable alliance with our unconscious parts that feed our minds with so many possibilities and novelties.

 

Hyper-emotionality: Hypersensitive people feel emotions 200%. Their own emotions are like powerful waves that trigger a flood of bodily sensations, vibrations, pounding, tingling, hot and cold. It's hard to appear placid in a discussion when such a wave is sweeping through us, just as it's hard not to scream in a rollercoaster carriage. We try to imitate our more ‘normal, rational and Cartesian’ fellow human beings by containing the emotional energy that pushes us out, but it's often a losing bet, and that's just as well. Our society wants to produce controllable, docile, predictable automatons, so as not to jeopardise a well-oiled system of productivity and domination: but that's without counting on the hyper-sensitive, those sacred rebels of the body and emotions. Hypersensitives judge themselves by their emotional nature, so subtly does society condemn them from birth to death. The more they judge it, the more violent and uncontrolled their emotional reactions become. There are two things to do here: digest the traumas and accept them. How much of my emotions are reactions to traumas from my past and can therefore be digested with the help of a therapist? This work reduces the reaction to triggers and helps us to have much calmer relationships and more self-control in situations that are usually stressful. Which part is a ‘normal’ reaction, but amplified due to my edgy nature, to life within me and around me. Cleared of their past charge, emotions are indispensable guides for navigating this earthly existence: anger pushes me to set limits and take a stand, sadness invites me to vent, fear urges me to be vigilant, joy pushes me to expand and connect with others.

 

Empathy: Here, there are several degrees of sensitivity. At the beginning, there is mental empathy, which is the ability to put oneself in someone else's place through thought, without any particular resonance of this empathy in the body. Then there is emotional empathy, which is the ability to resonate with the emotional state of the other person. Then there's hyper-empathy, the ability to feel another person's physical sensations in the exact place where they feel them. The hyper-empathist may feel a stomach ache, a hip ache or a headache that does not belong to him or her. This latter variety of hypersensitivity lends itself well to becoming a healer of all kinds.

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Empathy is generally the thing that hypersensitives find most distressing, especially when you don't know what's happening to you. It's very disconcerting and sometimes very painful to feel other people's emotions and sensations without knowing that they don't belong to us.

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Hypnosis can help you to become aware of and optimise this capacity by using breathing to transmute energy, imagination to protect and ground yourself, and presence to discern what belongs to me and what belongs to the other person. Presence is generally the best way to protect yourself. The more I know myself, the more I am in my body, the more I know what is mine. The more I'm lost in my thoughts, the more my porous nature lets in all kinds of outside energy. Most hypersensitive people find it hard to really be in their bodies at first; they find it uncomfortable to be in pain linked to traumas. It's vital that hypersensitive people re-appropriate their bodies, through yoga, hypnosis, dance, sport, martial arts, whatever. Their body is their instrument, and like a musical instrument, it needs to be used, tuned and cared for. Subconscious intelligences such as intuition and instinct are felt in the body. The hypersensitive person who does not inhabit his body is not connected to his personal power and suffers his sensitivity more than anything else. In order for the hypersensitive person to take their place and deploy all the richness of their talent that the world so desperately needs, they must therefore:

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- heal past traumas to purify their emotions and become more present

- Cultivate presence in your body to refine your sense of instinct and intuition

- Set up an ecology to preserve yourself: sleep, diet, solitude, free time for creation and self-expression, healthy friendships, regular contact with nature.

- Work on your personal power: the 3rd chakra for yogis (manipura). An excellent mantra for hypersensitive people that may seem aberrant to others: ‘there is no energy more powerful than me’. To be repeated before going into groups, crowds or any place where the tendency is to be overwhelmed by the energy of others.

 

Discover the specialised support of L'Étincelle de Juliette

If you need support with healing from trauma, addiction, managing hypersensitivity or emotional dependency, I offer hypnotherapy and Human Design sessions tailored to your needs. Discover how my methods can help you overcome emotional trauma and release the blocks that hold you back. For those struggling with addictions such as Bulimia or Anorexia, my hypnotherapy sessions will help you find a lasting balance. If you're particularly sensitive to emotions, explore my page dedicated to being Highly Sensitive to learn how to better manage your emotions and interactions. I offer sessions in Nice and the Côte d'Azur, as well as hypnotherapy online, so you can benefit from my services wherever you are. For more details, discover my holistic approach in the Hypnotherapy section.​​

 

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Please note: Hypnotherapy, EFT and EMDR, even when practiced by a therapist, are in no way substitutes for medicine. All medical conditions must be followed up by medical and/or therapeutic professionals. Furthermore, I am not a psychiatrist. Consequently, I do not make therapeutic diagnoses, and no medication should be modified or stopped without the advice of the medical staff who prescribed it. However, I am trained in psychopathology and psychotraumatology. In other words, I'm able to detect the symptoms of the most common psychological and personality disorders. And above all, I'm able to use the tools I've developed to help you resolve the emotional distress that is the cause of these disorders.