Very Sensitive Children: What Effect It Can Have In Adulthood

Many people are born with a very high sensitivity. They can empathize with their family, with their friends, and with all living beings. This is a very necessary and healthy natural condition, but if it is not properly accompanied by parents, it can end up causing problems for both children and adults.

In principle, empathy and sensitivity are highly desirable qualities, not only for people, but also for our society to grow and evolve. The problem for many girls and boys is that this sensitivity is not usually understood by their environment and, furthermore, many parents do not know how to accompany or defend it.

From sensitivity to blocking

Isabel was a very sensitive and empathetic girl. He was affected and worried about his problems, but he could also put himself, very easily, in the shoes of others. If a friend told her about a setback she had suffered at home, she lived it as her own and tried to help her.

He couldn’t bear to see an animal suffer without wanting to take it home. In her family, she was teased for being so sensitive and scolded for taking all the injured animals that she found in the field.

On the other hand, her friends, knowing Isabel’s predisposition to help them, took advantage of it to burden her with her own responsibilities and not have to take care of them; he did their homework, helped them cheat on exams, and stood up for them when someone messed with them.

As time went by, Isabel took on, in addition to her own, all the concerns and responsibilities of others.

This ended up causing him great emotional suffering.

To avoid this continuous discomfort, the girl began to create a breastplate. His unconscious reasoning was “if I stop feeling so much, they will no longer be able to take advantage of me and I will not suffer anymore.”

Why is the emotional shell created?

This emotional shell grew in his adolescence and, in adulthood, it not only strengthened, but also, with each negative experience, hardened. If at some point she tried to connect with someone and they took advantage of her again, her armor became more and more rigid.

In her adult life, Isabel was a cold and distant person. In fact, this was his reason for consulting when he came seeking therapy. He had so blocked his emotions that he did everything mechanically. “I’ve become an insensitive robot and I don’t like it at all, but I don’t know what to do to change it,” he told me on our first date.

We have to understand that this process of creating the shell was not elaborated on purpose or consciously. It was an automated response from Isabel’s unconscious to try to stop suffering from the abuse she received from abroad.

In the past, the breastplate served its purpose, it was the only way the girl found to defend herself from others. As an adult, Isabel, who did not know how to handle her sensitivity without being harmed by others, also did not know how to dispose of this armor that, in the long run, had proved equally damaging.

In her work, in therapy, Isabel understood the damage that this shell had caused her. He understood that it was not the proper way to defend himself and began to break free of the stiffness.

How to unlock emotions

In her sessions, she was able to recognize that it was not fair how she was treated at home, or how her friends had taken advantage of her. Also, he was able to verbalize and take out all the damage they had caused him. In addition, she promised to start taking care of herself to give herself all the support that she had not received in her childhood.

With great care and patience, she began to connect with her own emotions and those of others. His stiffness began to relax, and even some muscle contractures that he had suffered for years disappeared.

However, this was only the first step on her healing journey. In next week’s article, we will see what negative effect this release from her breastplate had on Isabel and how we work to find a solution.