Did you have to make yourself small to survive in our world?
This blog is for those that have felt like they never fitted in, it is for those that were told to stay ever so quiet or small to fit in to the world, or to leave a part of their identity outside the front door before entering their home, or seeing their family, their faith community, school, or even wider society.
It may not have been something about your identity, it may have been something that occurred in your youth or adult life, an innocence that may have been taken away from you due to trauma you faced or something you may have been witness to, or you may have just been a more sensitive person and the people you love or adults you thought you could trust, or the teachers in your life, did not know how to handle your more sensitive nature.
These words may not have been expressed, this may have been an internal sense of danger, or a felt sense of the world not being safe. It may have been an inappropriate joke, or some gossip expressed at the family table, at work or overheard when drinking at the pub, or their on-journey home, or in their home. It may have been in the views expressed by those they love to be it family or friends. Or a reaction to something on the TV, on social media or in the newspaper. Our race, cultural identity, faith, gender identity, sexuality, visible or invisible disability and how this was perceived by others may have made the world around us more dangerous and to survive it we may have had to become more hypervigilant to our surroundings. These small things would have told you to keep yourself small to survive or to keep a part of you invisible.
For me when I look through my school reports, nearly in every school report it talks about that “I need to grow a new skin and be less sensitive’. Not one adult in my life thought about them having the responsibility to find out why I was a highly sensitive person and perhaps if they had put in some proper support or given proper time to talk through and understand what was going around me to turn me into that highly sensitive person. As any child I wanted to be seen, heard, and loved. There was and is fortunately a lot of love in my family which offered the right conditions for me to grow into who I am today, but I often did not feel seen or heard for what was going on in my life. Now looking back in hindsight there were a lot of clues that there were some things wrong. For many us therapists or that work in frontline work, we are wounded healers and that’s what makes us want to support others, so their needs are validated, they feel seen, heard, and held in this world.
In the book ‘The Highly Sensitive Person‘ written by Dr Elaine Aron where she validates these experiences: “These experiences matter. Like a plant, the kind of seed that goes into the ground – your innate temperament is only part of the story. The quality of soil, water, and sun also deeply affects the grown plant that is now you. If the growing conditions are very poor, the leaves, flowers and seeds barely appear. Likewise, as a child you did not expose your sensitivity if your survival required different behaviour”.
As a white person I have the privilege of walking through the world and being invisible, as a majority of the world is white. Though, if those around me perceive my Jewish ethnic looks, my queerness or me being non-binary, or that I walk through the world with my walking frame due to my disability. Whilst I would not like to see these parts of myself as being vulnerable, they do make it more vulnerable to exist in this world. There are also parts of my identity that still to this day I still get the message that I must make small to survive in the world. That is why when those I love, request me today to make those parts of myself smaller. I do try to react with compassion, but my internal child feels silenced, squashed, and invisible.
Often as an adult I must remind myself that “I am good enough as I am’ and if you’re reading this and identifying with anything I am writing, know: “you are good enough too”.
I often work with neurodiverse clients and the neurotypical people around them want them to think in a neurotypical way, but they never become curious as to what if they changed the way they look and walk through the world in a neurodiverse way, would that not make them connect to and understand the person they love better?
As humans we all need the right conditions to grow and if as sensitive adults, we give ourselves permission to create the right conditions for ourselves, what a wonderful world it would be.
Today, I do wonder what if the world adapted to the more sensitive person. What if their needs became more validated? I wonder how more compassionate, gentler, peaceful softer, kinder would our world be?