The Grip of Anxiety and Highly Sensitive People (Part 1)

In the past year, as I have met fellow sensitives at live events for The Empath’s Journey, one of the questions that has come up repeatedly is “How can I be less anxious as a sensitive person?”

Anxiety is a broad subject, and of course, no two people are anxious for the same reason.

Being highly sensitive also creates certain kinds of unique situations that can lead to anxiety and overthinking, such as being able to sense other people’s feelings and trying to deal with this discomfort by “fixing” other people’s problems.

As highly sensitive people, our boundaries can sometimes feel porous and easily invaded.

So, there are definitely unique situations that highly sensitive people face, and yet, anxiety is also just part of everyone’s life in the world we live in today. There is chaos, division, the threat of global pandemics (The Coronavirus is spreading as we speak, and here in the United States, people are lining up at places like Costco to stock up on groceries and other supplies.)

The world we live in is chaotic. It is unpredictable. And yet, some of us feel more anxiety than others.

As someone who has struggled with anxiety a lot (although I never called it that), I thought I would start doing a series of posts on this topic. There’s a lot to talk about here, and in every “Anxiety” post I do from here on, I will talk about one or more reasons for why you feel anxious as a sensitive person.

In this post, let’s talk about the connection between a history of trauma and present-day anxiety.

If you are a highly sensitive person with a history of trauma, anxiety will hit you harder.

I know it isn’t fair. I know it is hugely frustrating to feel shaky time and again in your life as something changes outside and you feel the tremors inside. As someone with a history of trauma, I have railed against this fact a lot in my own life.

But this is something important to acknowledge. In the past year or so, it has become much clearer to me that a lot of my problems with being highly sensitive are not actually problems with sensitivity. They are problems related to being a highly sensitive person with a history of trauma.

I have known about differential susceptibility for many years now. But I didn’t make all the connections until recently when I started encountering more highly sensitive people and noticing that not all of them reacted to anxiety-provoking situations in exactly the same way.

Highly Sensitive People and Differential Susceptibility.

So, what is differential susceptibility?

Basically, it means that both good and bad events sink in deeper for sensitive people. It means that when something traumatic happens to you, you are more affected by it than people who are not highly sensitive (although, of course, trauma affects everyone).

On the flip side, if you grow up in a supportive environment and have nourishing life experiences, the good will also sink in deeper for you than it does for non-HSPs. (Read a great piece on differential susceptibility on Dr. Elaine Aron’s website here.)

So, there are two sides to the coin. But if you landed up with the wrong end of the stick, that’s not very comforting, is it?

The connection between trauma and high sensitivity is why some sensitive people might be viewed as worriers or very pessimistic. Trauma primes us to be on high guard, on high alert, and always scanning our environment for danger.

Although highly sensitive people are cautious by nature, the lines between caution and fear blur when there is trauma involved.

Unpredictable events that you can’t control will create a lot more anxiety in you than they do in people who don’t have these effects of past trauma to deal with.

Let me give an example. Last year, in July, there was a mass shooting in Gilroy, which is a few hours’ drive from where I live. Three people were killed and many others were wounded. The gunman, in the end, killed himself.

Gilroy has an annual Garlic Festival during which this happened. It’s a fun, local event I have faintly thought of visiting sometime. Some friends of ours were also planning to go to the festival that day and thankfully didn’t go.

So, this all felt very close to home.

Although nothing happened to me personally, I remember feeling very depressed by it.

It was extremely anxiety-provoking. And of course, a lot of people felt exactly this way.

But I think, just from observation, this sense of feeling shaken and these dark and muddy feelings continued for a lot longer for me. It was harder for me to take my attention away from this incident. It was a lot harder to let it go.

I think this sense of the world being an unsafe place that might shift at a moment’s notice is something that a lot of trauma survivors deal with for years upon long years after the traumatic incident has happened. The residue of trauma often lives inside our body, and we have to do a lot of inner work to let it go.

So, if you are a highly sensitive person with trauma, I want to say, I know it is very tough. I know there are times you get anxious about things that don’t affect other people as deeply. I know why that is.

It’s because you have spent years and possibly decades untangling the weeds of trauma from inside yourself.

It’s because you have a wound. It’s because exposure to negative events literally changes our brains.

So, please have compassion for yourself. Please be aware why you are getting anxious, and instead of judging that anxiety, love that wounded part inside you. Take care of it. Bandage it. Soothe it. Comfort it.

It deserves your love.

You deserve your love.

And there is a silver lining in all this. Just because highly sensitive people are so responsive, when positive interventions are made (such as therapy or using bodywork or some other practice), you will respond as deeply to those interventions as you did to trauma.

There is something inside you that will drink in all the good experiences and be truly nourished by them. There is something inside you that makes you resilient just because you are sensitive, not inspite of it.

So, let’s claim that resilience more and more. Let’s nourish our sensitive souls. Let’s give ourselves all the good things — attention, emotional support, good words, beauty, creativity, laughter — that will help us thrive and grow.

Let’s take care of ourselves.

We, as much as anyone else, need to be our own beloved.