Have you ever heard the term HSP before? If yes, do you think you fall into the category of a highly sensitive person? If the term is new to you, HSP stands for highly sensitive people or person(s) and it refers to people who are overly aware of their surroundings and everything going on there.
If you are in a relationship and you discover that you take things too seriously, or your feelings are always hurt by the littlest actions, you are probably a highly sensitive person.
Being a highly sensitive person has its perks but downsides. Ultimately, the consequences of high sensitivity sometimes outweigh its benefits. If you are the type who takes things too seriously or the constant need to have control over everything, you will always have a conflict.
Another thing that will stress highly sensitive people is confrontation. Highly sensitive people tend to avoid any form of conflict that may heighten their emotions and make them feel forced empathy towards the wrong party.
You may have found yourself in a situation whereby you are right and the other person is wrong. But, because you can’t deal with too much hassle, you let them have their way. Always turning the other cheek won’t serve you well in the long run. More so, some people, including your partner, will run roughshod over your time and again until you learn how to say stop.
That said, this article addresses how to stop being sensitive in a relationship and gain more control over your high sensitivity personality rather than allow it to control you.
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There are so many concepts with similar traits and if you’re not careful, you will make the mistake of claiming an idea that doesn’t fully describe who you are or what you are going through. High sensitivity is not a term to throw around as you please. So, you need to compare and contrast the attitudes of highly sensitive people with your personality.
Only after then can you conclude whether you are easily prone to high sensitivity in almost all cases. The knowledge from this discovery will help you move on to the next step, which is knowing how to handle the sensitivity.
You must ask some questions to arrive at the answers that keep eluding you. If you are simply going through a rough period or your hormones are raging and you translate it to mean high sensitivity, you might be making your circumstances more than it is.
As such, examine how you feel, why you are feeling that way, and what to do to feel better. Don’t arrive at hurried conclusions that you are highly sensitive when your hormones are the ones making you feel less of yourself.
Another heat way to stop being too sensitive is to remove yourself from the scenario and view it from a distance. If your friend is the highly sensitive one and her unique situation keeps landing her in one conflict after the other, what would you advise him or her to do?
When you care about people you will do your part to help them make sense of life no matter how difficult stuff may seem. Put yourself in the third party position and advise your hypothetical self on how to go about the issue.
One thing that most people, especially highly sensitive people don’t realize is that you don’t have to address every issue or let yourself feel every emotion. If everyone were to give ear to every problem or allow all kinds of emotions to flow through them, people will be easily worn out.
You need to understand the life rule of choosing your battle and filtering the kind of emotions you allow yourself to feel. When you can come to terms with this part of yourself, you can easily channel your sensitivity to other productive stuff.
Highly sensitive people have a razor-sharp connection to different stimuli and words are one of those stimuli they respond to most. If you observe that words play a major role in influencing your feelings, you should try to use the same verbal means of communication to boost yourself when you’re feeling overwhelmed.
Life and relationships come with stress which usually appears magnified more than it is for highly sensitive people. Words are powerful and capable of centering someone easily prone to being destabilized.
Speak positive, uplifting, and calming words to yourself in such times. You can also write it boldly in your special corner or have that one person who you can rely on to buoy your spirit when you’re down. If you are in a relationship, your partner will be the best person to do this for you.
What do you usually do when things are going out of control in your relationship? Do you lash out when you should be calm? Do you keep quiet when you should express your mind? Do you just shut down because you can’t deal with anything at that point?
What you do or say in reaction in a panicky scenario will determine how easily you’re able to come back to your balanced self. Reacting properly to bad things in your relationship will help preserve the relationship. Rather than wait for your partner to trigger you, be proactive, and do things when they should be done.
As a highly sensitive person, it is easy to forget yourself while you are buried under the need of others, especially your partner. When love is added to the mix and you’re in a relationship with someone you care so much about, your emotions can intensify to a fevering pitch and you will lose your sense of self.
In this case, you need to step back a bit and retrospect on how you’ve been handling your life and how to feel better every day. When you are not yourself, you cannot serve others, including your partner, as you desire to.
Relationships will come and go but your life and happiness remain the most important things to focus on.
Many people in relationships try to stifle their attitudes just to satisfy their partners which is detrimental to what the course of life should be. Highly sensitive people are even more at risk of either emotional explosion or erosion which is a result of trying to please their better halves.
If your partner is finding it difficult to understand your actions or why you think differently from other people do, you may need to make him understand in several ways until he is more familiar with your peculiarity.
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If you’ve tried your best to let him know and he still cannot understand or love you as you are, it might be best for you to leave the relationship. As long as you accept that your sensitivity is forever and you can only keep it under control, not erase it, you will do fine and eventually get a partner who will understand you completely.
As someone with heightened sensitivity, you need to set boundaries no one, including yourself, can cross. When you don’t set boundaries, people will overuse your generosity towards them. They will burden you with their issues while yours are ready to blow up in your face.
Setting boundaries will help you know when to keep people at length when necessary and when to help them without shoving your concern aside. Boundaries will make people respect your wishes and not go overboard with their expectations.
Highly sensitive people can fall into the hole of dependency on their partners if they are not careful. When you notice that in most of your relationships, you are always relying on your partner to do things for you, there is a problem.
While you may give your all to people most of the time, including your partner, you shouldn’t always expect that they will do the same. People are fickle and it’s a human thing to be selfish sometimes. Therefore, you need to focus on yourself just as much as you do so much for others.
Highly sensitive people have a hero complex because they easily empathize with people in pitiful conditions. If you are the type who wants to do nice things for everyone who crosses your path, it will be difficult to handle too many relationships at the same time.
If you are also in a romantic relationship, your partner may not fully understand why you are acting as the Mother Theresa of our time. You need to realize that even superheroes cannot save everyone and you can only do so much to reduce people’s pain.
Even for your partner, you can only do your best. If bad things happen, you might not be able to stop them in time.
Vampires may exist only in movies but there are real-life bloodsuckers who thrive on using people to further their ambitions and live good lives at your expense. This set of people don’t care if you have anything left afterward. Because they know you are willing to do so much, they will take from you till you have nothing left to give.
Some women end up in relationships with emotion sucking men who will drain them of their will, energy, and time. If you think you are one of such women in such a relationship, you need to leave that man ASAP.
Another thing that plagues a highly sensitive person is low esteem which occurs when you feel you aren’t doing enough or feel you’re less than you should be.
When you are in this mood, you may start seeking validation from your partner for everything you do. He will, in turn, consider it nagging and men hate when their women nag. When you start feeling emotionally down, it’s best to turn inward and boost yourself up again instead of constantly turning to your partner.
When you are highly sensitive, you can be easily viewed as a pushover because you avoid confrontations a lot. When people see you as someone they can mess with and get away with it every time, they won’t have any reservations about treating you as they wish.
If your past relationships were built on your timidity and your previous partners treated you badly, you shouldn’t allow that trend to continue. Stand your ground and let your word stand.
When it comes to healing, you need to understand that no one will help you do the ultimate healing, except yourself. Your therapist can’t do more than guide you towards your healing, your partner and well-meaning folks can’t do more than encourage you to mend.
The best form of healing is the type you allow yourself to do wholeheartedly. Whether your wounds are physical or emotional, you need to be self-sufficient enough to attain your healing.
The number one rule to living a full life is to love yourself more first before you dedicate a large portion of that love to your partner. When you don’t put your self-care first, you will be inhibited in the way you love other people, including your partner.
You can only give more when you have more than enough love to go around. To avoid going into conflict with yourself whenever you are at a crossroad, you should self-evaluate to see if you’re feeding your soul enough to feed other people’s souls.
Another error that most sensitive people make is to think they are always responsible for other people’s happiness. That you love your partner doesn’t mean that you should take on full responsibility for his joy or be always focused on not making him angry.
The more you try to satisfy him always, the more conflict will arise from your good intentions.
Overly sensitive folks are usually taking everything seriously and so, they expect that every relationship they enter must lead to marriage or at least, a committed relationship.
You need to learn that not all relationships will lead to something serious and the best thing for your kind of person is to notice when your partner is ready to move on to someone else so you can bounce too.
When you are self-aware and self-sufficient, you will have a strong connection to yourself that no bad encounter can easily break. With strong self-sufficiency, your sensitivity won’t present that much of a problem because you are fully aware of your strength and weakness and, you know which one to enable at different times.
As a highly sensitive person, you need to get away from all the regular activities you expose yourself to and take the time to hibernate, refresh, and recharge. Getting away from your partner and things that trigger heightened emotions is good for you and it will help you stay on top of every circumstance you might face.
Someone prone to height sensitivity needs to maintain a balanced lifestyle. You can’t afford to feel too much or too little because your life doesn’t thrive on extreme ends of the spectrum. You need to maintain a balance of health and fun in your relationship and individual life.
Just like the getaway trip, consider going on a long due vacation, or taking a weekend break to a place you’ve always wanted to go. As long as you come back refreshed and ready to tackle fresh challenges, you’ll be fine.
It is difficult to stop a sensitive person from being completely sensitive but it is possible to control how sensitive you usually feel. You can stop being so sensitive by reducing the way you focus on other people’s needs and how you let their actions affect you.
To control your emotions in a relationship, you need to accept that you are sufficient on your own and tell yourself that even without a man, you can do fine by yourself. When you have this at the forefront of your mind, you won’t be badly affected by what your partner does.
You are not immune to high sensitivity because of the way you’re naturally wired. As such, you are attuned to other people’s pain, joy, displeasure, comfort, and whatever emotion they are currently feeling.
You can date a highly sensitive person by firstly understanding that he cares so much about you and you shouldn’t take advantage of his love for you. He probably puts your needs before his and is ready to do anything to make you happy. However, you must be ready to deal with the downside of dating a highly sensitive person, which is that he can become so overwhelmed that you will feel overwhelmed by extension.
Being sensitive is not entirely a weakness. More often than not, even though sensitivity can become too much for the giver and receiver, it feeds the intuition which can save you from a lot of pain you might face if you don’t yield to how you feel.
Empathy and deep connection are peculiar factors that sensitive people express towards other people. However, if you’re not careful, you will lose these factors in yourself. The purpose of the tips in this article is to help you channel these factors towards living a fuller life and build meaningful relationships without losing yourself.
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Whether you're married or just started dating someone, infidelity rates have risen by over 40% in the past 20 years, so your concerns are justified.
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This tool can help by uncovering hidden social media and dating profiles, photos, criminal records, and much more, potentially putting your doubts to rest.
