Sensitivity that breaks
A trip to my hometown made me see sensitivity in a completely different way
Have you ever been told that you’re too sensitive?
Some scenes from my childhood:
I’m seven years old. My mom, stepdad and I are at a pub in Holland and two men get into a brawl. They don’t see me and I’m squashed between them for a few seconds. I’m terrified. After we leave, I want to talk about what happened because it was so upsetting to me. I ask my mom why the men got in a fight. Why did they shove and punch each other? Why were they so angry? I’m shaking, and I tell her it was scary. My stepdad looks annoyed and says to my mom, “Why is she still talking about it? It’s over already. Why does she have to be so sensitive about everything?”
I’m 11 years old. It’s summer in Hong Kong. It’s hot and humid. My stepmom and half sister are making fun of how frizzy my hair is. I don’t have silky Asian hair because I’m mixed. They say my hair looks like a bird’s nest. My throat constricts and I start to well up.
“You’re not actually crying are you??” shouts my half sister incredulously.
“Oh come on, it was just a joke! Don’t be so sensitive!” my stepmother chides.
I used to HATE my sensitivity. Why did I feel everything so much more intensely compared to other people? Why did things affect me so much? Why wasn’t I tougher?What was wrong with me??
During the lowest points in my life, I was convinced my sensitivity would break me.
I felt like I wasn’t cut out for this world.
As I grew older, I came to realize that sensitivity was what instilled empathy in me, and was also responsible for my intuitive and psychic gifts.
Just recently, however, I made an unexpected discovery about sensitivity. One that took me by surprise, but in hindsight makes perfect sense.
A few weeks ago, I returned to my hometown (home city, if we’re honest), Hong Kong, after almost seven years away. The trip came out of necessity and quite stressful circumstances, but it ended up being one of the best things to happen to me recently.
They say travel coincides with turning points and moments of change in your life. In January, I got a reading from a lovely tarot reader (yes, intuitives get readings too!), and she told me that there was a need for me to zoom out this year so I could get perspective. It’s hard to see when things are really close to your face.
Taking a trip, whether international or local, is one of the best ways to zoom out. Being plucked out of your familiar routines, away from home, and looking at your life from a distance, can help you to get the clarity you’ve been seeking. I like to compare it to looking at a mosaic up close, where it just looks like a jumble of colorful squares, versus stepping back, and viewing it from a distance, where the full picture emerges.
As fate would have it, the book It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn was somehow brought into my awareness right before I left for Hong Kong. I’d heard of this book before, but you know how it goes - it’s all about timing. This time, the timing was right.
I read it on the plane. I read it on the MTR (subway). I read it in my hotel room before bed. I couldn’t put it down. It has been SO interesting to read how trauma, very specific fears, and anxieties are passed on from generation to generation until its story is heard and someone answers the call to heal, and have this spiritual concept be backed up by science.
While reading, one question I kept asking myself was:
How does someone know to answer the call?
I’ve witnessed it in my own family story, and the family stories of my clients, where a parent grew up being mistreated by their parents, and then proceeds to mistreat their own children in exactly the same way.
“Why?” asked my client in our session yesterday. “Why would you knowingly do that to your kids if you know it hurts?”
I’ve asked myself the same question a million times. The thing is, I don’t think it’s always knowingly or consciously done. They are running a program. Or more accurately, the program is running them. (And I don’t mean that they shouldn’t be held accountable. I’m talking about lack of awareness). Family trauma repeats itself as different versions of the same story through each generation.
That is, until, someone finally hears the story. Until someone acknowledges it, and sees it, so it can be healed. Someone becomes aware of the program.
Someone sensitive.
One of my clients describes her sensitivity as her “antenna.” I love that analogy.
It’s such an accurate description of what’s going on:
The sensitive one in the family is able to pick up the dysfunctional pattern with their antenna. First, they pick up a signal that not all is alright. Then comes the mental and emotional anguish, which makes them ask “Why?” and “What is causing this? What is behind this?”
The sensitives of the family are truth seekers.
They will follow the thread that runs through the family.
They’re brave enough to follow the threads under the rug, and in the closet and face the skeletons that are hidden within.
But the bravest part of all, is that they will choose differently and break the cycle.
When I was in Hong Kong, I decided to start following some of these threads, through stories of my grandparents and great grandparents, that I’d never heard before. (More on that in another post!) It was extremely eye opening. There were so many connections between their stories and my own irrational fears and anxieties. It was also very apparent how stories kept repeating themselves. Often in the most uncanny of ways.
I don’t want my kids to repeat these same stories. And so, I know that I need to look at them, warts and all. I’ve been living so much of my grandmother’s and mother’s stories. I’m ready to choose my own story now.
If you’ve ever felt like your sensitivity would break you, know this -
It is the very thing that has woken you up from a trance. The very thing that shows you where healing is needed, and is possible. It shows you where the cycle needs to be broken.