Cari-bein'

Sensitivity Training

If I had ten dollars for every time I've been accused of being "overly sensitive," I would have retired long ago. But here's the thing: after being bombarded with that phrase by others for decades, I occasionally catch myself posing that question to myself. "Am I just being too sensitive?" After hearing it directed toward me for so long, it's like I've adopted the label for myself on some level. Sometimes we can't help but think, "I don't think I'm that way. But if they all do, they must see/know something I don't." Bullshit.

It took me the longest time to realize, and accept, that I'm entitled to my feelings--even if others disagree with them. I grew sick and tired of hearing people tell me that I "shouldn't" feel a particular way, or that I "should" just "get over it." No, pal, YOU get over yourself. In fact, why don't you stay over there--within your own feeling boundaries--and leave me the hell alone! (Not that I have any energy on this or anything.)

I used to wonder why I was being accused of being "too sensitive." Did others not feel hurt or upset or angry when they were treated with disrespect or spoken to abusively or on the receiving end of someone's constant sarcasm or demeaned in front of others? The part I could never understand was that I would look around (at a workplace or a family setting or in a friendship) and think, "I don't speak or act that way toward them. Why do they think it's okay to speak or act that way toward me?" And then when I took offense, they'd toss out the "overly sensitive" label.

My mother has always insisted that certain (insecure) people feel "threatened" by me. That has always mystified me, since the leit motif of my life has been to go around making myself as small as possible so that I wouldn't be threatening to anyone in any way--so that no one could say I was too smart or too competent or too skilled or better at something than a lot of other people. I've spent decades watching others who seem to possess only a smidgen of some of the talents or qualities I possess walk through life with unbounded confidence and chutzpah--all the while magically convincing others that they're amazingly competent and skilled, when in fact they're quite mediocre. And I don't see anyone trying to "knock them down to size." So it's always been confusing to me why some people feel compelled to do that to me, especially since after decades of it I tend to leave my real personality at home and show up with just the Mini-Me version. But even the palest version of my personality seems to be too much for some people.

Truly, it's one of the great mysteries of my life: this "I'm going to offend you and then call you overly sensitive" dance. I just don't fucking get it.

And you know what? My job is not to sit here and be small for someone else's comfort level. I used have to these words by Marianne Williamson tacked up in one of my corporate cubicles years ago. Maybe it's time to post them again in a place where I can remind myself daily:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

posted by Marilyn @ 5:57 AM