Us HSPs pick up on the emotions of others, including pain and sadness. It can stay with us and bother us more than others.
There are tons of examples I could talk about, but one popped into my head the other day. It was something I haven’t really thought about in over fifteen years, and it was interesting to examine it all over again in the lens of high sensitivity.
When I was in high school, the father of a classmate died in a tragic plane crash. I wasn’t close with his daughter, but we were friendly and played on some sport teams together. Her father was well-known in the community, everyone liked him, and he was my softball coach when I was younger. My sister was good friends with another of his daughters.
Of course the community was devastated. And even now, I feel like a jerk for talking about how this affected me, since obviously how I felt is unimportant compared to the pain felt by his wife and daughters. What right do I even have to talk about the pain related to his death…
When I heard the news, I remember lying on my bed and sobbing until I couldn’t breathe. I thought about so many scenarios–the moment the mother found out, when she thought about how she’d tell the kids, the moment she told them, and how they were all heartbroken together. The unspeakable, raw, pain. How can they even bear it? I thought of my classmate and couldn’t fathom her heartache. It made me hurt so much to think about it, and I kept thinking about it. I wondered why no one else in my family seemed to be as bothered as me.
My family went to the showing. I did not want to go, because I worried I would cry, and that would be awkward. I also did not want attention on myself, of course. I felt I did not have the right to feel as strongly as I did. I wasn’t close enough to the family to be as affected as I was.
But I made it through without crying. I saw my classmate there for the first time since it happened, and was full of empathy. I thought about the mundane things we do in a day–take a shower, put on clothes, brush our teeth, eat a meal. She had to do all of those things that day, knowing she was going to her dad’s funeral. How can you even function with such a huge loss?
I think, to me, that her loss represented all loss. It represented the loss I will have to face some day of someone close to me. I worry about that. But what good does that do? None, of course.
In situations like this, I wish I could turn off my sensitivity. It didn’t do me any good to feel so much pain and sorrow about that man’s death.
Related posts: Empathy toward the physical pain of others
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I feel, and absorb, other peoples feelings all the time. Sadly, it seems to only be the negative or sad emotions. Book characters, people on the news, my husband when he has a bad day….
Because of this, I have not gone into work professions that I feel would really help people and the world- counseling, social work, etc. I simply can’t handle it.
A few years ago, my acupuncturist shared a tool with me that I use on a pretty regular basis. I imagine that I’m being surrounded by a bubble, and I literally ask, in my head, “that it protects me from others emotions and energies”. I visual the bubble- for me its a shiny iridescent soap bubble. When I enter a situation that might be distressing, or am around people who’s energies I don’t do well with (my mother, for example), I picture my bubble. It does help.
Your recounting of that high school story was poignant; teens are rarely at ease with an experience of death. But your point about HSPs absorbing highly emotional situations is a good lesson for us to work on appropriate (but kind) detachment skills.
What is interesting to me is that not only do we respond to other people’s pain so readily, we actually seek out those feelings. We like songs about unrequited love, and the lonely heart, and we are most impressed by movies that act out those feelings of grief and pain. Not that we don’t like joyous emotions too, but it sometimes puzzles me that sad songs can be the most beautiful.
When I was a child, watching the evening news could be overwhelming–for the very reasons you mentioned above. A news story about a tragic event created cascading emotions of empathy/sorrow/pain for complete strangers. Of how it would feel…how they had started the day out like anyone else, and that lives had been changed forever.
There is something about ‘putting yourself in the place of another’ that I just did naturally. Automatically, again and again. Now, I can stop myself from doing that–especially if I sense it will be overwhelming. But as a child, I did it all the time…and it was painful. I never told anyone how this empathic process worked, because I figured everyone else experienced things the same way.
I, too, think “Why do I do this?” This is not my experience, and I can’t possibly know how they feel…
But it’s how I’ve always been. Nice to know others understand that, too.
You described me as a child. I’m 41 and have the same painful empathy levels now. I know that empathy is needed; we’re humans and we love. But I’ve ask God to take this empathy thing off of me for years to no avail. I don’t want to be blah or cold hearted; I love people and I love animals. But this feels and seems to be dysfunctional, the pain and tears I go through for people, strangers.
A class mate of my son was beaten to death by his mother’s boyfriend. He was 6. I did not know of the abuse but now I hear that the child?
had broken fingers, swollen face and bloodshot eyes from being hit in the face and a burst lip. He also had bruises about his body. Child services in my country did nothing on three occasions. The final day he was seen all they said to the mother was do not let him stay in the same house as your boyfriend. Two days later he was dead and photos of his broken body circulating on social media. showing he was stepped on with shoes, ribcage dislocated and his hip and ribcage jutting out to the side of his body and many bruises and broken bones. Four month later no charges and it is obvious that it is because of the role the Child care board in Barbados did…which was nothing, when the child should have been immediately removed from that environment. The man even threatened the grandmother who was trying to get him into her custody. He threatened her right there in front of the state agency. Everyday I think about that child. and although nothing can bring him back but I need justice. I keep seeing his bruised and broken little body and it hurts. He even beat the child at the school and twist his neck for walking too slowly. The child’s hand was in a cast already because he broke his arm and fingers and he still beat him to death. How do I get over this? And his mother, she loved the man so much that she allowed this to happen to her baby and even after the child died and she ran out of the hospital she was still with the man.
iT IS HURTING ME SO MUCH. tHINKING OF WHAT HE WAS GOING THROUGH. I think about him all the time. His dad was overseas. He had been with his dad and being cared for up until then. I feel so sad for the child to have met such a violent end and feeling unloved by his mother and wishing for his dad….How it must feel to know your mother defended her man and lied about you having allergies which were bruises and that you fell so that is why your hand and fingers were broken.
The child services told the mother “oh just don’t leave him in the same house as your boyfriend….three days later he was dead because she did just that. How could that person do that? Seeing a child in that state, and the child only said what was going on when the mother was asked to leave the room. And even saw her boyfriend threatening the grandmother who tried to save the child. It hurts so much and no arrests yet. How do I cope with this immense consuming pain?
A few years ago I was driving on the highway and heard on the radio about a boy whose father died who did not want to believe it was true and had gone out in the woods, calling out for his dad. I started crying inconsolably, so much that I had to stop the car on the side of the road. I imagined and felt the disbelief he felt when they told him and he ran out into the woods looking for his dad, the way he must have felt as he called out for him, hoping he’s alive, but fearing he might not be, the desperation and deep loss he felt when he realized it was true, and the emptiness and dread that would follow him when he realized he was gone for good. After a while I collected myself and drove to work and when I parked my car, I cried all over again another 10 minutes before I could get out. And even at work, the first 30 minutes, I had tears rolling down my face.
Hi Taura. It’s been a while since you posted and I don’t know if you’ll see this and I hope you have found closure. The story you told broke my heart, especially as I read a similar story recently, also of a 5 year old boy whose mother’s boyfriend beat him to death. I have also not been able to get past it, in a similar manner to you. This is not the first time- I have similarly been devastated by other stories that I have read on the internet about tragic deaths surrounding children- it’s always children. One story affected me for about a month before i felt normal again- and these were all complete strangers- I felt like i was losing it.
My sister also suffers from the same high-sensitivity and we sometimes discuss our feelings, but I think we both struggle with how to cope.
Does anybody have any good coping strategies after the fact?- apart from ‘avoid watching the news, avoid reading such stories, etc’. Sometimes you just get sucked into it, before you even know what hit you.
I can totally relate to all these stories and I wish I had a coping strategy to share. In uk there was a horrific child abuse case of “Baby P” as he was known in the press and I was absolutely distraught about it for months. My mums friend died last night and I have been so sad for her daughters I can imagine every emotion they are going through. It is so difficult to live with being highly sensitive. I too love sad and poignant songs, books, films – I love the rain and winter. I don’t even like summer. I can be so morose! I am a songwriter and I do find that really helps as a medium to express these feelings. Sometimes songs pop out of nowhere so quickly and I feel an utter sense of relief when I write and sing it over and over. Perhaps you can all find a way to express your indescribable feelings in an art form. I also love that it may heal someone who hears it …
Hi Kelly,
I recently found you and your podcast, it’s interesting to hear about your individual experience of high sensitivity.
There’s been a recent disaster in my community, and I so relate to the way you describe feelings of empathy toward other people’s losses. Thankfully, as an adult who’s done a lot of personal work in knowing my inherent traits, I EXPECT to be feeling this way right now.
In fact, it’s why I find myself seeking out support from sources like you. So, many, MANY thanks to you for your generosity in publishing content that’s helpful and accessible.
Yet, I do think that “worry” can be helpful if it’s tempered and transformed into taking action. I embrace the idea of turning “worry” into concern and concern into action.
While no one can control the inevitable loss of loved ones, we can take proactive steps in how we DO relate to those we love BEFORE we lose them. Just like you can authentically express and accept your trait of high sensitivity and know that intense feelings are part and parcel of who we are.
The bus crash that killed 16 people on the Humboldt hockey team has had me in tears since yesterday. I had heard about it but didn’t look it up until last night, and man I wish I hadn’t. I didn’t know any of the players, but I love hockey, have been in a horrific car accident, and have lost a loved one to a car accident, so I guess I feel that I somehow know their pain.
I also have Asperger’s Syndrome, which is interesting because people with Asperger’s are known to have a lack of empathy. And yet I’m sitting here balling because I’m imagining the pain the surviving team members must be feeling having lost their friends who were pretty much their brothers. The youngest player was my brother’s age which just makes it worse. I just can’t focus on anything else.
Im so happy I stumbled across this post. A few days ago a young guy I dont KNOW but know OF through social media and mutual friends was murdered. The dumb news paper released the 911 call, of his girlfriend, someone I also distantly know, finding him barely breathing, shot, in their driveway. She tells the operator she was only gone for a few minutes and I can’t get her voice out of my head as she says hes kind of breathing and that he isn’t blinking. He took his last breaths in her arms on the night of the first. The sound of her heartbroken whimpering has kept me up every night since. I think it especially hits home with me because they remind me so much of my fiance and I, and being distant acquaintances with them allows me to imagine it happening to myself with my own loved one. I have been holding back a flood of tears and heartbreak trying to tell myself it doesn’t involve me and my empathetic side is trying to take control, but I decided to let it out tonight when I was finally alone and I have just been in tears for hours now, knowing my close friends who were close with them are suffering and being able to imagine what the poor girl, who had finally found the person she wanted to be with forever and loved so dearly is going through. We are young to be experiencing such loss and I cant imagine her, as you said, waking up and trying to live life and move on with that weight to bare. How can a person ever experience love and happiness again after such a tragic loss? How does someone not feel a consuming, emptiness their entire life? I have been lucky enough to escape significant loss in my life, but people say my town is “cursed” as we lose over a handful of people we all know every year to tragic accidents or murders and I feel like I am waiting around for it to be my turn to lose someone. I try not to obsess over it, but My heart and mind get far too overwhelmed, even from a distance, with people’s suffering. I have yet to figure out a way to separate my actual feelings from it, but knowing that other people experience the consuming sadness the way I do is comforting.
Hi Allan, thanks for posting. I’m sorry you are struggling with this. This part really hit me: “How can a person ever experience love and happiness again after such a tragic loss? How does someone not feel a consuming, emptiness their entire life?” I have thought almost these exact thoughts. These are the types of thoughts that send many people into a dark place. After a tragedy, somehow people find a way to carry on, I suppose. I also have been lucky to escape tragedy in my life but inevitably it will happen. It seems crass to say “try not to think about it” but honestly, it helps. It doesn’t do yourself any good to keep hurting yourself with these thoughts. There is no solution or answer to your tough questions. Continuing the “Emotional cutting” does not help you. Also, I always recommend speaking to a therapist as they are awesome at putting these things into perspective.
Sometimes I’ll think about my dog dying and I will instantly cry and my husband finds it so strange. He seems heartless and I say, “won’t you be sad when she dies?” and he says, “Of course, but what’s the point of being sad about it right now?” it’s tough to argue with that.
I didnt realize i was a HSP until i read this….My husbands sister list her husband last year and the pain is still hard for me. Losing any kind of family member is hard weather it be extended or your own. But to lose someone through suicide who was currently still serving whos spouse is a loving, caring, gentle, acknowledging, amd reassuring person is twice as hard.