Emotional Sensitivity and Intensity: How to manage intense emotions as a highly sensitive person - learn more about yourself with this life-changing self help book (Teach Yourself)

As an empath, you possess a natural gift for making instant connections with the emotions of others – and this all happens automatically and unconsciously. If you fail to realize this – and to distinguish your feelings from those of others – you can become overwhelmed with undue stress and pain from those around you. Mental symptoms like mood swing

From a young age, you may have experienced existential depression and felt grief over the meaninglessness of life, death and loneliness. You might have a difficult time fitting in with those around you, or feel frustrated that they are not prepared to consider these weighty concerns.

Your parents do not intervene or take notice when you are being bullied by others. • You always have the feeling that you ‘don’t fit in’ with your family, and you didn’t develop strong connections with them.

People high in emotional OE are sometimes accused of ‘overreacting’, and their intensity is often misunderstood as a sign of emotional immaturity. Their compassion and concern for others, their focus on relationships, and the intensity of their feelings may also interfere with everyday tasks and hold them back from achieving in life (Piechowski and

You tend to experience zealous enthusiasm about certain topics and endeavours. When you get excited about an idea, you find your mind running faster than your words, or you find yourself talking rapidly, perhaps even interrupting others.

these parents may manage to fulfil all the requirements society sets regarding primary care, such as providing clothing and schooling, yet in these cases, the lack of outside corroboration of what is happening can make the invisible wounds more psychologically damaging. In some homes, there is even the pressure to maintain the illusion of a happy f

Your existential angst manifests as an unnamed sense of urgency, a constant impulse to move forward. You get a constant ‘niggling’ feeling that time is running out, or that there is something important that you should be doing, even when your vision is not clear yet. Perhaps you feel a weight of responsibility on your shoulders – even for things yo

You have a rich inner world fuelled by imagination and inner dialogue, and saturated with words, images, metaphors, visualizations, vivid fantasies and dreams. As a child, you may have retreated to your imaginary haven in times of emotional turmoil.

Excessive empathy – an intense sharing of others’ negative emotions – is linked to emotional disorders in health professionals and caregivers. Their empathic distress is often framed as compassion fatigue or burnout (Batson, 1987; Eisenberg et al., 1989; Gleichgerrcht and Decety 2013).

Unlike shock trauma or physical abuse, psychological injuries are invisible and often unacknowledged. As a child, perhaps you were forced to silence yourself at times, because expressions of needs and wants were forbidden or even dangerous. Even as an adult, you may have developed the habit of ‘talking around’ or simply ‘talking about’ your story,