hsphaven

When I was in hospital I kept saying I just want a normal life. While people around me are building careers and starting families, I’ve spent my 20s depressed, distressed and in and out of hospital. It is continuing into my 30s now. I can’t see myself ever having children and I don’t know if I will ever work either. Just when I try to build a better life for myself, such as study, another trauma happens. A therapist I’ve come to rely on leaves, and suddenly I am sliding down the biggest snake in a snakes and ladders game. I drop out of study, I can no longer play badminton and I’m right at the bottom of the board again. It has often felt like there’s some oppressing force conspiring to keep me stuck.

My whole life has been quite unusual. By the time I was five I’d lived in more houses than I was years old. I also went to seven different schools and was bullied from prep to Year 12. I don’t intent for this to be a long post about my life. I have already written about my life in detail here (“Stolen: My life in 1276 words”), here (“Life”), here (“An invisible scar”) and also in a short memoir which is available on my etsy site. But I just didn’t have the stability most people have growing up. People were constantly coming and going out of my life and I suspect this has led to a sense of emotional malnourishment and difficulties with attachment. So when I do manage to get close to someone and then lose them it is a devastating loss.

I wouldn’t take away being highly sensitive. It is not being highly sensitive which has caused all my problems, it is my environment. Many highly sensitive people are happy and living fulfilling lives. The thing about being highly sensitive is we’re particularly sensitive to both good environments and bad ones. We are like canaries in the coal mine. If we grow up in a healthy, loving environment, we tend to do great, even better than non-HSPs. However if we experience trauma, then that affects us more than non-HSPs and our outcomes are far worse.