Do you have a dysfunctional family? Tell me about it.

[yours_truly]

Dysfunctional family? Constant arguing? Getting nowhere? Crying? Screaming? Giving up? 

yeah sounds a lot like my fam situation. My parents argue like actual children. I’m wondering how you guys coped with it and how you managed to figure it all out. Why can’t adults just grow up, I mean like seriously, what happened to communication?   

[therising]

Hi yours_truly

I think life can be tough for the most sensitive member of the family, based on the fact they can sense so much. When you can sense animosity, resentment, stress, degrading remarks, depressing behaviour, lack of effective communication etc, it can become pretty overwhelming. What can make it even more challenging is when a family member vents to you about how they feel about another family member. Then you can be left thinking 'Why did you tell me that? Now I'm fully tuned into how you feel about them and now all I can sense is how you really feel when you're in the same room with them. Why the heck did you tune me into that? Why have you led me to become even more sensitive to how much you dislike them?'.

I think one of the toughest things for highly sensitive people to achieve, especially if they've been raised to be a people pleaser (I can relate), is to develop skills in not automatically pleasing people. Being brutally honest can be a tough skill to master because it can require a sense of balance. The balance is between being honest while also feeling for the person you're being honest towards. Kinda like you don't want to completely destroy them or deeply wound them with your honesty but at the same time a massive psychological slap could be the only effective strategy for waking people up to certain behaviours. So the question can become 'How do dish out a massive psychological slap without doing too much harm?'.

Doesn't always work but I've found it can start with a loud expression: 'Stop!', 'Enough!' or, if you're someone who rarely swears, throwing out a swear word can be enough to shock people to attention. The next step can involve questioning. 'Why can you not feel what you're doing to me?' is a fair question and one that will often get the response 'What are you talking about?'. Next comes the chance to lead people to get a better feel for the impact of their behaviour, on others. 'Don't you realise I can feel this hatred/this animosity/this rage/this stressful/depressing behaviour. I can feel it running through my entire body and it makes me feel sick'. This is typically where you'll find out who's who. Who is going to wake up and question how that feels for you and who is going to say 'I don't care' as they continue arguing. If the arguing is between parents, same thing applies, finding out who's who. While one parent may stop to consider the upset you feel, the other may say 'If you don't like it, leave. This is my house'. If you want to get a bit sassy, you could say 'You mean the house of torment' 😅. You might even get a laugh out of the parent who feels more for you.

I think sometimes people can be so caught up in their own feelings of rage, stress, sadness etc to the point where they just can't feel for others (for one reason or another). While a raging person may simply be a self absorbed self entitled person or they may be someone who's legitimately fighting for the need to be heard or a depressed person may not be capable of feeling joy for another because they're depressed, there are so many different reasons for people's inability to feel for others at times. Personally, I tend to leave arrogant people alone. Such people simply don't want to feel for others. It can be a waste of time, trying to get them to do it, and it can send you a little insane. Makes more sense to appeal to the person who's capable of feeling for someone other than themself. It's so much easier to lead them to become more conscious. Actually, with arrogant self righteous degrading people, there is some fun to be had there. You can respond to insults from them with 'Being so sensitive, you know I can sense a closed minded degrading person when I meet one. Call it a talent'. While such people used to deeply depress me, nowadays I tend to make some fun. 😁