Campaigning for the Practicality of Sensitivity
As a child I was “too sensitive”. That meant, I think, that my feelings got hurt easily and I wasn’t thick skinned. I also didn’t know how to do verbal battle with anyone posing as an intellectually superior being. More recently I have come to cherish my own sensitivity and sensitivity in general; after all it is part of the intuition that lets me be a therapist sensitive to others. A diagnosis of ADD has, I think, made it even easier: I am, and have always been, sensitive. It is part of my temperament and more recently I feel it is something I want to protect rather than defend.
Part of what I mentioned in the essay on Emotional ADD has to do with the shame about sensitivity to the quickness and/or bullying of others and the chaotic feeling of brain cells fumbling and tear ducts getting ready to flood when in the midst of such an argument. This may not mean the person who experiences chaos is too sensitive but rather that the sensitivity has not been protected and seen as a potential source of strength.
Lately I have begun to conceptualize the meaning of practicality as including implication, ramifications, and cause and effect. In other words practical solutions would have to include the human, social— ecological—consequences of those solutions or actions.
I have come to see and understand sensitivity as one of our greatest human resources. It might actually turn out be the greatest, but only IF IT IS PROTECTED. Sensitivity has to do with sensing and sensors, and picking up on cues of danger as well as kindness; it includes cues for the need to flee or fight as well as for feelings of tenderness. If we have become increasingly immune to and demeaning of sensitivity, it may turn out that we are not only distracted from our sensitivity but that we reject it whenever we have the chance.
This, it seems to me, is no small matter, and it might even be another emergency as we become more and more distracted from pain from so many places, from within and without and even from the very fact that we are a nation at war. It would seem we might be de-sensitized by and from our own fears of confronting the returning soldiers who will show us their own psychic and physical wounds. These soldiers and other witnesses might make all of the advertisements for the “manhood” of the military come down from artificial grace into the landmines for any whose soul or spirit or sensitivity are still breathing.
I start out in the spirit of emergency and as happens often, I shift to some humor so as not to kill my sensitivity, so that the seriousness of it all will not suffocate my spirit and silence my caring. I know this is a large scale problem and that in order to cultivate sensitivity we might have to turn our concept of weakness and strength on their heads.
My humor and whimsy and fantasy bring me to the fact that this is an election year and as such I might turn this into a campaign message. So let me say in this here election year, I am in favor of this option. If I were campaigning for President, the fantasy begins—and my own dancing mind says “Run with the fantasy, Carol”.
So here goes: this is for me one of the definitive benefits of ADD—playfulness, even in the midst of serious topics. So imagine I am a leading contender in one of the key political parties, the Sensitive Liberals. I am in the forefront because I have admitted my own ADD, I have admitted having taken psychotropic medication, and I have admitted my liberal leanings and the signing of every petition that was placed before me, having been kept in a file by the FBI. And, of course, I have admitted over and again, my sensitivity.
But there is another reason I have the potential for winning, really a few reasons. I stand for collaboration, which means I have made clear in my Administration and Cabinet, there will be bleeding heart liberals and top notch conservative economists: there will be practicality in terms of finding out causes and effects and helping things be cost effective. I am popular among a good portion young people who are not yet completely aligned with conservatism so as to cry (and of course, scream and maybe even swear) whenever they hear the word “evolution”. I am popular with young people because I want children helping to organize curriculum, teenagers on school and community boards with their visions and needs heard.
But I stand to be elected first and foremost because I have defined sensitivity as perhaps our greatest strength. I have proven that much of the violence in popular and cult films and reality television, comes from the factor of humiliation being perhaps our biggest source of violence PRECISELY BECAUSE SENSITIVITY WAS SEEN IN THE LIVES OF SO MANY AS SOMETHING TO BE HIDDEN OR AS A SOURCE OF SHAME.
· My campaign says: hey people, do you know why “liberal” has become a dirty word? Do you know it’s not just because people are scared of losing money on taxes. No, it is because to be liberal one has to acknowledge that some people’s sensitivity has gotten the best of them and they are overwhelmed and they cannot go it alone.
· A liberal cannot win because he/she is afraid of the very word. “Liberal” equals sensitivity and sensitivity equals weakness and weakness equals death.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, and boys and girls of all ages, I promise all of this will be changed in my administration. Thank you for your applause, you may sit down.
I have seriously mixed feelings about returning to reality at the moment—it was fun almost being President—but nonetheless I do want to campaign in my own way for the practicality of sensitivity.
Picture, if you will, a couple of scenarios treated differently than the usual way. A boy who is shy and has ADHD and who has no athletic prowess is beaten up and or taunted in the schoolyard. The bullies are helped to get in touch with their own sensitivity to hurt and they are seen as “under-sensitive”—a term now used as a signal for emotional or social help. The sensitive boy is seen for his advantages on a feeling level and starts to feel better.
The people watching reality shows and those starring in them are helped en masse and on individual levels to understand their need to witness humiliation. As they realize the acute value of sensitivity and begin to heal their own wounds which have included a cultural view that acting strong makes someone really strong, they begin building their communities, dancing more (you know, enjoying other kinds of fun), and communicating more about everything to those important in their lives. They even begin sharing their life stories outside the television viewing or studio and they tend to be drawn to tutor (sensitively help) the under-sensitive among us. They begin to learn that admission of weakness and vulnerability is the beginning of real strength. And while they occasionally watch violent movies and have a vicarious thrill of sadism, it is no longer their primary hobby; in fact they tend to cringe when witnessing humiliation as they remember their own.
The communities where there are poor and angry people, and even rich and angry people, are no longer seen as merely a sign of disgrace but a cause for our own sensitivity as to understanding their anger and respecting their needs and their cause for anger. We begin dialogues and tissues are handy as we process the pain of neglect and failure to honor the differences of all of our citizens.
We respect evolution in the sense that if we want freedom we have the responsibility to be sensitive to all of our citizens. We wouldn’t think of denying anyone health care because we have understood ecology, and the sensitivity of all things and creatures to one another. And those who are gushing with tears at every sign of stress are getting help in finding self-respect and individual techniques to manage the chaos that has come from the lack of practice in protecting their own sensitivity.
Lastly, I share my own example. Hello, my name is Carol. I am a sensitive person but I am not in recovery for this condition. It has taken me years to own it and not apologize for it. I also share my concern/worry for any “community” which makes sensitivity a source of shame.
My warning/worry/fear/concern comes from all that I have learned. It can be summarized in the following:
The neglect and devaluing of sensitivity, can only lead to more violence which forces people into corners either hiding their own vulnerability, turning it into a form of self-loathing. Or else what can happen is more of what is already happening—that we as a culture only embrace sensitivity when we see it is bleeding in the exhibitions of public display or trauma on our television sets while some psychological guru tears the victim’s feelings to shreds and/or “solves” all with a swoop of the tongue. This, to my mind, is not sensitivity but rather public humiliation and surrender.
We risk turning violent against any who are weak since they remind us of the weakness in ourselves. We would be forgetting that ecology does not only have to be about the connection of all things and people but in addition the connection of every single person to all of him/herself. And distraction is not only the absence of attention: we can “pay” attention but if we lose caring—if we lose sensitivity about what is inside us and around us, the “attention” becomes scary—it is without humanity and it and we become numb.
To cut off sensitivity would be an amputation of what is most precious. Our value doesn’t only come from our brains or our power alone, but also from our tenderness, and our capacity for caring and compassion and for the empathy which must begin at home—within us.
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