I'm here today to help you learn how to stop
being so sensitive. Are you ready for this?
First of all, sensitivity is not a bad thing. I know that it gets in the way
sometimes especially in a relationship. And sometimes in how you feel, you'd like
to stop being quite so sensitive. Or maybe somebody referred this video to
you because they think you're too sensitive.
Well, let's just be clear that sensitivity is not a bad thing.
I think emotional sensitivity is something that can be a
huge personal asset that will help you to
actually show up in more brilliant ways in your relationships in your
communications as a genuine authentic human being who
actually feels stuff. So, that's my disclaimer.
Now, having said that, sometimes sensitivity gets in our way.
So, it's good to understand a few things about how to manage
that. Along those lines, let's go to the equestrian world
for a moment. I grew up in an agricultural town where there were a lot
of cows and horses and chickens and goats.
And I learned something about bridles. If you have ever ridden a horse,
you know exactly what a bridle is and what is it actually. It's an
apparatus that fits over the head of the horse. It's connected to a
bit that's inside of the horse's mouth. And the bridle's purpose
is to what? Take away the power of the horse? No.
It's to steer it. I think we're going to look at emotional sensitivity
in this way. We want to bridle it. Okay? We don't want to shoot it between
the eyes. We don't want to kill the power of that
beautiful horse. We want to to bridle it or steer it guide it in a
direction that it can actually be productive.
That's what a bridle does to a horse. So, in thinking about the bridle for our
emotions, that might give us some ways to think
about it. And talk about it that could be really helpful.
So, in bridling this sensitivity let's first become more aware of it. And
I would specifically invite you to take a look at what your
triggers are. Triggers when I'm talking about emotional sensitivity,
or whatever it is that tips you off, that gives you the start for this sensitive
experience. Usually, we can identify when we don't feel quite right.
You know, when we're already into an emotional reaction.
So, let's back it up from there a little bit. What happened just before that?
I remember when my kids were young and one of them would come up and say,
"Dad, he hit me." And my response would always be,
"What happened just before he hit you?" Because they leave out that information.
We can tell when we're having an emotional response. But like my kids,
let's go to what happened just before that. Back it
up and see what happened just before you started to feel emotionally tipped over.
Usually it's some kind of an event or a communication
or an incident that triggered that for you.
And there's something about the incident that was
triggering. So, you might back up and say, "Well, just before I got emotionally
tipped over, we were having this heated conversation."
Okay, what was it about the heated conversation that triggered you?
"I felt accused or I felt ignored or i felt accused or I felt
blamed for something." Okay. Those are your triggers.
Just notice them. I'm not even saying you need to do anything about stopping the
triggers or responding to them differently. We'll get to that.
But notice them. Recognize them and start to monitor "What are my triggers?" You're
probably going to find that certain things tend
to trigger you. Well, that's helpful information.
Knowing that will give us a way to start addressing it differently.
So, recognize it and monitor it. Once we're in this place of recognizing
and monitoring so that we're aware of the triggers, now we can start to do a
little bit of psychological work on these.
And here's what I would suggest: Rethink the triggers in a way that allows you to
take it less personally. Almost always the
triggers are becoming personalized. Do you know
what i mean by that? You feel it, right? When when the trigger happens and you
take it personally, you feel like it's about you. You feel like
it's intentional. You feel like it's coming at you
personally. Let's reframe it in a way that allows
you to take it less personally. Most triggers get tied back to the
behavior or the words or the thoughts of somebody else.
Thoughts. You don't even know what their thoughts are. But what if their words are
what triggered you? Okay, how can we reframe that in a way
that allows you to take it less personally?
The personal part of this is that it happened to you.
The impersonal part doesn't matter that was you. Could have been
anybody in that circumstance. So, if you can mentally take yourself
out of the triggering incident and mentally insert
someone else like me for example, you can use me
if you want to. Take yourself out of there put me in that situation.
What would I experience? Probably the same thing because
the same things are happening, right? So, it doesn't matter that was you. It just
happens to be you and that's why you take it so personally. Let's back off
from that. It could have been anyone in your
circumstance. This is almost universally true. If you
go through a divorce, well that's easy to take personally. But
what if it was somebody else in that situation?
Then it maybe would have happened to them instead.
Do you see what I'm saying? Reframe the experience.
Let's take it less personally. That's going to help us to bridle,
put the controls on our emotional sensitivity.
I'm going to go out on a little bit of a limb here but i'm pretty confident about
this one because of the research that I've done personally the clinical
experience that i have in psychology. Almost always when we're feeling
emotionally triggered and that emotional sensitivity kicks in,
it's all about us.
It's all about me. That's a little selfish in some ways.
But beyond the selfishness of it, let's take a look at what happens if you shift
your focus instead of on me to other people. This is one of the
fastest ways i know to address anxiety. Because when we're feeling nervous or
self-conscious or insecure about something and that
emotional sensitivity is kind of kicking our trash for a moment, who are
we focused on? Yeah. Do you see it? The self-focus
is what perpetuates the anxiety. So, shifting our focus off of ourselves onto
other people. And just try this, in whatever interactions you find to be
triggering, simply ask yourself, "Hmm,
I wonder how that person is feeling about themselves?" See, it's not about you
and how you feel is only secondary. Our focus is now shifting to
how other people feel about themselves. The interesting thing that happens: This
immediately puts some social distance... Have you heard enough about
that during the pandemic? But this is a different kind of social
distance between you and the issue. Now, you're looking at
it from outside because it's not about me or how
I feel. I can look at it as something that's
over there. Not over here. That changes the game.
When your focus shifts to other people, you just put enough
distance in there that you can now reframe this more easily to take it less
personally like we already discussed. But this also puts you in a powerful
position to do something different
with the situation. You get to show up differently in this relationship because
you just gave yourself enough space
that now you can make a different choice. Different decision about where you're
going to go with this. The principles that I'm sharing with you
here are simple. Simple and easy are not the same thing.
And sometimes it helps to have a coach. I don't know if you have a coach yet. You
might consider bringing me onto your team. I'd be
honored and happy to fill that role for you. I've also got a team of coaches that
I've trained and certified.Best place to find that is at Live On Purpose Central.
Go.liveonpurposecentral.com. Come over and see what's available to
you. We can also get you on to a free breakthrough call
with one of our coaches. Go.liveonpurposecentral.com.