Excessive sensitivity and CPTSD
Posted on July 6th, 2019
I have been thinking since several days about the topic of people who are more sensitive than the average. Sensitive, as in perceiving more than the average person. It may be things like hearing sounds better, but also spontaneously thinking deeper about the world around them. They may also be emphats, or people with Asperger's. I wonder why in the circles of people discussing codependency, narcissistic abuse and CPTSD I have not yet seen anyone mentioning the following:
Just going through life while being highly sensitive produces very similar, if not the same, symptoms as being emotionally abused by narcissistic people.
I think it may even undoubtedly cause CPTSD, even if raised in an "objectively" non toxic environment. Does it mean that the environment's toxicity is relative? Does it mean that narcissism is relative? I start to think that yes, perhaps they are.
If someone is born more sensitive than others, they won't realise it by themselves. Same with being more intelligent. They might get a clue about their intellect when they start school - or they may not, if they have bad luck of finding inappropriate teachers. On the other hand, they will hear a lot that they're overreacting, overly sensitive, manipulative, imagining things, paranoid, and since their learning process is different, they may even be called dumb. Is this not how a narcissist makes their victim feel?
Such a person from the moment of birth is constantly in an invalidating environment and permanently gets the feedback that what they see and feel is wrong (even if it later turns out they were right, no one will register that fact). Permanent gaslighting. The sensitivity and tendency to think deeply about everything may make it impossible for a kid to find peers with whom it is possible to have a conversation. Isolation and lack of connection. And, what happens with kids who are different - they often become the target of abuse of other kids, or even the target of teachers' jokes (none of them necessarily narcissists). Plus, since the sensitive person assumes everyone is equally gifted, when others deny what seems obvious, it seems like intentional deception from their side. It feels like everyone lies, or performs some theatrical act, for unknown reasons. Almost as if that person lived in a Truman Show. Nothing feels real anymore. Imagine all the important events, like going to school, trying to make friends, trusting the adults in the kindergarten, everything in that anxious confusion, interleaved with bouts of aggression. Would this not create CPTSD?