Kygirl, I responded to this yesterday, but it disappeared. I guess I'm being given a second chance to try and respond even more eloquently.

Smilinize is much more eloquent when it comes to analyzing the body-mind connection. But I'll give it a try.

I'm definitely one of those people who appears to feel things more deeply and soulfully than many others around me. I've often been accused of wearing my heart out on my sleeve, and told to "toughen up" and that I need a thicker skin. My emotion-based responses to people and situations often baffled the people around me and then their reactions baffled me, because I couldn't figure out how NOT to feel the depth of care and concern that I felt.

But years of trying to repress those feelings, and years of trying to camouflage my sensitive nature only resulted in me feeling more fractured, lost, confused and misfit than ever. It was only a few years ago that I decided to stop trying to be everyone else's definition of who I should be, and start living life as the highly sensitive person that I am.

I agree with your pastor that this profound sensitivity is not the cause of depression, because I believe that clinical depression does involve some phsyiological chemical imbalance. But I'm sure there's a round-about connection.

Because we're so sensitive and aware of all of the suffering/wounds/pains that surround us, we do tend to want to "bring home everything and everybody to fix them and make them better." That leads to numerous body reactions, including adrenaline overload, other stress-related symptoms and frustration (because we simply cannot fix everyone, but we still want to be able to), and fatigue (because we refuse to give up). Prolonged stress and fatigue in turn diminish our immune system, which probably has something to do with the chemical imbalance.

I don't pretend to know all this for sure, from a medical background. I'm just speculating on that connection based on my own experience and the related experiences of others who also suffer from depression. Smile, Leigha and others here often post on the mind-body connection, not necessarily from the perspectives of the depression-connection, but there's no doubt in my mind that one area of dis-ease leads to more areas of dis-ease.

[ September 20, 2005, 12:22 PM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]