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 ]

Sharon, I'm going to be leaving and am having difficulty typing with my injury but I wanted you to know how much joy you've brought to this thread with your love and insight. I think you're a very special woman and a blessing to many. I truly love you and your spirit.

Off to my son's wedding.

Recently scientists have identified what appears to be chromosones related to shyness, depression, and hypersesitivity so maybe there is an inherited tendency though I would assume it would be complicated by extended stress and/or trauma. Perhaps in the womb also.

smile

Dianne, I don't know if you've already left, but thank you for your kind words...you brought tears to my eyes.

I will be praying for you until you get back here. Praying that your pain will be manageable and tolerable (if not altogether healed!!!), and that your trip will be full of joy, love and delight.

LIFE AS AN INF (Introvert Intuitive Feeler): Part 1 of 3

Excerpts from Chapter 19

Despite many years of psychoanalysis, we were never really able to completely eradicate my lifelong problem of feeling like a social misfit. I had learned to get along "out there," but only by becoming an expert chameleon, quickly adapting myself to the social environment in which I found myself at any given time. This didn’t mean that I deliberately compromised my spiritual or social values; it just meant that in a quiet, introspective milieu, I was quiet and introspective. And in a noisy extroverted crowd, I became (or tried to be) noisy and extroverted, although it never felt completely comfortable. I would come home utterly drained and strangely dissatisfied by this vague feeling of not having belonged.

My inability to fit in anywhere baffled me. What baffled me even more was my constant craving for solitude, despite being paradoxically attracted to these social gatherings. Even while I craved to belong somewhere, and somehow learned to expertly adapt myself into belonging, in the back of my mind I would be counting the minutes until I could be back home, alone in my own space. Much of my life’s struggle has involved this constant bouncing between a profound craving for solitude and an equally profound yearning for a healthy social life.

I could never understand that craving for solitude and grew to see it as a major flaw in myself. It seemed to render me socially inept and so completely unlike everyone else who appeared to be able to cope so much better than I ever did out there in the real world.

Even now, that struggle continues to dominate my life. With severe fatigue added to the mix, it’s not so much of a struggle, since the exhaustion pretty much determines what I’m capable of doing on any given day. The relentless calling to withdraw into solitude has become even stronger since my latest breakdown in February 2002. It’s inexplicable, this driving force that calls me to take time out, to read, write, listen, pray, think, be…time out to do absolutely nothing at all.

It has been my lifelong experience that most people, (including my own self), cannot fathom that profound, driving need for solitude. Some have misinterpreted my withdrawals as being anti-social, unfriendly, moody or even selfish and snobbish. I had often second-guessed myself and misinterpreted it that way as well, until Dr. Q [my awesome therapist] was able to reach in past my blind confusion and help me "see the light.”

When I first sat down in his office I was lost, broken, exhausted, nonexistent and utterly unable to function socially. We had to very carefully extricate me from a toxic chaos of internal wreckage and deal with an assortment of old issues that hadn’t been adequately dealt with before.

Our most common ground became the Myers-Briggs approach. [I won’t be explaining the specifics about Myers-Briggs here…for background information, see *** at the end of this post.] At one time in my life I had been very interested in Jung, and had done in-depth studying into the Myers-Briggs' personality types as a tool to understanding how/why humans interact with each other the way they do. Although I had been able to comprehend it theoretically, and even apply it rather superficially to other people, it had never taken root enough for me to be able to connect any of it to my own self. Perhaps that had more to do with having become such an expert chameleon by then that I simply couldn’t find an authentic self to apply it to!

As we began using the Myers-Briggs model to try and untangle all of the chaos and internal wreckage, I again found it difficult to make that quantum leap from theory to personal comprehension, but we slaved away at it, trying to find “me” somewhere in all of that jargon.

The "aha" moment jumped out at me one day when he was describing some of the attributes of my personality type, which the tests revealed to be Introverted, Intuitive and Feeling (INF). Dr. Q was explaining that one of the strongest, most dominant traits of an INF was a constant craving for solitude.

As he continued to elaborate, I could actually feel the light bulb going on in my head. My mind swirled with the prospect that I could have been wrong about myself all these years. Was it possible that these "character flaws" were not signs of serious brokenness but actually legitimate qualities? Not things to be fixed, buried or eradicated, but bona fide characteristics that I could dare to embrace as being the real and gifted me?

I asked him my incredulous question, "Do you mean that it’s okay for me to NOT keep trying to fix these things, to look at these "flaws" as legitimate personality traits? If that’s true, then shouldn’t I be nurturing and cherishing them instead of fighting against them?"

He answered with great excitement as he saw the light come on in my eyes: "Please do.”

It was another amazing epiphany. Liberating. The end to 40 years of constantly putting myself down as being a social moron, trying and failing miserably to exorcise these flaws out of me when all of this time they were normal, legitimate and potentially beautiful characteristics of my core self – an Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling self I had never allowed to exist.

*********

*** References for Myers-Briggs Personality Type

A fairly simple explanation of Myers-Briggs: http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/tt/t-articl/mb-simpl.htm

A more detailed explanation (and quick test): http://www.personalitypathways.com/type_inventory.html

It’s best to take the long, official MBTI® ( Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ) test from a qualified professional. Most psychiatrists and psychologists, as well as career counsellors, should be able to administer it. To take the “quick” version of the Myers-Briggs test: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

For a comprehensive explanation of different types: http://typelogic.com/infj.html

For more info, simply type “Myers-Briggs” into any search engine and start browsing the results.

[ September 22, 2005, 10:37 AM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]

Hmmmmmmmm, now it seems as if my long post disappeared......Eagle, you and I must have something in common here that our things keep disappearing...LOL

I had posted a long post about not being able to work, etc. If anyone sees it somewhere else, please let me know. If it doesn't reappear then I'll post it again in a bit. I'm still steaming grapes for grape juice so I'll be back a little later.

Hugs,

Mary

Eagle,

Thanks for the Myer Briggs personality info. I studied those concepts as a part of a bus. adm. degree. When I was studying that, they tried to fit everyone in one category all the time and some people fit different categories at different times. Looks like they have changed the diagrams, etc. to accomodate the changes people make from situation to situation. The information is very useful.

Your writing fascinates me because it is unusually emotional, intellectual, and spiritual all at the same time. I am so impressed at the way you analyze your feelings from both an intellectual and poetic perspective. That must indicate a very high degree of intelligence. I wonder if that could be a part of not feeling as if you fit in anywhere. Maybe it is difficult to find others who communicate on so many levels at the same time.

Your counselor confirmed one of the most helpful things I have ever learned about my own emotions. Sigmund Freud said the pain of emotions come not from the emotions themselves, but from fighting them. Once I learned that, like you, I stopped fighting my feelings and began to accept myself as the imperfect being that I am. Knowing God made me as I am because my weaknesses fit the strengths of others in the huge beautiful jigsaw puzzle of His creation helps too.

smile

smile, I thoroughly enjoyed eagle's book because it included so much of her spirituality.

Smile, that last paragraph is POWERFUL!

Oh Smile, sometimes your posts leave me speechless. You touch me so profoundly that it's akin to healing.

When I was studying that, they tried to fit everyone in one category all the time and some people fit different categories at different times.

Reminds me of the old "fitting the square peg into the round hole" scenario...and the "squeaky wheel gets the grease" could fit in here too.

For me personally, as an INF, the workplace was always a difficult place to fit into. I could never figure out how to fit into other people's logic-based expectations of me. I was a loyal, hard-working enthusiastic-to-the-mission worker, but didn't recognize the giftedness of my "INF difference" in the workplace. And so I would do everything I could think of (without compromising my values) to "chameleonize" myself into belonging. It was a survival instinct, I guess. INF's can't stand controversy or disharmony, so we do tend to become peacemakers and "bridges".

The result was that I WAS a peacemaker in every workplace, and became a valuable team member, but very few people at work ever truly got to know me well. Or so it felt, because I was forever having to repress my intuitive insights and vision, because I didn't know how to express them without being emotion-based, and so just hid that side of myself.

The other result was that I frequently burned-out from all of that biting my tongue and repressing who I was in order to fit in better.

Knowing God made me as I am because my weaknesses fit the strengths of others in the huge beautiful jigsaw puzzle of His creation helps too.

That IS powerful imagery! Very empowering.

[ September 20, 2005, 07:42 PM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]