I had two dreams last night. My first dream involved me getting into trouble every time I tried to tell people how I was feeling… I ended up in a psychiatric ward. My second dream included me watching an unknown friend get raped. At first the two didn’t seem related, but after thinking about it longer, my mind made a connection I can agree with.
Do you ever feel like you’re getting fucked over by your own emotions? If it sounds visceral it’s because it felt visceral. And yes, I feel like I need to use that strong of a word, because it’s that strong of a constant feeling I have as an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person). The only difference is that now I’m more aware of it than I was before I knew about the trait. If you’re reading this and can’t relate, then kudos for you with a side of jealousy and admiration from me. If you can relate though it’s important to know that you are not alone.
My first dream got so vivid and real to me, I felt stuck in it. So stuck that I’m honestly not sure when I finally realized it was just a dream. In this dream my emotions were so strong and suffering so greatly it led to my own destruction.
I entered into the dream with someone asking me how I was. My response was that I was struggling a lot. Their response was that I was being dramatic, which of course let to me feeling like I wasn’t being heard. That everything I said was just being cast aside and disregarded. In response, I started becoming more ardently verbal because they didn’t know how fraught I truly was. The more fervent I became, the more they told me I was being insane and that they couldn’t listen to me until I calmed down. It was like they were in a different reality and couldn’t see the anguish happening to me even though I was right in front of them.
The dream went on like that for a while and the last thing I remember was being placed in some mental asylum. After that was like an intermission in my sleep cycle where there was just blackness while I slept. Maybe my mind had grace enough to give me a break before the next dream started up.
The second dream started with a group of my friends and I hanging out outside enjoying a seemingly perfect day. We were in some kind of quiet and calm outdoor space on a nice sunny day in the early summer. I say early summer because flowers were in bloom, but I wasn’t uncomfortably hot (I’m always hot in the summer). Out of nowhere on this sunny day a stranger enters our area and takes over as the bad guy. I don’t remember any weapons I just remember the dominating presence.
The do it or I’ll kill you, presence, I mean. He made a girl from the group strip down and walk on the outside railing of some stairs high enough up to be an unpleasant fall. He then met her up there, climbed onto the outside railing with her and started to rape her. He made the group watch. None of us said anything. We just did as he ordered. When he was done, he left. Nobody moved the entire time. Everyone just stared into space after he left.
And then I woke up and did not go back to sleep.
I just thought about the dreams and wondered what the hell they were all about. The first one was easy enough. It’s been a very emotional few weeks for me and it’s been hard to find the vocabulary to explain myself to my new team. It’s like starting from scratch, letting 3 new people into my life, which is an extremely hard thing for me to do on a deeper-than-surface level. I feel judged and misunderstood and resentful, whether those feelings are valid or not I still feel them. This is in part because I’m still learning to accept my HSP traits and it is also in part for not knowing how to express emotions very well.
If often feels like my emotions are so intense that I’m going insane and that people don’t understand my struggles, which is why the first dream felt so real. The second one though didn’t make sense. Why the hell was a midget raping someone and why didn’t the group of people stand up to him since we outnumbered him four to one? It didn’t make sense. Then I thought about it more.
Sometimes I really feel like my emotions are screwing me over. Small emotions that I should be able to control, turn on me and start to control me instead. Instead I feel powerless ad at their mercy. Like I can’t do anything about it, like I just have to sit there and take it. Like I don’t have a say. My emotions can be my own worst enemy at times, making me lose control over myself. I feel ashamed, and gross, and dirty. I blame myself by saying that something is wrong with me, that it’s what I deserve.
What I have to keep reminding myself, consciously and sub-consciously, now, is that my emotions aren't bad. They are just different. If I let myself fear and avoid the little emotions, then I let them grow and takeover. I let them win. So it is up to me to continue growing and learning about what triggers certain emotions and what I can do to embrace them instead of shun them. Obviously they're not going anywhere.
Not everyone will understand how deeply I feel or how much it affects me and that's okay. I don't need to fight with them on how I'm truly feeling and I don't need their approval. The only acceptance I need at the end of the day is my own.
If you're looking for more information about being an HSP and what it means, I suggest starting with Elaine Aaron, the woman who started it all!
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