Happy May the 4th or should I Say Happy Star Wars Day ( May the fourth be with you, get it ? )
Today is the 3rd business day where I am part of the unemployment rate of the world. There's still a tinge of strangeness in that. The past 3 days have been rather slow moving (in a good way). Usually, mornings I will drive Cat to work and then drop her off and then head to Coles for groceries shopping. Then once at home, will just chill until lunch time. Once after lunch time, will be the start of things that I should be doing.
The 1st day was Washing Tofu, our Toyota Corolla hatchback; yeap I named the car after getting inspired from Initial D.
The 2nd day went all the way to Chatswood( further North of Sydney City) which is the unofficial Chinatown in the area where Asian stuff is cheaper. Haircuts here are like north of 20 AUD so went all the way there. Managed to get one at 18 AUD by a China lady. Lol
Yesterday was introduced by the Youtube algorithm on the topic of Highly Sensitive People( first video below). From there I kept watching under videos and also chanced upon another video during a Mental Health Workshop organized by Google for their employees.
This categorization allows me to explain a lot of the traits that I showed and why I always had been moody and depressed over the recent few years. And in a way why before 2019, I was more 稳 .
I had always thought that I was like slightly neurotic or when I had taken the Personality test where I was categorized as ISFJ which are like 10% of the population and that I am highly empathetic and have a heightened level of self awareness then others. I also thought of myself as someone who is highly emotional and that I should always try to suppress it. Like you know, I am the rare few numbers of the Human population and I struggle to find anyone who understand me. I don't really know anyone else who is a HSP within my circle of friends but I do have friends whom just let me be and listen to me whenever I am emotionally overloaded ( peeps like GK, Hui Min and Sam). Yeah, still not a lot.
Truly it is very comforting when one realizes that it is not really my own fault for being emotional or that I am not supposed to be so sensitive to things. For the past 3 years , things have happened and so many changes in my life such that I eventually broke down like mentally and emotionally. I didn't realize that I needed self care and this self care cannot be done by anyone except thy self ( that's why it's called self-care, dummy)
It just make me feel comfortable that I don't have any weird mental disorder or that I am bi-polar or something. And that I am not alone in this world and being a HSP, I am being valued in this world. I know that Cat doesn't like the idea of being shoehorned into something like a personality category because everyone is unique and if everyone can be quantifiable then what's the value in them. To me, on the contrary, I believe that these categorizations help one to better understand themselves and provide an explanation to themselves. From there, it is how one makes use of the strengths and understands their weakness so to carry on living and being of value to the world.
Some of my arguments and mood change was due to some strong words that Cat uses and expresses herself. Me, being always running away from conflicts, hated it. I understand that not all conflict is bad and there are times I can handle conflict but if at that point of time, I am already triggered then I will just be in a bad mood. Sometimes very direct words are used and I will be hugely impacted by it and sometimes I will be affected for days. I remember things for years if some instances are deeply impressionable on my consciousness. Phrases that are usually thrown at me by people around me are like
" You should be less emotional"
"Just let it go"
"You cannot handle pressure"
"You are too slow and take too long to decide"
"Why do you cry so easily? Boys don't cry"
These phrases irked me and the worst thing is that following these phrases, I noticed the facial expression, the tonality of the voice and the way the eyes looked. And I immediately felt a very strong level of emotions such as Disgust, Irritation, Unhappiness and Nonchalance. Followed by a huge amount of Guilt and Anger why people do not understand me. Eventually, it became an infinite loop until I took the time off to think it all through before I could let it go. Most of the time, I did not have the time nor did I set aside for myself to do it. What started from a small paper ball led to a huge rock and eventually I cannot handle it anymore.
I think not all the traits apply to me but I would say 80% of it does and a lot of things I had experienced or actions I did kinda made sense now. I still have other things to clear out in my mental list of things I want to tackle but I am glad that I chance upon this ( or was it Google algo being stalkerish again 🤔).
In anycase, I will be posting more posts on HSPs and hopefully I can clear out a lot of my mental backlogs and maybe help other HSPs if I ever bump into them because in this world, the majority not necessarily will understand the minority. And for HSPs, it is so easy to get overrun by the emotions and then once it crosses that particular threshold, there may be no turning back for them.
Leaving the videos for whoever is interested. Probably not many will read this anyways. So it will be more for my reference in the future.