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The "Yous're too sensitive" game

When someone cares about you, they don't say things like "you're too sensitive" or "you're so emotional", they really become more sensitive to your sensitivities.

Don't fall for the "y'all're also sensitive" game. It is played by those who want to get away with their ain bad beliefs.

Transcript follows.

The Game Some People Play With Your Emotions

There's a game that some people knowingly (or sometimes unknowingly) play. At that place are people that know they're doing information technology – the emotional abusers, the manipulators, the coercive type, and the unethically influential type.

I speak from experience. I was married for 4 years and during that time (not only in my marriage simply in other relationships too), I was highly manipulative. I didn't know I was until nosotros separated. I had this realization that I was being manipulative. I didn't know the term dorsum then but I was existence emotionally abusive and I was doing so in many means.

Ane of them was being highly judgmental. I was judging my wife for doing things that I didn't hold with. I wanted her to arrange to my standards. I wanted her to adjust to my values and I set the bar very high. I was also giving her the silent treatment.

The silent treatment, not too many people know, is a form of emotional abuse. It doesn't always get-go off that fashion because sometimes you need silence to process. Sometimes you demand silence because you lot're so angry, you don't want to just lash out at someone. You just need your time to process things, recollect about them, and figure out what to do side by side.

Merely when the silent treatment turns into making the other person feel guilty, making the other person conform, there's a level of control in there – "I want yous to do what I want you to exercise and so I volition be silent. I will withhold and withdraw love."

These are the types of things I was doing in my marriage and it was very unhealthy and very toxic. So I come on here, showing you lot my cards, letting y'all know that I was in that location. But I was on the other side. I was the one playing that game. I didn't know information technology was a game – it was the game I played for many, many years.

Equally soon as I got into relationships, I needed the other person to be the way I wanted them to be, instead of allowing them to be the style they were when they showed upwardly in the relationship and allowing them to be authentically gratuitous.

"Accurate" in the sense that they could show up as themselves and "costless" as in, 'if they showed upwardly in a mode that I didn't like – I still accepted them, I notwithstanding allowed them (I don't fifty-fifty like using that word), but I allowed them to be who they are, and who they were.

The Selfishness of Control

What I've learned over the years is that my trying to command the person in my life was a selfish way to go what I wanted and make life perfect for me instead of sharing in the experiences of someone else, and celebrating their successes and commiserating in their failures, and not telling them what to do, but existence there equally they did information technology, and supporting them as they did it.

There'due south a lot more to unravel in that location and actually dig into so that we tin can understand the entire breadth, the unabridged spectrum of emotional abuse and manipulation and coercion, and just downright lies and deception, and other bad behaviors that nosotros don't necessarily want in our lives – and also that we tin can catch ourselves doing. I caught myself doing these things in my spousal relationship, and realized, await a minute – is this how I want my wife to feel? That was the one question that probably changed everything: is this how I want her to feel?

I believe when you truly dearest someone, you support their happiness, you back up their path to happiness, you support them wanting to be themselves. When you tin show up in someone's life and they want you to be you lot, not someone they want yous to be – doesn't information technology feel uplifting?

Doesn't information technology feel freeing?

Don't you want to spend as much time equally you lot can with that person?

That'southward what I figured out tardily in the game. I was 41 or 42 and I realized, "then that's what relationships are about – supporting her path, sharing life with her walking to the dusk together, holding hands, and having our own life also, having our ain path of success and failure, and hoping that our partner is going to be in that location to support us through this – through the thick and thin – knowing that we're all doing the best we can".

Sometimes we're going to show upwardly in means that our partners, our friends, and our family doesn't like. When that happens, how do they prove upwardly in our lives? How does our partner, our friends, and our family unit prove up after we follow a path that they don't similar?

You actually outset figuring out who'southward of import in your life and who finds you important to them, and you learn who wants to control you lot and who doesn't. Equally soon as somebody starts making y'all experience bad about yourself, near your decisions, about the steps you're taking in life – that's when yous really have to commencement questioning who the people are that you're involved with, that you're associated with, that you're even related to.

This happens in and then many different dynamics, including family unit. In fact, in my other podcast, The Overwhelmed Brain, I talk about family dysfunction, family drama, and defining your personal boundaries. That episode is called "How family unit drama can teach you a lot nigh personal boundaries" if yous want to check it out.

Coming back to this topic today, how I ascertain emotional abuse, in full general, is when you not only make somebody feel bad, merely y'all make them experience bad about themselves.

When they feel bad about themselves, judge what? – You don't have to exercise too much of the work because they're putting themselves down, they're questioning their own decisions; They're losing trust in themselves.

So if you lot're the emotional abuser like I was, I was putting all this doubt in my partners over the years and my married woman when I was married. I put doubts in their minds so that they would experience bad virtually themselves. I would give them dingy looks, I would requite them the silent handling – sometimes for days.

They would inquire "Where did you become? I need your honey. I need your attention." They wouldn't utilize those verbal words but in hindsight, I can meet that's exactly what was happening – "Where are you? Are we in a relationship? Why are you withdrawing?"

It was my hope that they would experience then guilty that they would change and so testify up in the relationship better, just to suit me – that'due south a very narcissistic tendency there: It was just to accommodate me.

Thankfully, I asked the question, "Is this how I want her to feel?" I recall that'due south a great question to ask the people in your life: "Is this how you lot want me to experience?"

If you have someone manipulating or being emotionally abusive or coercing y'all in some fashion – go ahead and ask that question. It may non be appropriate in every situation merely it's a smashing question to have when there's somebody who claims to honey you lot and claims to want you to be happy if they practice things and they say things that they know hurt you lot.

I'm Not Being Hateful, You lot're Simply Besides Sensitive

This brings up the main topic I want to talk about today, which is the "you're too sensitive" game. If you lot've e'er been told "you're just being besides sensitive", or "y'all're being overly emotional" (that was i of the checkboxes in The 1000.E.A.North. Workbook).

The 200-point assessment in the workbook is a bunch of checkboxes that you become through helping you to define the level of emotional abuse that yous might be experiencing. One of the boxes is "My partner calls me too sensitive and overly emotional."

I want to allow yous off the hook. If you've e'er been called too sensitive or overly emotional, 99% of the fourth dimension it'south not true. I know there are people out in that location that say "No, I'm a highly sensitive person, it is true. In that location's a lot of situations that I am sensitive about."

But if yous're in that space, and you know that near yourself, that'southward okay. I understand that in that location are people that are sensitive. I'm sensitive to needles, I don't like them. I only barrel through them and hopefully, information technology's done earlier I think about it.

Only that'south non what I'one thousand talking near. I'm talking about emotional sensitivity, of course. There are some people that have adult a higher emotional sensitivity. That term – highly sensitive person – that is a thing.

My married woman considered herself a highly sensitive person and I'm here to tell you that highly sensitive people often get involved with emotional abusers. Highly sensitive people ofttimes get involved with in-sensitive people.

This is something that'south very of import to know if yous've ever been called overly emotional, highly sensitive, or too sensitive. I want you to look at the source and ask yourself, "Who is telling me that, and is that person insensitive?"

This is where I'one thousand going to permit you off the hook. Virtually of the time, when somebody says you're too sensitive, it's a manner for them to focus your attending on yourself. If they can focus your attention on yourself, and so they go away with bad behavior.

This I accept strong feelings near because I accept heard from so many clients and and so many listeners of my other show, The Overwhelmed Brain. People write in and say, "My partner says I might be also sensitive. I remember I am" and I always reply that comment with this response – it'south not that you're too sensitive, information technology's that the person telling you that is insensitive to your sensitivities.

If someone really loves you and they really care almost you, they're going to empathize that you have sensitivities. If they bruise on those sensitivities and so blame you lot for those aforementioned sensitivities (the ones they knew almost before they trampled on them), then the trouble is their insensitivity to your own fears, doubts, and emotional triggers.

When my girlfriend and I commencement met, she had many sensitivities. 1 of them was the inability to trust men. She was sexually abused as a child and she adult a distrust of near men in full general. She still had relationships with men – some good, some not – but when nosotros met, she did not trust me and it took her a long time.

Because I understood that she had this sense of not being able to trust me, I had to exist extra sensitive to that. This is my bespeak with today'south episode – you demand to understand that information technology's non that you're also sensitive, it'south that the person telling you that is not being sensitive to your sensitivities, and that pretty much makes them insensitive.

I don't mean to characterization someone else as that considering sometimes we know we're playing the game and sometimes nosotros don't. When I was being insensitive toward my married woman, I didn't know I was playing the game. I wanted what I wanted and I learned to do that from babyhood – to get what I want, I just accept to use the silent treatment.

I simply have to sulk, I have to mope, and I take to feel bad because I want my overly sensitive wife to experience compassion for me, to experience guilty that I feel bad then she needs to practice something about it to brand me experience better. I wanted to use her sensitivities against her.

Thankfully, I figured that out because I was ruining many, many relationships. I don't want your relationships ruined. I want you lot to empathise that some people are going to utilise your sensitivities against you and it's non your fault. It's not something that yous demand to set up.

Sometimes You Have to Depict the Line

You can work on your sensitivity, sure. Yous might be overly sensitive to certain things. Merely when someone tells y'all that and they use information technology as an excuse to get away with their behavior, that's where the line needs to be drawn. That's what needs to finish.

You might have to say something. Yous might accept to speak upward for yourself and say, "Look, if yous know I'm sensitive in that surface area, and you really honey me, and you really want to support me, and you actually want me to be happy – then why would you exist insensitive to that?"

Hopefully, the person doing that will stride back and realize, "Oh, jeez, I'thousand sad, I gauge you're correct."

That would be great. I'm not saying anybody volition have that response, but some people don't fifty-fifty realize they're being insensitive. Some people need to exist reminded that "Yes, I have sensitivities and I want you to know that when you call me as well sensitive, knowing that I have these sensitivities, information technology makes me feel similar you don't respect my sensitivities. Information technology makes me feel similar you don't care about me, you don't back up me, you lot don't dearest me, you don't even like me. Yous simply want me to feel bad."

I don't want you to get defenseless in that game, the "you lot're too sensitive" game, because you lot don't deserve information technology.

So what! We all have sensitivities, right?

Absolutely. I desire you to know that just because y'all may have college sensitivities in some areas and not so much in others, nosotros all have our sensitivities.

I guarantee yous that fifty-fifty the people that are abusing linguistic communication and abusing their human relationship with you accept sensitivities, and information technology would exist very unfair of united states to take advantage of those sensitivities, just like information technology's unfair of them to take reward of ours.

Remember, you are not alone. You do not accept to experience as if no one volition ever see or sympathize what you're going through considering the word is out.

This show and many other resources are highlighting manipulation and emotional corruption and outright charade and so that more people are aware of it and more people can call others out on it.

The more people that know nearly it, the less other people will go away with information technology.

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Source: https://loveandabuse.com/the-youre-too-sensitive-game/

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