If sensitivity is the capacity to feel deeply, fragility on the other hand is the phenomenon of needing to feel certain things and not others… It’s an inability to recover from the experience of deep emotion, to regain a center, to maintain one’s capacity to function with maturity even in the presence of something very painful. This can be an enormous problem; without the capacity to tolerate our more painful feelings, we might find ourselves terrified to go towards certain spaces of life, or worse, we might be unable to bear the feelings that we carry within us at all times. This leads to a range of problems, from the anxious position that perpetually fights off life, to the depressive position that has formed a kind of dissociative crouch from it, to a host of difficult personality structures we all encounter with regularity in the world: the bragger, the complainer, the perpetual victim, the chronic abuser, etc.
We need healthy connection with each other. We need this desperately, perhaps more than at any time in our history. Our society, our ecology, hangs in the balance. The healthy connections we need requires us to do the work of cultivating our emotional maturity. This maturity involves the work of allowing sensitivity to our environments, to each other, celebrating it, teaching it, while also cultivating the capacity to keep our shape as we experience what emerges when we allow ourselves to feel the truth of life.
The Promise and Peril of Emotional Sensitivity [Psychology Today, 22 May 2019]
Use the link below to read the full article by North American psychologist ERIC S JANNAZZO:
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