Let’s explore what sensitivity is, why it’s essential, what it can be mistaken for, and how to develop it.
Sensitivity is based on feelings. First, let’s define what it is.
Feelings are what we can feel, what we perceive with the help of receptors located in our body.
Feelings are one of the most important things for which our body lives and functions. Imagine how many processes are going on in our bodies so that we can feel something. Every person has feelings, and every person has their own unique set of feelings. Each person will feel the same phenomenon or event in a unique way.
Feelings are one of the key components of a person, an important tool if we consider a person not only as a body. Read more about this in the article about attention. In a nutshell, a person is a combination of body, feelings (both ordinary and abstract), and mind, all united by attention.
Feelings can be categorized into several types:
1) Bodily Sensations: These are sensations we feel internally through our body’s receptors, such as taste, touch, breathing, blood pulsation, pain, biochemical and hormonal changes, and emotions as biochemical reactions. When receptors are stimulated, they send signals to the brain and we can interpret them. We perceive these feelings through the body with the help of special organs (receptors).
2) External Perceptions: These are sensations we feel through external stimuli using our senses, like vision, hearing, and smell (excluding smells originating from within our body).
3) Abstract Feelings: These are feelings not tied to specific organs, such as empathy, the sense of space and time, intuition, love, and happiness (considered beyond mere hormonal reactions).
It’s crucial to differentiate between feelings and thoughts. Compassion, mercy, pity, fear, desire, and shame are thoughts that can evoke emotions, but they are not feelings themselves. Emotions are reactions to thoughts, which are influenced by our environment and societal norms. The emotional response to these thoughts depends on our attitude towards them, and this attitude depends on the society we live in: who influenced or is influencing us, what language we speak, what subculture we belong to, and so on. All this determines what thoughts we use – beliefs, principles of morality. The same action can be evaluated differently in the same society, ranging from positive to extremely negative. It’s just a thought. You can read about what thoughts are and what you can do with them in this article..
Thoughts are not feelings. Developing sensitivity does not make you more vulnerable. When people claim they are highly sensitive and easily hurt by words or actions, this is a form of manipulation, where they request specific behavior from others due to being controlled by their thoughts. Grudges and emotional pain arise from thoughts about those grudges. People become trapped by these thoughts, leading to suffering. Sharing this suffering is an attempt to alleviate personal pain, but it is important to recognize that this mental suffering is a personal issue.
After we have figured out what feelings are, identified the difference between feelings and thoughts, and realized why it is safe to develop sensitivity, let’s look at what it is and why we really need sensitivity.
Sensitivity is a characteristic of the ability to feel or sense. The more developed it is, the more vividly you can feel, in some cases, just feel something or someone.
Sensitivity is the ability to direct attention to the essence of things and phenomena.
Sensitivity is an adjustable function controlled by our Attention. It is possible to feel something more or less intense, or to turn off all the feelings in general, and this choice is made by the Person themselves.
Why do you need to develop Sensitivity?
- Enhanced Quality of Life: Sensitivity enables you to engage with your environment and experiences more deeply, leading to a more fulfilling life.
- Better Intuition: While intuition itself may not be developed, noticing it more frequently and clearly is possible.
- Feel happiness as a subtle feeling of peace and quiet. As subtle as feeling the smells on the exhale. This is a state of “good” that is always there, but you need to learn to spot it among all the bright events that happen to you.
Separate “your” thoughts and feelings from “alien”. New and alien thoughts aren’t bad, but it is important to be able to recognize them. This will help to counteract manipulation, as well as to notice new ideas or solutions faster.
A person can not only direct their attention to a part of their body, for example, but they can also feel it. This way we can direct our attention to the body and feel the pulsation of blood or heartbeat in it. At this moment we direct our attention to this process and adjust our sensitivity to recognize this phenomenon.
At some point, with the development of your sensitivity, you will begin to feel things that previously seemed absolutely impossible. You will be able to experience facets of the world that were previously locked away. However, along with this, you can start feeling other people, their suffering, their pain, physical pain in the body. You can start feeling another person’s pain in your body. This is where you need to learn how to separate what is yours from what is not. You need to learn how to turn your feelings off. Imagine that you are in a place with unpleasant smells that distract you. You can just “turn off” your feelings. You can both feel the smells from a big distance and ignore them. If the situation calls for it, you can simply stop paying attention to the feeling by switching your attention. This allows you to control your feelings: use them when you need to, and ignore them when you don’t need them. This is possible through observing your attention and understanding where it is and how it is distributed at the moment.
This will allow you to truly be in the present moment and not be distracted. You will be able to control your life, your attention and your feelings. You’ll be able to choose what to feel and what not to feel – that’s what feeling management is all about. However, it’s not going to happen automatically. You need to develop the ability to manage feelings within yourself and build that skill up. There are special exercises designed to achieve this. These are real workouts that will help you develop this skill. At some point, you will be able to feel others’ pain and suffering, their emotional states, and what is happening to them. At the same time, you will also be able to feel their joy, happiness, and any other states they are in. Our exercises will help you distinguish between your own feelings and those of others. While we are all deeply interconnected, it’s important to manage this connection to prevent empathy from turning into personal suffering. Some people who feel others’ emotions deeply may suffer because of it. To avoid this, you must learn to manage your skills and occasionally turn off your empathetic responses, ensuring that your happiness depends only on you. This makes maintaining your well-being much easier
With sensitivity, we can truly experience happiness. Not just an emotion, but a profound, physical sense of happiness within ourselves. Sensitivity allows us to experience life on an entirely different level, enabling us to feel orgasms of incredible power and depth. When you develop sensitivity, you begin to feel not only your body but also a deeper bliss, love, and connection to life itself. This ability is available to everyone. It’s simply a matter of learning to feel, directing your attention there, and managing it.
Sensitivity can be developed through training that enhances both your sensitivity and your ability to shift your attention between different senses, as well as to hold multiple senses at once. We use the senses as tools to train our attention. It’s all trainable.