“What’s wrong now?”. “What are you crying for?”. “Suck it up!” – sound familiar?
“ A child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother’s love or the love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress emotions.”
Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
Sadly, it is often the case that as children our sensitivity created a ‘problem’. We were well aware that we were ‘different’ but did not understand why. We struggled to cope with the overwhelming nature of being so much, and perhaps lacked an understanding, empathetic witness who could provide the accompaniment that we needed to safely explore the true depths of our inner world.
Feeling everything on such a deep level is overwhelming. If our tears were met with contempt, anger, frustration, impatience, or in any way that registered as ‘unwelcome’ to us, then it makes sense that we would learn not to show our true feelings, for fear of rejection.
We learned to hide in plain sight, dimming our bright lights in order to fit in, to survive. Often we were labelled as ‘quiet’ or ‘shy’ and left to manage our sensitive nature alone. We might have developed maladaptive ways to cope, such as dissociation, avoidance, denial; or perhaps we listened to these harsh voices and internalized them as truth.
If this was true for you, then I am sorry this happened to you.