Читать книгу Sharing the Burden - Christa Lüling - Страница 8

Several years ago, we attended a large Christian conference. We were exhausted from the demands of our everyday life and were longing to be spiritually refreshed. The teachings offered refreshment for our minds and the worship refreshment for our souls and spirits – the atmosphere was wonderful! My husband was having the time of his life talking with all kinds of people, but I sat there amid 5,000 or more people and sank deeper and deeper into my seat. After a while, I couldn’t take any more and said to him, “Dirk, I have to get out of here! I can’t stand it! Being here isn’t helping me at all; I’m feeling worse and worse!” Back then, I had no idea what was happening to me. I figured I was just a high-strung loser. It wasn’t until two years later, while listening to John Sandford’s teaching “Healing for Wounded Burden Bearers,” that I finally understood this confusing event. Over and over again, I found myself saying, “NOW I get it!” as I realized that I was totally normal: a normal highly sensitive person with a strong tendency to “bear burdens.” Because of my temperament and gifting, I had been not only perceiving, but also soaking up like a sponge, all of the unspoken needs, distress and problems (burdens) of the people around me at the conference. Back then, I was helpless, not knowing how to protect myself from, or rid myself of, this senseless suffering. So I not only suffered, but also made it worse by negatively judging myself, my perceptions and my reaction. I felt so wrong and out of place!

Today, I know that I’m not the only one who struggles with these kinds of perceptions and feelings. There are many like me, but most of us are hesitant to share our feelings and perceptions openly. We know by experience that our way of seeing and feeling things will probably be different from that of the “normal” majority, and we will probably be misunderstood if we talk about it. Imagine the huge relief it was for me to finally be able to open up about these things, to realize that my burden bearing is a gift and to accept the fact that I am highly sensitive!

Over the years, I’ve noticed other typical characteristics of this gift in myself. When I’m in a large group of people, I often feel confused or have trouble focusing on one thought. I can often tell how a person is doing simply by looking at his or her face; not a word needs to be spoken. People often tell me their problems, pouring their hearts out to me. In counseling sessions, I can clearly sense what a person is feeling and instinctively know how to give the appropriate response. And I sometimes suddenly feel pain, tension or even the symptoms of an illness for no apparent reason. These sensations often disappear just as suddenly as they appear. I have learned that these are all normal experiences that I share with many other highly sensitive people.

This high sensitivity is the basis for intuition, imagination, creativity, inventiveness, empathetic communication, and very finely tuned perceptions. Many people are sensitive to a certain degree, but highly sensitive people are so marked by these characteristics that they can be considered gifted. Elaine Aron, who has done extensive research on the phenomenon, says that 15–20% of the population consists of people who are significantly more sensitive than others due to their neurological constitution. By the way, this percentage also occurs in many mammals, among which high sensitivity can also be observed. Experts say that there is a marked difference between these highly sensitive 20% and the next group, which can be referred to as “sensitive.” This measurable difference – which is due to a particular neurological characteristic of the brain – confirms that high sensitivity is a special ability or gift, i.e. either you have it or you don’t. In this sense, it is similar to a gifting in music, art or mathematics.

In her important pioneering work The Highly Sensitive Person, Elaine Aron uses the term “highly sensitive person” for such people. John and Paula Sandford do not use this term, but long before Elaine Aron’s book was published, they described a certain category of highly sensitive people, calling them “burden bearers.” The Sandfords chose this term because they noticed that not only they themselves, but also many others that they knew, had the ability to clearly perceive the inner condition and burdens of others and carry these burdens as if they were their own, without having made a conscious decision to do so. In the course of this book, we will make a distinction between the general characteristics of high sensitivity, which we will briefly introduce in the first part, and the special qualities of “highly sensitive burden bearers,” into which we will delve more deeply afterwards. For the sake of simplicity, we will use the abbreviation HSP(s) for (a) highly sensitive person(s) and HSB(s) for (a) highly sensitive burden bearer(s).