Your dominant sensitivity type is…
EMPHATIC SENSITIVE
Please note that this is only your dominant sensitivity type in this moment in time.
We humans all have combinations of different types of sensitivity, so you can always go back and take the quiz again if there were multiple choices that were right for you.
With that said, let me share with you my insights around Emphatic Sensitivity…
To be Empathic Sensitive means that you experience both your own and other peoples emotions strongly in your physical/emotional body.
You can sense what others are feeling even if they don’t share it with you and sometimes even if they themselves aren’t aware of it.
You can probably notice dissonance between what people say they feel or what they show on the outside and what they are really feeling on the inside. And this can be confusing and even scary.
At large western culture is a culture that pushes away or try to hide the darker and more complex emotions of our human experience. There’s a strong emphasis on joy and happiness, and of course we all want to experience that, but we won’t get there if we try to deny other parts of our emotional world. It will actually take us farther away from the deep connection, to ourselves and each other, that arises when we can be with our emotions and experience that we are not alone in our struggles with so called negative emotions.
In the field of affective studies a number of researchers have proposed ideas around different types of Basic Human Emotions. For example, Dr. Paul Ekman identified six basic emotions - anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear, and sadness. He has also presented strong evidence that contempt is a basic human emotion. All of our other emotions are different flavors of these six, or seven, basic emotions.
Check out this Wheel of Emotions to see an example of the relationship between the six basic emotions and other feelings.
If you relationship to your own emotions is strained or blurry you will probably find it more difficult to be with other people when they are experiencing the emotions that you have not yet befriended in yourself. What might happen is that their emotions evoke unprocessed or unmetabolized emotions in you, and they get tangled up and it is difficult to distinguish what belongs to you and what belongs to someone else.
Befriending you own emotional landscape, the basic emotions and the different flavors of the basic emotions, can help you experience more ease when it comes to other people’s emotions and experiences. It won’t take away your empathic ability or sensitivity, but it will help you understand what is your responsibility and what is someone else’s. It will support you to be with other people without internalizing their experience.
This especially important if you know that you’ve developed strong behaviors of wanting to help or fix when someone is experiencing distressing emotions because you don’t want them to suffer. This tendency can be the very thing that is pulling you away from yourself and into other people’s emotional landscape.
As a Empathic Sensitive you probably have a deep yearning to understand other humans, to understand their experience, how they think and how they feel. And a deep yearning to help them feel better. But sometimes it can be that this yearning comes from a deeper longing to understand, to know, yourself. By shifting your focus, at least every now and then, from “what is happening in other people” to “what is happening in me” you will begin to build more capacity to use your sensitivity in a beneficial way. When you begin to combine your empathic ability with deep self-awareness your sensitivity will be transformed into a superpower.