Sometimes people who are emotionally sensitive are controlled by their emotions.  When they are feeling happy and joyful, they think positive thoughts and all may seem right with the world. When they are upset, they may not remember how good they felt before and be unable to believe that they may feel good again. During those times their thoughts are often pessimistic and they may see all as hopeless.

Emotionally sensitive people may also experience mood dependent behavior. When they are happy or content, they are active with their friends and interested in the events of the day. When they are depressed, sad, or scared they may withdraw and isolate. Their behavior depends on their mood, more so than for people who are not emotionally sensitive. In addition, the way they see themselves may be controlled by their mood.  They may hate themselves when they are angry, sad or disappointed.  When they are content or happy, they may accept themselves or at least not feel such intense self-dislike.

Emotionally sensitive people are often affected strongly by their environment and different people are soothed by different types of settings. Maybe a loft in an artsy area of town or a house in the country or a townhome in a busy area of the city fits with the environment you love. But maybe you are living in suburbia when you are a city person at heart or a nature lover living in a big city. While it may not be feasible to change your address to fit your personality, you can work on the interior of your home being more reflective of your personality.

Having a home that is a personal refuge means paying attention to what is soothing to you and arranging your habitat in ways that fit your personality. Sometimes out of fear of criticism, rejection from others, or not taking time to focus on their own needs, emotionally sensitive people may not venture from a tried and true decor. Such an atmosphere might not be upsetting but it also not likely to be comforting.

In The Mindful Child, Susan Kaiser Greenland gives an example of mindfulness as being like a cylinder of clear water.  You can look through the cylinder and see the other side. If you pour a cup of baking soda into the water and shake or stir it, the soda clouds the water and obscures your vision. Just like the baking soda in water, thought and emotions can create uproar in our heads and cloud our minds. When you let it rest and don’t take action, the soda settles and the water becomes clear again. The longer you rest in steady breathing and mindfulness, the more your thoughts and emotions settle and the clearer your mind.

Regulating strong emotions is a difficult task for everyone. Actions that result in negative outcomes can seem so right when you’re angry, hurt or sad. When your boyfriend breaks up with you unexpectedly the day before Valentine’s Day, saying that he’s interested in your best friend, understandably, you may want to rip up every one of his prized and valuable baseball cards (not to mention what you might want to say to your ex-best friend). When your boss dictates that you have to work late on the evening you’ve planned your beloved grandmother’s 70th birthday celebration, you may want to give him a piece of your mind, even though you know you can’t afford to lose your job. Remembering and obsessing over all the ways your boss has been unfair to you will only fuel your anger.

Based on the research on happiness, having close relationships is associated with life satisfaction. At the same time, connecting with others in a meaningful way requires allowing yourself be vulnerable. To connect meaningfully is to shed pretense, to take off whatever mask you wear and allow the authentic you to be present. Brene Brown has excellent TED talks and books that discuss her research on vulnerability.

Emotionally sensitive people tend to both overshare and undershare information about themselves; sometimes they tell very personal information to people they don’t know well and whithold information from close friends. There can be undesirable results for both actions.

You’ve just learned that your boyfriend cheated on you. Or your boss criticized you in front of a large group of people. Maybe a friend has talked about you in not-so-flattering ways with other people. Full of anger, you write a scathing email and push send. Or you tell the other person off.  A few minutes later, you realize you are in agony, wishing you could unsend the email or unsay your angry words.

In such situations, you may wish emotions didn’t exist. But emotions give us important information. Being completely logical leaves out the information we get from emotions.  For example, depending on the context, anger can communicate that we need to protect ourselves, shame may help us adhere to values, and fear helps us escape from situations that could be harmful. Sometimes, though, we experience emotions for reasons that have nothing to do with surviving the situation we’re in, such as being afraid when there is no physical threat. For example, maybe we are afraid of uncomfortable situations, afraid of our emotions and afraid of  speaking up for ourselves.

Based on research, people in general are happier and have a greater sense of well-being the less time they spend alone. A recent study adds to that understanding. People who engage in more meaningful conversations, rather than small talk, have a greater sense of well-being. But small talk may be the path to having those deeper conversations. You may need to have small talk to move on to closer relationships.

For emotionally sensitive people, this is a difficult issue. Small talk can seem meaningless. Engaging in small talk, unpleasant for most, can feel as miserable as a migraine for the emotionally sensitive. Yet it’s not likely that you can meet a new friend for coffee and then immediately discuss your shame about the affair you had last year or even how inadequate you feel around the have-it-all-together neighbors.  It happens, but it’s not likely.

Medicine has had its moments of magic, like the polio vaccine and penicillin, where the discovery practically wiped out a major health problem. Some believe the “magic” of medicine may have reached its limit and advancement now will be in people actively working to prevent illness through the choices they make, such as nutrition and exercise.

The moments of magic may have misled many people into being passive about their healthcare and constantly looking for a new approach or a new medication without careful thought as to how the new treatment makes sense and why the old treatment isn’t working.

People often ask, “What did the doctor do?” rather than “What are you doing?” when change is needed.

All the work our body does during sleep is still a mystery. We are just beginning to understand some of the reasons sleep is so important to us. There are many ways that lack of sleep affects our functioning and our health.

1.  Obesity.  One study found that by age 27, those who sleep less than six hours a night are 7.5 times more likely to have an unhealthy Body Mass Index, and other studies support the connection between short sleep hours and being overweight.  The connection is related to the effect of sleep loss on the hormones that control appetite.                .

2.  The ability to make decisions, even simple ones, or recall obvious facts drops off severely.  For example, exhaustion appears to be related to numerous tragedies and accidents that occur in the military and in the private sector.  Investigations into the March 2005 refinery explosion in Texas City, a suburb of Houston, found many reasons for the explosion, including workers who were so sleep-deprived that their brains were unable to recognize the signs that they were nearing a major catastrophe. In 2010, many international oil companies agreed to install a fatigue management system at every major plant.

It’s no surprise that managing your emotions is an important part of happiness. Even though it’s not easy, the good news is that regulating emotions can be learned.  The first step in regulating is becoming aware of what triggers your emotions and what emotions you are experiencing.

Knowing the Cause

Part of understanding what you are feeling is knowing the reason for the emotion. Let’s say you are feeling fear. If you believe the fear means something horrible is about to happen, you will build it up.

If you can identify what is about to happen that is scary, then you can take action, such as buying water and boarding up the windows for an anticipated hurricane.

If you realize the fear is because someone you love is going into surgery tomorrow, then you will know your fear is based on fact, and you know it is time-limited. The information as to what the fear is about helps you act on the emotion, not just sit with the fear and have the fear build on itself, and taking appropriate action seems to help regulate the emotion.