Quality as sensitivity leaves us like a living creature left on an ice floe. The ice cracks, and this living thing leaves us, sailing further and further into the abyss of waters, rewarding us with a wistful look and emptiness. This article is about how we show sensitivity and what is its role in our lives.
This material is for informational and educational purposes only and is not medical, psychological, or psychotherapeutic advice. If you are experiencing an acute psychological condition or need professional support, please contact a doctor, psychologist, psychotherapist, or crisis service.
Sensitivity, Well-Being and a Longer Life
Sensitivity is our ability to feel and understand, to accept a person without a critical view of his essence, the most important social characteristic of a person, in the form of built-in feedback that activates our human nature. A quality that allows us to adapt to the surrounding reality and other people. We respond to the call to give something to a person to make them feel better.
Recent psychological and medical studies are interesting to prove this. As psychologists of the University of Michigan (USA) found out, good people get sick less, but live longer. Psychologists observed for five years 400 married couples whose average age was over 50 years.
Partners who showed attention and care towards each other got sick twice as often. There are also statistics that sensitive people live an average of nine years longer. This can be explained by the fact that in a mysterious way the level of lymphocytes in the blood increases, instead, human activity tones the blood vessels. All this has a favorable effect on the work of the heart. This means that a sensitive person (the synonym good person can be used) is less likely to suffer from cardiovascular diseases. Indeed, the word sensitivity in the semantic field is close to such a word as cordiality.
Doing good, the human body begins to produce more of the endorphin hormone, which is responsible not only for pain relief, but also for the subjective feeling of happiness. In this way, the pain without which one cannot live in life is softened, and the feeling of satisfaction from contact with reality increases. The important role of endorphins is that they have a calming effect, therefore, stressful loads are better tolerated.
When we are sensitive and want to do good, we are on a kind of motivational high, euphoria. We feel our usefulness, busyness, which means we get rid of loneliness. Charitable activity gives us a new circle of communication, which, as we know, becomes rarer with age. Thus, sensitivity allows us to regulate our mood, the volitional component of the personality, increases vital energy, and has a positive effect on the production of the hormone serotonin. If there is not enough serotonin in the body, it leads to depression. Serotonin affects emotional stability and susceptibility to stress in humans, serotonin is normal, it easily copes with stressful situations. And, on the contrary, if the level of serotonin is reduced, then any little thing can lead such a person out of normal balance.
So if everything is so good, what prevents us from being responsive today. And what can be done if there is a person next to us who needs it so much, but cannot for certain reasons come to his kindness.
Is there a component in raising a child that is responsible for developing sensitivity? Yes, of course, when the child cries, the mother takes her in her arms, responds to her request, i.e. shows sensitivity.
This is how the child encounters this quality for the first time, learns about it. Psychologists found that in children whose mother took her in her arms after a considerable time, or completely ignored the child's needs, the level of aggressiveness in later life was higher than children from the control group (where the reaction time to the child's cry had average values). As you know, aggressiveness has a negative effect on adaptation to society, and is the cause of a criminal personality. Throughout life, such a child can soften the negative personality traits associated with his mother's neglect through education, but still, he does not always acquire kindness and cordiality towards other people. Somewhere deep in the soul, a person with such a trauma (and we must talk about the trauma) simply cannot believe that another person can be kind to them.
On the other hand, it is important to take into account the influence of society. The loss of this quality is understandable in the rapid way of the life of the information society. In the pursuit of our goals, we devalue what does not bring a visible result right now. It is better for us to close ourselves in a castle of indifference than to accept the invitation of the one who asks, to enter his world, to interact with him about his problem. Everything is fine with us, and let the other one solve his own problems. Autonomy from pain is the religion of modern society. And she unfurls the flags, because we don't always know what to do with another person's pain, we avoid it. We have no motivation to be empathetic, to accept other people's pain. That's how we die alone.
And also some strange shyness, very suspicious. You will open up, help, and they will tell you that you are not ashamed, you are naked. That's why we are afraid to open our hearts. After all, to respond to a call for help is not only to show that you hear, but also to open up, which is much more difficult, especially if there is no motivation for this.
Considering the above, we note that the best way to teach sensitivity to another person is to demonstrate this personal quality. There should always be the idea that a person is necessarily dressed in a shell of closedness, mental callousness, that somewhere deep in his soul, he has a basic need to be good, to create good, sharing it, gaining at the same time, and not losing. It is a need, not an ideology that came from somewhere.
Of course, there is a person who shows fear in a situation where he can do good, you should devote some time to individual psychotherapy. Perhaps in this fear there are the beginnings of love, which is so important to be able to give to other people. Hiding behind a mountain of injustice, shackled by psychological defenses, this love cannot break out into the world. After all, we need it so much!