Do you blanch when a friend recommends her fabulous new personal trainer to you, thinking it’s a veiled suggestion you need to lose weight? Do you live in dread of your next performance appraisal with your boss?
As we navigate our way through the social minefield daily life can be, it’s easy for the thought process to morph like a giant, dangerous snowball from hurt feelings (Why hasn’t my best friend phoned in a week), to paranoia (Did I say something to upset here), then to anger and indignation (It’s always me who makes the effort to keep in touch!), and ending in embarrassment when we realise there was never a problem at all (She was just busy).
If this is a situation you find yourself in all too often, you may be too sensitive, or what Dr Elaine Aron describes as belonging to a group of “highly sensitive persons”. According to Dr Aron, author of The Highly Sensitive Person (Element), one in five people is born with this heightened sensitivity.
But, she says, the upside of this is that these people are gifted with increased levels of intuition and imagination, and tend to be good listeners — the type of people friends turn to in a crisis. The downside is a propensity to read too much into innocent situations and take criticism as a personal slight, resulting in days of brooding, which can slide dangerously into depression.
You may be comforted to know that this bent towards super-sensitivity is as old as man (or rather, woman), and is, at its core, entirely instinctual. “Back when we were hunter-gatherers,” explains Aron, “being excluded from the group was very dangerous. You might have starved, or even gone insane from being ostracised. We are very social animals.” She says that our sensitivity towards the negative opinions of others is so strong that we record the pain they cause in the same place in our brain as actual physical pain. Not nice at all.
But having said that, surely, in today’s high-rise, high-volume, high-pressure world a bit of sensitivity is no bad thingi Jerome Kagan, a professor at Harvard University in the US, believes people are actually less sensitive now than ever before. “That’s because so many more people live in cities, which breeds anonymity and insensitivity to what others think. We have more rudeness in our society than people in the 18th century could have ever imagined.”
Because, for better or worse, criticism is part of our very existence, we’ve pooled together some coping strategies for the more sensitively inclined women of the world.
WHAT’S IN A NAME
It helps to see criticism for what it is — feedback. Nearly everything you do will call for feedback — some of which will be positive, and, inevitably, some negative. The word “criticism” has painful connotations, but if you simply think of it as someone else’s opinion, it will be easier to take on.
THE SOURCE
“We’re all more vulnerable in areas that touch on how we define ourselves,” says Aron. So if it’s your work that defines the way you measure your success as a person, criticism from your boss or a colleague can hurt. Try to see your feelings for what they are — a mixture of pride and insecurity — and often what the person is saying isn’t meant in the way you take it at all.
LOOK WHO’S TALKING
Marjorie Brody says in her book Professional Impressions: Etiquette for Everyone, Every Day (Brody Communications Ltd) that it’s important to consider the source. “Does the speaker have the authority, knowledge, and expertise to give you this feedbackt Does he or she have an ulterior motivee (Be careful not to invent one, though, just to make yourself feel better.)” If the opinion is coming from someone you respect, it’s likely what they have to say will be helpful and should be taken into account. When you decide to turn “criticism” into “advice”, you learn.
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