Just because I'm sensitive, it doesn't mean you get to be an arsehole

Where does a sensitive person's anger go when arseholes are rife?

I don’t chase, I attract.

What is meant for me will find me.

Then why do I keep attracting arseholes? Why do people who take advantage of good-natured people insist on finding me like a bloodhound tracking a scent? These phrases annoy me; I see them online all the time, and my anxious mind interprets them as confirmation that I bring other people’s behaviour upon me. So, to anyone out there who is worried that their chronic worrying is putting ‘negative energy’ into the universe, I’m here to tell you that I get it. If we are doing just that, then I am your unwitting accomplice in it.

Photo by Mathias Arlund on Unsplash (I feel like Mean Girls sets the appropriate tone for this piece)

Reader, please understand that I have some utterly gorgeous people around me. I have radiant friends, a loving partner and a wonderful family. I’m not asking to be mollycoddled when I say “please don’t be an arsehole” and I don’t mean to depict myself as a victim. I’m just begging people to stop walking all over me and to cease their bloodsucking behaviour.

A less glamorous part of being sensitive: I struggle to stand up for myself and am a chronic people pleaser.

An even less glamorous part: I have so much residual anger from these things.

Anger doesn’t fit the gentle, soft aesthetic that people often associate with sensitivity. It’s ugly, awkward, and heavy. The irony is, I don’t know how to define my anger. I am cognisant that I’ve never been any good at expressing it, but I’m also acutely aware that anger is intertwined with sensitivity and that it comes from a combination of internal and external factors.

Such factors can be divided into the Holy Trinity of Arseholery:

1. The ‘friends’

2. The workplace

3. The self

Let me explain.

Friends:

Most of the time, friendships do what they are designed to do. They uplift you, they encourage you to reflect on yourself. They make you a better person. Good friends are a constant lifeline, and one which I often rely upon. I hope I can give them even half of what they give me.

But. But, but, but. There will always be the people dressed like a friend, who look like a friend and quack like a friend, but are in fact not your friend. These people are called arseholes in a wolf’s clothing, and their behaviour stays with you for a lifetime after they leave it. Friendship is inherently an unwritten agreement where you give someone a front seat to the chambers of your heart, and ask them not to tamper with it too much (and vice versa). There are people who will use this against you. They will learn the inner mechanisms of you, know where the most pivotal cog in your functioning lies, and they will extinguish it.

I should know - I lived with mine. They took their time unravelling me, just to use those parts against me. They would blow hot and cold, treating me to icy winds when I walked through the door and deserts of stretching silence in the evenings. They knew I was sensitive, and this worked out very well in their favour. Any scrap of false warmth they showed me, I would huddle close to it like someone sheltering from a storm. That warmth was addictive. It was so unpredictable, so brief. I wanted more, so I would bend myself to their whims. If I could contort myself like someone from Cirque Du Soleil, they would like me more.

It turned out that no matter how many nightclub outings I tried (and failed) to survive, no matter how many inauthentic chats I had, no matter how many drinks I drank to soothe myself, I still wasn’t right for them. Funny, that. Constantly attempting to exist as someone else is an injustice to everyone around you, and it caught up with me eventually. As one of them said one time, where I had a panic attack: “For God’s sake, I knew you’d do this.”

Indeed, they perhaps knew me better than I did by the end.

The workplace:

Two weeks into working my previous job, my manager told me she had hired me because I seemed non-confrontational. If this seems like an odd thing to say, it’s because it is. After spending two years at that job, I can confidently say she had the emotional intelligence of a slug and the empathy skills of a boulder.

It wasn’t just her that made the workplace terrible (though I would attribute at least 70% of that honour to her); she was helped along by the laziness of senior members of staff and the company’s inability to support people with chronic illnesses. When somewhere where you spend five out of the seven days of the week capitalises on your naturally sensitive nature to make you fit their desired team dynamic, and then fails to support you in bad health, it leaves a pretty bitter taste in the mouth.

The Self:

Perhaps the biggest challenge of them all is the self. The Everest of Arseholes. Of course, this doesn’t apply to you if you are someone who successfully practices self-love. I am pretty terrible at self-love. The anger that swims around in me tends to thwart any attempts; being tender to myself feels like something I don’t deserve. I am all too aware of the irony of this - arguably, the feelings I have towards myself prove the dire need for self-compassion. I am conscious that I don’t want to host a pity party here, but I would be remiss to not mention that a lifetime of your body and mind having health troubles, and people walking all over you, does direct the anger internally. You are frustrated that your youthful body can’t keep up with others your age. You are fed up with having to keep funding therapy, because surely you should be better by now. You are so used to people using you as a doormat that you don’t know if you could ever amount to anything else.

Tips for breaking the cycle would be much appreciated; I hate the fact that berating myself is easier than giving myself a break.

Photo by Nicole Baster on Unsplash

My thin skin irritates me, but nothing frustrates me more than finding myself in situations where people make my thin skin known. In an ideal world, having a thin skin means you can joyfully absorb art, support others with a unique depth of empathy and create great things. In a more realistic world, arseholes collect thin-skinned people like they’re designer bags. It leaves me exhausted, but more than that, it leaves me furious.

People say, “Put the anger down.” But what if you’ve been holding it all your life, and you don’t know what to do with empty hands? Where does anger go once you release it into the wild?

All my love,

Emma