Anyone who is extra sensitive can blame it on their genes and past experiences
The evening is progressing well; you are enjoying your glass of wine and the company of friends. Then all of a sudden someone looks at you and makes a remark implying that your outfit is too tight. You find yourself getting red in the face and feel like sinking through the floor. Your feelings of enjoyment are transformed into anger, mixed with humiliation. The evening is ruined for you.
If you are a logical, sane person who experiences this kind of reaction more often than you would like to, you may fall into the category of 'extra-sensitive'. You could very well blame your genes for this: Scientists agree that at least half your personality comes from your gene pool and that sensitivity runs rampant in certain kinds of families. If you happen to be a ruminator (someone who mulls, analyses, etc) you are at higher risk for absorbing negative messages from the environment.
But by reading too much into what other people say or do, we may sometimes overreact to innocuous remarks. Some of us lash out, which just compounds the problem, while others say nothing but brood endlessly instead, which is linked to depression.
Elaine Aron, a psychotherapist and author of The Highly Sensitive Person says that we are all more vulnerable in areas that touch on how we define ourselves.
So if your self-esteem is tied to your work performance you're likely to get more upset if a coworker comments negatively on your report, than if your child tells you that you aren't looking good on a particular day. All of us have a drive for self-verification, to have others reflect the beliefs we hold about ourselves. Most people are highly motivated to believe the best about themselves and go about looking for feedback from others ( sometimes inadvertently) to confirm these good feelings. But someone who is depressed often goes around and seeks negative feedback, to verify her own thoughts. Research supports the idea that bad is stronger than good; bad feedback, bad parenting and bad experiences are more powerful than good ones.
People remember bad more vividly, process it more efficiently, and pay more attention to it. Bad impressions form quicker, and negative feelings tend to linger longer than positive ones. So one's brain can trick one into reinforcing a bad day by recalling bad memories that will confirm the feelings, especially since life experiences help to shape our personalities too. If you acquire some idea about yourself - maybe you were the kid who was always late to school, or never finished her homework assignment on time- the idea that you are "disorganised" will impact your brain circuitry and get built into how you think about yourself.
The human brain loves to categorise and label so while someone is the "pretty one", another is the "smart one" and the third is the "lazy one". One grows accustomed to that label and is constantly recreating that identity, just because it feels familiar.
The way our brains are wired also explains why some people seem to believe the best about themselves while others seize on the most self critical thoughts that crop up in their heads. It turns out that there's a certain area in the brain that's assigned the task of negative thinking, which acts as the barometer of every social interaction we have. It goes on red alert when the feedback you have been getting from others isn't going well.
This area is the anterior cingulate cortex, which turns out to be larger and more influential in women, as it is the brain circuitry for observing emotions in others. This is the reason women are assumed to have more emotional sensitivity. We've been built to be emotionally responsive to the needs of a non- verbal infant.
The hormonal surges in the female brain, described as the rising tide of estrogen and progesterone make women more sensitive to emotional nuance, such as disapproval or rejection: The way feedback is interpreted from other people can depend upon where you are in your cycle.
Some days the feedback will destroy your self-confidence and on others it will destroy it.
There's something about the menstrual cycle which puts a woman's emotional self in a bad light at least a few days every month, and at least 90 percent of women feel a heightened emotionality four to five days every month.
In general women are taught to think more about other people's feelings than men are. So while it's ok for men to be blunt, women are expected to be warmer, more agreeable and more invested in relationships and end up more likely to overreact to minor problems and remarks but there is good news for those who would like to change their perspectives.
If we can enhance memory, which we know we can, then we can change our outlook too and find an alternative way of viewing ourselves. You can transform negative thinking by driving the brain in a different direction: It's all about changing our reactions into more constructive ones.
Doing this repeatedly can help us make a fundamental difference in how our brains operate. Identifying your pattern of negative thinking and the barriers in your mind is the first step towards creating a positive view of yourself.
Our sensitivity to the negative opinion of others is so strong that we record these emotional wounds in the same part of the brain as actual physical pain.
"Reproduced From Mail Today"
