Oversensitive feelings

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In the past couple of years one thing that's become more apparent about me is that I'm very oversensitive and get upset easily. My brother has emphasised this to me as have my parents. Also at school, even advice from teachers that sounds slightly negative (but is constructive) can upset me a bit, or if a frustrated teacher has a certain tone in his/her voice that I don't feel is necessary. It's also common when I'm given advice; I get upset easily by it because people with Asperger's Syndrome find it extremely difficult to be open-minded and so I find it difficult to follow the advice in a way that suits me. If I can't easily follow their advice, I tend to give up on it and continue linearly as I did before.

Another thing about me is that I'm far too overanalytical of myself. As a result, this means I can be quite harsh on myself at school. For example, if I end up getting a B or a C in a piece of homework or a test, I tend to beat myself up over it not being an A. So if I'm consistently falling below my target, I can't easily fix it because I find it hard to follow the advice given to me by the teachers because it goes against the linear trend I have been previously following. For example, I'm in Year 13 at school (doing A-Levels) and I've been trying to find a better way of working more effectively and with confidence. Whilst I can come up with a short-term solution, I just can't see it happening for long in the future.

Does anybody else easily get upset or find it hard to be open-minded to other people's advice?

Yes, definitely.

In fact, I am studying for my A levels at home now because I couldn't handle the people who were around me because I thought they thought badly of me.

One major example is a year or two ago when I auditioned for a kind of bursary fund for musicians to help with lesson costs and things... I left it feeling depressed and thinking their comments were negative but I actually got the bursary and my piano teacher asked them about what they said and they were actually talking about things they expected in my future, not things I should have already accomplished.

So, yeah, I do understand the feeling of being oversensitive towards criticism... Even if it wasn't actually criticism :-/

Same here to me, someone being critical of me has always felt like they were calling me stupid. I didnt kick my butt into doing well in school just to be called "stupid", directly or otherwise. I do everything i can to not take it as such, but in the end i just have to shut myself down before i crack. Seems to happen as well when, supposedly, someone tries to help me and something in their tone sounds exactly like theyre being critical.

Well I'm physically oversensitive.

I love food a lot more then most,
feel pain far sooner,
laugh faster and harder,
and cry very very quickly.

Mind you, frustration works a lot like pain, and I do get annoyed damn quick.

But beyond that, I don't tend to mind criticism, bullying, or rivalry. I've had plenty of trauma's in my past, but I think that's the reason I've come to terms with people in general.

I'm not as bad now, but when I was younger, I was very over-sensitive to slights and criticisms.

A technique that I find helpful is to write down what the other person has said and look at it objectively. See if you can understand what they were trying to say.

If you get their point, then make a mental note to do things differently in future, and then go "meh" and continue with your day to day life.

If you don't understand what they were on about, then it could be either they were talking rubbish, or you aren't able to pick up on it at this moment in time. Tell yourself that you'll learn eventually (or post it here and we'll tell you what went wrong) and then go "meh" and continue with your day to day life....

Basically, don't let it do your head in; take the information from the criticisms but leave the emotions behind.

I mightn't have explained that very well, but I find it helps.

I've always gone with the coldly analytical approach -- is there something in what was said that I can use? Any bit of useful information? If so, I fish that out and ignore the rest. If there's nothing useful, I ignore the whole thing.

It takes time, but you can eventually retrain yourself to view criticism as a chance to sift for useful information, and eventually wind up so involved in that aspect you forget to feel criticized.

I used to be like you to a great degree, but after many years I now take criticism well except when I know for sure they are rubbing it in my face and then I punch back 10 times harder than their original criticism.

But one criticism I will never take under any circumstance is if they say my opinion is wrong and say it's stupid or demand me to change it.

But with any criticism I still have to watch myself getting sucked into a perception of being judged......

I am sensitive but after so much i become numb and piss people off with my lack of response. My focus is on the task at hand and all around me disappear I hear them and I am aware of them and know what they say but don't respond. It is not on purpose it just happens! I am aware of them and if they are threat no threat and if they become a real threat. If they are no threat and remain that way they are scenary(SP)

of course. I get upset about everything, and take everything seriously. I never follow advice, i always have to try everything out for myself and then people always saiy 'errr i told u so'

I also find that I'm oversensitive. My feelings get hurt, very easily. I blame myself for everything that goes wrong, as well. When it gets really bad, I have a good cry, and than I play 'Such a Shame' by The Kinks on youtube.

I am really over-sensitive when it comes to hurting things. I'll eat meat quite happily, but I find it very hard to kill off a cockroach scuttling across the counter. When I was younger I used to cry when my goldfish died because I forgot to change the water, and felt bad about crushing ants under my feet. :/

It also applies to people and emotions. I just can't bring myself to hurt other people. Not that hurting people is a good thing- but necessary sometimes.

Though, strangely, I have a very high physical pain threshold.

I am overly sensitive and always working to become more relaxed about it. I think it would be easier if I didn't have the excessive emotions. It's difficult to make solid judgments when you're encountering and displaying feelings are not necessarily appropriate to the moment or situation.

I know this thread isn't very rescent but it's the only thread I've found what is relavent to how I'm feeling at the moment, and I want some friendly advice/support (not lectures like ''get a life'' or any rubbish like that, because that really doesn't help). Also I'm going to promise myself not to swear in this post.

OK, I'll tell you. I've been haven't very strange feelings lately, and they are all mixed up with opposite thoughts, which makes me feel low without knowing why. Here's the problem: As I've become a young adult I'm finding it harder and harder to accept being the only one with a disability out of my cousins. I have 5 cousins on my mum's side, and I see them a lot, because we are a close family. My youngest cousin is 13 now, and the oldest is 21. I am the second oldest, but I feel like a baby compared to them now. And because I don't have many friends, I feel my cousins are my ''close friends'', and I used to cling onto them a lot when we were all small children. But now they're getting older, they're starting to have lives of their own and wanting to see their mates, and also leaving me out. I feel really unworth it, because I have a car and can drive, and also have saved up a lot of money in my bank, so I would have thought the cousins younger than me would be saying to their friends, ''my older cousin is a bit shy, but is really cool because she can drive, and she's got a lot of money - more than us.'' But now I've learnt it's not what you've got, it's how sociable you are, and it's really not fair.

But anyway - here's my mixed feelings. They are all becoming streetwise and out and about with their mates on week-end nights now, and although lingering about on the streets at night with a crowd of rowdy teenagers isn't really my idea of entertainment, I also get these horrible jealous emotions too. So if they asked me to come and join them and all their mates one Friday night, I will cringe and shudder at that thought and say, ''no thanks.'' And then I sit in my room crying - not because I said no, but because they're all socially able to mix and hang out, and I'm not, so then I think that it wouldn't be worth my while going along with them because I will just get bored and end up just tagging behind them. Also I struggle with having to put on a front - it exhausts me. So I start saying to myself, ''I hate hanging about outside late at night with a crowd of teenagers who won't really speak to me and it won't really do my emotional energy any good, so what have I got to be jealous of?'' But I still feel horribly jealous that they're out and I'm not, even though I don't want to be out on the streets.
I've been feeling very sensitive about that in the past few months now, and now I feel I don't want to spend any time with my cousins when they come, because I feel I'm not like them and I never will be.

I don't want to feel that way towards my cousins, but I can't help it because I'm getting these mixed emotions. Being jealous of people who are doing what you choose not to want to do is a very upsetting emotion. Is it because the teenage cousins are all younger than me but are doing much more, and I'm still in the mind of a 10 year old, and I know it? Or is it because I'm loosing my relationship with my cousins? Or is it because I can't handle the fact that they're changing and I'm not? Does anyone else feel like this, who have a family full of NTs?

Yes, this is how I feel, too. My heart is a peach; anytime you put a knife into it, it bruises and bleeds. My heart feelings are not rational unlike others' head feelings, and I can't feel rational or intelligent. I am not intellectual, as my sister is; I am artistic, perhaps overly so. I cannot stomach criticism, and even if I can't spell a word right, I beat myself up. I feel destined to be like this...I can't help you, though, because I can't help myself with this...I'm sorry.

It's still nice to write to people who feel the same as me, like you do.