People with high sensitivity (PAS) are those who, as the name says, have high sensitivity, a personality trait, which according to the Association of People with High Sensitivity of Spain (APASE), is present in two out of ten people. A few months ago we talked to you about this trait in children, who often have intense emotionality in certain situations.
But high sensitivity is not something that appears only in childhood, but is a permanent feature in the personality of each person. That is why we have now gathered the testimonies of 11 women who are PAS and also mothers, who share with us how motherhood is lived when you are highly sensitive.
I am a mom and I have high sensitivity
I will start by sharing a little of my personal experience with high sensitivity. Throughout my life I was a shy and reserved person, but very perceptive. Always I noticed things or details that others seemed to ignore, sometimes crowds annoy me and loud sounds make me anxious.
But a characteristic of my personality is that i am very emotional. I cry when I am happy, when I am sad and I have also cried when I feel courage. I cry when listening to a piece of music that touches my soul and also when I identify with the character of a movie or series and see him suffer. Basically, I am what many people call in Mexico "weeping".
When I was a child, my mother asked me not to cry so much, "you are going to hurt your eyes", he told me. Over time and as I grew up, I realized that not all people were like me and I felt that others thought that I was too dramatic and intense. Not long ago, I first encountered this whole high sensitivity issue, where I discovered that it was characterized by four things:
- Intense sensory perception accompanied by a capacity to capture a great amount of nuances and details of the environment.
- A excess sensory information which can produce a physical or emotional saturation.
- Processing and deep thinking with a tendency to reflection.
- Emotionality and empathy.
Basically, a person with high sensitivity It has a more developed and perceptual neuro-sensory system, so it receives much more simultaneous sensory information, compared to a person with medium sensitivity.
Having discovered all this and trying to understand a little more about this trait, I entered several groups on PAS's Facebook, where I found people going through the same situations as me. As a mother and blogger, I was very curious to know if other PAS mothers also felt some things about motherhood like me, so I looked for those who wanted to share a little of their experience. So now I share you the testimonies of 11 mothers who are also highly sensitive people.
The discovery of being PAS
Now with the use of social networks, it is easier to access information and learn about any subject, but in the case of most of the mothers interviewed, the discovery of being PAS came after having had children or even, after discovering that their children were.
This was the case of Cristina, 38, with a six-year-old daughter:
I discovered it thanks to my daughter, last summer she was 5 years old and one day eating she choked on the food a bit. That day he decided to stop eating, he panicked and the little he ate was liquid or helping himself with plenty of water. We decided to take her to a child psychologist to see what guidelines she could give us as the days went by and it remained the same.
The psychologist at one point asked me if she was very sensitive, I said yes and then she said: "Highly sensitive children feel more emotions and fears and block, need their time and overcome it by themselves," so that when I got home I began to investigate on the subject of high sensitivity. Thanks to her I discovered that I am also PAS.
On the other hand, Aida, also of 38 years and with two children of 6 and 3 years, explains that it was all the emotions experienced by motherhood that made me discover this trait in her:
I discovered that it was PAS because motherhood revived in me that way of being that I had stored inside me, like a breastplate in front of the environment where emotions are not as valued as cognitive ability. In my children I saw features very similar to me and I did not want them to go through everything that I have gone through and I began to investigate and ruminate everything I felt.
For Aida, discovering that she was highly sensitive was "like finding a lifeboat," because like many PAS, she from a very young age she felt different from what is supposed to be "normal", noticing emotions and sensations that I did not see in other people.
According to a 2014 study in which Elaine Aron, the creator of the term "high sensitivity" participated and who began studying this trait since the early 1990s, sensitivity is something that could be in genes, so it is likely that women who are highly sensitive, have children who are too.
Motherhood, a real challenge that surpasses us
Something that happens with highly sensitive people, is that in certain situations or environmental stimuli they may feel overwhelmed and have an urgent need to isolate themselves To try to regain calm. Our sensory perception is so intense that it saturates us physically and emotionally.
Postpartum, for example, a stage in which all women go through a series of enormous changes and adaptations, is usually really difficult for women with high sensitivity.
Chiara, 35 and with an 8-month-old daughter, says that In the postpartum, all I wanted was to be alone:
Undoubtedly I have felt many times overwhelmed and overestimated by the demands of having children and many times I have felt the need to isolate myself and look for moments alone. I had a terrible time enduring family visits in the weeks after delivery when all I wanted was to be alone with my baby.
In the case of Ana, 39, and mother of two children, her experience with the first child was very rewarding, but with the arrival of the second everything was complicated:
Attending two plaintiffs was stressful, exhausted and had no time to think. I went to the bathroom without hurry to breathe a little and disconnect even if they were 5 or 10 min.
It was no longer so easy to go shopping, go on a trip, visit the family ... be aware of two fiercels that do not escape, that do not hurt themselves, that do not fight, that no one takes (they must add the paranoia of mother PAS) a lot of stress although luckily with age a tad is waning.
When there are conflicts between them I lower the level of energy to the fullest like a mobile and I have to go to lie down, or walk on the grass, listen to music ... disconnect and recover.
Meanwhile, Jesica, 31, with a 21-month-old baby, says that the whole role of mom-housewife surpasses her:
I have felt overstimulated and at the same time at other times surpassed, not so much because of my daughter's demands, but because of the overload of the mother-housewife role. I have felt the need to isolate myself not because of my baby but because of my partner, because although I am sorry to say so, but it is like having two children, a small one and a large one who does not reason. The truth is that I have not felt taken care of in postpartum, nor valued as a mother-housewife, by the typical micromachisms.
People with high sensitivity are often not understood and sometimes receive comments from other people, who without knowing about their emotionality, minimize their feelings, which makes everything even more difficult.
From this point, the Being a PAS mother and having children that are too, can be a bit complicated to understand for others., as Aida tells us:
Being PAS girls too, I have to manage them from empathy and that in this society where punishment is normalized is very difficult. You feel alone trying to help them manage their emotions from another angle, of course I have just run out. There are days that I need to be reading a book or relaxing while another family member is with them. It is what we call at home time was positive, we also try to apply respectful pedagogies.
PAS mothers need more time alone
On other occasions I have talked about time for mom, a space that I consider all mothers should give us to relax and disconnect from the stress and fatigue we live day by day. But In the case of PAS mothers, this time alone is a real necessity, and without it, we can feel drained and overwhelmed.
Highly sensitive people They need to periodically have moments of isolation, peace and silence, something that is not usually frequent when you have children at home. Livier, 39 and with three children aged 14, 12 and 7 tells us a little about this:
I have 3 children and even in the simplest things I feel overstimulated. When they play, they scream and make a lot of noise I feel overwhelmed and I have to get away. I go to my room and lock myself up, or sometimes with their homework, plus work, housework and so many things I feel totally blocked.
The issue of screaming can be particularly difficult for PAS mothers. Childhood is a stage in which those little cries and a lot of noise from our children are not missing when playing, and Although we can understand that it is normal in a child, it can become something really annoying for a highly sensitive person, as it happens to Bethlehem, 41 years old and with two children of 12 and 6 years old:
I can't stand the screaming! This has happened to me for three years, my ears are extremely sensitive and it bothers me that people speak loudly. As a mother I ask for silence every so often, imagine.
Being a PAS mother is also being constantly worried
Another feature of people with high sensitivity, is the processing and deep thinking, which in many occasions it makes us analyze things too much and have difficulty making a decision, because we contemplate all the possible scenarios that could arise.
Fabi, 51, with a 16-year-old son, tells us that sometimes he tries to avoid over-analyzing things:
I consider myself very deep, always reflecting and looking beyond where the generality of people seeks. I guess that many times for my son that is desperate, because there is always a lesson to learn at any time and situation.
So, it happened to me that I try to be different and not go deep, but by doing that, I stop being myself. And the most I want in this world, is that my son be the same and accept himself as he is.
But in addition to analyzing each situation too much, we also experience many anguish, because our emotions are very deep and we tend to see more the negative side of things, instead of the positive. Silvia, 46, and mother of two daughters of 26 and 22 gives an example:
I suffer for everything, it takes my dream to think of my daughters, although now I have matured and control myself more, but still I cannot help.
Cristina also explains a little about this feature, in which in addition to analyzing everything, the empathy we feel for others also makes us go through distressing moments:
I worry too much, I am very aware of whether it is right or wrong, if she is happy or not, if in school the classmates love her and accept her or not, if she fits in school, and so on. When he wants to do something that scares me like swimming without sleeves or climbing to a fairground attraction alone, I try to put my mind blank and meditate so as not to overwhelm myself with what might happen. When I see her suffer I have a very bad time, I want her to always be well and happy.
But being a PAS mother also has many benefits
Perhaps when reading all these characteristics, one might think that being a highly sensitive motherhood person is an odyssey or everything is more difficult for us than other people. But being PAS is also something that brings us many positive things.
On the one hand, the emotionality and empathy that we handle, It helps us to have better relationships with our children and we can even understand them better, without the need for them to tell us something, as is the case of Johanna, 37, with four children aged 18, 15, 9 and 5:
I am so perceptive that I know if something bothers them, even without them being able to realize it. I feel that being a PAS helps us better to be connected with our children, at least I feel that with my children I have a very special connection, in fact there are times that we don't even need to talk to each other, we understand each other only with looks.
For his part, Mara, 44 and with a son of 20, tells us the following:
I identify more with the characteristic of emotionality and empathy. They tell me that I am too overprotective, but my son's friends feel very comfortable with me because I am very understanding.
High sensitivity is not something negative
That personality trait can be difficult to handle and complicated to understand when you don't know what you have. It is common to feel weird or different from others, but that doesn't have to be something necessarily negative.
When it is known about the subject, it is much easier to handle it and understand why we feel a certain way in specific situations. And while it may bring us moments of anguish, also it makes us live more positive emotions and good news.
Being a mother and not knowing what is PAS can make motherhood something really complicated and stressful. It is common for negative feelings to appear that we are too exaggerated or that we are not able to do things well like other women. He Understanding, accepting and managing this trait helps us to live a richer and happier motherhood.
If when you read the testimonies of these mothers or the characteristics of the high personality you have felt identified, you may also be PAS. You can take a test on the website of the Association of People with High Sensitivity of Spain by clicking here.
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In Babies and more | "My son is very intense": 11 testimonies of mothers who tell us about the day to day of their children with high sensitivity
