4 “super powers” ​​little known to hypersensitive people, according to Fabrice Midal

Fabrice Midal: When we don’t know that we are hypersensitive, we feel ashamed, guilty of our reactions, of our emotions. We experience them as gaps, mistakes, inconsistencies. We do not see the link between the different manifestations of our hypersensitivity: we can start to cry while listening to the radio, react very strongly to certain sounds or certain smells. We can also have disconcerting flashes of intuition. As long as we don’t connect these phenomena, we tell ourselves that there is something wrong, we feel strange, abnormal. Recognizing oneself as hypersensitive means understanding that these different manifestations form a coherent whole. This is the first step towards acceptance.

Fabrice Midal: When I started hearing about hypersensitive people, I didn’t recognize myself in the portrait that was painted of them: fragile beings, withdrawn, who had to learn to protect themselves and regulate their emotions. During a dinner in the United States, I spoke with a young doctoral student in neuroscience who was making the connection between phenomena that I had never connected. The sensory dimension (I couldn’t stand the contact with wool, which ruined a good part of my childhood); the emotional dimension (I can only work in harmony and kindness); the intellectual dimension (I always have difficulty with linear logic, which digs one furrow at a time, I think in a tree structure). When I understood that hypersensitivity was the common thread of these phenomena, I had a shock, and then I felt a profound peace. I stopped blaming my parents and started investigate hypersensitivity.

Fabrice Midal: This is Francis Taulelle, a specialist in nuclear magnetic resonance at the Lavoisier Institute in Versailles, who is personally interested in trance phenomena and, more broadly, in hypersensitivity. He first pointed out to me that hypersensitivity accepted and worked on was not only not a problem, but could become a talent, a profession: be a “nose” in perfumery, become a cook, or an artist, or therapist… More surprisingly, Francis Taulelle came to the conclusion that hypersensitivity is natural and rational. It is our culture, imbued with the philosophy of Descartes, which separates emotions and sensations from thought. However, as the great neuroscientist Antonio Damasio showed, thinking without sensations and emotions is impossible. The more these are inhibited, the more “narrow” we think. On the contrary, hypersensitivity allows us to take into account a greater diversity and complexity of sensory, emotional and intellectual information, which amounts to thinking “broader and deeper”. It is also this “more” that makes Aristotle say, in a little-known text, Problems (text attributed to Aristotle, translated by Pierre Louis (CUF)), that great men, artists, but also warlords and leaders, were “melancholic”, the name of the era for hypersensitive people. Which makes me say that hypersensitivity is a gift.

Fabrice Midal: It’s a burden until you understand what being hypersensitive means. On the other hand, when we say to ourselves: “I am hypersensitive, I therefore have very intense sensations, emotions and intuitions, and I think in a network and in a tree structure”, we very quickly realize that we are well more equipped than deprived, richer than disadvantaged! That said, after having identified your hypersensitivity, you must also cultivate it and use it as a springboard. To live intense experiences of communion with nature, art, others, to get involved, to develop one’s creativity… When we understand and make this gift of hypersensitivity our own, then we know jubilation, the joy of being yourself.

Fabrice Midal: This is not entirely true. Until one fully recognizes oneself as hypersensitive, everything is indeed difficult. We don’t have the codes and we suffer from being reproached for being so singular. But once we access the power within us, we discover extraordinary relational abilities. Certainly, as a hypersensitive person, I find it difficult to work in a collective that is not caring or warm. I prefer one-on-one time to a group, so I favor relational modalities of intimacy and authenticity. But I have a major advantage: I know how to create quality connections. This gift attracts people in search of depth and kindness. Hypersensitive people have antennas to sense and radar to navigate. They’re not missing anything. They just need to understand themselves better to deploy their power and live the life that suits them. Highly sensitive people have superpowers.

Fabrice Midal: I see four: the ability to escape from the hell of narrow, mechanical and cold consciousness, to rejoice, savor and enter into joy. Have a heart, empathy, love others and know how to communicate. Understanding things, living things, human beings. And finally, perhaps above all: to be indifferent to the morbid seduction of power, which fascinates humans for the worse. American researchers have shown that if evolution had protected hypersensitive people, it is because they were precious for the survival of the species. Their antennas make them invaluable lookouts, great discoverers of remedies and innovators. The researchers concluded that hypersensitive people helped promote growth and, therefore, the good health of the group.

Fabrice Midal: Yes, and I experience it every day. Hypersensitivity can be compared to daimon of the Greeks, a power within us that has the power to guide us on the path of our own life. If we listen to it, it daimon prevents us from fitting into the mold, and therefore from renouncing who we are. Proust followed his daimon. His literary work is unlike any other, he did so with what he was, what he felt, with all the antennae of his hypersensitivity. It also gives us four essential lessons: hypersensitivity constitutes the most effective antidotes to grayness and boredom; she is our genius, our daimon ; she is an extraordinary recycler of suffering (through creation); and, finally, it makes everything more alive.

Fabrice Midal: Because they are honest, altruistic, sensitive to injustice, and solitary too. They sense things that no one senses, they do what no one does, they follow their daimon. In the same way, I consider the anti-slavery activists and the resistance fighters of the Second World War to be hypersensitive: they felt in their hearts, in their flesh, the suffering that was inflicted on others. Their commitment had nothing heroic in their eyes; they could not do anything other than refuse the unacceptable. For me, that’s what hypersensitivity is: not accepting the sacrifice of our humanity. A humanity which does not submit to the law of standardization, competition, profitability, selfishness. We are made to feel, to be empathetic, to be united, to marvel, to create. To be hypersensitive is to be fully human! As Max Jacob said: “Be human if you want to be original, no one is anymore.” » My conception of hypersensitivity is based on the conviction that it is an absolutely necessary force today.