Having Stronger Emotional Reactions

• Sensitive people need to realize that they came into life with stronger emotional responses, for better and for worse. They will stay emotional. Compared to others in the same situations, they will be, for example, sadder, happier, more irritated, afraid, curious, or ashamed, and wanting more than others to be very close.
  
  
• Others around them that are not as sensitive need to realize you cannot turn a race horse into a turtle nor a sensitive person into a perfectly emotionally regulated human being. 
  
  
• Affect regulation, as its called, is a skill that can be learned, however.  This simply means that in a given situation, having the right emotion and expressing that to others in the right degree.
  
  
• Taking an inventory ones emotions with a therapist can be helpful, such as fear, anxiety, worry; irritation, anger, disappointment; sadness, grief, depression; curiosity, interest; joy, contentment, satisfaction. Others include the social emotions such as; attraction, loneliness, pride, guilt, and shame.
  
  
• Learning to be aware of ones anticipatory emotions is helpful.  Sensitive people tend to  look ahead to the likely outcome of things, often reacting and feeling ahead of time an anticipated loss, separation, joy, unpleasant event like a medical or dental procedure, or even an accomplishment, long before it occurs.
  
  
• Sensitives also need to learn that every change involves a loss and every loss leads to negative affect, and this is even truer for the sensitive person. A sensitive person must have time to process this loss as well as the gains experienced or still hoped for in the new situation.
  
  
• Emotional schemas, otherwise known as complexes, are the set of memories, emotions, assumptions, and defenses (ways of surviving) that are associated with an overwhelming experience or repeated experiences, especially traumatic ones. These schemas are dissociated and autonomous, having their own function, to protect you from a repeat experience. They come to life when triggered by anything that resembles the original situation.
  
  
• Because the highly sensitive have intense reactions to events, they have more complicated, easily triggered complexes. The good news is that they quickly grasp the idea in general and their emotional schemas in particular.
  
  
• Sensitive people often have a history of hiding their anger so that others are not disturbed by it and potential dangerous responses are averted.  This is a skill that needs to be safely learned from a professional at times.