Am I a Super-Feeler?

* Have you been told you are too sensitive or that everything is a big emotional deal for you?

* Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by your emotions — like a knob turned all the way up for anger, anxiety, guilt, sadness, and other emotions?

* Do you experience your emotions so intensely, as being overpowering, that you cannot manage your behavior or think clearly in the moment?

* Do you regret how you behave because in a given moment you do exactly what you feel?

* Are you exhausted from going up and down, left and right, because of overwhelming emotions?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, chances are you are a super-feeler.

Everyone, at one point or another, feels overwhelmed with crushing emotions and doesn't know how to handle them. Super-feelers, however, feel their emotions as if they have a switch that turns on and off —they feel too much, too quickly, and they act too soon, as if they're being kicked, stomped on, and knocked down to the floor by those feelings. (Be aware that throughout this book, the terms emotions and feelings are used interchangeably. Also, to avoid confusion, let's distinguish emotions or feelings from moods: mood is a long- lasting state, while an emotion or a feeling is a transitory experience.)

If you're a super-feeler, your emotions are running your behaviors, 24/7, with no vacations and no holidays. For instance, when you feel guilty, you're pulverized with guilt; when you feel anxious, you're crushed with anxiety; when you feel sad, you're flooded with sadness. You experience your emotions quickly and intensely; believe every thought, interpretation, or hypothesis that comes into your mind as if it were the absolute truth; and then do exactly what the emotion tells you to do. Later on, you regret your actions because you get hurt and the people you care about get hurt, too.

Going through this dance with your emotions, up and down, left and right, back and forth, is exhausting, and you find your life is full of broken relationships, loneliness, difficulties holding a job, and perhaps, even suicidal thoughts. It's not easy for you, and it's not easy for the people around you.

As a super-feeler, you're dealing with emotion regulation problems — as all people do at times — but because of your makeup, you feel most of your emotions at a maximum level, turned all the way up, and despite your efforts, you frequently get stuck on a reactive chain of emotion after emotion, almost on a daily basis. You may wonder ...

How Did I Become a Super-Feeler?

On the day of my thirty-fifth birthday, my boyfriend and I were hosting a party together. This relationship was my fifth attempt to create a family life with someone I love. I met him through an online dating website, and after dating for eight months, I felt that he was the one. We argued a lot, sometimes for hours, days, and even weeks, but I still believed he was the one.

On the day of my birthday, I was really upset with him because he wasn't helping me as much as I wanted him to. I got so mad that I started yelling at him, calling him names, complaining about how he never helps me, how he's a slob, and cannot seem to keep up with me, even for such an easy task as putting together a party. I was so angry that I took off for an hour to the coffee shop next door and sat there crying, texting him, still angry. When I got back to the apartment, my boyfriend was gone, and his most important belongings were gone, too. There was a piece of paper on the hardwood floor: 'For eight months I asked you to pay attention to your anger, the way you treat me when you get angry, and even when I'm here with you with all my love, you cannot do it. I'm scared and cannot do this to myself. I'm out of this relationship; I'm done.'

- A SUPER-FEELER

Have you been in Stacey's shoes? Despite her desire to have a family life, her emotions dictated her actions 24/7 in the relationship with her boyfriend, and she ended up with a fifth breakup. Why does this keep happening to her? What makes her get so angry at her boyfriend so quickly and so often?

Here is a three-part response to make sense of Stacey's behavior: 1) her temperament, 2) her limbic system, and 3) her learning history.

YOUR TEMPERAMENT

Your genetic makeup predisposes you to a particular type of emotional baseline from which you respond to your internal and external world; we call this "temperament." Some people are wired to be sharpeners and others are levelers. Levelers are usually more mellow-yellow, as my students once said, and it takes a lot for them to have a reaction. Sharpeners, on the other hand, tend to be more sensitive, attuned, and impressionable; they react more to their surroundings, people's facial expressions and tone of voice, noise, sensory stimuli, and so on. Super-feelers tend to have a sharpener temperament in general.

YOUR LIMBIC SYSTEM

The limbic system is the area of the brain in charge of emotional processing, and it has a set of structures that interact together. There are two organs that play a key role: the amygdala and the...