Can childhood neglect affect your sensitivity levels as an adult?
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Can childhood neglect affect your sensitivity levels as an adult?
Answer: Childhood neglect can have a profound effect on your emotional energy. Often it makes you very sensitive and open to your environment, sometimes too much so. Then it might seem that you “over-react” but really your empathy has been finely tuned by the trauma. Use some of the shielding and grounding techniques I prescribe for empaths in The Empath’s Survival Guide. I find most sensitive people need to spend time in nature. I recommend that you regularly take time out from your routine. Visit the beach, a forest, a canyon, a river. Choose a spot that moves you. Aboriginals seek out windswept plains for purification. Native Americans go to fresh streams to clarify their inner vision. (Any water source, including a bath or shower, can cleanse and purify.) Tibetan monks pilgrimage to mountaintops. Allow yourself to draw on the earth’s primordial forces. Savor the beauty of a twilight, sunset, or dawn. Let them nourish and restore you. Also I’m a big believer in surrogate parenting. If you didn’t get the nurturing from your parents, find adults in your current life who can love and nurture you as parents would.
Best regards,
Judith
Judith Orloff, MD is a New York Times bestselling author whose books include The Genius of Empathy: Practical Tools to Heal Yourself, Your Relationships and the World, The Empath’s Survival Guide, and Thriving as an Empath, which presents daily self-care tools for sensitive people. Her upcoming children’s book The Highly Sensitive Rabbit is about a caring rabbit who learns to embrace her gifts of sensitivity through the love and support of other animals. A UCLA Psychiatric Clinical Faculty Member, she blends the pearls of conventional medicine with cutting-edge knowledge of intuition, empathy, and energy. Dr. Orloff specializes in treating highly sensitive people in her private practice and online internationally. Her work has been featured on The Today Show, CNN, Oprah Magazine, the New York Times, and USA Today. Dr. Orloff has spoken at Google-LA and TEDx. Explore more at www.drjudithorloff.com
