Hypersensitivity: Hypersensitive people experience the world differently. This is also the case in their romantic relationships. How to be fulfilled as a couple when you are hypersensitive? Discover the advice of Elodie Crépel, psychoanalyst, family mediator.
Hypersensitivity and love
Hypersensitivity affects both women and men and is characterized by hyperemotivity. That is to say, an emotional frequency denser and more intense than the average. But also by hyperesthesia, in other words the fact of having one or more more developed senses than the average.
Indeed, if hyperemotivity and hyperesthesia are the two greatest characteristics of hypersensitivity… We must therefore not generalize. Because “this different cerebral functioning is also colored by the life story and the personality of each one”. Says Elodie Crépel.
The psychoanalyst also adds that there is “a huge lack of knowledge about neuroatypies”. What is the origin of this phenomenon? “A fashion effect that mixes everything up a bit”.
What are the particularities of the hypersensitive in the couple?
In a couple, hypersensitive people perceive and feel the world differently. One of their characteristics is actually what are called mirror neurons. Small neurons which thus make it possible to feel or to have the sensation of feeling the other. “In hypersensitive people, these mirror neurons play on their hyperemotivity: they feel emotions very quickly, intensely and for longer,” explains the expert.
Moreover, experiments carried out by the specialist show, for example, that if we show images of kittens or babies or, conversely, unpleasant images to hypersensitive people… their emotions will be stronger and last longer.
Hypersensitivity and love: specific needs to be respected
These individuals therefore need to give their all. They merge with each other and try to live with each other, inside each other. “They are hypercompassion and not hyperempathy, which means that they don’t just understand what the other is feeling, but they put themselves in their shoes, they feel with the other”, specifies Elodie Crépel.
Result ? Their partner may feel smothered. The hypersensitive have the feeling that the other does not give as much as they do and this can be the source of tension. Their needs in love are thus different. They actually have a need for connection, freedom and authenticity.
Hypersensitivity: advice to be fulfilled in love
In fact, in a couple, hypersensitive people must know each other well. “Understanding how they work helps them not only to stop feeling guilty, but also to explain their reactions to their partner,” explains Elodie Crépel.
However, a person who does not have this knowledge of himself may fear rejection or abandonment which could lead to a bad choice of partner. “The relationship is damaged from the start because we become attached to someone who does not correspond to us. Since the choice of partner was not made in line with our needs, but with our fears”. Thus indicates the psychoanalyst.
See sensitivity as something positive
Often singled out… For a fulfilling couple relationship, “it is important to stop seeing this functioning as a problem”. Elodie Crépel reminds us that this is not a problem but rather a potential that we all have.
Perceiving it positively is therefore a gift, since it allows it to be developed as the potential it is. This is called advantageous sensitivity, in the words of the specialist.
Don’t be afraid to communicate about what you don’t like
Highly sensitive people tend to be self-sacrificing. In this idea of pleasing the other, there is therefore the fear of disappointing their partner. “The couple cannot function like this. If you want to fulfill your need to be loved for who you are, you first have to show who you are,” recalls the specialist.
Hypersensitive people must now communicate about their needs and desires. “You have to replace fear with needs, because when you’re afraid of something, you can’t meet your needs,” she also says.
