Mandy Moore on depression and sensitivity

Along with her success as an actor and musician, Mandy Moore has experienced emotional challenges including depression and sensitivity.

“A few months ago I felt really low, really sad. Depressed for no reason. I’m a very positive person, and I’ve always been glass-half-full. So it was like someone flipped a switch in me.”

She says her recent split with Zach Braff “added to what I was going through, but it’s not the complete reason. It definitely doesn’t help if you’re already in that place.”

Moore, at 22, also spoke of some of the existential issues she is exploring:

“I’ve been going through this really crazy time in my life – it’s what I imagine people fresh out of college go through. I’m asking myself life-altering questions, like Who am I? Where do I fit in this world? What am I doing, what do I want to do? Am I living to my full potential?” [Jane magazine, Feb 2007]

Gifted and talented people are more likely to ask those kinds of questions, and may experience feelings discussed in the article Existential Depression in Gifted Individuals, by James T. Webb, Ph.D. As he notes, “existential depression arises when an individual confronts certain basic issues of existence.. [such as] death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness.”

Mandy Moore has commented in earlier interviews about her sensitivity:

“I’ll cry at anything, even a tissue commercial. I’m overly sensitive. It’s so easy to hurt my feelings.” [allstarz.org/~mandymoore/]

“I’m extremely-extremely sensitive. I can cry at the drop of a hat. I’m such a girl when it comes to that. Anything upsets me. I cry all the time. I cry when I’m happy too.” [absolutely.net]

“I’m really overly sensitive. I get my feelings hurt very easily, and sometimes I just cry for no reason, and I hate that.” [malaya.com March 21 2004]

Many people equate high sensitivity with exceptional ability. But in her article The Highly Sensitive Child (and Adults, Too): Is Sensitivity the Same as Being Gifted?, Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D. writes that in her experience, “not all highly sensitive people are gifted. That is, at least as adults, many HSPs are not expressing some talent in a way that others would recognize as outstanding.” She also notes high sensitivity occurs in 15 to 20 percent of the population, but a smaller percentage are considered gifted.

But sensitivity is a trait shared by many highly talented, if not gifted, actors and other artists like Moore, and may be part of what makes them so creative.

Bron: http://talentdevelop.com

Being Sensitive

 Article By Noreen Barron

 

Highly sensitive people can be considered “weak” “soft” “pathetic” and “cry babies”.

Have you ever been called too sensitive, too nervous, too highly strung, too many feelings, too deep, too analytical, too, too, too…?!

While being sensitive has its advantages, it’s also difficult being “too” sensitive. Sometimes we feel like we feel too much and we’d like to be able to switch our self off sometimes!

I switch off when I become aware and silent. In Italian, the word for sensitive is “sensible”, which means ‘to be aware of’.

Being aware of others, our self, nature, music, beauty, art, being kind to our self and others, treating others as we would like to be treated is being sensitive.

It does not mean fixing everyone, being responsible for everything and everyone, absorbing others’ energies, feeling depleted, feeling bad, feeling overwhelmed, feeling too much of everything and anything!

I think everyone has the capacity to be sensitive, it is a sign of emotional health to be aware of you, others and what is around you. 

Being considered sensitive is not the prerogative of a few “chosen ones”. My belief is that being highly sensitive, as it is generally understood, is actually an overloaded and overwhelmed nervous system.

Common signs of being considered highly sensitive are hypervigilance, anxiety, nervousness, digestive problems, restlessness, sleeplessness, anger/rage etcetera.

These signs are strong indicators, not of being sensitive, but of undischarged traumatic imprints on the nervous system.

Energy that the nervous system generates to deal with threat to the organisms survival, and, for whatever reason, is not able to release and discharge, is called the freeze response. It is this frozen energy or imprint that causes these symptoms and that give rise to people being called highly sensitive.

Many highly sensitive people suffer from chronic conditions like IBS, CFS, depression, anxiety, autoimmune conditions and so on because of these repressed or unconscious imprints on the nervous system.

Trauma expert, Dr Robert Scaer calls these, “dis-eases of the freeze response”.

A dis-ease means a lack of ease. One of the most defining characteristics of being termed highly sensitive is a lack of ease. There is a nervous energy that always seems to be humming away in the background, and which can, very easily, be triggered into a ‘bigger’ response.

There are no reserves or what is termed resilience in the nervous system. It’s all just too much and the person often feels overwhelmed by what others can usually take in their stride.

Highly sensitive people can be considered “weak” “soft” “pathetic” and “cry babies”.

They are often shamed and criticized for their “over the top” responses, so they swallow and stuff many, if not all, of their needs, experiences, feelings, thoughts to keep “it all in” and contained, so as not to feel so overwhelmed or criticized by others.

So, an already overloaded nervous system becomes more overwhelmed and eventually this excess undischarged energy may manifest, and usually does, as there is nowhere else for the energy to go, in dis-ease.

EFT helps this frozen energy soften and move so it can be discharged from the overwhelmed nervous system.

Author: Noreen Barron M.A. EFT-Cert1 (Certified EFT Practitioner, Ireland)

For more info on EFT you can have a look at my website

Nurturing our sensitive self: Ted Zeff, PhD on strategies

At the beginning of March, I posted a message on dr Ted Zeff and sensitive men.  I got a lot of reactions on thet article.

Today I want to share a video by dr Zeff on strategies for nurtering one self.


“At least 50 million Americans have a finely tuned nervous system.”


Books by Ted Zeff, PhD :







His site: www.drtedzeff.com
Source video: Highly Sensitive People: Coping Strategies