Sensitivity: Good or Bad
Is Being Self-Aware a Pro or a Con?
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Well, to speak bluntly: It’s both. When it comes to the world of the imagination—aka the creation of art—sensitivity is not only good but required. You can’t be a serious artist and be clueless about your inner world and the world around you; you must be able to see and understand your emotional and interior landscape on a deep, foundational level. (Which most people cannot do. Hence the need for artists in the first place.)
However, in the world of so-called Real Life—gritty, sometimes brutal reality—it’s more of a mixed bag. Sensitivity and self-awareness are a net good when it comes to day-to-day life in terms of friendships, in terms of romantic relationships, in terms of empathy (sorely lacking in our culture today and on both political sides), and in terms of understanding someone else’s point of view, whether politically, economically, socially, emotionally, etc.
But.
It’s also very hard. Because, as I suggested a few lines back: Most people are not sensitive and self-aware. Most people are generally self-serving, loudly opinionated, and in denial about a whole host of things about themselves, people close to them, people in general, and the world. Many say this is a normal, well-adjusted psychological “defense mechanism.” In other words: Most of us can’t handle a full dose of life, self-reflection and, as Socrates quipped, “self-examination.” Joan Didion famously wrote that we “tell ourselves stories in order to live.” How true this statement is!
Consider any number of people you know well. Think about the gap between how they view themselves and what their lives actually look like from your POV more or less objectively on the outside (not 100% objective, of course, but certainly much closer to that mark than themselves seeing their own lives.) This is the same reason writers need editors: When a writer finishes a draft of a book or story, they have basically lost the ability to see their own work objectively. They’re too close to it. It’s like a fish trying to separate itself from the water it swims in. Impossible. So you hire an expert with no emotional investment in either you or your story to tell you the truth about your writing. (Scary, I know!)
I’m inclined to see this human trait—which to some degree I myself of course share, because to varying levels we all do—as a form of “weakness” for lack of a better word. Though I don’t think anyone can completely see themselves totally objectively, I do think artists—particularly writers—have a special sort of inner X-ray talent which allows them to see themselves and others on a deeper level, in richer, more profound ways, and to be more objective with themselves and others in a way which is fundamentally unique.
And again: There are pros and cons to this ability. The pros have been explored. The cons are obvious: How can you be friends with people who see themselves as X when clearly they have little to no connection at all to X? One might adjust Didion’s statement thus: We tell ourselves LIES in order to live. In other words: Most of us can’t handle the fact that we’re to some degree liars, that we’re deeply flawed and cracked, that we’re hypocrites, that we get along to go along in our social circles, that we sacrifice some notion of “integrity” in order to be liked and accepted in our groups, that we often don’t say what we really think or mean in order to “play it safe,” that we often portray ourselves as being much better and much more honest than we actually are, that we emotionally [fundamentally] deny death, while simultaneously understanding cognitively that Death is real.
Again, I have many of these traits myself; I’m not pretending I’m somehow better or different or “beyond” this. That said: I have the sensitivity, the self-awareness, to grasp that I am doing this. That in itself is part of the self-awareness. Whereas many might deny most of the previous paragraph (showing their inherent lack of self-awareness), I own it. Because I have, like all genuine writers, that X-ray vision.
Sensitivity. It’s a tough one, isn’t it? Sensitive people struggle—myself 100% included—because we’re constantly in our heads, thinking, wondering, imagining, asking the dreaded question, What If? We possess interpreting minds, minds that seek to understand on the deepest level what someone said and why. The problem with this—not in fiction but in real life—is that often people just say something because 1. They’re HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired); 2. They’re trying to hurt you on purpose but don’t really mean it; 3. Their genetics and childhood environment largely drove them to say/do it (here we get into Free Will, which I’ll save for a future essay); 4. They’re literally not thinking about the words coming out of their mouth; 5. They’re confused for a variety of easy and complex reasons; 6. They actually thought deeply about what they said and they mean it.
The problem is: Sensitive people don’t have the luxury of letting words slide like “water off a duck’s back.” When someone says something you interpret as mean, unkind, cruel, brutal, cutting, rude, etc, with sensitive people those words stick around, sometimes for hours, days, even weeks or months. Sometimes they’re never fully forgotten. We throw the words around in our minds, interrogate them, put a microscope to them (using our cognitive intelligence, our emotional power, our intellectual autopsy-abilities). In short: We don’t have the privilege—to use an overused, battered word—of letting someone’s words be…just words. Words, for us, have meaning. They point to something; they signify something bigger than just language. They arrow towards some sort of greater understanding, some code which must be cracked, some unmarked door which needs opening.
Norman Mailer in one of his letters writes about how [male] writers have a good dose of masculine and feminine within them. No matter what anyone says, I think this is true for all people. Yin-and-Yang. There’s not either/or here (sorry Kierkegaard and Elliott Smith). It's not a binary, gender or sexuality or anything else. All humans have a strange, complex mix of good and evil within them, for example. You can find countless examples of “good, normal” people in history (and currently) doing and saying atrocious things in the name of religion, political ideology, social identity, etc. We’re all hypocrites in the end. I loathe animal cruelty…yet I continue to eat meat created in the horrible death camps called factory farms. I want everyone to read my YA novel, The Crew (now available on Audible) yet find it exhausting to read a friend’s manuscript (even though I just recently did, and it was fantastic). I yearn to be trusted by people and yet I struggle to trust others myself.
Etc.
Again: this is the nature of being human. In most ways these false narratives we inherit and tell ourselves—our defense mechanisms—are probably something close to necessary, if not totally so. In other words: Without this psychological protection many of us might kill ourselves, or fall into unflinching depression, or be unable to properly function. So we lean into our stories, using excuses and rationalizations and defensiveness and denial and our two favorites: Distraction and blame.
Being distracted from the cruelty and beauty of life is easier now than ever before: The internet, my friend. Social media. TV. YouTube. Movies. Shows. Work. (Big one.) Going out. Being generally “busy.” This is our 21st century life. It’s all built around the need to avoid seeing, avoid looking, avoid facing IT, whatever that slimy, slippery IT may be: Death, fear, terror, loss, grief, your own inner flaws, your own past, whatever you run from.
Sometimes people use the term “sensitive” as a pejorative. I remember a woman I knew once preempting her giving me something by saying, “I hope this doesn’t offend you; I know you’re sensitive.” Her tone made it clear what she meant: You are too easily hurt, like a brittle child, so I’ll say this up front because I’m stronger than you and I want you to know how weak you are.
Yes. This was my own interpretation of her words. My own perspective, biased of course.
There’s an intrinsic irony here, too. Part of being self-aware means being aware of the likelihood—if not the fact—that you’re not as self-aware as you probably think you are. Meaning: If you think deeply about yourself, you’re probably not actually as “deep” and self-reflective as you think you are…but you’re still more self-reflective than the average person. I do think there’s some sort of wall which one can hit: If one is too self-aware one might cease being able to function. Writers, in my view, stand right on the fence here: They have just enough inner life and imagination and self-awareness and self-consciousness to create good work, but not so much that they can’t function. Yet, being this close to The Edge of non-functioning leads many of us to the bottle, to drugs, to suicide, to severe depression. It’s as if we know too much, can see and feel too closely. It’s as if we’re missing a layer of skin, or as if we’re anti-heroes with a superpower which both hinders and helps us.
Then there’s the Joe Rogan therapy attitude: Thinking and reflecting deeply on the self—and doing a lot of therapy—is actually bad and self-absorbed and (another abused word in our times) narcissistic. This one cracks me up. It makes me think of AA, the old-school guys who are considered to be “Big Book Thumpers,” aka the guys who rattle off things about page 82 in The Book and can talk about AA theory and philosophy…and yet when it comes to their deep personal life they seem to have much less to say. In my almost 14 years of sobriety, I’ve noticed a pattern among these types: They’re usually hypocrites. More specifically: They’re assholes. They sound fantastic in AA meetings in dank basements, and then they treat people outside of AA like trash. I have witnessed this strange phenomenon many times.
The trouble these people seem to have is that they’re more concerned with looking and sounding good, than with actually being good, or, more to the point, being self-aware. Which leads me back to Rogan and the anti-therapy idea (and yes: In some ways therapy language and culture has infected Gen Z fringe-left ideology and that’s a net negative). Thing is: The notion that deep, complex self-reflection is self-absorbed doesn’t pass the smell test. The biggest assholes usually aren’t the self-aware ones but the opposite. The more self-aware a person is, generally the harder they’ll at least try to be empathetic, open-minded and kind. Because you ultimately “don’t know what you don’t know” as my wife loves to say often.
This is true. Ignorance is bliss. One might extend this idea: Ignorance is bliss for the self and torture for the people around them. You might be saying things which feel deeply harmful to close friends, and you wouldn’t know or even care if confronted about it because…you guessed it…you don’t contain the capacity to self-reflect. Instead you’ll go into self-defense mode. That’s safer. So, no: Therapy (in general) and self-reflection are not self-absorbed: Knowing yourself more and more allows you to be a better and better person, a more thoughtful friend, stronger with boundaries, better with romantic relationships, more likely to empathize with others, etc. It enables you to become a more thoughtful, kind, loving person. Yet as with everything, it’s all about moderation. If all you do, think and say is totally steeped in “therapy-speak,” and you’re always only thinking about how something affects you, then yes, that’s a problem.
Now, if all you do is think obsessively about yourself and you don’t bother to implement your new knowledge in real life: That’s a different scenario. Ditto with therapy: Are you there to selfishly bitch about everything, or are you there to genuinely plumb the depths of your psyche and learn?
In short: Being self-aware segregates we humans spiritually in a sense. We’re a sort of alien lot. We’re flawed just like everyone else, but we have a certain kind of rich inner vision which others don’t have. That leads us to either suicide, extremism, alcohol and drugs, or Art. We lucky ones find Art.
I did. Thank God.