Balling up when it's too much
Sensitivity, chronic pain, and empathy. Being tough and vulnerable.
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Curled up in a ball. Shutting out the world. Pangolins do it best. In Indonesia, wooden sculptures of the “shy man” are curled up too. On his knees, face in hands, and tucked in an impossibly tight ball, the Orang Malu figure is a yogi. The pain of the world, maybe his own pain too, has become too much. The story goes that he curls inward into meditation to alleviate the suffering of the world. He absorbs rather than shuns the pain. His body is muscular and youthful. Rubbing his back brings strength. How curious to see power in a figure whose spirit appears so abjectly defeated.
Any highly sensitive person relates too well to this position. Those of us with chronic pain also know the feeling. The two regularly go together.
Sensitivity is a virtue and a burden. Elation, awe, and bliss can be overwhelming and wonderful, yes. But more often than not, the feeling a sensitive person notices the most is pain. Be it physical, emotional, spiritual or energetic pain, pain is the loudest.
To bear such agony, a sensitive person has to be strong. Paradoxically, a sensitive person is also viewed as weak, as having a low pain tolerance. Do we nut up and take it? Or ball up and avoid it?
Are we strong or weak?
A paradox of strength and weakness prevails. Highly sensitive people know their sensitivity to be a gift, a mark of their exceptional empathic abilities. Not only are they able to pick up on and feel what others cannot, they are able to bear the burden of the intense feelings. This borders on superhuman.
At the same time, our culture sees sensitivity as a mark of inferiority and weakness.
