What To Do When Your Culture Doesn't Value Sensitivity?

 By the end of this episode, you’ll see what happens when you live in a culture that doesn’t value sensitivity, and what begins to change when you stop waiting for that environment to validate you. In this episode, you’ll discover why being in a culture that doesn’t value sensitivity can make it feel like a problem, what your mind starts to do when you don’t feel understood or valued.

What begins to change when you stop looking outside yourself for validation? Welcome to this edition of Self-Compassion Wednesdays, where we dive deeper into understanding ourselves as highly sensitive people by exploring the unique traits that shape our experience. You may live in a culture where speed is valued and toughness is rewarded.

And emotions aren’t really welcomed, and over time, something subtle can start to happen to you. You can start to think that your sensitivity is a disadvantage, that your interest in inner things, in alignment, in doing things well and being, having integrity and being slower but more thorough. These things are actually not an advantage, but are a disadvantage.

And this comes from the way a culture can end up treating you, which is you can end up being told either directly or indirectly that you’re blatantly just too sensitive or that you’re overreacting, or that you’re overthinking, or that you’re taking things too personally. And this is that culture’s bias that is.

Judging you based on a different set of values. And so when this happens, you can start to feel like there’s something wrong with you. You can start to feel like you are out of place. And this, these kinds of cultures that value, speed, and toughness can end up making you feel like any kind of emotional expression is out of place.

Or that needing time or space is some kind of weakness, or that you’re being selfish or that your depth is misunderstood as complication or that your pace is too slow or that you need to adjust yourself to fit what is value. It’s interesting to look around the world and see that there are different cultures and that not all cultures relate to sensitivity in the same way.

Some cultures value attunement and value, harmony and value emotional awareness, and see sensitivity as awareness, not as weakness. Other cultures more common in Western context, prioritize independence and efficiency and productivity and emotional control. And so if you’re in an environment like that, your sensitivity may be looked down on more than in other cultures.

For example, if you look at Japan, what’s valued there is. Sensitivity to context and reading the room and subtle communication. And what it looks like is that people often pick up on what’s not being said, and that’s as important as what is being said. And emotional re restraint is often paired with awareness, not disconnection.

It’s valued attention to detail and. To the atmosphere is something that is respected there and being considerate of others’ experiences is even expected. So sensitivity shows up in that culture as social intelligence and refinement. Or if you look at South Korea, what’s valued there is emotional awareness and group harmony and social attunement.

And what it can look like is. There’s a concept there of reading the room quickly and accurately they call it, and this is a part of their culture, something valued there. And also adjusting behavior based on others’ feelings is part of the culture. Being aware of subtle shifts in mood or hierarchy, it’s also part of the culture.

So sensitivity in that culture shows up as awareness and relational skill.

So sensitivity, when you see it from this point of view that different cultures value it differently, shows you that sensitivity is not inherently a problem. It’s always being interpreted through a cultural lens. And if you’re in a Western culture, then that lens is may not be appreciating sensitivity in the same way.

But the fact that other cultures do appreciate it makes you think, wait a minute, there’s not something wrong with sensitivity as we’ve been led to believe in the West. It’s just depends on what value that culture is holding.

So once you see this, it can make, it can just help to loosen this feeling that there’s something wrong. It can also lead to another kind of problem. And that is the thought comes in maybe I just need to be somewhere else. Maybe I’d be happier in a different culture. And so there’s this feeling like there must be a place somewhere where I’d finally feel understood.

And it can lead to a yearning. It can lead to even a kind of sadness, because it may not be possible to move to a culture like that. And so you can end up starting to idealize other cultures and make your happiness dependent on being somewhere else than where you are. And so you can end up wanting to move somewhere where you’re more, accepted.

And the problem is that this still keeps the focus outside. It still creates dependency. Actually. It makes you. Dependent on where you are, I can feel okay when I’m in the right environment and this can turn into kind of waiting and searching and comparing and I kind of feeling sorry for yourself.

Oh, how did I, how come I ended up getting born in this culture? It could have been better if I was in a different culture. And we really do idealize these cultures. No one culture is, has this perfect setup for. You to be completely taken care of. It’s every culture has its different values and some will align with who you are and some won’t.

And there will always be friction no matter where you live, but it’s an easy trap to fall into. I remember when I was younger, I used to idealize Indian culture and I used to think, oh, there, it’s valued to be more inward and spiritual and to take time for meditation. And I used to really like almost wish that I was.

Born there instead of here. And while I love that culture, it is, it’s not the answer, the culture itself is not the answer. What’s important is seeing that being in a Western culture, for example, is not the only lens through which you can see your sensitivity.

Let’s look at what happens when your mind gets a hold of this idea. And when you are exposed to a culture that is not sympathetic to sensitivity, something internal starts to happen. Your attention can start changing and focusing on how you’re being seen. How you’re being received. In other words, you start taking on that judgment that something’s wrong with you or that you’re different and you may start to start looking for what’s going on and how can you fit in.

You may start wanting others to understand you or to validate you or to see you accurately. And when they don’t, you can start to feel badly or you can start to feel like you’re not accepted or that you don’t belong. You can even start explaining yourself more or helping, trying to get, help other people get it or hoping that they’ll recognize your depth.

The belief here is that if they understood me, then I’d be okay. So notice you’re still dependent on them to be happy. And another thing that can, you can start doing is you can, you may start adjusting yourself, like adapting to fit into the environment. Like you may start holding things back or softening your reactions or speeding up your pace to try to keep up.

Or trying to simplify your, how you express yourself. I’ve noticed many times where I got into that mode and I start looking for sound bites. I start talking in like little clipped versions of what I actually want to express because I believe they don’t want to hear it. And so I just shut myself down before they even have a chance to hear what I was going to say.

This can also lead to self-doubt. When the environment doesn’t respond the way you hoped, you can start thinking that you really are too much or that maybe you really do need to change or there really is something wrong with you. And so you start to internalize the internal, the external message, which is that you don’t fit in.

There’s something wrong

and. Your sense of being okay can become tied to how others respond and whether you feel understood or accepted. And so this is dependence on others for your happiness. What all this does is it keeps you outward focused. It keeps you your attention on your environment, on other people and how things are being received instead of.

Your attention being on your own experience and your own clarity and your own grounding, and this leads to more effort and more monitoring and less ease, and often a feeling of being unseen, even while trying harder to be seen. So when you start to see how this. Affects you and how, what happens in you that you start constantly looking outward when you see this, that outward looking may start to shift and begin to loosen.

This is the value of studying the HSP trade. Learning about how we are built and that we are, there’s nothing wrong with us, and that we’re built that way for a reason, because you start to reference yourself. Directly instead of looking at yourself through the lens of the culture that you’re living in.

So the shift is from outside to inside. That’s the key. Instead of waiting to be understood, you can bring your attention back to your own experience and you can begin to notice what you’re actually feeling and what actually matters to you and what actually feels true to you. This is the missing ingredient.

In any culture, I don’t care what culture, how supportive it is, when your focus is on the culture and on other people, then you miss what is the most important for feeling acceptance, which is accepting yourself, experiencing yourself, and gaining confidence that what you feel is valid for you and what matters to you is important to you, and using your own.

Internal judgment and way of processing to come to conclusions instead of always bouncing everything off of everyone around you. So this can lead to a kind of letting go of needing the environment to change. And then you don’t have to go run off to another culture. You can be in any culture, you can be around any kind of person.

If your reference is internal, if your sense of acceptance comes from understanding and appreciating the way you work, even if it’s different from the way other people work, so the environment can stay the same and people may still continue to respond the same way, but your wellbeing is no longer dependent on that because you’re no longer waiting for approval or understanding.

So acceptance, true acceptance doesn’t come from being seen by everyone doesn’t come actually from being accepted by everyone. It comes from not being in conflict with your own experience. It comes from allowing your sensitivity to be there without needing to justify it from owning who you are and really appreciating who you are.

When that happens, you can drop into any culture. It can be in any kind of situation and whether it’s appreciated or not, you can be more yourself. So the feeling I’m left with today is that learning about other cultures that value sensitivity more can be validating in a very important way. It can also lead to envy and continuing to search for peace out there instead of looking for acceptance and peace internally where it doesn’t depend on culture at all.

If you can find that kind of reference, that internal reference, that is where you can experience true inner freedom instead of depending on another culture to be happy. In this episode, we looked at why certain environments can make sensitivity feel like a problem because the focus is on outside accomplishment, on speed, on money, on recognition and status, and having different values like we do as HSPs of having of harmony and depth and alignment and inner peace can in that kind of culture look like weakness.

We looked at what your mind starts to do when you don’t feel understood or valued, and you start to doubt yourself and think something is wrong with you, and either try harder or feel like a failure and an outcast. And we looked at what begins to change when you stop looking outside yourself for validation.

And what happens is you can live anywhere in any culture. And let your reference be on your own values and find how sensitivity can complement and contribute to a world that values speed and toughness. You have a place even in that world when you appreciate your own sensitivity, then you don’t need outer acceptance as much.

You find your ways of fitting in and you don’t mind the ways that you don’t fit in. So thanks for listening. It’s always great to explore with you. This program comes out three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Join me next time for Strategy Fridays where we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress as a highly sensitive person.