Sensitivity,

 

Like everyone else, I was often judged as a child because of my sensitivity. Usually people learn to pretend they got over it by denying what they really feel, but I still felt very hurt every time and was told by others that I should try to get a thicker skin .

 

So people always thought there was something wrong with my sensitivity and called me touchy. According to scary, compulsive, frustrated and insensitive people - who, as they literally said, tried to impress on me that they really had my best interests at heart and thus treated me punitively for my own good - I worried about nothing. Because I took it so personally, they said it was just a matter of not taking things personally and growing up. Growing up I felt distraught, defenseless and blank, because I knew one thing for sure: adulthood was not for me.

  

Whatever I did, hoping to gain more self-control over my emotions, had the opposite effect. I became more and more emotional because of it and all my failed attempts to change myself piled up. My reputation was carried by me like a burden. However, I always knew that my feelings were true because I could cry. Every time, because of my sensitivity, I felt rejected again, I would cry and slowly come to my senses. Also, according to the others, there was always something wrong with the fact that I cried so often. For myself, however, crying has always been a huge relief.

 

I had an inferiority complex, so to speak, and therefore didn't know what I wanted. Actually, I always knew very well what I wanted, but measured by the standards of the others, I had no other goal than to try to feel good about myself in some way. I embarked on a spiritual journey, diligently searching for who I really was. The whole journey could really be summed up as my ever-present tendency to move forward with positive emotions.

 

When I talked about my traumatic feelings in a therapy group at the time, everyone praised me because I was actually already able to speak about it honestly and directly. It was very moving to get confirmation that there was actually nothing wrong with what I was feeling and the fact that talking about my feelings could have positive results was a real breakthrough.

 

In the Netherlands, the country where I grew up, people have all kinds of sayings about emotions and talking. Here are a few. What the heart is full of, the mouth overflows. He wears his heart on his tongue. Bitter in the mouth makes the heart healthy. Take a leaf to the mouth. I got a lump in my throat. A drunken mouth speaks heart's ground. He talked past his mouth. She stood there tongue-tied. Everyone is talking about it. Talk to someone. Shut someone's mouth. You took the words right out of my mouth. Early bird catches the worm. Don't turn your heart into a murder pit. Pour your heart out about something. A sigh gives vent to a heart full of sorrow. Many of these saying don’t translate at all. I have often been told I wear my heart on my sleeve.

 

After studying psychology and giving therapy to people with trauma, depression, criminal background, schizophrenia, bipolar or addiction, I noticed time and time again, I was dealing with people who didn't know how to deal with their feelings. Because I was the one who confirmed their sensitivity to them, a natural positive change immediately occurred, they had not experienced before, as I did this not from a professional attitude, but from an awareness of my own sensitivity.

 

It is from this background the conceptualization of Embodied Language (EL) came about. Simply put, Disembodied Language (DL) is heartless speech, without any feeling or emotions. When we come to terms with our feelings, because our language has become so sensitive that we can speak directly about our felt emotions, in a way that we speak only from positive emotions, then we experience our Language Enlightenment (LE). It is possible for anyone to stop DL, have EL and then experience LE. When we do that, we live in the reality that we have created ourselves and we are truly able to live the way we want to live. With DL, however, we keep pretending that we live, the way we want to live, but someone with EL hears that this is not the case.