the emotional roller coaster that is my life

My whole life I have heard things like "you're so sensitive Lee-Anne" or "you're just too emotional". For a long time I believed that I had a problem with taking things too personal, but now I understand why.

Being a Highly Sensitive Person (or HSP) affects my life in many ways, but for me the emotional part is the hardest to deal with. I have zero control over my original emotions in any situation, with every emotion. Also every emotion that I feel is to the extreme. In many situations this is great, I can have a real excitement for things in my life. But for the most part it is extremely draining and pretty overwhelming.

I know to be truly happy, outside influences like weather and work shouldn't affect someone, but because I am an HSP, I absorb more from these outside situations hence the overwhelming lack of emotional control. It used to bring me down thinking that my emotions control me, and that it makes me unable to handle situations the way others do. It made me feel weak that I can't just will away my emotions.The phrase, "leave your personal life at the door" is next to impossible for me in any scenario. I think sometimes that being an HSP drives me to constantly live in the now, which sounds like a good thing but often I can't get my mind past the current situation and that can be detrimental to calming myself down and moving forward with my daily life.

The good thing is, once I am able to see that my emotions have taken me over, I can try and come back to reality and use my sensibilities to subside my emotions. This gives me the ability to properly analyze and conquer whatever is going on. Now I am seeing the relation to being an HSP, absorbing more from each situation and taking longer to comprehend it all, but in the end I have a better understanding than many others.

Maybe I will never be able to control my initial emotional reaction to things, but I can try to find ways to catch myself when it is clear my emotions are in charge and if I practice that maybe handling my emotions will become more natural.