Do you remember what subtlety was?

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In the old days, when people lived less anxiously than us and were therefore wiser than us, keep quiet was synonymous with to feel. While we believed that strong feelings they require noise and anger, it may be that they can only be truly experienced and known in silence, individual or shared. Along with that, in those old times, there was also a word for people buried in those silences, sensitive, in some way vulnerable, easily excitable. The fact that we consider this word to be archaic or Croatian today could be the subject of a completely different text. Let us now see what psychology can say about that term, and even more so about such persons.

Let me start with a couple of illustrations. Imagine a young man who lives abroad and will never return to his homeland. Tuberculosis kills him when he is only 39 years old, after one of his sisters had already been killed as a child. Somehow he made it to Paris, but it is not clear how he will survive and be treated there. He was considered a child prodigy, but the world of music was still ruled by Beethoven's shadow. Our hero, however, has no physical strength to begin with Passionate, Hamerklavir would be worse than a marathon race. Since he can't fill the concert hall with his tone, he starts his own compositions to play in salons (and he managed to do that only about thirty times), where he does not have to fear that he will not reach the guests who are not sitting right around him. Today, we all know his name because of his compositions (almost exclusively piano), which sound especially intimate, are full of instantly recognizable sensitivity, the finest textures, are usually short and very stormy, as if they spring from the heart and hit directly in the heart, so "Chopin" is today practically synonymous with "romanticism".

Subtlety does not have to be associated with artistic expression at all. Now imagine a young man who decides to study medicine (by chance also abroad). His mother gave birth to thirteen children, he witnessed deaths even before he started school. When he reaches the age of fifteen, his beloved father dies. As a doctor he works with the poorest, he has a need to heal and help that no one around him fully understands. He has a loving nature and is quite sexually active, but he can't decide which woman to propose to and his poetry (at least in English translation) is completely meaningless. However, he writes that he seems to read the minds of his patients and knows in advance what they will entrust to him. He is gaining a reputation as the best psychotherapist in the world and Viennese doctors say "if your horse dies, send it to Ferenci in Budapest and he will cure it for you". Unfortunately, trying to give his patients all the empathy and love they didn't get growing up exhausts him so much that he dies of anemia at the age of 59.

What can we learn from such examples? It seems that some children are born more sensitive than others (though not necessarily more intelligent or talented at the same time). The world that surrounds them leaves a deeper mark on them, their impressions are more intense, they are easily moved to tears by both beauty and pain, regardless of whether it is their own or someone else's, their dreams are stormy, their fears and attachments are equally strong. Where the majority remain indifferent, their nerve endings, metaphorically speaking, are not covered with a sufficiently thick skin, so not only are their sensory experiences sharpened, but the connection between them and feelings is extremely close: cold and fear seem indistinguishable, as well as warmth and pride or infatuation and the taste of salt on the tongue. Just as they perceive the world differently, such children carry more feelings, but not only in a quantitative sense. Although they won't be able to tell you clearly for a long time, and sometimes never, they carry more "shades" of feelings, many slightly different types of joy or sadness, which are related to different relationships, situations, activities, places... The wealth of inner the world does not have to be reflected so much in loud expression as in the fact that fine differences between feelings are not neglected, not taken for granted. If such a child falls in love with language, he can become a walking thesaurus for the world of feelings. If not, he will ask you for a hundred blue and green crayons, he will distinguish the taste of different types of olives or the aroma of coffee, he will always know who is singing fake, whose facial expression has unexpectedly changed even if only slightly...

Today, it is popular to explain everything in terms of the specifics of how the brain works (which we usually still hope to one day discover). It may be the case here as well. But in a large number of such examples, behind all this, at least chronologically, there is a premature awareness of mortality, unresolved family tragedy, chronic illness or loss, that is, wars and global cataclysms. In the fragile soul of a child is buried a sense of pervasive despair from which there is no real protection (or adults are obviously lying that they will be able to protect you from something like death). Awareness of the true state of affairs is unnaturally early, but not because of old age and not because adults treat you as their equal.

This kind of child can hide his preferences, but they are very often too obvious. An unusual sensitivity does not allow itself to be tamed and speaks through everyday expression as much as through hobbies and interests. A child may, for example, feel a constant need to search for beauty, whether with or without talent, so every day he asks to be played music, to look at pictures or sunsets, to hum or dance clumsily on his own. And he grows up into a person who is always, even if secretly, suffocated by prosaicism, who tries to "soothe" everything in life.

Second, from the earliest days, he is more empathetic than his peers. Although he knows how to be perfectly happy in the game, someone else's pain pierces him perhaps sharper and deeper than his own, and tears well up because of what apparently has nothing to do with him. He visits a lonely grandmother, distributes toys in the park and does not want to win if others will suffer because of it, does not shy away from too serious conversations and does not clearly understand why it is unusual for others.

Not all curiosity is only about intelligence. Someone early sees that the world is full of flowers of different colors or clouds of unusual shapes, and then it does not give him peace if it is not somehow organized. Then come secrets with countless nuances that are impossible to organize, that arouse insatiable curiosity - all the heavenly bodies in the universe, invisible forces that govern nature and mind, similar and yet unique human faces, feelings, madness... More combative children can start to engage in early the fight for justice, despite the awareness, however rudimentary, that he will never win. And when the victims are too far away or the principles are abstract, the feeling that someone is unprotected, that injustice has been inflicted, that injustice is "allowed" to exist at all, itches like old winter shoes, itches like tights hastily pulled on a sleepy body.

A special question for every delicate person (even in France) is how they will find their place in the family and society. Few parents delve into such childhood experiences, especially where there are older siblings, so expressions of sensitivity are often met with reassurance or superficial comfort. It is even worse that such a child sees that at school he cannot find friends in whom feelings resonate as deeply and for a long time as he knows has been happening to him for as long as he can remember himself. All this can lead to the development of introversion where it was not completely natural, and even shame, the belief that others are better. And no choice of school or profession is a guarantee that it will be possible to avoid this.

Wherever someone's strongest point is, there is inevitably also his weakest point. From that rule, it can be deduced that the price of sensitivity (besides the loneliness described above) is pain, that all countless impressions, feelings and reactions sometimes turn into pain, despite possible marriages, professional achievement or psychotherapy. I am referring here primarily to an increased tendency to depressive and/or anxious reactions, but it is also obvious that tuberculosis has long been almost synonymous with art, since even when it is initially robust in structure, the body becomes exhausted and hypersensitive. The most vivid example of this can be the fact that the greatest German poet (and the Germans really like to brag about their robustness) died as a result of stabbing himself on a rose thorn.

With such sensitivity, the simple presence of another person can cause pain, so life is spent discovering the optimal distance. The capacity for intimacy, emotional and/or erotic, may remain underdeveloped due to fears, or the experience of intimacy may forever be at least partially experienced as a threat or danger.

All of these problems easily lead to someone wanting a break from their sensitiveness or developing defenses against it. The only thing that is unusual about this is that no one has yet found an effective way out. You can "nurture your roughness", devote your life to others, get drunk or become a monk (and many things between these extremes), but in adulthood, the skin can hardly really "get fat".

In an age when almost everything is treated as a mental disorder, it is important to emphasize that sensitivity is a personality trait, that it should not be treated or feared (even when you notice it in a boy growing up in the Balkans). At the same time, such persons, at least occasionally, may need support and even protection. Providing such a thing is not only a moral obligation, but also a very small sign of gratitude for everything that delicacy, sometimes at a high price, has brought to each of us and our entire world.

The author is a psychologist