Sensory Overload?

Always looking around. Always feeling it.

Last night, as I was strolling home from dinner with Dr. H, I commented on how wonderful it was to be outside on such a beautiful night. As I soaked up the park's live music and cool summer breeze, I felt incredibly content. "The fresh air just makes me feel so happy!" I mused. Dr. H hugged me close and chuckled in response... "You're nuts" he said. "You just feel so much. You have feelings about EVERYTHING. It's like... how do you have a feeling about being outside!? I just don't have that many sensors!" I laughed because this seemed like such a simple and perfect explanation. I do seem to have "more sensors" than Dr. H. We quickly wondered if this applies to women vs. men as a generalization - do women have more sensors?

This morning I spent longer than I'm willing to confess googling various questions like "are women more emotional than men?" and "are women more impacted by their environment than men?" in search of scientific proof that I am not an emotional nut nor is Dr. H a robot. No dice (though for some very interesting info on women's superior emotional intellect and how our empathy is the perfect yin to men's problem solver yang, click HERE and HERE). All I have to go on is me and Dr. H: I am always soaking things in and reacting to the way they make me feel. I can easily get lost in the deliciousness of a slice of pizza, the comfort of a day with my best friends or the dreariness of endless grey rain. Dr. H on the other hand seems to have two settings: "enjoying this" and "not enjoying this". He feels things, I feel things hard core. He keeps most feelings to himself, I'll talk to a wall about my mood if it will just listen. Must just be all my sensors:)