Excessive sensitivity and resistance to social interaction are interconnected. The main cause is heightened sensitivity, which leads to negative experiences in social life. Socializing itself, as an activity, is a form of aggressive behavior—it is an event where we act aggressively. At this point, let me clarify what we understand as aggressive behavior in the AEQ method.

Aggressive behavior means moving toward something. Aggression is the opposite of passivity. Aggression in itself does not necessarily mean violence, although violence is a form of aggression. If we are unable to appropriately address issues in time or let them go too far, we may resort to entropic second-degree aggressive emotions, which can lead to violence. Sometimes, violence is the only way out. However, this largely depends on a person’s emotional maturity and their ability to anticipate the future and prevent undesirable events—or redirect them in a constructive way that still uses aggression productively.

Why Is Aggression So Important?

Newton’s Second Law clearly states that in order to change the direction or speed of a moving object, a force must be applied. This means using kinetic energy to influence a moving body (living or non-living) to change its speed or direction. If something is chronically ineffective or inappropriate, change is necessary. If that change is not made, the condition remains chronically the same. These problems then continue until they become so great that they lead to destruction—or in the case of a human being, even death.

To change something chronic, we must apply Newton’s Second Law and influence what we want to change with force. This immediately brings the need for aggression, because without it a person cannot influence or bring about change. If a person is passive—which is the opposite of aggression—then they merely wait for things to change on their own. In such cases, they lose control and the ability to consciously influence change in a way that considers their interests or those of others involved.

Excessive sensitivity directly interferes with the appropriate use of aggression. What happens when we use aggressive behavior to activate Newton’s Second Law? Newton’s Third Law comes into play.

Newton’s Third Law states that every action triggers an equal and opposite reaction. If a person initiating aggressive behavior is too sensitive to handle the inevitable reaction (as per the Third Law), problems arise. Instead of the kinetic energy used to influence someone leading to change—because that person is bothering, obstructing, or threatening them—the situation reverses. The person being influenced reacts, and if we are too sensitive, we retreat instead of them.

This leads to highly ineffective use of aggressive behavior. The person loses the ability to influence their environment and cannot affect what bothers, threatens, or limits them. Consequently, they try to withdraw from the environment. If they have no influence, they become ineffective in the relationship. Ineffectiveness is repelling, divisive, and unappealing, driving us away from interaction. This is why overly sensitive people often become less social.

Why Does a Child Become Oversensitive?

If a parent does not know how to use aggressive behavior effectively to solve problems, the child searches for a better solution—often avoiding problems altogether. They do this by limiting themselves, isolating, becoming cynical or hostile, and creating distance from others. This helps reduce problems but also limits the pleasure and joy that social connection can bring.

Like everything, sensitivity has two extremes, and getting stuck on either side—being too sensitive or entirely numb—is never healthy.

A child’s oversensitivity can also be explained through a core principle of AEQ relationships: the child must have too much of what the parent lacks, and too little of what the parent has in abundance. This is based on the law of balance.

If a child is overly sensitive, it often means one of the parents is not sensitive enough. Imbalance in the family leads to dysfunction, which most affects the child as the most vulnerable family member. The child compensates for this imbalance by exhibiting the opposite behavior. Thus, the child takes on what is missing, even though it plays a crucial role in family function.

If you notice your child is overly sensitive, don’t ask what’s wrong with them—ask what’s wrong with you, the two of you as parents, and the environment the child is growing up in. If you are participating in AEQ programs, your sensory amnesia and disconnection gradually diminish through regular AEQ practice, allowing you to more clearly see that the child’s behavior is a consequence—not the cause—of the problems.

Then, you can consciously work on increasing your own sensitivity and balancing what you lack, which is why the child has too much of it. Once you raise that lack to a proper level, the child can reduce their oversensitivity.

Reduced sensitivity increases the child’s ability to use aggressive behavior, as they become less afraid of the response. When there is a reaction to their influence on the environment that bothers, obstructs, or threatens them, they will no longer retreat, yield, or flee, but will stand their ground. This gradually makes them more effective in solving problems. They will not be forced to build a shell of chronically tense muscles and a constantly activated sympathetic nervous system, which allows them to shift from hypersensitivity to numbness—a state that, in turn, pushes their child into hypersensitivity, neurosis, hysteria, or manic behavior as they fight for a parental response.

If you want to solve a problem, you must initiate change. To initiate change, aggressive influence is necessary—meaning pressure must be applied to what you want to change. And change always brings resistance.

This becomes an even bigger issue if a child grows physically but not emotionally. Then we have an adult whose body is capable of generating strong emotions, but whose consciousness cannot control their behavior.

Parents who feel and often know they did not give enough attention to their child—placing them second or third during their upbringing while choosing to be diligent at work, overly involved in sports, caring for their own parents’ relationship, or supporting an emotionally immature partner—tend to look the other way when their child acts out.

That child becomes increasingly stubborn, sensitive, and indignant—filled with hatred toward the world that let them down.