Unveiling Self-Cursing Patterns in Sensitive Individuals: A Qualitative Inquiry from a Pakistani Context

Abstract

Being sensitive means being overwhelmed and easily affected by little things happening in the environment. Sensitivity is usually considered negative trait in humans and sensitive people are being treated negatively and harshly in society, such individuals are usually observed to curse themselves. This qualitative study was designed to explore the meanings and perception of sensitivity. Triangulation of data sources was selected to find the results. This study recruited 21 participants for interview and 56 documents for data collection. The participants in this study were inducted purposefully having ages between 18 to 29 years. WhatsApp interviews, aligned best with the objectives of the research study that lasted from 20- 30 minutes. Data collection was started after the formal approval of research protocol from the departmental research committee. Three veterans of qualitative research were involved in the recording and transcription of data; memos and code book were also incorporated along with the data. Phenomenological analysis for interviews and content analysis for documents were used to analyze the data through the lens of Rubin (2021). Methodological Integrity was maintained through triangulation of data sources. The findings exhibit six main themes; intensive feelings, personality traits, expectations, prioritizing relations, emotions and extreme reactions. Researchers faced an increment in sensitivity during data collection. To deal with this problem few pauses were taken during data collection, so it took longer than usual to collect data. Implications of the study have been discussed.