Helping Highly Sensitive Introverts and Therapists create a life outside the box that allows them to embrace their Sensitive Strengths.
All tagged Self-acceptance
A common boundary strategy for HSPs is to amplify what you’re feeling or escalate the severity of your needs to be understood. Exaggerating a bit is a form of self-protection because it may feel safer saying no with an “excuse” - giving some compelling reason that justifies your need to the other person. It also saves you from hearing “it’s no big deal” or “you’re too sensitive”.
Being highly sensitive isn’t just about being overwhelmed, you also feel deep joy, happiness, and excitement over the little details. Are you suppressing your positive emotions to protect others? Is empathy getting in the way of being your true self?
Although it may feel like it, you are not doomed to feel constantly exhausted and overwhelmed as a highly sensitive person. Prioritizing rest and honoring your limits opens up the best parts of being more perceptive and deeply emotional.
As an HSP, you need to live for yourself and not follow someone else’s compass. It’s important to reflect on what you need to honor your sensitivity and how you’re sacrificing yourself to make others feel more comfortable at your expense.
What might be available if you listened to your own needs more often? Less overwhelm, more energy, more joy and fulfillment, strong intuition, better sleep, less guilt. When you begin to recognize the value that your sensitivity brings, you can begin to access more of what your sensitivity has to offer and less of the burdens that come from living a non-HSP lifestyle.
Being misunderstood as a highly sensitive person is common because most people in your life don’t have the same type of attuned nervous system that you do or need the same amount of downtime and recharging. The solution is not to bend beyond your bandwidth, but to communicate your needs and experiences more clearly.
When you’re highly sensitive and feel everything deeply, it can be stressful and isolating. Others may question or criticize you for your “overblown” reactions. You then wander if you’re too emotional, fragile, or dramatic. Although it can be a burden at times, feeling this emotional is an asset in many ways.
Major life changes such as moving, starting a new job, or getting into a new relationship are complex when you’re highly sensitive. You will feel so many layers of emotion such as excitement or grief, notice all the little details and nuances of your new situation, and need way more time to process it all.
When you’ve been told your emotions and perceptions are wrong, you can’t help but begin to question yourself. Every instinct, feeling, thought becomes uncertain and confusing. Your feelings will often be different than others and you will often know things without knowing why. This is part of your gift of being born highly sensitive - more aware, intuitive, emotionally attuned to your environment and the people around you.
Highly sensitive folks feel everything deeply and have emotions that seem bigger than the moment. Maybe you’ve been called dramatic, thought you were “too much”, or been accused of overreacting as a result. Learn about my experience of having a big emotional response and my process of realizing I wasn’t overreacting, just having a typical human/HSP experience.
Why criticism is so difficult for Highly Sensitive People, typical responses when facing conflict and ways to manage without apologizing or blaming yourself.
As you begin to explore your relationship to your sensitivity more deeply, it’s common to grieve a vision of yourself as a non-HSP. You may notice yourself passing through the Five Stages of Grief that were first introduced by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her book On Death and Dying.
Having your own timeline as a highly sensitive person is actually a gift in disguise that you can embrace! You may take fewer chances, wait longer to make big decisions, or hit those relationship and work milestones later, but your actions will be well thought out with fewer mistakes.
Whether you’re getting started or wrapping up an activity, you may notice that you feel stuck or frozen. You may also struggle with procrastination and motivation. Whether you’re getting out of bed in the mornings, trying to leave work for the day, or starting a new book, you may find yourself struggling with these changes on a subtle or more obvious level. Each time a highly sensitive person goes through a transition, your brain wants to pause and reflect on what’s about to happen. There’s nothing wrong with you!
What if you could do less and honor your needs to recharge more as a highly sensitive person? The best part is that it only takes a little something for a highly sensitive person to fill up with the same amount of joy as a non-HSP. Being so highly perceptive and a big feeler, you not only notice the little things around you, but you get to deeply experience them. It’s okay to listen inward and hibernate in bed when you need to.
Learning to put yourself first and honor your unique needs as a highly sensitive person is a process that takes time and practice. Educating yourself on what it means to be highly sensitive, practicing self-compassion and mindfulness, and surrounding yourself with people who support your growth are essential pieces of the puzzle.
