A few weeks ago I released a Facebook posting about our highly sensitive friends and how to create space for them to be comfortable with themselves and around the rest of the world.
Many people identified with the symptoms of being highly sensitive and a few questions came about from that post. My intent today is to create awareness for the people who are seeking these insights
Being highly sensitive is a gift, although at first, these gifts are not welcome. Those who have the gifts see them as a curse, and the people around them don’t really understand.
What being sensitive means?
Being Sensitive means a few things. However, for this level of information, I will define it as the ability to recognize our senses, a way to receive sense impressions.
Everyone is sensitive. We all use our feelings to interpret the signals we are receiving through our senses. Even when we don’t feel it in our body, our feelings are the interpreting mechanism we use to understand the world around us.
There are five senses we all agree about:
- Sight;
- Hearing;
- Taste;
- Smell;
- Touch.
But there is no universal agreement as to how many senses humans actually have. There are theories on 7, 9, 11 and even 21 senses.
Highly sensitive people are open individuals, and they use multiple senses to receive and process information. In the age of too much information, you can see how our highly sensitive friends may get quickly overwhelmed with the world around them.
To start, we need to understand this amazing gift by knowing if you are a highly sensitive person. The first clue is to remember your childhood. Highly sensitive people cry a lot when they are young children. It drove grown-ups crazy. Perhaps your parents told you that you were a crybaby and demanded that you stop crying. If you were a young boy, you might have experienced shame, abandonment, and punishment because “boys don’t cry.” If you were a girl, you might have been bribed with sweets, toys or more attention to stop you from being what they perceived to be “overly sensitive.” As a result, these children had no choice but to bury their gifts inside and almost act as if they were someone else when around people. As they grew up, they developed a thick skin and pretended not to be hurt when they were bleeding the pain inside.
These individuals also ignored their intuition and likely got sick often too. They may also have had bad dreams more often than other children; their resistance to the gifts subsides when they sleep. As time passed, highly sensitive people tried many strategies until they were able to forget (or successful ignore) what they instinctively knew: they are special people.
Many highly sensitive people will not rediscover their talents until they are around their 50’s. That’s when we don’t care what people think. Plus, their inner calling becomes stronger and louder, and the distractions they created as children don’t work anymore.
Highly sensitive women will experience emotional discomfort every month about 10 to 7 days before their period. Then it will ease it out until the following month. For man, they will also feel the discomfort, but only when they slow down a bit. Their natural tendency will be to find a new hobby, start a new project, or anything that will temporarily numb their feelings that they were told is not right for a man to feel. The discomfort is usually described as unhappiness for no reason.
It is common for women to describe themselves as sensitive. In fact, every women and man are sensitive, but the cultural norms have associated this beautiful quality of being as “feminine. “ As a result, man will refrain from considering their sensitive in public and privately.
In nature, we do find more women making decisions with their feelings more often than with their logic when compared to males. And it is not a bad thing.
High sensitive people know things that cannot be easily identified with the use of the five senses alone. They know but cannot explain what they know with reasoning.
Highly sensitive people may be having a conversation with someone about a problem and have the physical symptoms of the problem, even a few hours or days later when they recall the conversation. Often they will go home at the end of a working day exhausted from absorbing the energy they collected from their coworkers and the environment around them. They are also a magnet for toxic people. Opposites do attract.
Being highly sensitive is being responsive or susceptible to our senses. These individuals are likely to be easily hurt emotionally, volunteer to a project they have no means of doing because they felt the pain of the person in trouble. They act very impulsively. They are aware of the attitudes and feelings of others, and their bodies react to their sense in many ways. Because they are often working in different energies levels unbeknownst to them, they get distracted and may get bruised easily and even called air-head. They are likely to avoid conflicts and will take the weak side of the deal.
Not all highly sensitive people are an empath, but all empaths are highly sensitive people. Empaths have high psychic and paranormal abilities.
Now that you remember if you are a highly sensitive person, here is what you can do to help your gifts:
1. Hold space for yourself
You can hold space by allocating quiet time every day, even if only for 15 minutes. A meditation or a morning practice is best because you are in a higher vibration when you first wake up and will likely stay there all day.
2. Walk in green spaces.
You are able to recharge your energy by being replenished by the trees. You will need 15 minutes for maintenance; 30 minutes will give enough boost for a few days. Make it an hour and your week will be golden. During the winter months, look for the evergreens. Just breath in and out the green color as you walk or drive. Remember, you are highly sensitive, and you can tune into the energy of the trees
3. Keep a clean and clutter free house.
Your space impacts you. If you can, feng shui your bedroom or at least remove the electronics, piles of books and magazines from the floor and all the junk from under your bed.
4. Embrace the cry.
If you are a parent of a highly sensitive child lower our tone of voice, do not interrupt, allow silence to be part of the conversation and build a space where your child not only have permission to cry but are encouraged to. Also, don’t let the child crying in the crib alone in the dark. That will just build a lack of trust in the child. They need to feel safe. When people cry they release stuck energies that don’t belong in a healthy body.
5. Create a night routine.
Finish your day daily with bath, bottle (if it is your child), read a book, or do a gratitude meditation before bed for yourself and your highly sensitive child. Do it at the same time every day, don’t skip it even if you are tired. Give your highly sensitive child or yourself a comfortable and safe room. Also, pick up all the toys and mess around the house before bed so you and your child can wake up and start the day with an open and inviting environment.
6. Shower.
If you interact with people all day long, get in the habit of showering before bed, be alone on your days off, and avoid interactions with toxic or negative people. If you must interact with them, gently cover your belly button with your hand. This simple practice will protect your energy from being drained by negative people.
Remember, you are special. But don’t let it go to your ego. Your gifts come with responsibilities which are mainly to uplift the energy of the people around you and the environment. You can’t fulfill your callings if you are feeling exhausted and depleted.
Keep sending me your questions and share this message with your highly sensitive friends.
