Being a highly sensitive person means you are very receptive to energies and impressions, get easily overwhelmed, and need a lot of down-time after traveling, social events or significant changes in your life.
If you have been working on self-improvement and healing yourself for a while, you may have read many articles on empaths. But while empaths feel the emotions of others and quite literally absorb them, highly sensitive people react to all sensory input, not just emotions. They can therefore become easily overwhelmed in any situation that is too noisy, fast-paced or crowded, whether or not specific emotions are involved.
Being a highly sensitive person is not a disorder or a flaw. It is simply the way your brain is wired from birth. It allows you to notice more details, and process information on a deeper level. In fact, up to 20% of the world’s population can be classified as highly sensitive.
Heightened sensitivity is not limited to human species. Dr. Elaine Aron claims that biologists have found more than 100 species of animals, insects and fish, which include highly sensitive individuals. Oddly enough, the proportion of highly sensitive to the rest of animal population is also 20/80 in most species.
Highly sensitive animals have a higher focus on security and increased vigilance. Because of this, they are innovative, choosing new ways of being and acting that deviate from traditional behavior, such as finding a new watering hole, or a new migration route.
People often confuse high sensitivity with shyness or neuroticism. The behavior of a highly sensitive person may indeed look similar to the behavior of a shy person or an introvert. However, shyness is a learned pattern of behavior, not something we are born with. Not all highly sensitive persons are introverts, either. According to research, some 30% are extroverted.
Highly sensitive people often struggle with finding their place in the world, trying to fit in. It may take them a long time to realize that others are not seeing things in the same way that they do, that they do not feel so deeply, do not see the connections and details in the same way. Some are also sensitive/advanced souls who need to find their path healing from trauma and abuse. What are some of the ways for us to improve our life and thrive as highly sensitive people?
1. Slowing Down
Because highly sensitive people perceive the world on a deeper level, they may need more time to make decisions and complete their tasks. For example, buying food is not simply about choosing a specific product from dozens of other alternatives. It is also thinking about health, personal diet preferences, price, as well as own feelings and impressions of the product. You need to be compassionate to yourself and accept that things happen on your own timeline — and that is perfectly OK.
2. A Dedicated Quiet Time after a Busy Day
Like introverts, highly sensitive people cannot be constantly on the go. Their nervous system absorbs a myriad of different details about the world around them and processes them to the best of its ability. As a result, they often become oversaturated and depleted by the end of a long day. A little time spent relaxing reduces the level of stimulation of their nervous system and returns them to a comfortable balance.
3. A Quiet Corner
The much needed daily quiet time is best spent in a specially designated place, pleasing to the eye, with dim light, and without unnecessary sounds. This is best designated as a quiet spot for meditation or a favorite hobby, such as reading, music, dance, art or handicraft.
In fact, cultivating a hobby and expressing creativity is very helpful for channeling all the impulses and emotions that at times may become too overwhelming for a highly sensitive person.
4. Highly Sensitive Person Feels Deeply — And Expresses Their Feelings
Highly sensitive persons have a much greater need to express their feelings than others. Any strong feeling that they experience requires immediate expression. It can be very difficult for them to keep it to themselves or to switch it off.
There is simply no way of hiding a strong emotion from the world. Everyone has to know! With such deep feelings, creative and artistic work may help channeling emotions into something tangibly beautiful. The feelings take on shape and form, and the overwhelm is channeled into a creative activity.
5. Allowing Time to Get Used to Change
Change is a difficult for anyone. But for those who are highly sensitive, change can quickly snowball into stress, depression and anxiety. Even positive changes, such as moving to a dream home or starting a new relationship, can cause a feeling of overwhelm that takes a very long time to process.
Rather than denying it, or trying to keep up the “business as usual” routine, allow yourself time to rest, adapt, adjust, and to feel the loss and grief that change may bring up. Nurture your sensitivity and give yourself plenty of rest. Take a day off after traveling. Have enough alone time to process the impressions. Don’t feel like you are somehow anti-social and then numb your feelings with addictions or illusions.
6. Cultivating Meaningful Relationships
Highly sensitive persons crave close relationships. They become bored and disinterested in relationships that lack depth, intimacy, and meaning. But being bored doesn’t mean they will hop from relationship to relationship. They don’t mind being alone. Highly sensitive people don’t give up quickly. They will try to make a lot of effort to achieve intimacy with their partner and guide them into a deeper dialogue.
Because this depth takes effort and energy, highly sensitive people are very careful in choosing who they let into their lives. A superficial chit chat and a relationship based on externals is not an appealing offer for them.
They crave a deep plunge. They will study every corner of your soul with the most sincere interest, and will try to understand you, accept you, and establish a connection with you on the deepest level.
7. A Good Night’s Sleep
Not getting enough sleep can make anyone cranky, awkward, and unproductive. For highly sensitive people, sleep deprivation equates to torture. Their emotions and feelings become ever more confusing, and it becomes very difficult to manage daily situations. Setting aside enough time for sleep is crucial for thriving with heightened sensitivity.
8. Healthy Eating Habits
Being very hungry disrupts concentration and mood of highly sensitive people. This has to do with brain chemistry, and can aggravate addictions and diseases if not taken seriously. Simple tricks may help here, like planning meals ahead or bringing a packed lunch to work.
Paradoxically, regular 24- or 36-hour fasting can help alleviate the negative effects of hunger in the long term, and keep the body and nervous system in better balance. Fasting improves concentration, helps develop a healthy relationship with food, and also raises the vibration of highly sensitive people.
9. Being Creative
I already mentioned creativity several times. Most highly sensitive people have a creative impulse. For them, creativity is like a valve through which they release the accumulated inner tension. They transmit their deep insights through art, music, poetry, photography or dance. This is the gift they have received in return for their heightened sensitivity.
10. A Purposeful Life
Highly sensitive people cannot imagine how someone lives without a purpose or at least some direction in life. They always find themselves asking existential questions. Who am I? Why am I created this way? What is my purpose? What is the point of all this?
Every choice and decision has a purpose and a meaning. And it is perfectly ok for the meaning we assign to your actions and choices to change as we grow and evolve. In retrospect, we will see the purpose in a different light. We are who we are, and the fact that we look for a purpose behind everything enables us to create meaning in other people’s lives.
11. Nature and Beauty
Sensitive or not, the environment we live in affects everyone. Highly sensitive people are particularly affected by their surroundings. Trash, chaos, or ugliness can be unsettling and throw them off balance. Beauty is a universal remedy that inspires, softens and heals all wounds.
Put out your finest tableware, wear beautiful clothes, grow flowers, set aside time to clean and make your house beautiful. Admire beautiful works of art and play your favorite music. Spend time in nature or walking in your favorite neighborhood. Travel to places that inspire and uplift you.
12. Loved Ones who Understand and Respect You
Even though many are highly sensitive, most people are not. They simply cannot understand how one can lose their composure due to a loud sound, a busy weekend, a wild party, or a violent scene in a movie. Or even how one can become so excited and overwhelmed by a positive and inspiring event. Most people do not even notice half of what a highly sensitive person perceives. And that is perfectly fine.
Just a few close people are enough to really understand and accept your high sensitivity and susceptibility. Ideally, you need a person who will not only understand, but will also know how to help and support you, to read your overexcited and confused face and take you to a quiet place in time.
Those who know you well, also know what a gift you have and are.
