Being an HSP or highly sensitive person has its pros and cons. Mostly cons if you don’t know how to embrace it. You have to face mental and emotional highs and lows, shutdowns and meltdowns, feeling constantly tired, needing to be alone or avoiding people and the list goes on. So who is HSP?
Who is a Highly Sensitive Person?
An HSP is a person who is very sensitive to their environment, whenever anything happens in their surroundings, all their senses get on high alert. Their minds try to analyze every movement to ensure its survival. The huge drawback is that the person not only starts to feel his/ her emotions but also starts to tap into the energetic field of people around them.
In other words, now he/ she is feeling what others are feeling too.
This scenario becomes worse when you don’t know what is happening or how to get out of it. With enough time, the body becomes so habitual to these emotions that even the person himself doesn’t know what is happening, when it started or ended. A slight trigger is enough to activate those emotions.
why does it happen or Why does HSP have this ability?
In most of the cases, the root reason arises in their childhood. If you’re an HSP, there’s a high possibility that you had a little rough childhood. Maybe your parents were not physically or emotionally present or they were very controlling or abusive.
The chances of being an HSP become higher if you felt unsafe to express your thoughts and emotions as a child.
In my scenario, whenever I tried to express myself I was turned down, and criticized for crying or shouting. Good girls don’t blame, they only listen and follow. So what happened when I felt my parents didn’t like what I was feeling or talking about, they disapproved of me.
I started to feel fearful, “My parents don’t like this, maybe there’s something wrong with me, I need to change myself so that my parents like me, what should I do that will make my parents love and approve of me more.”
To get their approval
To get their approval would start to open my field or look outside of myself for the ways that will make me feel loved and validated. That was just a safety mechanism that I learned to feel safe.
What happens when you feel Unloved and non-validated? You start to feel unsafe. With this, fears arise and now you will do everything in your power to make that feeling go away. Again in my case, that was only possible when I got the approval of my parents.
Sounds silly, but this is how a child’s mind and the unconscious mind work.
This got more interesting in my later years because now I was able to read and predict their every move. Whenever they were around I was on high alert. I had to be on my best behavior. Be the perfect kid and sibling that they wanted me to be. The result was I was their favorite kid growing up.
But things turned upside down when I started to hit puberty and worse in my 20s cuz now impressing them was a little hard when my wishes and desires were turned down on every step. I became rebellious.
What was the point of being in someone’s good books when you are turned down on every step?
What happens when an HSP is turned down for expressing themselves?
They shut down. They will shut down their thoughts and emotions because now they do not feel safe to express themselves. Because in the past when they tried to express themselves they got rejected, and their emotions were not considered relevant.
After the shutdown phase, comes the meltdown when you just burst whatever you are feeling. And that’s necessary too, you cannot hold things longer.
The wound is the place where the Light enters you ~ Rumi
With pain arises awakening
This is the phase when an HSP will try to get into spirituality. Because nothing outside of them is making this feeling go away and then they turn inward or try to. Sounds cool right?
Wrong, because now more discomfort will arise. To be free of these thoughts and emotions, you have to cross the bridge of pain which is only possible when you accept and surrender to these thoughts and emotions. Some may continue to do the work and some might give up. Or both.
How to turn this curse of HSP into a blessing?
- Get into your body: Continuous shutdown has led them to block out their emotions. They are always in their head, thinking and analyzing. Thus the solution is to return your attention to your inner energetic field. Allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling. Let your thoughts and emotions be there, don’t fight them, just let them be.
- Embrace your inner child: Since the trauma is stored from childhood, the way out is there too. Start to do things that you loved to do as a child. By doing this, you’re embracing the parts of yourself that once were hurt.
- Know that people do their best with what they know: For so long I blamed my parents for what I was going through until I realized they were doing what they learned and observed in their life. So how can I put all the blame on them? We are the creators of our realities. And by thinking the same thoughts and feeling the same emotions, I was creating the same reality over and over again, (unconsciously). With this understanding, forgiveness came easy and I had a choice, I wasn’t a victim of my reality.
Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you. – Eckhart Tolle
- Yoga: Yoga helps you return your attention from your mind to your body. When you are fully present in your body, there is an energy shift. Your mind is no longer in control and you start to become conscious of the unconscious patterns.
- Journal: I highly suggest you to journal whenever your mind is going from one place to another or you feel like your emotions are all over the place. This activity ensures that you release the suppressed emotions, unconscious thoughts and get back in your element.
Remember HSP there’s a way out. Honor your emotions because they are there to be acknowledged not suppressed. Allow them to be there, accept them, surrender, and let them dissolve themselves in the light of your consciousness.