"The Power of Embracing Inner Work: How Highly Sensitive People Can Benefit"

Could you be a highly sensitive person like myself? Making up 15-20% of the population, according to Elaine Arons research, 70% are introverts and 30% are extroverts. Like 'canaries in a coal mine', we tend to think and feel deeper, noticing nuances that others miss. We have a mind that notices more detail and makes more connections. There is a difference in the way we process stimuli in the brain, we take everything in at a deeper level and we are likely born this way. The amygdala, the almond shaped gland that process emotional stimuli in the brain, is in a higher state of alertness than average. HSP's also have higher levels of empathy due to more activity in the mirror neuron system of the brain. We feel other peoples needs and emotions as our own and often feel the need to help and rescue others. Many are empaths and may not realise that they are also clairsentient or have psychic abilities.

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift." -Albert Einstein

Perceiving the world deeply and not having the validation to mirror our experiences can lead to disconnecting from our intuitive knowings and authentic gut feelings. Growing up in a culture that values a patriarchal system, it is likely that a more introspective and receptive nature is misunderstood. Society often expects the HSP to ignore their gifts to conform to social and cultural expectations. You tend to get the message from the world that you need to be different to fit in. It leads to the feeling of 'I don’t belong'. I remember sometimes wondering if I was an alien from another planet.

Most of us are born into a family lineage that includes a bunch of trauma patterns, these get passed down through the generations from ancestor to ancestor. Someone in the line needs to be the one to break the chain and do the healing work. Maybe it's the one who sees through the false masks and coping adaptations and can't take anymore suffering. HSP's struggle to ignore or accept a lack of awareness, because they intuitively feel the disconnect between words and actions. The inability of many HSP's to express their deep sense of knowing about the conflicts they experience can cause them to feel isolated, alone, and wondering if there is 'something wrong with them'. Our authentic self gets lost through attachment disruptions and our relationship to life, will then often reflect our early relationships. Fear has a big effect on our ability to receive subtle information, as it will block the flow and reduce the messages and sensations that are possible when the consciousness is open and trusting. HSP's can end up feeling easily overwhelmed by the trauma that has been suppressed. Through learning to go against myself and disconnect from my intuition and felt senses inner trust got lost.  

"We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain." -Alan Watts

Healing is the practice of attuning to ourselves, it is an inner connection and an embodied sense of safety. We can't bypass the need for a feeling of safety. I did this for years as a way to stay out of my body trying to not feel uncomfortable energies. Through spiritual bypassing, closing down, numbing with addictions, and dulling through drugs. Another escape is an over active logical mind, this can cause dissociation from the body and intuition, usually because the felt sense has become too much and so it feels safer to exist in the thoughts.

As young children we are not capable of regulating our own biology. The vagus nerve develops from early attunement and mirroring with our caregivers.

The myelination of this nerve is what creates a smooth flow of impulses in the autonomic nervous system, it is what helps us buffer against stress. When we are not adequately mirrored in our sensitive nature, we develop the belief that the world is a dangerous place. Becoming hyper vigilant in fight/ flight/ freeze or fawn instead of the healthy part of the system. Fawning is a common nervous system response for us feeling types and we can be merging with others energy as a way to find safety and end up becoming 'people pleasers'.

"It is because of my high sensitivity that my system protected itself through such a complex freeze and it is because of my high sensitivity that my system emerged from such a complex state of freeze. It was only when I finally started to attune to my sensitivity and realise how disconnected and mis-attuned I was from it that things started to shift" ~Ally Wise

We need presence over protection and somatic embodied presence means the true self can finds ways to heal. By changing gradually through rewiring the patterns in the mind and body, the subconscious starts to trust you and you can release the memories that have been stored inside.  The more we can understand ourselves and feel safe to feel, the less we believe we need to be different. We can start prioritising our needs and find our own authentic self expression. I had developed protective identities in my psyche, to keep my wounded younger parts safe. These parts are network patterns in the brain that contain memories, emotions, beliefs and behaviours and they become more active in times of stress. A child could not blame the adults or world around them, so they make meaning out of it about themselves, internalising the blame as shame.

"The meaning of becoming "whole" or creating "wholeness" is to make something holy or to heal. The descent into one's depths brings healing. It is the path to total being, the treasure which makes sacrifice worth the effort. This is the place where consciousness is born, and at the same time the place where healing and redemption take place. It is the cave where the dragon of chaos lives. But it is also the place of an indestructible city, a sacred place in yourself where all the split-off parts of personality are united and become connected." ~C.G. Jung

When you disconnect from yourself to fit into your environment life gets confusing, it’s hard to make choices because you are in conflict inside so you close your heart and scatter the mind in an attempt to stay in connection. I have learnt over time to be with the younger versions of myself and let her know I won’t abandon her anymore. I started to feel the pain that had not felt safe to feel and then pain from my family line, humanity and the planet. There are messages in emotions and it is so important to grieve the unmet needs and find ways to meet ourselves with an open heart. By getting out of survival mode there is space to make new choices and to find the still small voice inside that wants to share its wisdom. Regulation comes gradually by holding space for all the feelings and sensations with an open curiosity and loving compassion. The journey is a spiral one that goes around uncovering deeper layers with more awareness and trust in the process. It is helpful to have a trusted mentor, coach or therapist to help you through this process.

We live in a very overstimulating world and as a result, highly sensitive people can find themselves feeling burnt out and exhausted. Natures calming effects play a big role and we need to spend time in natural environments, this has a soothing effect on the nervous system. Just like nature our bodies like to be in rhythms, titrating and pendulating, with times of rest and times of activity. This is something our culture does not seem to support and we are often forced to go against ourselves and our needs, without enough recovery time. This way of running on adrenaline covers up our internal cues from our body. By finding the beauty and awe for nature it makes me feel more alive and connected to life. 

Through an embodied sense of safety and connection with self, it becomes easier to envision what our deeper purpose and reason for being here is. Visions and values start aligning as you get to know what is really important to you. Through healing and becoming more whole, it is possible to make the biggest contribution of your gifts, while trusting you can take care of all of yourself along the way. By bringing love to our wounds we start noticing the false identity and all the ways we adapted to protect from pain and intensity. We start to believe that our sensitivity is really our super power and start listening to ourselves and acknowledge our feelings and needs.  The world needs people like us who can empathise, who care deeply about life and who can feel others pain. Many HSP's have a purpose related healing and transformation of individual and collective trauma.This is the path of the 'wounded healer', our experiences enable us to help others and be of service to the world. If we each commit to doing our inner work to grow our consciousness we give permission to others to do the same, because 'as within, so without'.

Self test- https://hsperson.com/test/highly-sensitive-test/

"The visionary is the one who brings her voice into the world and who refuses to edit, rehearse, perform, or hide. It is the visionary who knows that the power of creativity is aligned with authenticity."-Angeles Arrien