We’ve talked about what makes up an HSP (highly sensitive person) – maybe you’ve even realized you’re one, yourself…
If that’s the case, be cheered to know it’s not all hardship and toil and curse – there are numerous blessings in being highly sensitive.
I long for you to know the rich gift of how you were created and learn to celebrate and thrive in your day to day.
If you missed my prior post, you can read it here.
The Blessings
Our world wouldn’t be complete without its 15-20% makeup of Highly Sensitives. With all its busyness and chaos, the introspective, sensitive butterflies bring a deep calm amidst the backdrop cacophony of a thousand crickets.
As an HSP, you can embrace many truths as you come to understand more your own complex makeup…
- Deeply caring, compassionate and sensitive to others, HSPs have an attentiveness to friends, family, even strangers in need. Their hearts go deep to understand and care for those around them.
- Highly Sensitives desire to help. While others can overlook ways in which to assist someone requiring help, instead focusing on themselves, HSPs genuinely want to ease the sufferings of others and many will find their calling in such careers as therapy, teaching in the arts, holistic medicine, ministry, hospice care, missionary work, and volunteer work (HSPs can be me-centered as well, in a different way – we’ll discuss below).
- Listeners, encouragers, helping others to recognize infallibilities they might have missed – if you have a relationship with an HSP, these are all valuable traits from which you benefit.
- Highly Sensitive People are deep thinkers. They don’t want to skim the surface with shallow talk; they reflect profoundly on items that matter.
- Creative & imaginative, their emotions enrich the world. If you’ve enjoyed a masterpiece in the arts – a vividly beautiful painting, moving piece of music, elegantly choreographed dance, you’ve likely witnessed the work of a highly sensitive person. This creativity can filter beyond the arts, showing itself in business, home life – anywhere, really.
- Deeper emotions are all part of the package of being an HSP. The highly sensitive will process sorrow to a profound extent, but they will also soar higher than others when experiencing joy.
- Does it drive you crazy to suffer through the atmosphere and schedule of the unorganized? Highly sensitive people are extremely detail-oriented. They see everything. This trait can make them highly valuable in the workplace, and enable them to carefully craft their family life, day-to-day schedule, and surroundings in wisdom. When they’re not too overwhelmed.
- Put an HSP in a position of leadership and they can excel and bring extreme value to others – both the ones underneath them and above. They will sacrificially put their coworkers before themselves and aim to make the environment and work healthy and optimal for everyone.
- Highly Sensitives are keenly intuitive. Think of it as a superpower.
- HSPs are connected to the world around them in an authentic way. They can fully appreciate time with a friend or in their activity of choice.
- HSPs are endowed with heightened senses. What other people fail to miss or experience is a source of joy for the highly sensitive. Basking in the scent of a fragrant flower, feeling warm sun rays upon skin, wrapping self in a velvety soft throw, tasting perfection of exquisite morsel, sweet and salty upon the tongue, losing oneself in the myriad of a thousand lovely Beethoven notes…all delectable treasures in which the highly sensitive can relish.
Whew! Take another look at the list above and rejoice.
You are a much needed asset to a lost and confused world.
And honestly, who doesn’t want more of these kinds of gems in our society??
The Curses
Moving on to the other list, the one you may feel more akin to, as you face these items each and every day…here are some of the dangers associated with being highly sensitive…
- The stronger sentiments of an HSP can be hard to manage, they feel everything acutely and suddenly, making emotional explosion and overwhelm a real thing.
- As highly sensitive people have a need for deep connection and others don’t (not to the same degree), HSPs can encounter much frustration in feeling this longing unmet.
- Being easily overwhelmed and overstimulated – I could drone on and on about this one, such is exceedingly relevant in the life of an HSP. They can’t handle as much as others usually can and quickly go into overload.
- Highly sensitive people are easily misunderstood by those who are unaware of what an HSP is – and that it’s a legitimate makeup and not simply a choice. Have you ever been told you’re too delicate and need to get over yourself? Frustration upon frustration for the Highly Sensitives who have to encounter these folks.
- HSPs have the most complex mind – I can recall my therapist from college giving me such a quizzical look and informing me I had “the most complex mind” he’s ever seen. Only now do I understand a bit of that extent! In honesty, it’s a struggle to even sit down and write these posts…I have a million things tugging at my brain, I’m easily distracted, I view a hundred different ways in which I could relate something and then I sit and overthink my writings. Before, during and after. Sometimes I catch myself simply staring out the window, lost in thought as the minutes roll by. Husband tells me it’ll get better and easier, but I’ve yet to be a believer.
- Highly sensitive people can become lost in themselves, being overly introspective. Because their emotional response is so strikingly felt, they can quickly find themselves engulfed in seas of sorrowful sentiment, struggling to escape.
- The Highly Sensitive are remarkably prone to deal with regret, second guessing, bitterness. Because they overthink every decision, they also overthink the decision after it’s made. Letting go is onerous, holding on feels second nature.
- Hand in hand with that is decision making…oh, what formidable task I’ve experienced, the grueling process of producing the “right” outcome! It’s exhausting, being beaten and bullied by self as I try to squeeze out the perfect choice.
- In a world comprised of non-HSPs (85-90% of our population), it’s not wonder a Highly Sensitive may commonly experience difficulty with others. The comfort of being understood is scarce.
- As highly sensitive people are so attended to the needs of others and feel strange in a society that looks not like themselves, they can easily fall into the snare of people pleasing. In doing so, they then regularly hide their own feelings and needs. Read about how this was a trap for me and what I do to find freedom.
- Hand in hand with people pleasing is having a hard time saying no. This comes into play from the HSP’s keen desire to see others happy.
- Highly Sensitives tend to be the ones who end up in therapy, particularly if they encounter struggles or trauma in childhood.
- Highly sensitive people are more prone to depression and anxiety due to a lack of coping skills and support in the midst of their challenging lot in life.
There you go –
not a pretty list, yet it’s pretty exhaustive.
If you’re a Highly Sensitive or know someone who is, don’t be surprised if you don’t feel a close kin to every single thing on these lists.
We don’t all look the same!
You’ll find yourself feeling a strong connection to certain items to which you identify, and a not so strong link to others. Regardless of which ones you relate to, the D.O.E.S acronym will ring true for every HSP.
If you’re still not sure whether you or your loved one are a highly sensitive person, Dr. Elaine Aron created a test as a stepping stone for evaluation.
As we’re left staring at this compilation of burdens, please know I’m not about to leave you hanging…
the most exciting part is coming next!!
Read on to uncover a list of viable solutions for the monumental mountains Highly Sensitives face. 🧡
Wow, I relate to so many of the things on these lists. Thanks for sharing them.
You’re welcome!
Wow!! Reading this was like reading about myself!! So many don’t understand, but it’s good to know that I’m not alone❤️
For the HSP, when you finally realize the special way in which you were crafted, there is such comfort in knowing there are others like you, people who understand you. So glad to feel you’re not alone❣️
[…] on in my next post to explore an extensive list of the blessings and dangers of being an HSP – and hang in there […]