PSA, Highly Sensitive Persons

Do you know an empath? A sensi? A crier? An ‘unstable’ person?

Is there a person in your life who feels things too deeply… Who cries at the drop of a hat.. Who is passionate about all things? Who often can’t seem to settle down or be happy with the way things are?

Then, you might know a HSP, or, Highly Sensitive Person.

Now, let me explain.. This state of being is both a blessing and a curse.

Imagine for a moment that you walk into a room where hours before people were fighting, scared, or strongly felt some other negative emotion.. All is well.. just a room, right?

Wrong. You feel the tension. It seeps under your skin and into your heart, It causes involuntary changes in your brain.

Imagine you see a homeless person on the side of the road, with a sign asking for money. No big deal. Kind of sad, but it happens. Probably looking to score drugs anyway.

Hang with me here… that person is your sister, your brother, a friend that helped you when you were at your worst.

Welcome to feeling as a HSP. Welcome to truly connecting with another person. Welcome to raw emotion.

It is hell.

Interacting with people becomes infinitely more complex. To deep, they run. To shallow an interaction, rapport fails to develop.

If by chance you do connect with someone. Become familiar with their demons. Love them. Hope for them, fight for them..

I gets messy.

People frown on mess. They get tired of the cycle. Tired of the fight of truly living. They settle. Therein, lies the problem.

Sensitivity, honesty, brashness, raw emotion.. It is inconvenient. It gets in the way of day to day ‘life’. You know.. the ‘important’ stuff. Like work, structure, plans, social events.

It is honest, unbridled, pure, and true… Not that that matters. We must all function. Good little cogs in our machine. Otherwise,… disruption. chaos.

I understand the sentiment for bridling such feelings. The issue stands, however, that if we choose that route. That repression of human compassion, empathy, sensitivity and concern. What is the cost?

It is a blessing.

A HSP feels in ways others do not. They can see beauty in a blowing leaf, be overwhelmed by the birth of a new life (even if it is not their own). If you have ever truly loved and been loved by a hsp, you will remember it for the rest of your life.

It is a feeling that creates universes. That opens you in a way you didn’t know existed.

Passion for good, for helping others, striving for life to be well lived. But, not just for themselves. A life well lived for all.

HSP can feel a person’s soul. They know the hurts, the secret shame, the anger, the pain. They want you to feel joy and love. If you let them in they will try to share those things. The good and the bad, with you. It is truly an experience like no other.

That kind of thing drives a person. It can be the difference in giving up or making a change for the better.

But, it is also a struggle. There is a huge learning curve for hsp in today’s world. And it is often a fight for those who were raised against their nature to resolve the differences in their feelings.

Nature vs Nurture, to the extreme.

Where is the happy medium? How do we truly connect and still manage our lives?

Let us have a conversation about it. Only with communication and the desire to understand each other, right where we are, where we have been, and where we plan to go, can we begin to make a life. To really live. To make a difference.