Many people in the field of holistic health are sensitive souls. You will also find many highly sensitive people in the realm of spirituality and personal development. These are the empaths, the light workers, and the healers. The people who are easily affected by the energy of those around them or what they sense is happening in the larger world.
Sensitives are just that, sensitive. They are easily affected by sights, sounds, smells, noises… Oftentimes, these are the folks who have food sensitivities, medication sensitivities, and even multiple chemical sensitivities. They especially have emotional sensitivities and can live from their heart in a way that most ‘typical’ people may not understand.
What Is A Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)?
Highly sensitive people make up 10-15% of the world’s population. That adds up to a lot of people, and yet, our culture has no idea how to support them. They are the deep thinkers and the analyzers. The people pleasers, peacekeepers, and the very gentle souls. You will often find others feeling comfortable confiding in them and seeking them out for emotional support. Thus, they make excellent caregivers and nurturers.
The HSP is born sensitive. They experience early childhood with a sensitive nature, and they grow into adults who will often care so profoundly that they want people to be happy and feel good, safe, and well cared for. In fact, you will frequently catch an HSP putting everyone else around them above their own needs.
An HSP tends to struggle navigating the intensity of the world around them. They may not even realize that it is actually their high sensitivity. They may likely not recognize that everything they experience and perceive is through the lens of their sensitive demeanor.
What Is An Empath?
A subcategory of the highly sensitive person is an empath. Maybe you recognize this term. It is more well-known than the HSP. An empath is a highly sensitive person who is way more than a gentle soul who sympathizes with nearly everyone they come across. This individual empathically ‘feels’ the emotions and feelings of those who are near them. This is the person who walks into a room and feels the ‘energy’ of everyone else. They can sense conflict, excitement, fear, and sadness. These people are so connected and kind of just know things.
An empath will cry with you. Even with someone on TV or on the radio that they don’t even know. They can literally experience the emotion as if it were their own.
While empaths can be born empathic, sensitive souls, this is slightly different than your typical HSP. The extreme empathy emanating from a true empath is usually formed after birth. It is often in response to a difficult childhood, traumatic events early in life, or the confusion of being a young child raised by a narcissist or someone who simply is unable to understand or tolerate the intense emotions of an extremely sensitive individual.
Empathy can be a coping mechanism for the HSP. It becomes their survival skill. The way they believe they can be wanted, appreciated, and seen.
The Difference Between An Empath and A Highly Sensitive Person
The differences between these two types of people are small and nuanced.
While they are both Highly Sensitive, the empath feels and can even absorb the emotions of others in a much deeper way.
The HSP is usually that way from birth, while the empath often develops this skill early on as a coping
response to the hard events or issues they have faced in their life.
Both of these people can live totally unaware of their special circumstance.
The HSP has a unique set of processing skills. They can be overwhelmed and very easily become overloaded. They notice details implicitly and are easily able to understand the feelings of others.
An empath will not only understand those feelings, but they will take them into their own body as if they were their very own. The empath is often the healer, spiritual or mystic. They see patterns in the universe that others just don’t. You might even notice that many psychics and mediums are actually empaths.
How To Manage A Highly Sensitive or Empathic Life?
High sensitivity is actually a superpower, even if it doesn’t always feel that way to the highly sensitive person in the moment of a trigger. This helps to shape who you are, how to survive or thrive, and especially how you interact with the world at large.
The biggest challenge to the HSP is staying out of overwhelm. To give themselves time and space to process deeply, and to ‘guard’ themselves from the stimulation they feel in every cell of their body.
Learning to clearly separate what an empath is personally feeling or the emotions they are experiencing from someone else they are witnessing is the largest obstacle an empath faces. As well as how to ‘protect’ themselves from the energy of others, so they are not absorbing it unknowingly.
Just having a little recognition of awareness is the best first step in leveraging this superpower. Because the truth is that this deeper knowing, keen sense, and recognition of subtleties is indeed quite amazing. It does, however, require you to understand a specific skill set.
Once you start to grasp these differences, not as a bad thing but instead as a special part of who you really are… Then and only then can you begin to wield this gift in a way that not only takes you to the next level in your own life, but also for those people you interact with in life as well.
Tips To Redefine This Skill
As I previously mentioned, awareness is the most crucial step in this process. It will take you to the people, stories, events, and opportunities you need to get the most out of this unique characteristic. Through those stories and retells, you will learn the skills to work through this aspect of yourself.
Pay close attention to the types of supports you have been drawn to. These are remedies for you. Reverence of nature, crystals, essential oils, etc. I invite you to bring in the things you find yourself attracted to. These are the various ways that highly sensitive people have used to protect themselves, their sensitivities, and their delicate nervous systems.
Having personal experience as a highly sensitive empath, I employ a variety of techniques to help me integrate into a ‘typical’ life. While also holding my unique qualities as sacred. This becomes a combination of learning effective ways to process my deep emotions, shielding myself from absorbing any energy that does not serve me, and empowering myself to live fully and share my gifts with the wider world.
Large gatherings, grocery stores, and huge outdoor events can often trigger an intense reaction from an HSP. Some people just avoid these types of settings. I don’t avoid them, but I do prepare for them. Whenever I might be faced with these circumstances, I protect myself. I do this with intention. That is the strongest skill an HSP can employ. Along with specific blessings, prayers, or visualizations. I might also add a crystal or other protective stone to my body. I may use essential oils to help me feel more grounded. This helps me to stay aware of my surroundings, so it’s not as easy to fall into the energy of someone else’s crisis or situation. I always try to create a quiet moment beforehand to be ready and end the event with a bit of self-time to decompress.
Some may think highly sensitive people are high-maintenance, different, or even difficult to be around. While that may be true in some instances, it might just be who you are. Why fight it? Instead, learn to work with it. Find the best ways to support it. Bring it so consciously into your awareness that you are running the show and not the other way around. If you use this as a springboard in everything you do, it will no longer control you or feel like a burden. Rather, it will encourage your truth and help you to be more compassionate in every interaction you have.
