At the age of four I watched as the doctor burnt a wart off my brother’s hand. I was in tears as I felt his pain. And when he was hit on the head with a school bag and his head was split and bleeding, I asked him why he wasn’t crying when it hurt so much. I literally felt his pain in my body. His response was ‘Don’t be stupid!’
Experiences like this taught me that there was something unacceptable and wrong with my innate ability to sense what others feel. I learnt at a young age to stop talking about what I tuned into and I tried to shut it down. My interpretation was that there was something wrong with me and this belief informed my sense of self, of who I was in the world.
The ability to sense how others are feeling or place ourselves in another’s shoes, is called empathy. Being able to ‘tune in’ can help us to understand their experience. It means that when we are listening to their words and at the same time tuning into the senses, we have a fuller perception of their meaning.
In ideal conditions, with the help of our caregivers we learn to differentiate ourselves from ‘the other’ and form a healthy sense of who we are as separate from them. The reality is that many of us did not have idealistic childhoods and neither did our parents.
When we have a healthy sense of self, we are able to perceive that the words, behaviours and feelings of the other is not us. This separation of them and us can be defined as a ‘healthy boundary’. In our relationships healthy boundaries allow us to communicate, listen and negotiate to have our needs met.
When we are deeply empathic and without a healthy sense of self we struggle with boundaries. It can be seen in our behaviour as people pleasers, in our defensiveness, in our over-giving and acting like a victim. We can end up in dysfunctional co-dependent relationships.
If you are reading this blog, chances are you are struggling with boundaries and likely could describe yourself as a Highly Sensitive Person. (HSP)
Highly Sensitive People are supersensitive to their environment and deeply empathic. You may have been told most of your life that you are too sensitive. You find you struggle with relationships and you view your sensitivity as a curse. This can lead us to feeling like there is something fundamentally wrong with us and our self-esteem suffers.
If you conceive of the mind as a program to help us survive in the body, then it makes sense that when we are threatened, emotionally, mentally or physically, one of our responses to danger can be to shut down our sensing to protect us from feeling overwhelmed. By disassociating from our sensing (our body’s felt responses) we protect ourselves from feeling. We learn to stop listening to the body to protect ourselves while we continue to scan our environment for danger. This is a normal survival response common to all of us. In a HSP the shut down and dissociation from our own senses can be more pronounced. The trouble is our dissociation can lead us to developing issues like anxiety, panic disorder and even depression.
Without this understanding of ourselves and how we survive and adapt to our life experiences it is easy to blame ourselves and others for how we feel and what happens to us.
As adults our heightened ability to sense what others are feeling can wreak havoc in our relationships.
How often are we inauthentic with ourselves and those we interact with? What we say is not the truth about how we feel. So, imagine having a conversation with someone who is telling you how happy they are to see you but at the same time you can feel their anger simmering under the surface. As a highly sensitive person it is difficult not to respond to the feeling. Naturally, we would recoil from that person’s anger, we may even become defensive. Our response, however subtle, can leave them feeling rejected and with even more reason to feel anger, so they may learn to dislike us. We are left feeling confused, hurt or defensive wondering what we did wrong, why they don’t like us and why we are always having difficulty forming healthy relationships.
A lack of healthy boundaries and our unhealthy sense of Self can lead us to form co-dependent relationships where we become emotionally dependent on our partner. As the relationship progresses it is like we energetically merge. We lose our identity.
We attract partners who fit into our pattern of relating then co-create this dynamic. As the relationship develops, our ability to sense the feelings of our partner and not having our own healthy sense of self cause us to struggle with communicating effectively and having our needs heard and met. In an attempt to alleviate the discomfort of feeling the other’s emotions, like pain or anger, we might form a pattern where we learn to please them; to give away our power and do what the other wants.
Imagine this scenario. You are your partner have decided to go out on a date night. It is your turn to pick the restaurant and you choose your favourite: Thai. Your partner then starts to talk about the new Indian he’d like to try. He’s been wanting to go there for a while so you decide to go to Indian instead. Why not? You don’t really mind. It sounds so reasonable and yet you may begin to feel frustrated after a while especially when it forms a pattern where you always end up at the restaurant that your partner chooses. Your partner may not even realise how you feel. To them it sounded reasonable, it was your choice and you choose Indian.
It is easy to see the other as manipulative when the reality is we are co-creating the relationship to become a pattern of giving and not receiving. After a while we may feel that we are not living the life we want and lacking fulfilment we blame our partner.
As a highly sensitive person, tuning in to another’s emotional and physical feelings is not a choice. It is who we are. We are born sensitive and this heightened sensitivity leads to the development of behaviours in us to protect ourselves from overwhelm. It’s how we survive. Without sensitive parenting and a safe environment, we can learn maladaptive behaviours as we interact with our world. These patterns are deeply entrenched in our being, in our psyche.
To begin to heal these patterns it is important to hold compassion for ourselves and understand that we are doing the best we can with the tools we have learnt to survive. When we learn new tools, we can do things differently.
Stop blaming! It’s too easy to blame ourselves, our partners, friends, bosses, siblings or parents. Sure, they may have hurt us but blaming keeps us in victim mode and keeps us stuck in patterns that are hurting us. Until we take responsibility for the part we play in our relationships we do not change and therefore our life does not change and you will continue to repeat the same patterns again and again in each new relationship.
It is challenging to face our shadow, our demons, and feel our fear, our pain and our anger. But that is how we heal and become whole again and develop a sense of who we are, that important sense of Self which leads to peace and happiness.
Here are some practices that will help you to begin your journey of discovering who YOU are.
- EDUCATE YOURSELF; Develop an understanding of your behaviour and how you interact in relation to others through reading or taking courses in self-development. When you understand your behaviour you can choose to do things differently.
- SEEK SUPPORT; Talking to a counsellor or other professional can be supportive at difficult times in your journey of reclaiming you.
- JOURNALLING; Reflecting can help you to identify thoughts, feelings, and patterns of behaviour.
- EMBODIMENT PRACTICES; Practices that reconnect you to your body like Yoga, Qi gong, Meditation, Dancing or other Mindfulness practices.
- SELF-CARE; Taking care of our physical, emotional and mental needs including good nutrition, rest, sleep, regular exercise, time out.
- COMPASSION; Practice being kind to yourself; you are doing the best you can in each moment. Change takes practice – sometimes we take one step forward and two steps back.
- GRATITUDE PRACTICE; Change your habitual thoughts and lift your mood by making daily mental lists of what you are grateful for: good health, having a roof over your head, enough to eat, friends, family, job, etc. Get really detailed.
- DAY DREAM; Dream about the life you want to live as if it is already true.
- STAR GAZING; Reconnect with the wonder and joy of your inner child.
- SPEND TIME IN NATURE; Ignite all your senses. Feel your connection to the Earth, breathe in the scents of your environment, watch the sun rise, hear the birds sing, taste the ocean.
- DO WHAT YOU LOVE TO DO; What is it you love to do? Dance, cook, climb or create? Go and do it!
- INTENTIONS; Be mindful of your intentions. You choose to dance because it feels good in your body. You choose to rest because you feel tired. Taking care of you is a statement that you are worth it.
- BE OPEN TO EXPERIENCE; When we are open to new concepts and ideas, we learn to see old patterns in new ways. Being open allows our growth.
We can learn to identify and reprogram our thinking and change behaviours with counselling, a gratitude practice and journaling. We can start to build our sense of Self and self-esteem through self-care practices and we heal our Being through embodiment practices that bring us back in touch with all of our felt senses. We are all unique beings and no one knows what is right for us except us. A general guide to healing and self-empowerment is to do whatever feels good to you that does no harm to self or others.
The reality is that being highly sensitive or deeply empathic can become your greatest blessing. When we heal old wounds, learn who we are and create healthy boundaries our sensitivity allows us to experience the joy of creating the life we desire and to connect in more meaningful ways.
When you are open to your experience, at some point it will become obvious that there is something more to life than just this physical reality. When you begin to understand life as a spiritual journey in a body it becomes easier to regain a sense of who you are and heal old wounds. We learn to reframe our life experiences as valuable learning processes. We understand how our spiritual nature shapes our physical life, that our sensitivity is in fact related to us being a subtle energy being occupying a body. That perhaps being highly sensitive has the potential to lead you to your higher purpose.
Years ago, I heard about this little tool called a bubble of protection and I’ve been using it ever since. To be honest, I didn’t really believe that it could work at the time. Yet I persisted in practicing it as I was open to any improvement on how I was feeling. One day to my surprise I found that it actually worked. (That little story is for another day) With experience I have come to feel that it is not about protection. I don’t need to be the victim here under attack, so I changed it to the bubble of self-love, a healthy energetic boundary. With this mindset we are empowered to take responsibility for our own wellbeing and not be a victim at the mercy of others. It may sound quite woo woo to some who are not used to working in terms of energy but it is surprising how many therapists, doctors, nurses, shop workers and many others naturally have developed some sort of system to energetically protect themselves in their work on the front line with members of the public. The alternative can be burn out.
If you’d like to start using this tool it’s very simple.
Bubble of Self Love
We can choose to deliberately create our experience using a combination of visualisation and intention. Here’s how to use this concept as a tool for wellbeing. Take a moment now to imagine and feel that you are surrounded by a bubble of pure white light. Take as long as you like. Feel into this experience as you create it with your imagination and at the same time have the intention that only unconditional love can come through this bubble. All other energies are reflected away, with love. Feel it as if it is true right now. This bubble is like an energetic barrier which helps you to stop giving away your power and also stops others from taking it and leaving you drained.
It’s that simple. Our ability to create is powerful and we get to choose where we place our intention. Each little step of self-care and taking self-responsibility is a step toward self-love and the inner freedom we seek.
