The Highly Sensitive Person. It’s Okay to Feel too much, Think too much

All the people out there who think there is something wrong with you for feeling or caring too much, for everything hitting you so hard, knowing you’d have enough money for a down-payment on a house if you had a dollar for all the times someone told you that’s not something to cry about, or it’s not that serious, calm down.  

The people who wake up sad, or just have a difficult time coping with knowing we are all misunderstood beings trapped in our minds, or just have a harder time coping with life altogether because you don’t understand why things seem to hit you harder than the people around you. Making you feel as if something different must have happened in your genetic coding because not one person you have ever met seems to share the same level of insight into the hidden dimensions of depth that you seem to find in everything. The people who all eventually question their sanity at one point or another, the highly sensitive and perceptive people who feel strongly they can read people’s emotions and see through the smiles and the bullshit. The ones who have so much to say, their mind’s are firing through thoughts seemingly at the speed of sound, interpreting and analyzing everything one hundred times over, but stay silent and observe. The one’s who don’t miss a thing and are so attuned to their surroundings that sometimes it seems so hard to stay sane, this piece is for YOU, and just know you are not alone. 

I am one of you. And I have learnt over the years that there are more of us out there, and were not crazy! Being highly sensitive and perceptive may seem like a curse, opposed to being selfish and going through life ignorantly, but I have come to believe that it is more of a gift than a curse. We see the world differently and although we will always have a little sadness is our hearts, or feel misunderstood, lonely even, in a room full of people, we sense things other people can’t and feel or understand things in ways that other people don’t.

The concerns of everyone may be suffocating at times but because of our strong intuition we would never intentionally mistreat a human for something someone else may see as cruelty because we would see it for what it really was, self-loathing, or whatever the case may be. Because of this we are able to be there for people in a way others couldn’t. Helping people is one of the best rewards in this world so, having the ability to do so on a higher scale is an amazing feeling.  This book helped a lot with teaching me more about myself:

The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

There is nothing wrong with you for feeling too much, caring too much about things some people would never even think twice about, you are not hard to love. You feel exactly how you’re supposed to feel, it is in your wiring and there’s nothing wrong with it. The things that make you sad, are the things that make you sad so don’t suppress it or force yourself to be numb to things you once cared about because the world tells you that there are better things to worry about. You feel what you are supposed to feel, and you, all of who you are, your jumbled mind and all is loveable.  

It has been a journey but I’ve figured out over-time that I am okay with myself and I can not blame myself for all the nights I stayed awake crying over things I could never change. I’ve learnt that we’re not meant to be fully understood, and that loneliness is malleable, and that companionship didn’t always have to be through a one-on-one connection but you could find it through books, songs, movies and poems. I also learned how worth it life really is when you get rid of the darkness, the demons. There are so many songs unsung, books unread, places unseen.

My journey of self showed me that its okay to be sensitive and the only thing that deterred me from seeing that, were the people in my life. If you are constantly told that the world is a tough place and you’re going to have to toughen up, its easy to believe that there is something wrong with you, because you’ve been trying to “toughen up” for years but you just can’t seem to get it right like everyone else. Everyone could use a little toughening up but that’s mostly just growing. The only change you need in your life are the people that make you feel there is something wrong with being you, or that you are hard to love. Certain books we’re a huge part of my journey of self, I don’t know where I would be without them. This book helped a lot with realizing these things about myself:

The Highly Sensitive: How to Stop Emotional Overload, Relieve Anxiety, and Eliminate Negative Energy

This site contains journal entries throughout my years of battling my demons and myself. It took me a while to put together because I just couldn’t bring myself to read over my old journal entries because the past replayed enough in my head and that was hard enough but I knew reading it would bring me back to an even darker part of my life and I was scared that the feelings I had back then, and the darkness would come back just from reading it. But I finally got over my fear, I got out of my present moment and I went back to the that dark past. I realized over-time that it was something I needed, it was sort of like a closure, a reassurance that I am stronger now and have come a long way.

I’ve learned that embracing, and learning from, opposed to running from the past is the best healing mechanism and isn’t always as scary as it seems. Because most of the time, the person you we’re back then, is no longer the person you are now and embracing that old self is kind of liberating because you realize what you overcame.  

You remember being that scared little girl where you didn’t think you’d see the next day, let alone the next 5 years; and you’re reading it, reminiscing about being that girl, but it hardly feels like you anymore and it’s the best feeling ever knowing you could never be that girl again because you have surpassed that, and you are exactly where you are supposed to be. When you’re in that dark state you could never imagine anything hopeful for yourself in the future, you see the same dark colors, the same dull lines and shades. But time passes, and you don’t realize the change but it happens slowly and when you look back, read back its crazy to ever believe that was you.  

But also at times when things in life don’t go as planned.. Sometimes those demons feel like they are creeping back up and it makes me wonder if  they really were there all along but I have learned to supress them with materialistic joy, or are them creeping back up, just a little bump in the road I can easily rid of?  

That is something I still do not know the answer to, as of many things. I am learning and growing and my journey will never end, life is just too confusing to stop questioning, to stop pondering on who we are and what the hell we are doing here.  

We are all, and always will be misunderstood, I mean no one will ever fully know the far corners of your mind, heart and soul, and finding peace with that, instead of claiming that you are misunderstood and lost, will bring you far more freedom, at least it did for me. Probably am at least 10% crazy though hahahah but that’s okay aren’t we all a little mad to a degree?  

New Year New You So, this year, there are no excuses! You are not too timid, too shy, too sensitive or emotional to live a productive life. You have a power, and this year you can use to your advantage. Use your voice this year, learn to use the power that you’ve always had within you. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking