High sensitivity as strength

Very often I hear people describe high sensitivity as something that is negative. As if it is always associated with overstimulation, fatigue, intensity and triggers. In this article I would like to shine a different light on this subject and explain how you can deal with high sensitivity with more empowerment. So that you will experience it as your strength.

Meanwhile, there has also been scientific research on high sensitivity. This has shown that people who are highly sensitive have a nervous system that works differently. It is as if they experience everything a bit more intensely. This is also related to sensory perception. Also, experiencing the world around you, including smells, colors, sounds and energies – everything comes in more strongly. For someone who is highly sensitive, this can sometimes be overwhelming. While, on the other hand, they are very good at picking up details, sensing undercurrents and seeing and feeling things that sometimes escape others.

I will list below some points of traits that are linked to high sensitivity, of which I often hear the “negative aspects”. Then I will give some examples of how to turn these very traits into your strengths.

1. Chaos in your head, excessive thinking and analyzing

It is as if you can perceive all the details around you. Many of these details get stuck in your head. But you are also an expert at analyzing, pondering and brooding. Precisely because your brain can make connections between things so quickly, combined with an eye for detail. It can sometimes feel like you are going crazy! Especially when certain unconscious fears are present in your system. This causes your mind to overthink and make connections and before you know it you are in a vicious circle of thinking.

Your (unconscious) strength here is:

On the contrary, you possess the potential for strong creativity. Thinking outside the box (out-of-the-box) is also a great trait. Moreover, noticing details is often incredibly useful as well, combined with making connections between things.

It is just important that you don’t stay in your head too much. Often people who are highly sensitive are not well grounded. Their energetic body is not properly connected to their physical body. This causes them to literally “float,” which in turn can cause them to develop all kinds of symptoms.

Living from the head, from fear and resistance is then often a result. The fears, patterns or traumas stored in their system are often not even their own (think of the family line with traumas), and because of this they often stay in their heads – because it frightens them to connect with the body and feel whatever there is to feel, with all the trauma stored there..

This is why the process of deeper grounding combined with inner work and healing is so important, so that you can anchor into your body and connect with the very things that are your strengths: your sensitivity, spiritual nature and creativity.

2. Intense sensory experience/being overwhelmed

Your nervous system works differently and all the information comes to you more intensely. It is as if there is not a filter present that keeps all the “noise” out. But you can also experience colors, smells, sounds and emotions more intensely, making things sometimes feel overwhelming. If you don’t know how to keep a balance then you can quickly become overstimulated.

Your (unconscious) strength here is:

Surely it is also a wonderful gift that you can experience life so intensely, with all its colors, smells and experiences. Of course, this is not always nice and you can also experience difficult emotions more intensely. But the other side of the coin is that you also experience the finer things more intensely. For example, I myself notice that I can be intensely happy with a simple cup of herbal tea in the sun, with the wind that I feel on my skin and the birds I hear singing. In those details as well as the deep experience of them, lies happiness for me. So try to shift the focus from ‘I feel everything so intensely and I get overwhelmed so quickly’, to ‘how could I get the most out of this for myself?’.

3. Feeling/absorbing emotions and negative energy from the environment

You are very sensitive. Not only to things you can pick up with the familiar senses, but also to undercurrents and energy. For example, you may suddenly experience someone else’s fear, pain or anger and believe it is yours. Or you may suddenly feel tense or empty after being in a certain location. It’s as if your aura is so far open to the outside world that you can experience everything inside that field as if it were your own. Besides the fact that it does not always feel pleasant, it is also very difficult to learn to distinguish what is yours and what is not yours and how to deal with it.

Your (unconscious) strength here is:

You can sense energy very well and thus learn (remember) how to work with it. You can sense other people very well and thus help them in a profound way. As soon as you start to experience this quality more as a strength, you will start to feel how you are always energetically connected with your own soul essence and the world around you. You begin to notice more positive synchronicities and develop your gifts energetically more and more strongly. Maybe you discover that your clairaudience, clairsentience or other intuitive gifts are strongly developed and you start working with these more and more.

Especially if you start living very consciously in co-creation with your soul essence, everything comes more and more into a flow. At the moment that you still experience mainly the negative side of this sensitivity that you have, this has mainly to do with a lack of grounding. As soon as you are not properly connected with your energetic body to your physical body, all sorts of things enter your body, but are not properly discharged. You also do not feel what is yours and what is not. Again, it is important to clear old ballast and trauma in your system through inner work, so that there is room for your soul to descend more deeply into your body. Only then will you truly experience life from your soul essence and qualities, because then they will be embodied.

4. Wanting to take too much care of others/too much responsibility

Highly sensitive children often notice at an early age (sometimes unconsciously) what their environment is struggling with. For example, you may have sensed as a child that your parents were carrying unprocessed emotions. Perhaps you unconsciously started to care for your parents (this can also be energetic) and wanted to help them, or wanted to make it ‘lighter’ at home. Also, precisely because you feel so much from your surroundings, you may start to feel responsible to do something with this. Because, after all, you are the one who feels it. This is a belief that can eventually exhaust you and cause you to carry burdens that are not yours.

Your (unconscious) strength here is:

Caring and taking responsibility are beautiful traits if you know how to use them in a healthy way, for yourself and those around you. Ultimately, these are traits that can contribute to a more beautiful world. Think of a world in which we take more care of each other, animals and nature. And in which we also take responsibility for being conscious of this. To let go of the excessive sense of responsibility, you can examine what beliefs you carry. Ask yourself: for whom do I feel responsible? And why? What if I were to let go of that, what would happen? And are all the things I carry in my backpack actually mine? Or do I also carry burdens of my parents that no longer serve me? If you carry someone else’s burdens, you are not helping them at all. If you stand in your light, only then are you a healthy example for the other person and can the other person himself take responsibility for doing inner work. This can only empower the other person.

5. Seeing yourself as “too sensitive” and taking the suffering in the world on your shoulders

It is often apparent in young children that they find the pain or suffering of the world very intense. It may be that as a child you were very sympathetic when someone else was in pain, or could get upset about, for example, an injured animal or the grief of another. Perhaps you recognize in yourself that certain things can really affect you. Sometimes everything just feels like “too much”. It may even be that you unconsciously want to flee the earth because it feels too intense and unsafe here. Or that you unconsciously feel responsible to ‘do something’ about it.

Your (unconscious) strength here is:

In my opinion, we need precisely people who are sensitive because the world as it is now will have to transform. Anyone who feels that the world is currently “too hard,” “too cruel,” and “too intense” may be right. The more people begin to feel this, and the more people do things differently, the sooner change will come. As described with an earlier example, it is good that more and more people are feeling responsible to start doing things differently here. Again, this may be done in a balanced way. Start with yourself, your own environment – and above all, don’t put too much pressure on yourself. You are not responsible for the whole world, but you cán make an impact.

At the same time, the moment you unconsciously want to run away from earth and all the emotions you may experience here, there is still unconscious trauma stored in your system. Memories of insecurity, pain or suffering make it difficult for you to truly land here. By healing old wounds internally, you ensure that you are more grounded in your body, and you can better process all the impressions here on earth.

Would you like to experience your high sensitivity more as a strength and do you want to work with it more consciously?

Sometimes it feels good when someone senses and mirrors you, so that you learn to understand yourself better. Also in the process of deeper grounding, healing and transforming old ballast and strengthening the contact with your soul essence, it is good to have help. You can join me for a deepening journey during a retreat in Sweden!