Welcome

Editor’s Note: I use the term highly sensitive souls as an umbrella for all who resonate with being a highly sensitive person, empath, intuitive, human design Projector or Reflector, combination of the above, or anyone who has a deep sensitive to the world around them, requires downtime to recharge, and is able to see things most others miss. 

Putting together puzzles has always been a love of mine. As a child I loved them, along with word searches, scavenger hunts, mystery books, and anything that involved identifying pieces and putting them together in a way that makes sense. 

As an adult, this matured into using these skills analytically at work, and I was well known across several departments for being able to figure things out, be they process related or people related. Making sense out of the seemingly non-sensical was my raison d’être in the corporate sphere and I was damn good at it.

Unbeknownst to me, this skill set was a hallmark of a highly sensitive person and Human Design Projector, of which I later found out I am both. I am also incredibly empathic when it comes to collective energies and have very strong intuition. In short, I am a multi-layered sensitive person with a keen ability to get to the heart of the matter quickly and accurately identify how to repair it/move it forward/enhance it/etc. 

What I also didn’t realize is the amount of energy expenditure these skills require. And that requirement is A LOT. 

If you are a sensitive soul, then you too probably have always felt different from those around you, especially when it comes to being able to go-go-go all day. In short, we cannot. 

Our gifts are always “on”. Always sensing around the environment we’re in and taking in way more information than our non-sensitive counterparts. Our minds and bodies process information, analytical and energetic, on very deep levels requiring mental and physical energy to do so. 

This leaves us needing more rest and quiet time than the Culture of the Extroverted Ideal understands, or allows. It means that we need earlier bedtimes, naps or rest breaks, and quieter environments that aren’t assaulting our senses with noise, lights, etc. Sleeping with the TV on? Yeah…NO. Not going to happen. 

Yet, we typically push aside these needs or fail to recognize them completely. 

How Did We Get Here? Childhood of course!

Ignoring our needs typically begins in childhood when we’re pushed and prodded to be social, participate in team activities, and do all the things that make us into the chatty, personable, energetic little go-getters. 

Well meaning caregivers, teachers, etc. who do not understand that our sensitivity is genetic and therefore not changeable (as well as a tremendous gift that will allow us to be phenomenal leaders and advisors in adulthood), will fret that there’s something wrong with us for wanting to sit with a book or puzzle instead of running around with the neighborhood kids on a summer’s day. 

We start to internalize the idea that there’s something “wrong” about us and about our needs as sensitives. Queue the shame and guilt. 

Suppressing our needs becomes unconscious as we get older, and often, we’re able to do a great job of keeping up appearances. We excel at work! We go out on Friday nights after a 50 hour work week! We let our partners keep the TV on all night because they need it to sleep (nevermind that it interferes with ours…we don’t want to look overly sensitive now do we??)

And then the day comes where we burn out. And then we recover only to burn out again. And again. And finally, we come home to the truth: we just cannot hang with the non-sensitives when it comes to energetic output. 

While there is relief that comes with this understanding, it doesn’t make it any easier to drop the feelings of shame and/or guilt for not being able to hustle like the masses. 

Our society wraps our worth up in our productivity, and if we cannot be as productive as others then we must be worth less, right? 

Definitely not the case, but also, not an easy belief to divorce ourselves from.  

So how does a sensitive soul drop the shame and guilt for daring to acknowledge their needs for rest beyond what is commonly accepted by society? 

Dropping the Shame and the Guilt from Your Daily To-Do List 

Moving on from shame and guilt for needing rest, quiet, etc. takes time especially if you’ve spent decades pretending your needs do not exist. This is something I still work on myself, because it is hard to accept that my way of needing to do things is counter to what society tells us will make us successful. 

Here’s where I typically start with my clients and what I personally go back to when I find shame circling my block:

Recognize Your Gifts

I think the best place to start is to recognize what the gifts and skills of your particular brand of sensitivity are.

Whether it is a deep analytical ability, the skill of reading a room’s energy and making adjustments based on the audience, identifying the holes in a project before it launches, or all of these, there are tremendous gifts our sensitivity gives us that we don’t value because we grew up to be detached from our sensitive nature, viewing it as less-than and not good enough.

If you’re really struggling to see your gifts, asking a trusted friend or coworker what your best “intangibles” are can be a huge help (I’ve found Human Design readings can really assist here too). 

Building up your sense of value and self-worth is critical to feeling empowered to meet your needs. Once you see how valuable your gifts truly are, you cannot unsee this fact. And this in and of itself makes it a lot easier to be able to give yourself what you need for those gifts to flourish. 

Understand You Are Most Likely a Sprinter, Not a Marathon Runner

For me, the next critical step in divesting myself of the shame and guilt for needing rest and quiet environments was to acknowledge this critical aspect of my sensitivity: It makes me really f*cking efficient.

A sensitive soul’s ability to pick up more information than others and process it more deeply means, as I mentioned above, we get to the heart of the matter waaaaaay faster than our non-sensitive peers.  What takes others eight hours to figure out, we can do in two. 

We’re like sprinters, capable of covering the distance from A to B in a very short amount of time, but then, like sprinters, we need to recharge because we’ve taken in and made sense of a ton of information before most people even understand where point A is located. 

In short, we ARE just as productive as others, we just get it done in a much shorter amount of time. And why should we be punished for our efficiency? 

Well, probably because we live in a world where more is better and hours worked are a badge of dedication and commitment (eye-roll). Proof that we’re ambitious! Driven! And yet, we miss that each of those qualities is completely independent of our needs as sensitive souls. They can both exist simultaneously and in perfect harmony. 

Not going to lie, this is still one that creeps up on me rather frequently but I always go back to: why should I be punished for being efficient? And I can never come up with one good reason.

EFT Tapping 

Shame and guilt are emotional energies that can exist in our body’s physical and energetic field whether we’re consciously aware of them or not.  

The more deeply held your beliefs about your sensitivity being a hindrance, your need for rest being a weakness, etc. or memories of past punishments for letting your sensitivity be seen, the more likely the energies of shame and guilt will be circulating around causing you to hold back, dim your light, ignore your needs, pretend you’re someone you are not, and so on.  

Emotional energies cannot be moved by changing our thoughts or repeating affirmations. They need to be felt and moved through for them to fully leave us.  EFT tapping is an easy low intensity way to evict shame and guilt from the body and energy fields.

It allows for us to not only move out the shame and the guilt and come into energetic balance with who we truly are underneath the cover-up job we’ve been doing, but also helps us start to reprogram our unconscious belief system around our sensitivity. 

Here is a tapping video for shame and one for guilt. If you haven’t tried tapping before, I highly recommend it! It’s amazing how something so simple can really help us release what’s holding us back in body, mind and spirit. (Plus Brad Yates just rocks.)

Work with the Root, Sacral and Solar-Plexus Chakras

These three chakras are considered the chakras of matter. They tie into our physical world, our security, our safety, our ability to move and create, and our sense of power in ourselves and our place in the world. 

While so much is made of the third-eye chakra and being intuitive, especially in the spiritual communities, these three chakras are literally the base for us to be ourselves in the world. (No amount of intuition is going to be helpful if you do not feel safe and empowered to act on those intuitive impulses.)

For sensitive souls, there are often blocks in all three of these chakras. The Root Chakra is about our very existence and whether we feel safe and secure in the world as sensitives. Guilt is stored in the Sacral Chakra which houses our ability to move, create, and be different from others, and the Solar Plexus Chakra houses our sense of self-worth, self-empowerment, as well as any shame we carry for not being good enough. 

If you often feel fearful of letting your sensitive needs be known, let alone met, feel stuck and trapped, and/or have a low sense of self-worth or confidence then I highly recommend taking time each day and focusing on these three chakras to allow you to ground into the truth of who you are, feel safe expressing it, and have the will power and confidence to move forward like the empowered unicorn you are. 

(Here are some links to get you started: Root meditation, Sacral meditation, Solar-Plexus meditation.)

A Final Message

The shame and guilt we carry as sensitive souls is real, but it doesn’t have to continue to be your reality any longer. If you’ve been avoiding looking at and embracing the needs of your sensitive self because you deemed it something that makes you a “less-than” I want you to reflect on this: 

More often than not, the things that people (the very ones we don’t want to inconvenience or offend by saying “No” to their invitations or skipping the club after dinner to go to bed early)  tend love most about us are our sensitive traits. Our ability to listen without interruption. To offer deep insight. To ask questions they hadn’t thought of. To reflect back to them what they most need to see about themselves. To solve a problem quickly and at the root cause. 

All of these make us supportive and caring partners, friends, coworkers, parents, etc. and they all require our precious energy. To allow yourself to meet your own needs, guilt and shame-free, is to allow yourself and others to benefit from you being at your best in the world. 

(I will also note that anyone who has an issue with someone else’s desire to meet their needs does so because they do not feel empowered to meet their own, so if you get push-back might be a good time to exercise those sensitive soul skills and ask them if they feel empowered to meet their own needs and see what happens. Wink wink.)

Hugs,
Elena

P.S. If you’re looking for some individual guidance from a fellow sensitive, I have 90 minute single sessions where we can get to the root of your sensitivity woes and transform them in whichever area of life feels the most out of balance.