If You are Sensitive, Read This

I’m sensitive. My feelings get hurt. I feel into other people without knowing it sometimes. I can get sucked in to other folks darkness or pain sometimes. I cry when animals are in pain or dying. I can be an energetic sponge, taking in whatever is in my environment. If someone is bullied, or made fun of, I feel the bully and the victim.

To us sensitive ones, everything matters, everything. And that is just right, wonderful, and okay. But we might feel like our sensitivity is “too much,” a burden, a problem. Somewhere along the way for example, our sensitive nature might have been judged, criticized, or shut down. Our sensitivity was not welcome for whatever reason. Fortunately our sensitive-ness never goes anywhere. Some of us just learned to cover it up through behaviors and strategies that squashed it, ignored it, or overrode it. We might have even learned to manipulate our environment or the people around us. But the cool thing about being a sensitive being is that you can’t turn it off. Nor is there a switch to turn it down.

The good news is there are very effective ways we each can learn to work with, and alongside, our sensitive nature. For example, we can learn to turn down the dial of our reactivity, thus responding to our environment with skillful means. We can set up our environment to allow in less stimulation so we don’t get blown out or overwhelmed. We can reel in our energy and instead of being “out there” with our energy, we can be “in here” with ourselves. We can learn effective boundaries to honor our sensitive nature and we can begin to train our community to know us in this way and to honor us as we are. Then we can really tap in to the wisdom of our sensitivity and begin to use it to serve others even more effectively.

And if we are raising sensitive kids? If we have no knowledge of, and skill with, our sensitivity, we will act out a lot and our kids will pay the price. If, on the other hand, we have dexterity with our sensitivity, we can be super helpful to our children and train them (through our actions) in how to work with theirs. Embracing our sensitivity is what allows us to learn to work with it’s magic. Thank you sensitive ones, for being exactly the way you are.

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