I'm going to share a little bit about the challenges that highly sensitive people might face.
These challenges might vary person to person,
And we all experience some form of these at some point in our lives,
Regardless of if we're highly sensitive or not.
So,
As I share these,
I invite you to be present with yourself,
Notice what's happening in your body,
Try to give yourself some compassion,
Knowing that you're not the only person who struggles with these things.
These are common experiences for many HSPs.
So,
That being said,
Oftentimes HSPs really struggle with overwhelm,
Overstimulation,
And that can come from a variety of things.
So,
Those include our,
You know,
Emotion,
Sensitivity,
We're very aware of emotional sensations in ourselves,
In other people,
So it can be overwhelm related to that.
And then the other thing is sensory sensitivity,
So you know,
Physical senses,
Having sensitivity to sight,
Sounds,
Textures,
Different tastes,
You know,
Things like that.
So,
There can be overwhelm from those as well.
So,
Let's first talk about the emotional intensity.
So,
This can come up in a few different ways,
And one of those is in ourselves.
We can feel very deep emotions,
Very deep feelings.
You know,
If people experience emotions on a scale of 1 to 10 of intensity,
If 10 is like the most intense a feeling can be,
HSPs might feel like we feel them at 12 or 13.
They can feel really intense and really overwhelming.
So,
For HSPs,
Knowing that,
One,
That's normal,
And two,
The emotion won't last forever,
You know,
It will pass,
It will come down a little bit and decrease in intensity can be helpful.
On the other hand,
Emotionally,
We can be really in touch with other people's emotions.
Now,
That can be a gift in some situations,
And it can also be a challenge because if we are absorbing everyone else's emotions around us,
It can be distracting from our own emotions,
Our own experience,
And it can be overwhelming to be taking in all of that information all the time.
It can feel like too much.
It can feel overwhelming.
It can be distracting even.
You might notice yourself having trouble focusing in like a big group of people or a big meeting or something like that.
So,
It can come up in a variety of scenarios.
So,
Talking about the sensory sensitivity,
Think about those five senses.
So,
Sight,
Smell,
Taste,
Touch,
And sound.
You may already be aware of where your sensitivity lies or certain things that kind of push you over the edge of being overstimulated,
Overwhelmed.
If not,
Just pay attention to it in the next day or two.
You know,
If you start feeling stressed or frustrated,
Take a step back and think,
Okay,
Am I overstimulated here in some way?
Have I been around a lot of noise today?
Are the lights really bright in here?
Am I wearing something that's uncomfortable?
So,
Those are examples of where the sensory overload can come into play.
I'll give an example for me.
I work from home,
Which works great for me because it's usually pretty quiet,
But oftentimes I am reminding my family to please be quiet because the noise really bothers me after a while,
And I know that I will get to a point where I feel really overwhelmed and bothered or exhausted by noise.
You might notice certain foods or smells that you just can't tolerate.
They're too much.
They feel overwhelming,
Distracting,
Unpleasant,
And that's okay.
These are things that we can learn about ourselves,
Use to understand ourselves better,
And take steps to make accommodations in our environment.
So,
If you know that a certain texture in your clothing feels really uncomfortable,
Distracting,
Bothers you a lot,
That's a good thing to know.
You know,
You can use that as helpful information when buying new clothes or choosing what to donate,
Choosing what to give away.
One more thing I want to talk about is this potential struggle for social anxiety or just discomfort with being in social situations in general.
HSPs tend to really enjoy those deep conversations,
More meaningful connections,
And so a lot of the time we struggle with the small talk.
You know,
The big events where there's lots of people mingling and just having those kind of surface level conversations.
It can feel boring,
Overwhelming,
Even exhausting to do that.
And for some people there can be a lot of anxiety tied to those situations because they know that they're going to have to exert a lot of energy to have conversations like that or,
You know,
Encounter whatever other stressor there is.
So,
That's one thing to keep in mind if you struggle with social anxiety or struggle with just being in social situations.
That's a common experience for HSPs and there's nothing wrong with you.
I like to reframe that into thinking about these qualities and this trait as we have certain things that we need and certain things that don't work for us.
And that's okay.
We are individual humans and we are allowed to have limits and needs.
So,
I'll explore that in another talk soon,
But I hope it was helpful to hear the common challenges that HSPs might experience.
There are more,
Of course.
This was an overview.
But if any of them did resonate with you,
I would encourage you to take a moment,
You know,
Even five minutes to just journal and reflect about what came up for you,
If there's any feelings of shame or you know,
Sadness even,
That you struggle with these things.
I hope that you can give yourself some compassion and kindness and remember that there's nothing wrong with you for struggling with these things.
There are amazing,
Amazing gifts and strengths that come along with this trait as well.
And I encourage you to listen to my other track about that as well.
All right,
That is all for right now.
Take care.
