If you want to understand your sensitivity, the first thing you need to do is to stop reading all these chats from the “so called” Highly Sensitive People. The only thing I found there is a lot of complains about life, lots of dysfunctions and disorders, how the world is a hostile place, how poor they are and how everyone must pity them.
No, HSP is not about this. If you feel this way you have two options, change the way you see your sensitivity or stop reading this text now and go back to your chats.
When we talk about a sensitive device we talk about a tool so powerful that no other tool can function like this. A highly sensitive radio can receive radio signals that normal radios cannot. A highly sensitive film can make pictures in poor light conditions. Of course, if you expose it to much light you are going to burn these pictures. But if you know how to use it you can make pictures where others are getting dark frames.
Would you call this dysfunction? Why do you call your sensitivity dysfunction?
Your sensitivity is your ability to sense, feel and understand things better than others do. You are not unlucky, you are gifted.
I know, nobody asked you to have it. But if you think of it, nobody asked you where to be born, your gender, your nationality or your family. Nobody asked you if you should be born rich or poor, lucky or unlucky. Nobody asked you to be born in general! It just happened, and you are trying to make the best out of it.
So, your sensitivity is a gift to you, or rather a tool that you can use. And believe me, if you learn how to use it, it’s a blessing and a miracle.
So why many are just complaining instead of enjoying this gift? The reason is that they try to understand their sensitivity through the words of people who are not sensitive. Duh! I’m sure that many people who didn’t understand the relativity theory told Einstein that it was nonsense.
So, stop reading all these chats about how poor you are, also stop listening to the people who don’t know who you are.
Choices? Many!
Connect with sensitive people who are open to the positive aspects of your sensitivity, listen only to people who accept you just the way you are without trying to change you or manipulate you.
Explore your abilities and train your mind to be able to use them. Find books and articles that talk about the positive aspect of sensitivity.
Take the first step with me, we can have a friendly half hour chat about sensitivity, examples, problems and solutions.

Love

Antonis

How often do you hear someone asking you a question and immediately you feel uncomfortably? Especially if it has to do with your actions and your life, a question can really hit you like a hammer on the head.
For many people this is a sign that the question is right, touched the right spot etc.

Not for me though!

If you did something and you're not sure if it was right or wrong and someone asks you "why did you do this?" how do you feel? Do you get a kick? Do you feel accused, even though this was not the intention?
Actually when someone asks me "why did you do this?" I always feel there is an accusation there.
One of the most wonderful and powerful books I have read is "Breaking the Rules" by Kurt Wright. In this book he is describing the right question, why it is powerful and useful and will always help you move on.

What is the use of the right question?

The right question will help you move forward, create, feel good, motivate you and give you solutions in the most difficult moments.
The right question will give you the tools for creating effortlessly, whatever you were doing with a lot of struggle will become easy and simple.
The right question will de-activate the analytical and repairing way of thinking and activate the intuitive and creative part. Will take you away from being busy with trying to correct mistakes, something you can keep you busy for all your life, and take you exactly where you can create the solution you want, the attitude you need and the life you always wanted, if you did, by just shifting your point of view.

Don't worry, I'm not going to talk about the secret or any other positive affirmation methods. There is some every day action and way of thinking of us though, that these people took as seeds for this secret and this action and way of thinking is our attitude towards life. Of course you cannot correct it with wishful thinking and magic spells.

Let's see what am I talking about.
Every day we see hear and feel around us a lot of images, words, emotions and ideas and, of course, like every receiver, we tune to the ones that interest us more. Like, for example, a radio receiver has access to many radio stations in different frequencies, but focuses and hears only one every time, the one the user decided to hear.
Same with us, every day we have many sources of information around us, external or internal (internal I mean we feel them directly from the sender and not through his words or expressions) and we pay attention to a few of them. Some we ignore partly, we know they are there but don't really show interest, others like they don't exist.

For example, I check every day many pages about highly sensitive and see what are people posting there. I see people writing about hope, insights, great ideas and powers in every day life but also about something special that happened, let's say, today while others are sharing a great deal of pain and fear about their sensitivity and their "condition". But more interesting are the replies. Most of the replies are in alignment with the post, sharing the same or similar, often competing sharing bigger problems and fears.
Of course I see a few people trying to change the mood and trying to offer a real support, but if you check the likes and the replies, not many pay attention to them.

But for me these are the most interesting.

Many self improvement agents are offering new programs for your mind. New and improved, with many promises for better results, wonderful life, happiness etc.
But are you sure that this is what you need?

First of all if you have old programs running in your head it means that you don't think your original thoughts.
And where did these programs come from? From involuntary affirmations they made you believe. "You are small, you are stupid, you are useless, you don't have the right or the ability", all these things that you were hearing as child made you believe that you are a little creature in a huge universe and you don't have as many rights as you thought when you started thinking.
Do you want more automatic programs coming from new affirmations?

It's absolutely normal for sensitive people to feel emotions from people around them. There are ways though that you avoid suffering.

Normally a sensitive person doesn't suffer with empathy, it's an absolutely normal thing and it can be used also as a tool. But if as a child they were trying to force you to feel certain things or avoiding others, you know, "stop being too sensitive", then you start judging the feelings, either they are yours or not.

Even in these case you can find ways to stop suffering.

1. Don't take over these emotions. They are not yours. Always try to remind it to yourself. You are not guilty if someone feels bad, just see it as an information.

If you love them back or they love you back there is no problem, things are simple, may become more complicated later but this is not the subject of this article.
The "problem" many people face is when someone falls in love with them or they fall in love without response.

To my opinion and my experience there is absolutely no problem with this. Falling in love is the most natural thing in the world and happens all the time all over the world.

The way I see it, if someone falls in love with you this can raise your self-esteem, make you feel good just thinking that there is at least someone in the world who would love to be near you.

I guess you all know the feeling, especially the highly sensitive and this for two reasons, because we feel more and because they know that we feel more.

So let's say that something happens in a moment that you don't feel flexible and one of your plans goes down the drain, let's say facebook rejects some project of yours. And you feel completely helpless, in the mercy of some authority or someone who is in better conditions than you, or so you think.
(The "so you think" is because when someone else feels like a victim they would love to make you feel the same, so they are not in better condition).

There are a few things you can learn to do in these cases, to make things lighter and to be able to get out of this situation fast.

1. Enjoy the feeling. Let's face it, when you feel like a victim all the responsibilities are gone. You are in the hands of fate, or the monstrous victimizer, and you don't have to do anything, just relax in your situation and, of course, your terribly delightful feelings. Of course you remind to yourself that this is not a real situation, but first you have to know it yourself.

Highly sensitive people can easily change their lives, start a new profession or evolve fast using every given opportunity. Of course this happens when they are healthy and didn't develop neuroses from the constant abuse they had as sensitive children.
Of course they can always get rid of them, but this is another story.

But the paradox is that they often complain when things are changing too fast around them so they cannot concentrate.

Of course this does not mean that they cannot function in instability, no matter how much HSPs complain, can always function, can be very efficient, they won't feel good inside them though.

It is a fashion of the last 20 years that became a great life guide especially after the movie and the book "the secret" came out. It is a new age movement with the idea that if you are thinking a positive way you will have positive results.
It is actually twisting the "law of attraction" with an extremely simplistic way (the real law doesn't say anything like this).

What is the philosophy? You just tell yourself that everything is fine and everything will be fine.
Did you ever see this happening? Stuff happens all the time even if the thoughts are extremely positive. I mean people get hurt and die, nobody ever became immortal by thinking positive.

Sometimes when you meet someone, from the first moment you know that this person is going to play a powerful role in your life.

Unlike other cases where your ego tells you to rush, to try hard to contact or get closer to this person, in this case you feel very relaxed. You are not in a hurry, you are not trying hard or playing games to get closer. You feel confident and you know that getting closer is inevitable.

Now this person may become your lover or your spouse, some special friend or will offer you a valuable challenge, an advice or just an inspiration for you life, sometimes without being aware of it.

In order to understand this we have to explain what the brainwave frequencies are . We are talking about the functioning frequency of the brain which varies according to the conditions and/or the type of person.

These are Beta, Alpha, Theta and Delta.

Delta 0,5-4 Hz is the state of the deep dreamless sleep, there is no consciousness there, at least not when this is the main wave pattern.
Theta 4-7 Hz, is the REM sleeping condition where dreams appear, or in case of being awake, the very deep relaxing state.
Alpha 7-14 Hz, is the relaxing mode, usually comes immediately when the eyes are closing.
Beta 14->21 Hz is the everyday awake functioning mode, where the brain analyzes, works hard and tries to survive.
In the 2 middle ones the person is more connected with subconscious mind and intuition.

This is a funny question asked by a coach.
Coaching is the best way, today, to bring your real self on the surface, by removing all the additional personalities you had to adopt all these years.
Especially for a highly sensitive person, the non acceptance of your uniqueness made you play roles and keeping some of them as your real personalities. In this case you need more than anyone else to discover your real self and bring him up.

But often this is not enough.

There is a possibility that your real self hasn't seen the light of the sun for many years, most probably since your childhood. So if you bring him up most probably will be shocked because there are not many genuine selves available in this world.
So playing roles and adopt other personalities had some meaning. It was a very good disguise in a costume party!

I have to say that sensitivity had no place in the primitive world. Why that?
Nature needs strength. Physical strength. All the species in order to remain strong in a very competitive environment were always trying to reproduce the genes of the strongest and the most durable and tough.
This way, the world was full of brutal force, even within the species and in many cases this is the way it remains.

When the big males with the unbreakable horns and the strong muscles are fighting for reproduction, there is not space for sensitivity and creativity.

Don't take me wrong, sensitivity doesn't mean weakness, there is strength there and often seems to be brutal. But a sensitive person has another way of thinking and often this strength is not used for brutality.

especially the ones who don't know or they forgot that they are.

Visionary leader is someone who doesn't rely only in analytical knowledge, experience and information to lead. The greatest tools of a visionary leader is intuition, inspiration and love.
A visionary leader doesn't need to push things, doesn't need to command, he/she just leads or shows the way.

Highly Sensitive people make perfect visionary leaders, in fact I'm sure that every real visionary leader in the past, in small or great scale, was HSP.

Many clients are asking me how to deal with their anger. And, as usual, the whole discussion is around the symptom, ignoring the real reason.
And by real reason I don't mean the event or the situation that made someone angry. The real reason has to do with self-confidence, self-esteem and self-evaluation.

Let's start from the beginning, anger is just an emotion. It's not important by itself. Thousands of emotions are passing through us every moment, most of them are just getting evaporated before we are even aware of them.
The non-logical animals also have emotions, fear, joy, anger, desire, but they don't hold on to them. We, with our "logic", are trying to hold on tightly to our emotions. We are also trying to control them. And suddenly, without any warning, we are angry and whatever we try we cannot relax.

In our society we learn that wisdom, or rather smartness is to manage to be someone who you are not. In the family, the school, among friends, in the profession or job, everyone tries to prove that they are someone else. Some role model who's achievements are trying to reach.
But there is a great difference between doing what someone else does and being someone else!

The first time I heard "Highly Sensitive" I also took it wrong, my impression was that they were talking about problematic people who take everything very heavily and are too emotionally. When they told me that I am also one, I was ready to explode, (well, maybe they are not completely wrong).
Slowly I understood the concept and the reasons HSPs are often too emotional.

Okay let's take things from the beginning.
Highly sensitive is someone who can feel, understand or sense much more than most people do. And HSPs are not rare, about 15-20% of the people and many animals share the same attributes.

Dear sensitive,

I'm sure you have noticed that often your thoughts and your ideas sound strange to the people around you. Your parents, your partner, your friends or your boss/employees have no idea what are you talking about, your great inspiration sounds like gibberish and your enthusiasm goes down the drain. Again and again.

But the fact that others don't understand your ideas doesn't mean that your ideas are rubbish, it means only what it looks like, people just don't understand your ideas.

The big question is where these ideas and inspirations are coming from?
Well it's the collective knowledge and wisdom, facts, ideas and insights from everyone, everywhere and every-when. And the reason that they come as random ideas and as flashes in your mind is because that's they way they suppose to come. If they come as words or voices they will be confused with the logical thoughts, or you will have to see a doctor.

Long long time ago, many thousands of years before our time, the humans were struggling for survival. Hunting, collecting fruits or even cultivating, in a hostile environment. The language, or rather the pre-language was trying to escape from the usual 5 different sounds for 5 different expressions, like danger, joy, food, sex and headache.
Having still a difficult life, even though the language was enriched with more words about sex and headache, among other things, the primitive human beings were slowly getting ahead of the animals.
Some of them though, were getting ahead of the rest of the humans too. Some of our primitive ancestors started creating tools from stones and pieces of wood, others were painting on the walls of the caves, some were "composing" music, (you know, rhythmic noises) or exploring and interpreting the sky and the position of the stars.
Do you think they had an easy life? I believe everyone else was looking at them the way we look at some crazy person today. "We are trying to survive here, trying to get food, escaping from wild animals, raising our kids and you are making.... art and science?"

In many cases you hear people talk about routine and how boring or bad it is or how it's killing the enthusiasm.
Sensitive people feel really trapped if they have to be in a routine, especially doing or living things that they don't like or they are not interested to.

Most of the times though, Sensitive people create their own routines. It seems strange that people born explorers, adventurers, artists and inventors, people with strange and unique ideas have to create routines and sometimes be furious if someone breaks them.