Navigating Sensitivity

Sensitivity is a continuum.  Some days we feel more sensitive than others.  Truth be told, we can all be insensitive at times too. 

Although all people can be sensitive, highly sensitive people fall more easily into overwhelm and anxiety as your stress response is activated and prolonged.

Being sensitive to your environment is a survival skill. Tuning in to sounds, sights, movements, other people’s emotional responses is what we humans do to stay safe.  However, when your brain gets stuck in being vigilant and searching for safety, you can automatically fall into interpreting your outside world as dangerous, when in fact you are actually safe.  You end up feeling anxious, reactive or on edge a lot of the time, when in fact you don’t need to.

As a sensitive person, you also have extremely valuable qualities that make the world a better place! You can deeply attune to and appreciate others and your environment and be beautifully responsive.   

I remember years ago someone sharing the metaphor with me of how an oyster makes a pearl and this transformed my perception of my own sensitivity: A grain of sand gets into the oyster, which the oyster finds irritating. The irritation prompts the oyster to secrete a substance that surrounds the grain of sand, to protect itself from the irritation.  And this is what becomes the pearl. The irritation was necessary to create the beauty of the pearl.  Honouring your sensitivity and appreciating how it serves you is important. 

As a sensitive, there is a lot you can do to make your life better and easier.  Shifting your brain’s automatic negative interpretation of your environment or re-wiring your brain, can be very helpful to return to balance.

You can also learn skills to self-soothe yourself when you feel jangly or out of sorts. Some of my favourite ways to shift out of being stuck in reactivity include:

• Having quiet, peaceful time to myself to do what I feel like.  This might be something as simple as making myself a favourite cup of tea or being my with dogs.
• Taking myself to an environment that I really enjoy.  This could be a local coffee shop, the library or my backyard.
• Journaling to allow expression of what is bothering me and better understand myself.  (*See separate post on journaling for difficult emotions).
• Shifting my emotional state to an ‘elevated’ emotion like calm, appreciation or peace or even joy sometimes.  Music really works for me to shift my emotions, as does dance.  I keep play lists of songs that help cultivate different emotional states. 
• Shifting my attention to what is going well in a moment.  There is always something to notice: the beauty of nature around me (I do love trees!), material comforts I have, how my body is working hard for me.
• Talking to trusted people in my life so that I feel understood, heard and accompanied is also very valuable.
• Physical activity.  Doing yoga or going for a walk can help with shifting your energy and environment.