The processes of thinking and feeling are our gateway to understanding both ourselves and the world around us. However, our minds can have the most annoying voices and utter the most nonsensical sentences. At many moments, we can believe everything our minds say because they can trap us into a room of fixed thinking with no windows. Some people’s minds have more deafening silence in these rooms that trap us, and the walls can often seem as if they’re closing in, blocking out all light in the process. This is the freight of the “highly sensitive person”, a term originally coined by the psychologist: Elaine Aron.
However much these dark and intense emotions can dwell on us and attempt to run our lives, I’m going to attempt to shift your thinking that being able to feel entirely and acutely, all the time, is more of a gift than a curse. This quality, drilled into highly sensitive people, makes us, on the flip side of the very dark and intense emotions, have such vibrant and bright ones too. I’m so grateful that I, as a highly sensitive person, inherently feel so deeply because life rarely passes me by in gray blurs, but in swirls of dark red, atlantic ocean blue, sunshine yellows, and many other extremely specific emotions with assigned colors like deep purple anxiety.Â
To live is to have highs and lows. Additionally, no one can truly live in their fullest form if they cannot process and then move on. A lot of the time when anyone is in the midst of a rainstorm, it can be easy to forget that there will be a rainbow when they come out on the other side. This can be especially true for highly sensitive people, but these intense emotions we can’t seem to escape eventually lead to understanding ourselves in relation to our environment. We are forced to feel so deeply, so why not use it to our advantage? Emotional intelligence is not something to take for granted as it is highly valued when it comes to both our relationships with ourselves and others.Â
Building on the topic of how being highly sensitive affects our relationships: we are the best friends. This inherent empathy makes us such intuitive listeners for the people we love. We are able to empathize with others so naturally and this results in them feeling heard and supported. Kindness is so underrated, but nonetheless valuable in our cutthroat society, which prioritizes competition and individualism. Some other people can abandon kindness to achieve other ambitions, but rarely can a highly sensitive person, or they’ll at least feel highly guilty about it later. This fact can ease highly sensitive people’s naturally anxious minds: you are good people because understanding and empathy come so easily!Â
Yes, being inherently sensitive can be exhausting, like when we constantly notice slight differences in facial expressions directed towards us in conversation or feel a shift in the mood of a room. However, isn’t it wonderful to be able to notice the world around us so incredibly well? Truly nothing gets past us. Furthermore, this quality can make highly sensitive people excel at all kinds of fields that require observation, close reading, or critical analysis.Â
Highly sensitive people are inherently made to live life to the fullest. We experience this one life so vibrantly, as if looking through a kaleidoscope. We were meant to feel so deeply, so we can understand so vividly, and experience an overall beautiful world. I know you have no choice, but just feel – it’s your superpower.