If you’ve just recently learned that you’re a highly sensitive person you might wonder, what should you do now? Perhaps you’ve discovered you’re HSP a while ago but it hasn’t changed anything and you are still feeling frustrated and even overwhelmed.
I want to share with you 3 crucial tips to improve your life as a highly sensitive person.
1 . Educate yourself
Learn everything that you can about the trait of high sensitivity. There’s so much research being done and the more that you educate yourself the better you will understand yourself.
There are many different dimensions to the trait of high sensitivity and these have been summarized by Dr Elaine Aron using the acronym D.O.E.S.
D stands for depth of processing. Our nervous systems and our brains have been created in such a way that we process everything like a supercomputer. We are very effective in analyzing, processing, filtering, absorbing, and interpreting all of the information from our environment.
O stands for overstimulation. Taking in so much information, at that level can lead to overstimulation if it is not managed. Imagine that supercomputer brain of yours overheating because it’s processing too much information.
E stands for empathy or emotional responsiveness. Highly sensitive people feel both negative emotions and positive emotions more strongly than non-sensitive people. Research shows that when HSPs observe someone, the mirror neurons in their brains fire and are more active than the mirror neurons in other people’s brains. That means that we experience the same feelings as the person we are observing.
S stands for sensing subtleties. Again, this is the supercomputer brain where we are extremely aware of the smallest subtleties in our environment. That also explains why we are so sensitive to strong smells, bright lights, and loud noises. Things that won’t disturb another person at all can be really overwhelming for us because we are amplifying all of the information in our environment.
2 Change your lifestyle to accommodate your sensitivity
When you begin to accommodate this highly sensitive side of you in your everyday life, you’ll find that you feel a lot more power and you have a lot more inner strength and resilience.
These things include getting enough rest, and even enough sleep. Taking care of your physical needs like drinking enough water, eating a balanced diet and getting exercise. Looking after your physical body allows you to better manage your emotional and mental bodies.
3 Make self-care a priority
The real self-care work that we need to do as highly sensitive people is to listen to our physical and our emotional needs, and to honor those needs.
Taking regular time is the most powerful self-care practice that you can start today. Right now, begin by taking out some time for yourself, away from people and electronics. Walk in nature if you can, or lock yourself in the bathroom if you have to!
When you take this time for yourself, it gives your brain the chance to deal with all of the information it’s been processing.
Doing the inner work
Apart from these 3 crucial tips to improve your life as a highly sensitive person, the step beyond that is to do the inner work.
We may carry core wounds such as:
- I am too sensitive,
- There’s something wrong with me,
- I am not good enough, and
- I don’t matter.
Healing these core wounds allows us to show up in a completely different and authentic way. As long as these wounds and these emotions are unresolved, they will continuously show up and sabotage you. They prevent you from really stepping into your full expression as a highly sensitive person.