Highly sensitive people are known to feel their emotions a lot more intensely than others. This causes HSPs’ to feel drained when too much is happening around, being around too many people, listening to too much small talk. There is a totality of sensory overload that is felt in an HSP’s emotional magnetic field which impacts the HSP to get emotionally drained.

Personally,I suffer from anxiety,and being an HSP, my anxiety gets triggered when I am in enclosed spaces,when I am around too many people,when I have to prepare on a new assignment/subject,when I have to meet new people are some experiential examples that I have faced as an HSP being.

Since a child, I have been hard on myself, I lacked self-compassion which just made me feel worse. I was conditioned to a fact that “being sensitive in this big bad world is not a good thing”. As a child, being bullied constantly by my classmates regarding my weight,I have always been a fat kid, was one of the building blocks to becoming an highly anxious being,also, not being included in the “cool kid” group was something I always craved for as a child.

This deep conditioning severely impacted me in my adolescent years and realized quite late, that all this was a childhood trauma impact. In my early 20’s, I started prepared for my Masters and I got my admission in one of the B+ graded colleges, where I made some really genuine friends,however, it took a while for me gauge that they were actually nice people and did not judge me on my appearance,my weight and other physical attributes. However, the sense of second guessing their intentions were always there in the background.

This what anxiety does to a highly sensitive person, the carry forward of childhood events bleeds into other relationships,which turns into a coping mechanism of shunning off strong emotions and fear of being vulnerable in close relationships. I soon realised, that HSPs’ need the right kind of support, the projections of societal conditioning is so strong onto adolescents that we forget that different people have different emotional and intellectual needs.

Today being in my mid 30’s,I have become an anxious avoidant personality where I have wired my brain in a way that I have to be in a cocoon to protect myself, therefore, my initial interactions with unknown people is generally shy and emotional. I love to make friends and meet new people, however, I hesitate to talk to them from the fear of being judged. Also, subconsciously, I have always thought of the worse case scenarios before I carry out any conversation, especially with strangers.

So I remember this one event that had occurred,I used to travel to work by an air-conditioned bus and I made friends with a young gentleman who used to catch the same bus. It started out with us having good conversations and getting to know each other and we also, went out of couple of dates,however, this one event was a major highlight that made me aware that I had an anxious attachment style in relationships. On one of the days, while returning from work, he started avoiding me and I was quite baffled as to what has gone down to receive this sort of a cold vibe treatment.

That whole evening, I actually kept overthinking about the issue and I texted him regarding this and he clearly ignored my message and did not reply to me until the next morning. That whole day,we did not speak. In the evening, while catching the same bus,I saw him and confronted him as to why was there ignorance and avoidance from his side, which actually turned into a big argument, and during that argument I was so furious that I started weeping uncontrollably while confronting him. And of course,we just stopped talking after that.

At that moment, I was unaware of what was happening to me and a whole roller-coaster of emotions were running though me which clearly amped up my anxiety levels. The mistake I did was I tried to approach him again via a BBM text, which went ignored and post that,I just let that phase of my life pass by.

This just strengthened my conditioning of “cocooning myself” and not being completely authentic in my relationships due my fear of abandonment and fear of being overtly sensitive in relationships.

Today I realize that,it is not the fault of us HSPs but the people around us who are not aware on how to cope and deal with such individuals.Some tips that I use to validate my emotions and protect my energetic field are:

#1 I do things that make me happy rather than invest and wait for people around me to make me feel good about myself.

#2 I have identified things that drain me like unemotional and ingenuine people,small talk,to much technology to state a few.

#3 I have identified things that make me feel good and I do them regularly such as blogging,teaching (my main profession),speaking and connecting with emotionally available people,spending time in nature,having hot beverages.

#4 Setting clear boundaries in all my relationships, I have done that consciously in my work and close relationships, there was a time I could not say NO.Today,without batting an eye-lid, if it does not resonate with me, I would let that pass.

#5 Having no expectations from others is something I have wired my subconscious mind about. After many years of being let down by people and not being there for me,which is okay, as everyone has their own battles. Also,being highly perceptive and considerate are my strengths which not everyone possesses.

I would like to end with a quote by Shannon L.Alder,that states “Sensitive people either love deeply or they regret deeply. There really is no middle ground because they live in passionate extremes.”