Living Within Samsara

Exploring the Highly Sensitive Person and What it Means to be HSP

Highly Sensitive Person Introduction

A Highly Sensitive Person is almost an arbitrary and cliche term for a person who, generally speaking, is “Sensitive.” Now when I say “Sensitive” I don’t mean necessarily emotionally, mentally, or physically “delicate” - though this is arguable. I also mean “spiritually,” “mentally” and “emotionally” attune to things outside of the ‘normal realm of consciousness’ that most of the world’s people reside in.

The “being delicate” aspect of the Sensitive is arguable to the degree that we may feel overwhelmed by things that (for lack of a better term) “earth people” are not necessarily overwhelmed by. I want to stress that I do not like to call it “delicate” any more than I would call an over-clocked computer delicate. Others may see us as delicate or fragile or moody or temperamental at times because they have no idea what is going on with the Sensitive - and why should they or even more to the issue, how could they?

Highly Sensitive People tend to be more sensitive to electricity, sounds, smells, “waves in the air that others can’t see,” other people’s moods, emotions, and extra-sensory or paranormal conditions that even the Sensitive may not be able to explain or understand. I, myself, have trouble with acute hearing. I hear everything. As a result, though it seems I am deaf when I watch TV, I am not. I need it to be louder so I can focus on it and drown other unwanted [feelings, noise, emotional, mental, paranormal] intrusion out.

For HSP Articles look to the Category entitled: Highly Sensitive

HSP is the acronym for Highly Sensitive Person. In addition to being Sensitive to noise, tastes, smells, sounds, and even feelings, pain, medicine, or whatever else, the HSP has a special light. Some people believe - as I do, after extensive interviews, research and a general watching and identification with others - that HSP’s are very special people indeed.

Highly Sensitive Person Qualities

A collaboration of efforts have seemed to make these qualities a general benchmark for describing one as HSP. A particular HSP may not have all of these qualities due to natural differences in people, upbringing, or other inclinations. And because we haven’t [yet?] the means to quantify HSP-ness, it’s up to each individual to determine for her/himself.

 
• Needing about 5 hours alone time to every 2 hours spent out in the world.
• Emotionally drained or exhausted when a friend becomes troubled.
• Inability to express to my satisfaction to another person how I?m feeling.
• Wondering how other people could *take everything in stride.*
• Introspective. Deeply reflective.
• Easy feelings of something is about to happen though no indicators.
• Feeling another person?s energy.
• Very sensitive to electricity, energy, vibrations.
• Acute hearing.
• Absorbing others moods, feelings, energy.
• Trouble with relating myself to others.
• Intensely troubled and sensitive to others suffering.
• Used alcohol or other inappropriate means to deaden the feelings.
• Spiritually wrestling almost since a small child.
• Feeling very different and wondering always what was the secret I was missing.

I have to equate being an HSP to an IQ Test. My IQ is 0 [or 100 or 5000], for example, if I am the only person in the world because I, alone, determine the curve. Like an IQ is not any absolute number but based in relationship to others, so too is the litmus for the HSP. In other words, there is no magic number and no definitive stand alone measure. As such with the HSP, the only reason we are HSP is because most others are not.

A pretty good litmus test: Have you been told you are “too sensitive?” Have you been known to cry at another persons pain? Are you quite fond of animals/children - more so seemingly than adult human people? Have you ever had a hard time wondering how it is that most people seem to ‘fit’ and how you don’t? Have people or has a person ever said anything to the effect like “You’re chosen” or “God has plans for you” or “There’s a light about you” and you somehow knew what they meant? Have you ever had dreams of prophecy or astral projection [out of body experience] issues? When it comes to you and electricity, would you prefer for it to be off? Have you ever gone into “emotional overload” with too many people, or too many electrical appliances? Have you ever felt as if you?ve known the condition of a person?s soul or spirit? Do you reject organized religion because you know it’s not telling the whole story? When it comes to the paranormal and people make jokes, do you cringe? Have you seen ‘energy,’ ‘aura,’ or what perhaps others describe as paranormal experiences? Do you feel better suited to NOT be in the workplace but vesting your talents and energy into creative or lone projects?

If any of the above are normal for you, you’re probably an HSP.

The HSP’s Paranormal Qualities

I do not know if this is every HSP. From the study A Neurobiology of Sensitivity , Michael Jawer equivocates paranormal happenings with those who consider themselves HSP. The reason I had been recalcitrant in addressing these other “paranormal” qualities when I first set out to discuss HSP-ness is because though I have had extreme paranormal occurrences in my life, and because the paranormal is still rather taboo in “earth circles”, I did not know -and still do not - if this is an HSP particularity trait or something else.

In conversations with other HSP’s one on one, it continually finally becomes addressed that they, too, have had extra-normal occurrences happen and have resorted to treating them almost as part of regular life. [I know I do.] I think this acceptance is in large part due to how readily they have known they were different or how early the paranormal occurrences began occurring for them.

At the risk of repetition, I will reprint my article, “Seeing the Paranormal in Everyday” here.

HSP: Seeing the Paranormal in Everyday

My recent article on Astral Projection and Dark Presence as well as the experience itself, has had my thinking of my HSP-ness with more depth recently.

HSP: HSP is an acronym for Highly Sensitive Person. In addition to being Sensitive to noise, tastes, smells, sounds, and even feelings, pain, or medicine, the HSP has a special light. Some people believe - as I do, after extensive interviews, research and a general watching and identification with others - that HSP’s are very “special” people indeed.

The major problems with being HSP can be, perhaps, obvious. Ordinary noise can be extra-sensory overload. Needing more quiet time than most other people could have social implications. Thinking and feeling more deeply than the other 88% of the population may have them wanting to commit you to your closest psych institution. Much fondness and identification for and with?animals causes extensive heartbreak at their loss. Disillusionment with society at large, based in others misperceptions of us could prohibit our good work. Feeling always somehow different as we watch the other so-called *normal* people function with relative ease; Where their left foot right foot day to day leaves us maybe in bewildered states of awe. How do they do that?

Well, now for the next phase of discovering our HSP-ness. Once we understand or can identify this as what we are, particularly with others like us, our social need is fulfilled. Our need for social understanding among our peers begins to take hold. Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs [Diagram]? Okay so then we move into esteem/ego area. We’re now feeling more okay with ourselves. Finally, at long last we are understood and accepted. We seem to now have a bedrock of grounding that propels us into independence. We are now secure enough to move into the “I am.”

Now what does our HSP really mean? We?re done with needing “to fit in” because we do. We’re done with “learning how to cope” because we have the benefit and experience of our peers to help us. We no longer feel the need to be isolated with the “who we really are” and so now where are we? Who are we? What is our potential as human beings?

I believe HSP’s are “Light-Workers,” “Indigo,” “Gifted,” “Chosen,” “Psychic,” “Intuitive,” “Empathic,” “Enlightened,” “Called;” I believe that a culmination of terms could be used to describe the true gifts or qualities of the HSP.

If you think you may be HSP here are some qualities of myself and my friends that I have compiled. Ask yourself if you have ever had experience with any of the following:

1. Dreams. Vivid dreams. Astral projection. Lucid dreaming. Prophetic Dreams. Highly symbolic. And of course you dream in color! (When the scientists said that people dreamed in black and white you knew this to be untrue for you and were baffled.)
2. Paranormal sight. Seeing things that could be described as paranormal. Have you ever seriously ?seen a ghost? or ?energy? or ?aura?? Have you seen things move with no provocation? (Do you cringe when you hear people talk smarmily about ?ghost sightings?? Do you hardly ever relay your own experiences?)
3. Paranormal auditory. [Clairaudience] Have you heard things that could not be explained? For example, laughter in the other room when no one was in there. The jingle of a cat collar behind you in the kitchen but you have no cats. [Yet you suspect it was your cat who passed away.] Your dad calling your name?from downstairs but he wasn?t home.
4. Paranormal feeling. [Clairsentience] Have you ever met someone and known right then the condition of their spirit, mood, or life? Have you known a person’s ulterior motive yet their mouth was speaking differently than you were feeling? Contrary to maybe a group of people’s idea, did you know the idea to be different than what was being sold? Were any of your feelings later validated? [Yet you refused to say “I knew it!”]
5. Thought reading. [Telepathy.] Particularly saying something that someone would confide “I was just thinking that.”? [I think everyone has. Among HSP’s we tend to exchange energy more freely with each other and perhaps occurs more frequently.]
6. Influence. [Telekinesis] Have you ever for example had your television go out and then with a “Oh stop” it came back? Have you ever (probably inadvertantly) thought-suggested something and then your friend brings it up? (With my dog it was a game. I’d think, ‘Want to go outside?’ And there she was. Head perked and tail wagging.)
7. Visions. Past, future or unexplained? Maybe you’ve had a dream, or a dream series that would later present itself. [Article of my biggest life-changing dream series.] When I say ‘past’ I mean to say that once - in twilight sleep, a hypnogogic state - I had a vision of me and my beloved in Egypt. We were Egyptians and we were saying goodbye to each other. Just a thought? A vision? Don’t know.
8. Seeker. Seeker/Fighter. Always searching for the higher spiritual calling. Have you understood, since you’ve been a small child that there was a special connection between you and the Divine? Have you particularly rebelled at this for whatever reason? Have you allowed alcohol, drugs, or other human distractions to numb you from this calling?
9. Coincidence. [Synchronicity] Have you been prone to noticing the ease with which certain things occur for you? Can you notice when the Divine has you on a certain path or mission? Do these coincidences seemingly happen to you more so than other people to the extent that you don?t bother explaining when a casual friend is in awe that something you absolutely needed to happen happened?
10. Empathic. Giving and Receiving Energy, Spirit, or Emotions. Do animals, children and certain people seem drawn to you? Are there people you know who have physically made you sick or very tired? Have you often felt so open that anxiety attacks seemed only seconds away? Do certain situations seem to be okay with other people, yet you’re feeling like ‘What the?’ Have you been depressed for no apparent reason to discover a loved one was in pain? Do you have friends ‘on your radar?’

Watching The Celestine Prophecy two nights ago- which was based on the like-named book - brought this all together for me as yet another validation that there is a higher calling for the HSP gifted. I could not believe that my life was there in that movie?my beliefs, my seeking, my philosophy on spirituality. It propelled me to add books for the HSP-inclined to the Samsara bookstore over and beyond the discovery phase of dealing with being Highly Sensitive.

Being a Highly Sensitive Person, I believe, is a gift. Once I overcame the distinction of feeling unusual and odd, I was able to embrace the gifts of the being.

Above was reproduced from the article: HSP: Seeing the Paranormal in Everyday
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Resources for the Highly Sensitive Person

• Highly Sensitive [HSP] Articles at this site.
• Highly Sensitive People on Squidoo: A consolidated 1 page site on what HSP can really mean.
• Books on being Highly Sensitive : I have some of these. Learn about yourself. Read some!
• Highly Sensitive Person’s Forum : A Stumbleupon forum for people who are HSP.
• Alphabetized Threads for the Highly Sensitive People Forum on StumbleUpon
• My HSP tagged sites on Stumble: Pages, articles, sites I’ve liked & tagged HSP.