Navigating Life as a Highly Sensitive Person

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Hey 👋

A few years ago I read “The Obstacle is the Way” by Ryan Holiday. My high-level summary of the book is that the universe puts obstacles in our way not because we are victims and we did something wrong to cause the obstacle to appear, but to show us where we need to fight so that we can grow and function at a higher level.

I’ve been going through a period of my life filled with obstacles that have made it blatantly obvious that I am a highly sensitive person and that my way forward is to figure out how to channel this and work with it so that it works for me vs. against me.

Growing up, I was shown left, right, and center that being a sensitive person was not okay.

At home, in school, and on sports teams in predominately “alpha” environments with coaches that screamed at me were not conductive to me understanding that how I was naturally was an okay thing to be.

I had to be tough.

I had to be strong.

I had to have grit.

These were the things that I was rewarded and praised for.

My nickname in soccer at one point was literally “The Machine” which makes me laugh now that I know myself a lot better.

I am definitely not a machine.

I am an extremely sensitive human.

While I do think that these situations forced me to gain skills that have helped me in life in many ways, not understanding myself fully and not understanding my unique needs and honouring those has definitely hurt me.

It’s caused health issues, burnout, a feeling of isolation, and a lot of masking and disconnection to try to “fit in”.

It’s estimated that ~20% of the population is born highly sensitive. I read this in a book called “The Handbook for Highly Sensitive People”, which, ironically, I couldn’t even get through because…I am too sensitive.

Being highly sensitive comes with an ability to process inputs more deeply than those who are not highly sensitive - both positive things like experiencing joy and adventure, and also negative things like grieving a death or experiencing trauma.

People who are highly sensitive are likely to make great leaders because they can take in a lot of information and process it on a very deep level. There’s a feeling of “nothing gets passed them”.

They can also make great athletes especially in sports that are highly complex and require a lot of intuition and “gut feel” in dynamic situations, where sometimes you can’t always see where you need to play the ball for example but “just know” your teammate is there.

But, like most things, it’s a blessing and a curse.

Highly sensitive people are more likely to feel overwhelmed, be affected by depression, and burn out from work.

Knowing that I am highly sensitive has helped me to reduce some of the shame that I carry in feeling really, really different than most people and like an alien most of the time as I navigate life.

It has helped to reduce what was a consistent feeling of “what’s wrong with me?”.

It’s also meant a lot of hard things that I am currently trying to figure out how to navigate.

One of the biggest challenges for people who are highly sensitive is understanding how to take care of ourselves.

In the documentary, “Sensitive - The Untold Story”, singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette talks about how she didn’t know she was a highly sensitive person when her career initially blew up and would have frequent meltdowns as a result. She realized later in her career that booking back to back shows wasn’t helping her and she needed more downtime than most people between performances and interviews.

A lot of highly sensitive people end up working for themselves because modern workplaces are filled with tons of stimuli and not enough baked in downtime for peace that it make it really challenging to set your own boundaries for what you truly need and “go against the grain”.

If you grew up as a highly sensitive person but felt misunderstood, like an outcast, or not supported emotionally in the ways you uniquely needed it, as an adult, you’ve likely spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to re-parent yourself and identify the things that do make you feel supported and that help you.

For me, my mind has actually been blown thinking about how I navigated life trying to mask this for 30+ years.

I became an expert at disconnecting and figuring out how to “get the thing done” or “get through” while ignoring my emotions and overwhelm and from the outside I somehow made it look like I was fine most of the time, but on the inside I was suffering deeply.

So many of these times I just thought it was normal and was what everyone else was doing.

I thought it was normal to cry from being overwhelmed at the beginning and end of…every, single, day.

Like most things I used to think were true, I am now realizing…man, I was so, so wrong lol.

I have by no means solved every aspect of this and I have a lot to work through.

Some things I do know, though, are that:

• I need to do a lot less than I usually want to do, and also question “WHY” I want to do those things in the first place. Am I trying to be a perfectionist and make everyone else around me happy so that it in turn creates more safety in my external environment? Or is it something I actually want to do in my gut, for me?

• I need more boundaries and I need to stop caring what other people think about me by putting them in place - this goes for family, friends, colleagues, and random people reaching out on LinkedIn or who stop me on the street (I have been told I am very open and approachable, which I always thought was a good thing until I realized that being open and approachable always actually inhibits me from protecting my own energy).

• I want to consciously align myself with people who make my nervous system feel safe vs. push myself to be in situations consistently where I do not feel safe even though it might “seem normal”.

• Figuring out how to experiment and explore things that support me is never a lost cause. I recently started wearing hearing aids for example, which I was kind of embarrassed about at first if I am being honest, but they have been a game changer in helping me regulate an auditory processing issue and reducing my baseline level of overwhelm and instability.

• What I need may look a lot different than what another person needs, and that’s okay.

While I have a lot of work to do and am still figuring out how to navigate this, I know for sure that wearing a mask is no longer serving me, or anyone that I interact with. Accepting being a highly sensitive person has been hard but also makes a lot of things I have gone through and am going through just make a hell of a lot more sense.

Soulwork 💜

📚 I just read two books that I loved and wanted to share with you:

• The Comfort Crisis

• Be More Human

Thanks for Reading!

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

If this edition resonates, please drop me a note and let me know! I love hearing from you and it makes me feel less like a robot typing away behind a glass wall.

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Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot.

Lisa ✌️