Welcome to my weekly newsletter building a supportive community for Highly Sensitive People (HSPs).
For this week’s edition of The HSP Revolution I felt inspired to explore some of the biggest fears I’ve faced in my own life — and that I often find coming up with my coaching clients. I wanted to share them here because so many HSPs feel that they’re alone with their fears — when nothing could be further from the truth.
Facing our fears is never easy — and I’d invite you to check in with yourself before reading on to make sure you’re feeling in the kind of space where you’re ready to explore this work. Being gentle with ourselves is always the best place to start. The below is by no means an exhaustive list, and this is a topic we can examine further.
As always, I love to hear about your experiences in the comments. I really appreciate it when readers give feedback since so many other people benefit from reading the comments. And thank you for the supportive emails — it’s great to know The HSP Revolution is landing.
1. Rejection
As children, we all need to bond with our caregivers — it’s the primal instinct that’s kept our species going. But even the most loving of parents weren’t fully able to attune to our needs. Very few of us had permission to express the whole of who we are — including our quirks, interests and eccentricities, and the true depth of our emotions. Rather than risk losing connection with the people we depended on to survive, it sometimes felt safer to abandon a part of ourselves.
In later life, this fear of rejection can resurface as a fear of being judged by our friends, colleagues or peers: A fear that we’ll say the wrong thing; or fail in some way; or that whatever we do, it won’t quite measure up.
If we take time to look underneath this fear, we’ll find another layer: A lack of self-worth. Unless we had a truly exceptional upbringing, then the chances are that through family life and school, we’ve came to inhabit a smaller version of ourselves — and may feel a deep-rooted sense of being somehow unlovable or flawed.
This wasn’t necessarily anybody’s fault — it’s just that the culture never supported us to fully express ourselves in all our highly sensitive joy, creativity and depth. So we may experience a feeling in later life like we’re wearing a suit that doesn’t quite fit — it’s too small somehow, too tight. But we get so used to the feeling that we stop questioning it. And we notice everyone else is similarly cramped, and take it as normal. We may struggle with feelings of loneliness since we may have not fully understood the depth of our own sensitivity, and how we need to seek out other sensitives to feel a greater sense of connection.
Antidote: Make connection and community a priority.
2. Lack of Purpose
HSPs thrive when we have a clear sense of purpose.
Our mission may vary over time, and creativity is often at the root of it — that feeling of self-expression that makes us feel most alive. Our purpose may be connected with our job, but it might equally be something outside of work — parenting, caring, creating or serving in some other form.
I’ve noticed that so many of the HSPs I work with struggle with the question of whether they’ve found their purpose or not — or if they’re on the right path. There’s few more unsettling feelings for an HSP than a sense of being off track. We may recognise deep down that our true calling is leading us outside the mainstream — but we fear what may happen if we give up on conventional definitions of success.
Antidote: Trust. Our minds cannot always grasp why things are happening in the way that they are. Sometimes all we can do is go with the flow of life and do our best to look for the clues that show us the next step. Our purpose will reveal itself — but sometimes patience is required.
3. Stressful socialising
Finding yourself in a social situation making small-talk with people you don’t feel a connection with is always going to be a struggle for an HSP.
Situations where you feel bombarded by everyone’s unexpressed emotions can be particularly overwhelming. Loud talking into mobiles; watching other people being aggressive or rude; fakeness and inauthenticity — all stress out our nervous systems.
Antidote: Learn what a firm “no” feels like in your body and practice saying it as often as you can. Cultivate quality connections.
4. Receiving
HSPs are natural givers — whether it’s providing practical help, or helping people discover a sense of meaning and purpose. It’s much harder for us to receive. We feel embarrassed, or say things like: “Oh, you shouldn’t have.”
As kids, we may have rarely experienced unconditional giving from our parents. If we struggle to feel we deserve love and care, then we find it hard to receive from others.
Antidote: Take the next opportunity to receive gracefully — without apologising.
5. Our feelings
We can do a good job of convincing ourselves that we’re in touch with our feelings — after all, we may spend hours analysing situations with our closest friends, and tell them all about what’s going on for us.
However, there comes a point on the path where we realise that all this talking and analysing ourselves has become a form of avoidance: We’ve yet to venture deep within ourselves and truly experience the depth of our anger, grief, shame and fear. We have to connect with these feelings at a deeper level — by experiencing them as visceral sensations in our bodies. When we connect with our feelings in all their rawness, we gain new insights that we simply can’t reach in any other way.
This is epic work. We may have a lot of resistance to the idea of surrendering in this way. Our mind may tell us that it’s too dangerous, that we’ll fall apart, and that we won’t be able to cope with our day-to-day lives. We have an unconscious fear of the changes this kind of exploration can bring. When we hear an inner voice saying “what’s the point of all this emotional work?” then we know that we’re meeting our resistance and that we’re on the right track.
Antidote: If you feel you have a lot of suppressed emotion, find a supportive professional or community where you can go to do this essential work.
Thank you for being part of The HSP Revolution!
See you next week,
You are so right about thinking through the feelings, talking about them and analysing them all in an attempt to avoid feeling them. And it's the avoidance that causes the tension, the anxiety and the panic. If I can let go and allow myself to feel in my body the tears come and with them the release and the feeling moves on. It's so hard to do and so worth while. It helps if you can find someone to hold you who will do just that until the storm passes. They don't have to be HSP but they do have to understand about holding, not talking and not fixing.
I’d also include incongruence (ie when nonverbal behaviour contradicts a person's words). I’m hyper aware of this and it sets off all my internal alarm bells – I have to remove myself from the person or situation and if I can’t, it causes real internal distress