Are you a highly sensitive person? I am too. For those of us who are highly sensitive people (HSP) we pick up on everything that goes on around us. This can be great, people think we have extra sensory powers. It always made me a very good judge of character and I often felt I was able to feel what the other person was feeling. Turns out, I could, my body resonance is very good and I learned all of this through years of somatic coaching and somatic experiencing practitioner training. It helped me enormously when I worked in the corporate world in executive development roles because I was really good at spotting people’s talents and working through with them how they can continue to grow and learn and what work and life experiences would help them to do that.
So I am really good with my sensory experiences, very attuned to environments and very nuanced changes in them, I pick up minute details in people especially emotional and energetic changes. I am super aware of light, dark, electricity, climatic change.
Where does it become hard for HSPs?
I found the big differences for myself and for other HSPs I have worked with is whether the nervous system is regulated or not. That is, our ability to move into the different autonomic responses (fight, flight, freeze and fawn) and then soothe ourselves and come back to our window of tolerance where we feel curious, connected and safe. Sensitivity is a gift when you are well regulated, it is your superpower. When you are aware of everything around you and don’t perceive it as danger, you can have a very deep connection with the world you live in.
Where is becomes a problem is when your nervous system is dysregulated. We can be stuck in survival mode. When you are stuck in survival and you are an HSP, you can find it really difficult to stay present and grounded. Everything in your environment can feel like a threat, you can become constantly anxious, overwhelmed, have panic attacks. It is not fun.
So how do we become an HSP?
It starts when we are young. Even as early as when we are in utero, yes inside Mum’s tummy. When babies are born they don’t have the capacity to regulate and self soothe. We do that as parents, mostly through touch. We soothe babies through touch, rocking, our voice. Brand new babies are super sensitive to the new world and they will startle and cry over any sound or cause of confusion to them. New babies are sensitive to new sensory experiences and to their parents. It is our job as parents to co-regulate their nervous system and this continues for the rest of their childhood. If a baby has had healthy co-regulation from an adult who can self regulate, at about 11 months old they will start being able to soothe themselves a little. The first three years of our little lives are super pivotal in the development of this capacity. What can cause us to become dysregulated is early trauma, it can start at conception.
We can experience stress in utero if our mother is stressed. My parents were in a motor vehicle accident when my mother was five months pregnant with me and one of the earliest experiences I had in my somatic healing was, we think, (me and my therapist) this experience that came up in a somatic experiencing session. It is hard to put to words because we have no explicit memory the first 3 years but we remember sensation in our body.
Stress in utero can prime a baby to be living in high stress when they come out into the world. Other experiences we might have that cause us to be in this state is if we grew up in a family where mum and dad fought a lot. We become masters at anticipating what our parents are feeling in order to defend ourselves. We become hyper-vigilant to the mood of the adults in the house. We become attuned to energy, emotions, physiology of others and in these survival states this may drive behaviour where we are very introverted or shy or just feeling like we can’t be ourselves. I also think some kids can experience this at school either with a teacher or other kids and become in this hyper aware state.
Also medical experiences or sickness we experience as a little person. If we had to have surgery or spend a longer period of time in hospital our little nervous system can become super overwhelmed and can struggle to understand what is safe and what is not safe. Over time if we have a few of these experiences we can shutdown to our feelings and emotions. This is our nervous systems way of coping.
The impact of experiencing all of this dysregulation over time, is that our nervous system can go into shutdown, this is the dorsal vagal state of the parasympathetic nervous system. When untreated this can lower our metabolism, energy and immune function. There is a lot of evidence that early and developmental trauma has a significant impact on health outcomes as an adult. Look up the ACEs study if you are curious, this has all the info in it.
Other kids might not shutdown they just might become hyper-attuned to their environment, these are our highly sensitive people. Their system is revving on high and they perceive everything as a threat, they don’t ever really feel safe.
Experiencing that co-regulation from caregivers when we are young is super key in teaching children to self-soothe and bring themselves back into presence and calm. If their caregivers were dysregulated because their nervous system never learned this, we end up with early developmental trauma.
A little passage from rumi or hafiz
If you identify as sensitive, whether you are introverted, extroverted or somewhere else in between, your sensitivity is a foundation.
Sensitivity is so wonderful, yet so fragile and misunderstood. We spend so much of our lives resenting it, fighting it, trying to smother it down, instead of nourishing it.
Sensitivity is often labeled as a weakness but in reality it cultivates a strength most people don't ever experience.
Sensitive people used to feel more so they can often simply handle more, when push comes to the shove.
The good news is that we can work with this. There are many somatic modalities, like somatic experiencing, neuro affective touch, neuro affective relational model, sensory motor psychotherapy which all support nervous system healing. It is never too late to learn, to heal your nervous system. When you do this nervous system healing work, your HSP gifts turn into your super power because you use them from a more grounded place. You are aware of your environment and you can witness your own experience on the inside and be with both at the same time. You can experience the world in technicolor and bring yourself back to calm, centred and grounded.
Come talk to me if you would like to explore healing your nervous sytem.