HSP Tools

Yesterday’s post was about Dr Ted Zeff’s wonderful new book The Power of Sensitivity. While reading it, I thought about all the different strategies that we come to learn while navigating the stormy seas of our sensitivity.

For me, one of them has been learning to calm my mind. The best way of doing this has been through practicing a gentle form of yoga, which connects my awareness with what is happening in my body. When I don’t do this, I feel as if my energy is dissipated, or I am stuck somewhere jutting out of my body. For many HSPs, a regular practice of some kind – a gentle form of exercise, meditation, reiki, or prayer – provides the groundwork for harnessing our energy in other areas of our lives. 

One of the wonderful things about being an HSP is that although the valleys that we go down can be dark and deep, our peaks can be just as expansive, just as exhilarating. Sometimes, when I think of my awareness as porous, letting everything in, it only seems like a disadvantage. But there is another side to the coin. And it is the fact that when I give myself what I need, I am almost as easily lifted, elevated. If I hear a beautiful piece of music, it nourishes me in the deepest kind of way.

The challenge, really, is to develop the habit to regularly give ourselves what we need. It’s a hard challenge for some of us, and our struggle with developing self-compassion can be extremely frustrating. It can make our progress really slow. 

I recently read Sonia Connolly’s lovely book Wellspring of Compassion again. What she says resonates with me so much and I expect, you will find yourself reflected back in her words. “Self-care can sound like an obligation, one more item on a long to-do list. Self-care can sound like abandonment if we were emotionally or physically neglected as children and still long for someone to rescue us. Self-care can sound selfish, self-indulgent, or forbidden when we are accustomed to caring for others first.”

For a lot of us, all these things make it incredibly hard to do self-care. This is a subject I want to explore more deeply this year and find solutions for. 

What about you? How do you think an increased sense of self-compassion can help your life? What stops you from actually giving yourself what you so acutely need?