Understanding your sensitive self
“I disappoint many people, and sometimes myself, by not being more obviously spiritual. I don’t go to church and rarely meditate in a formal way. I wear ordinary clothes and eat an ordinary diet. I have an aversion to much of the language I hear and read from today’s spiritual sources.” Thus begins the poetically-titled piece This Fractured, Heavenly World in a back issue of Spirituality and Health magazine.
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When I was younger, not sure what to wrap myself around and grow, I listened to the cacophony of different voices inside and couldn’t figure out how to reconcile them all. They all seemed so different from each other, these different parts of me. I couldn’t hold this tension, this feeling that inside me were many different people. I couldn’t see how to bring them all together. And so, I flattened parts of me into one. […]
Making decisions has been hard for me. I have gotten better at it, but I am still searching for ways to decide that feel right. I know that too much information can paralyze me, leaving me sorting through options. Is this better? Someone else is doing that. Should I do that as well?
What is right for me?
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The littlest bird came and hovered near me the other day. I was sitting in the patio, reading. The sun shone overhead, and I felt entrained with the rhythm around me – the hum of birds, the little unnamed sounds that nature makes that seem to pull downwards, into the coolest, deepest well.
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I recently wrote about HSPs and their struggles with developing self-compassion. For HSPs that have gone through a traumatic experience, this struggle is even harder. Trauma, by its very definition, is overwhelming. To deal with it, we might have run away into our minds and away from our bodies.