3 Signs You are a Highly Sensitive Person.

If you are a highly sensitive person (HSP), you experience the world differently than the majority of people. This difference is biologically hardwired in you. You were born with it.

You are more aware of subtleties. You process information deeply.

This means that you tend to be empathetic, thoughtful and creative. But this same tendency to notice details means that you can also get overwhelmed more quickly than other people.

Then, of course, there is the fact that although being highly sensitive is completely normal (it’s NOT a disease or disorder), you might often feel misunderstood.

Only around 15-20% of the general population is highly sensitive. So, people around you might not really understand you. And you might have grown up feeling as if no one could truly see you.

At this point, you might be wondering if you are a highly sensitive person. If you are an HSP, you’ve probably been called “too sensitive” as a child. You probably already know that you are sensitive but that word might have been thrown at you like a weakness and you might have run away from it.

But if you want to think about it some more, here are some points. If they resonate with you, it’s highly likely that you are a highly sensitive person.

1. You are often emotionally exhausted from absorbing other people’s feelings.

As a highly sensitive person, your brain is wired to respond deeply to other people’s feelings. You tend to mirror their experience and both empathize and sympathize with them.

And if you are highly empathetic but don’t have strong energetic boundaries, you can feel other people’s feelings inside your own body. It’s as if you are this emotional sponge, soaking up whatever is around you.

Both these things — your natural empathy and responsiveness as well as a learned tendency to actually take on people’s feelings, can leave you feeling exhausted and drained. There might be times when you just want to hide under a blanket or get away from everybody so you can feel your own feelings.

2. You are rattled when you have too much to do in a short amount of time.

When you were a kid, you got frazzled when you had to do timed tests and quizzes. Now, as an adult, when you have too many things on your to-do list and not enough time to transition from one to the other, you might feel overwhelmed and stressed.

You might feel as if you are getting overloaded and drained. Your battery discharges quickly.

You might also feel like you take more time to do tasks than others. It’s because you are noticing and observing so much as you are doing them.

You are built for depth, not speed.

3. You might feel like a canary in a coal mine.

In the olden days, miners would carry down canary birds into the mine tunnels with them. If dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide collected in the mine, the gases would kill the canary before killing the miners, and this would serve as a warning signal to the miners to get the heck out of the tunnels.

While this is a pretty violent example, it’s also true that as highly sensitive people, we can be like this canary in the coal mine. We can be that signal that warns of impending danger.

As a highly sensitive person, you are naturally inclined to look at the big picture and think of the long term. So, you can also see how doing certain things will lead to inevitable consequences.

For example: It might feel clear as day to you what is missing in your nursing facility & how it can affect patients as you go about your day-to-day as a nurse. Or if you work in an office, you can see the consequences of going for the short-term gain instead of the long-range view.

But often, these observations are not valued or understood by other people. Sometimes, it’s the “Kill the Messenger” syndrome. Sometimes, it’s because you are pointing out something to change and there is something deep in the other person that is resistant to it.

In the meanwhile, you can get labeled as difficult or negative even though what you are offering has real value.

As HSPs, we need to be aware of this syndrome, so we don’t internalize other people’s judgments and trust our own instincts enough to follow them. It can be a learning for us to realize that we need to become advocates for our own selves in a world that is not built for us.

If you are a highly sensitive person, you are a bridge-builder, a connector, someone who sees how we are all links in the chain. We need you and what you have to contribute in this world today, in this world that is hungering for exactly what you have to give.

Ritu Kaushal is the author of the book The Empath’s Journey, which combines personal stories with practical tools to help highly sensitive people channel their deep sensitivity. Sign up for Ritu’s newsletter for two free chapters of The Empath’s Journey.

You can find The Empath’s Journey here.