If you are a highly sensitive person, you may often feel as if you are the odd one out. Sometimes, you might even feel as if you don’t quite belong. After all, not everyone experiences the world as intensely as you do.
But even with this sense of being an outsider, there are few sensitive people who would give up being sensitive. Sensitivity brings with it its own set of gifts, and it makes up the essence of who we are and how we relate to the world. So, let’s pause today and count a few of these amazing things that come with being sensitive.
You are deeply affected by music and art.
Our deep feelings also mean that as sensitives, we are deeply affected by art, music and nature. This means that we have access to hope because real beauty — the kind of beauty you see in a sunset or the wonder you experience when you look through a telescope — connects us to the bigger world around us. Even when things are chaotic or it feels like the world is going crazy, there’s a deeper, more sacred world that you can turn to.
You can build trust between people.
Highly sensitive people are attuned to the feelings of other people. We are also the kind of people who see how the same thing can be viewed from different angles. Often, we are good mediators because we don’t have an agenda that we are trying to push and we genuinely care about what people feel and experience.
You often have good intuition about people.
Highly sensitive people are very aware of subtle details. We also have a very good emotional radar. This means that we often have very good intuition. If you’ve grown up in a rationally-minded culture or were taught that a “good” person doesn’t judge others, you might, at first, talk yourself out of your hunches and gut feelings. But once we’ve had enough experience and once we’ve started trusting our own selves, our intuition can become an amazing tool. It can steer us clear of the wrong people and give us early warning signs to help protect us.
You are probably very good with animals.
Being able to pick up emotional nuances means that you are good not just with people, but also with animals. Before the pandemic, I used to volunteer at an animal shelter to socialize dogs and cats. A couple of other volunteers had some issues with some animals. One tried to pick up a cat who clearly did not want to be picked up and was mildly scratched. That’s not the kind of thing you would do as a sensitive. You would know, without being told, that an animal needed space to get used to you or that they were in an off mood that day.
You have a rich inner life.
Highly sensitive people have rich, layered inner lives. You are someone who is deeply interested in the human psyche and who feels like their own inner life is like a deep ocean. There are strange and beautiful creatures of thoughts and feelings swimming inside. The deeper you go, the more there is to know. You might have really intense dreams that are meaningful and whose symbols speak to you which makes you really interested in studying these dreams. But whether it is through dreamwork or creative expression or simply being an observer, you have a strong desire to connect with and express your inner life.
These are just some of the things that make life really rich and beautiful for sensitive people. The next time you are feeling down, it might help to count all the things you appreciate about your sensitivity and how it makes your life better. Sometimes, life can get tough as a sensitive, but just as our valleys tend to be low, our mountains are equally as high as well.
Ritu Kaushal is the author of the book The Empath’s Journey, which TEDx speaker Andy Mort calls “A fascinating insight into the life of a highly sensitive person and an emotional empath.” Sign up for Ritu’s newsletter to get two free chapters of The Empath’s Journey.
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