Being a Highly Sensitive Person is Both a Blessing and a Curse; How You Can Deal with (and even Embrace) It

A guest post by Susie Schwartz from The Quest for Less Health Stress

Dear Singularly Sensitive Friends,

I’m excited to share a post by Susie Schwartz from The Quest for Less Health Stress! Susie has an inspiring perspective on living as a sensitive person with chronic health issues (and an adorable pup!). Please enjoy this article and check out her bio at the end.

Warmly,
Lori

Being a Highly Sensitive Person is Both a Blessing and a Curse; How You Can Deal with (and even Embrace) It

Guest Contributor Susie Schwartz from The Quest for Less Health Stress

I cried at the vet’s recently, and my Chihuahua, Carlos, was fine. Why, then, did my eyes well up and spill over? Because a large mixed breed dog shook, cowering under his human’s chair, terrified. His elderly sister was also shaking and buried her face in her larger dog sister’s fur. That was enough for me to need some tissues. That’s right. I am a highly sensitive person (HSP), and I felt those dogs’ terror all throughout my body and spirit.

Being an HSP is not only about feeling sad for others. Very Well Mind defines an HSP as this:

“A highly sensitive person (HSP) is a neurodivergent individual who is thought to have an increased or deeper central nervous system sensitivity to physical, emotional, or social stimuli.”

To read more about how I identify as an HSP, see my post, I Identify as a Highly Sensitive Person. Do you?

Being an HSP is both a blessing and a curse. First, let’s take a look at some blessings:

• I feel strong empathy for others who are hurting or struggling. (Including animals!) (This is also a curse. We’ll get to that.)

• I don’t shy away from feeling and processing my emotions

• I notice new symptoms and my body’s signals that tell me how I am really feeling

• Beauty, art, music, and nature deeply move me and have the power to change my physical and mental state.

Let’s look at these in more depth.

I am (mostly) thankful for being a highly sensitive person. I am more likely than my husband who is not an HSP, to message a mother who has lost their young adult son in a car accident 8 months after he died, just to say I am thinking about her, because I really am. I can remember sitting and talking with a brand new friend and weeping with them, as they shared about miscarriages caused by spousal abuse, developing MS, and giving birth to and raising a daughter with special needs. I can’t know for sure, but it seemed everything she felt, I felt too. And she could tell. She was ultra-thankful for the time I spent with her and for my free-flowing tears in honour of her story. Highly sensitive people make for good support systems.

Sometimes, in a group setting like a house party or office meeting, an HSP will be able to pick out the person who is dying inside because unbeknownst to everyone, just found out her spouse is leaving her. We can feel her pain like splashes of hot paint on our sensitive skin. We can see the paint, too, in our mind’s eye. It’s red, like blood. A good metaphor for oozing pain. We’re also often the person in a business meeting that will make sure the quiet person sitting there silently gets a chance to be heard and supported. In my opinion, the world could use more of that.

I’ve also noticed that highly sensitive people often feel more free to meet their emotions head-on instead of stuffing them down in denial. I think this is partially instinctive and partially learned. We HSPs have to learn to put our frustrations, anger, fear, and darkness somewhere, or we’d implode into a million fragments of overwhelm and sickness. In my case, I either write, or go for a walk on a farmer’s track in an English field and scream at the cows. (The sheep are too sensitive, so I spare them that.) 

The day I learned of a close friend’s violent suicide thanks to many factors, including chronic illness and an emotionally abusive husband and son, I sat on the sofa and didn’t move all day. I cried. Lay under a blanket. I wrote an emotionally loaded letter to her, describing her emotional scars and wanting to be small. She tried to be so small – invisible through posture and an eating disorder. I ranted and shouted with sections of all caps.

Another friend phoned to check on me later in the day and asked if I was able to distract myself. “Oh…no…” I stammered. “I didn’t even try to do that.” I dived into the deep end of my emotions. It was ugly and intense, and for a week I grieved violently. But after that week, I let the winter rain wash my spirit, and the anger dissipated. My heart dropped the stones I had wanted to throw, and I became lighter. Then, about two weeks later, I poured my sadness into my baby grand piano keys and wrote a song to honour my friend. All of this processing has brought me peaceful comfort and oh, how I miss her, but I can smile when I picture us sharing a cup of coffee together, or exchanging beautiful stationery as birthday gifts.

Being a highly sensitive person has also made me more aware of my body’s signals that I am in distress, like tensed muscles, a headache, feeling nauseous, or clenching my teeth. These signals can clue me into my emotional state much more quickly and clearly than my thoughts do. When my jaw joint is hurting, I know I’m really feeling it. This is a blessing in disguise because as I massage the side of my face, I usually clue in to take action, like deep breaths and other relaxation techniques.

Being in tune with one’s body brings another benefit. As someone who has struggled with chronic and acute illness since the age of nine, I notice new symptoms quite fast. When my doctor asks me how to describe my pain levels or if the symptoms ebb and flow, I can answer accurately because I already know. This can equal early detection and faster treatment.

I don’t know if this is a result of being an HSP, or if I’ve just learned this along the way, but I am deeply moved by art, music, and nature. I can find beauty in mice playing in the rocks in my back garden, and even in wasps taking a sip of my drink. (Hey…they are just trying to survive.) This is life-giving. Taking note of the lyrics of a song, studying one of my sister-in-law’s painting of a bird, or stroking the leaves of a tree calms my stress spirit and replenishes my depleted emotional energy. It also takes me out of a moment of crisis or tragedy – big or small – and gives my spirit a break. Since I’ve realised this, I try to take notice of the puffy clouds in the sky or the art hanging on a hospital wall or the well-earned wrinkles on my friend’s face. These bring me so much joy. I thank my sensitive spirit for this.

Now, for the curses:

• I get overstimulated – lights, sounds, touch, heart feelings

• I overthink things

• I am deeply affected by other’s emotional state

• I feel empathy for those I don’t even know 

Here’s a closer look.

I love music. Unless it’s country or screamo, I’m down. But as an HSP, I need to be very choosy about which concerts I go to. When the guitar is not distorting and the genre is acoustic and chill, I get moved to tears from the beauty of it. When the bass is booming and the drums sound manic and there are lots of flashing lights, I cry for very different reasons: stimulation overload. It’s like my brain shorts out and melts down. I sure understand why a tired child can’t cope with laughing clowns. It’s all too much. 

Sensory overload also happens physically. There was a time in my life that I could not wear a watch because of its weight, and my bed sheets felt like sandpaper. And I’m not sure if it’s my fibromyalgia or from being a highly sensitive person, (Chicken or egg?) but when I’m overtired or get bitten my a mosquito, my nervous system lights up like a Christmas tree on cocaine. It can be tricky moving through this world as an HSP.

Overthinking can be a problem.

Yikes, did they take it the wrong way when I said the dress they were trying on looked a little frumpy? It was all the dress’s fault, not theirs. They asked me their opinion. They wanted me to be honest, right? It just didn’t do them any favours. But they have a gorgeous figure. Great. Now they probably won’t answer my messages. Should I message them with an apology? But it’s 2 a.m. If I send it now, I might wake them up, just giving them more reason to hate me. Oh, Susie. You should just keep your mouth shut. Even if they ask. You always get yourself in trouble. This is how my brain works. All. The. Time. Thinking, thinking, and more thinking. Twirling and twisting and expanding and bouncing. Sure, other people overthink as well, but as an HSP, I feel all the feelings of doubt and worry deep. And they are hard to shake. 

As for feeling others’ feelings, we HSP really take them on board. A mother I know recently was telling me of their fear their child’s cancer would return. She started to cry. I immediately joined her with tears of my own. I thought about this for days. In fact I still think about it. And I can feel my belly flip with nausea and my chest tighten every time I remember the conversation.

As an HSP I also carry the pain of people I don’t know. About 20 years ago, I heard that a 13-ish year old boy in a neighbouring community had been standing behind a road paving truck and got buried in hot tar as it dumped. I still feel my body react when I think about it. I took on the pain the boy would’ve felt as he died, as well as the grieving pain of the whole family. I didn’t know them at all. Letting the world’s pain into my spirit is one reason I am in therapy now.

So, on one hand, being an HSP is a good thing, but on the other it can be detrimental. (See the post, Being a Highly Sensitive Person Can Hurt Your Health. Let Me Help You Protect It. 

So, I am both thankful and frustrated with being a highly sensitive person. But I suppose life is often like that – both good and bad in the same moment. 

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Susie Schwartz is a Canadian writer and songwriter currently living in the UK. Her publications include a regular newspaper column called, ‘Expert Patient Here to Help!’ in six Manitoba community newspapers and she is also a regular contributor to The Mighty. Her article, When I Was Shamed for My Invisible Disability – by Two Disabled People was published in The Huffington Post and has been very popular. Head to her publication  The Quest for Less Health Stress | Susie Schwartz | Substack  and follow her on IG here: @authorsusieschwartz