Strategies To Make Life Easier As A Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). Highly sensitive people react to everyday sensory stimuli more strongly than others. They like to compare themselves to a sponge that soaks up everything.
As a result, highly sensitive people perceive things more intensively and in greater detail, but they also become overstimulated or feel stressed more quickly. And since their threshold of irritation is already exceeded where others are still having fun, they often feel “wrong” or “somehow different”.
This makes it all the more important to have an understanding of one’s own high sensitivity. And to find strategies to deal with it better in everyday life.
Strategies To Make Life Easier As A Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)
If you think you might be an HSP, here are some ideas that might help to make life easier for you.
Recognize high sensitivity as a personality trait and make friends with it
It makes sense to recognize high sensitivity. And to align life – as far as possible – so that it harmonizes with this personality trait. Of course, this also includes the interaction with non-highly sensitive people. Not only because they are in the majority. But also because opposites not only attract but can also complement each other wonderfully.
US psychologist and author Elaine Aron (“Are you highly sensitive?”) has been dealing with the topic of high sensitivity for over 20 years. And she never tires of emphasizing that high sensitivity is not a disease, but a personality trait.
Recognizing and acknowledging this is an important and liberating step for many highly sensitive people. They finally realize that they are neither “weird” nor “somehow different”. Or “cowardly” or “too delicate” – they are highly sensitive. And behave completely normally according to their high sensitivity.
It doesn’t matter what non-highly sensitive people have persuaded them over time. If you then succeed in making friends with your high sensitivity and accepting it as completely normal, this also has a positive effect on your self-esteem.
Be aware of what is overstimulating
High sensitivity does not mean that highly sensitive people necessarily tick in the same way. There are both introverted and extroverted highly sensitive people. In addition, everyone brings their own imprints with them.
What bothers one person doesn’t bother another. It is therefore important to find out for yourself what is overstimulating. And to provide relief again and again.
Whether by creating small islands of calm in everyday life or through the ability to separate oneself. In the latter case, it is helpful to practice the art of saying “No“. This is also something that is often difficult for highly sensitive people.
Addressing high sensitivity
Overstimulated? Then it’s often a case of: see nothing, hear nothing, simply come to your senses, and recharge your batteries in a quiet place.
It doesn’t even take much to trigger this overstimulation and the resulting desire to withdraw in highly sensitive people. Often, it even involves activities that others find entertaining. For example, a shopping trip, a visit to the cinema, a party or other everyday things.
The reaction of highly sensitive people therefore often seems strange and incomprehensible to non-highly sensitive people. And so these supposedly “sensitive people” are quickly perceived as arrogant or solitary and pushed into the role of outsiders.
Whoever can, should therefore speak openly with their environment about their high sensitivity. Not everyone will be able or want to understand this.
For highly sensitive people, however, this openness is liberation, as it takes away the pressure of having to constantly pretend and put on a less sensitive facade.
Why high sensitivity and mindfulness make a good team.
Mindfulness can be a life raft in potentially overstimulating moments. It helps to be aware of the situation. Without judging everything or getting lost in negative thought loops and horror scenarios.
In other words: focus your attention only on what is. And not on what is probably about to happen because we expect it to happen – which also includes our own behavior.
If you’ve always been nervous in a room full of people, you’ll probably be nervous this time, too, and want to escape. Or will they not? With a little practice, mindfulness offers a way to escape exactly this vicious circle.
Don’t become a hermit despite high sensitivity
Highly sensitive people appreciate calm and manageable situations, but nevertheless, they also need stimuli and challenges just like any other person. And even if it seems tempting to avoid all stimulus triggers as far as possible: it doesn’t make sense.
Because that way life becomes more and more cramped, the hurdles insurmountably high, and social life massively impaired.
Highly sensitive people, therefore, do well to consciously engage in exhausting situations that they would like to master.
And if there is the need, there is always the possibility of leaving the situation for a moment – a saving thought that makes it a little easier for many highly sensitive people to perhaps get involved in a stimulus-triggering situation after all.
And whatever stimulus-triggering hurdle is overcome: it will increase self-esteem.
High sensitivity – a life with fine antennae
It is not always easy to live with such fine antennae. However, it is helpful to simply regard high sensitivity as normal. And not to label it “good” or “bad”.
The art of living consists of recognizing the body’s signals in time and consciously managing one’s own strengths. Knowing your limits without letting them restrict you too much.
And to find compromises that make living together with non-highly sensitive people possible, which also enriches one’s own life.
Bring acceptance and awareness to dis-ease
It’s easy to let tension and discomfort overtake our minds. Try actively working to let it be when feeling uneasy. That is, notice the emotion or sensation and sit with it without judging it.
Try to find the location of that emotion or sensation in the body. Notice its nature, and see if you can sit with it gently, compassionately until it transforms, shifts, and perhaps dissipates.
In conclusion, Life for the highly sensitive remains a special challenge, but one that also entices with particularly intense sensations.
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