your sensitivity is a map

for those who are “too sensitive”

I walk through the world from a place deep within myself that I never fully leave. I am tethered to it, not like a weight but like a companion. It is a place that feels so open it can hurt because everything brushes up against it. It overflows with love, with grief, with empathy. From this place I have always sensed the world.

So much of my life has been spent trying not to feel too much, be too sensitive. Especially as a child, everything felt big. Each feeling coming with a message — one that I either run from or run into. I quickly learned that not everyone feels this much. I’ve felt like an outsider most of the time but it never made me want to be different, only brought me closer to myself. I found my mirrors in poetry, in art, in music. In late night conversations with people I may never see again. In listening to others talk at cafes while I wrote or worked behind the counter. Being a sensitive person has made me see the wholeness of other people. We all contain every possibility, every emotion, every potential experience.

Eventually I did learn that it is a gift to feel this much, to see this much in the world. Being a sensitive person has made love more beautiful and heartache more painful. In my early twenties I tried to turn it off. I tried to shut out the world but it only made me implode. So I leaned back in. I learned to be gentle with myself, gentle with others. To not expect others to feel as much as I feel, or to see the world the way that I do. I gave my sensitivity a voice and from that came my first book, and then my second, and then my third. To feel so much became a blessing and a way to connect with people.

Now I am learning discernment. I don’t believe that sensitivity itself is ever wrong. I believe it is a gift. One that must be cultivated, cared for, understood. Your sensitivity is a map to a way of being in the world. It leads you to your path, your purpose, your lessons. It is something to decipher and distill. When sensitivity turns into taking everything personally and empathizing without boundaries it becomes a problem. Becoming a human emotion detector and interpreter is an attempt to keep you safe, but it can often lead to inventing stories, or giving excuses to others for their behavior, and can keep you in a loop of your patterning.

Being a sensitive person will teach you to trust your own intuition instead of seeking outside of yourself for everything. That is an intentional and daily act. A dullness comes with always seeking outside of yourself for answers. If you can turn the part of you that is investigating back on yourself then you can shine a spotlight on your intuition. Your intuition is what lies underneath the thick sensitivity, the layers of emotion, the circling thoughts. It isn’t always loud, and most of the time is a subtle hum underneath everything else. It does not falter, and it is never wrong. Learn what sets off each part of you and your emotional reaction. If you can pay closer attention to this then you can see the difference between what is true for you and what is not. Discernment will offer your sensitive heart some peace in knowing not everything you feel is as big as you think it is, and not to run away with it all of the time.

Keep a record of what your intuition and sensitivities reveal to you throughout your life. I have a serious journal ritual and have had one since I was 13. I have stacks of Moleskines and composition notebooks on my dresser. Usually I write every other day. Sometimes there are phases when it is once every other week. Some days I write half a page, others I write 12. I don’t sit down with prompts or any sort of guideline. My only intention is to get out what is inside of me and see if I can get to some sense on the page. A pattern will reveal over time, or an inkling of intuition that I hadn’t yet fully trusted will come true. I process what I feel again and again. I am truthful, open, nonjudgmental in these journals. They are and will always be the most sacred things to me, a spiritual practice to be with my soul. And through this practice I have gotten to know the patterns of my sensitivities. This is where I see evidence and learn to trust those parts of it, and where I see invention and learn not to feed those parts of it. The trick is to write about something until it eventually is smaller than you. Get the story, the emotion out of your body. It doesn’t matter how many weeks or months it is spinning inside of you. It will shrink.