Falling Out of Alignment Is Risky When You’re a Highly Sensitive Person
This morning two carpenters came to my house to work on my upstairs deck. Yesterday, they’d worked on the lower deck, but still needed to make some finishing touches. I reminded myself as I had my coffee to say something so none of us would forget to make those last repairs. Should be an easy thing to do, right? And yet….
There is still a part of me that hesitates to state what I need and ask the questions I need to ask of the people doing the work—whatever it is. “They” say to be your own medical advocate, for example, when you’re in a position where you might feel the least likely to feel empowered. In this case, all I’m doing is talking to carpenters, experts though they may be, and yet, still, I hesitate. Will I annoy them? Will they think I’m stupid? And, most disturbing, will they not like me if I speak up?
At the root of it all is this ancient need to be accepted and liked. Is it because I am a woman? Because I was taught that being liked was necessary for finding a partner, friends, colleagues? When did I accept that belief that simply speaking my mind (and heart and soul) was the wrong thing to do?
Over the decades, I have become more and more myself. I have learned who I am and how to be my authentic self regardless of the potential fallout, and have rejoiced in that learning. What continues to surprise me is that initial need to please.
I talk a lot about the vibrational energy that exists in everything, and how that energy often masquerades as something else entirely (see my article in Eden Magazine this month, “Spinning Words Into Vibrational Gold”). This is when what looks like a duck and quacks like a duck is not a duck at all. It’s when we make assumptions based on old beliefs that we don’t even know are beliefs because they’ve been with us for so long.
My belief, for example, that if I don’t please the people they won’t like me, has been around a long time, and has led to the assumption that if they don’t like me I will suffer for it in some way. That speaking my mind will lead me down the path of no redemption—in their eyes as well as my own.
But, if I don’t speak my peace in the moment, how can I live with myself?
What this comes down to, in the lexicon of a Celestial Life, is staying in alignment. To me, living with myself as myself means continuously being in the vibration of authenticity. When I’m not in that vibration, in what I call my Unique Energetic Signature or UES, I feel it so strongly it’s as if I’ve stepped into someone else’s life, body, mind, and spirit. It’s as if I’ve lost my way, even if it’s only for a moment or two. It’s as if I’m falling out of alignment, a free fall into what Leonard Cohen might call “a broken hallelujah.”
It has become more and more obvious over time when this happens because I literally experience this fall out of alignment on a physical level. I notice that my face sort of fixes itself into a position of a half-smile, as if whatever I say needs to be presented through that mask. I feel this weird sensation in my throat, as if I’m about to choke, as if something is stuck there. My chest feels tight. I even feel like crying.
The thing is that none of these symptoms are really related to an emotional state. I am not feeling like crying because I am sad, for example. It’s just that when I am out of alignment, I’ve stepped outside my true self, and that feels so uncomfortable that instead of all systems go, I’m in all systems failure.
This is why I spend so much of my time as a Highly Sensitive Person, as a Vacationing Angel living the Celestial Life, reminding myself that being in my own alignment is all that really matters if I want to live authentically and compassionately, without fear and guided by inspiration, intuition, and connection to Source. And why, next time, carpenter, plumber, accountant, or doctor, I will remind myself to speak only when I am speaking from that place of alignment.
I’ll let you know how it goes!
THE HSP TREATMENT BREAKTHROUGH
Elevating Your HSP-ness by Heidi Connolly