The Secret Life of the HSP
Insider View: The Secret Life of the Highly Sensitive Person
When you’re an HSP:
- You feel as if you were born on an entirely different planet from “everyone else.”
- You spend all your energy trying to be normal.
- You spend all your energy pretending to be normal.
- You give up and decide you’ll never be normal, and that fact will always be a burden.
- You don’t trust the world; worse yet, you don’t trust yourself.
- You develop aches, pains, allergies of all kinds in direct proportion to how much of a misfit you feel and how much you hate that feeling.
- You’re afraid if everyone knew what you were really experiencing (thinking, feeling, seeing, knowing, doubting, pretending, sensing, etc.) they’d turn and run away faster than the Roadrunner on speed.
- You base your world view on, “If only I were different, everything would be different. I’d be able to cope. I’d be able to adapt. I’d succeed.”
When you’re anywhere from slightly to massively sensitive on the Scale of HPSness, these are the kinds of things that comprise your life. You may be less convinced you come from another planet that someone else; you might have a lot more social anxiety or depression. But, wherever you land on the spectrum, whichever level you reach on the scale, the sure sign of HSP-ness is feeling more than you are willing to admit to the world.
Living a secret life may be something you’ve gotten used to, even convinced yourself you’re comfortable with in the sense that you can’t imagine living any other way. Yet, ultimately, living the secret life of an HSP leads either to: (1) Turning all the fear and insecurity inward, creating emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental malfunctioning, or (2) Turning all the fear and insecurity outward… creating the same malfunctioning.
Which is NOT to say that you are broken. All this says about you—about us—is that we have learned to blame ourselves or the world for the discomfort and unhappiness we feel. And because neither approach works very well, we can end up trapped in an endless cycle of defeat.
How can we turn this paradigm on its head? By learning to use our innate Intuitive Logic.
Intuitive Logic is what HSPs have in spades. It’s our natural ability to think from that place of knowing—the one most of us have spent years learning to deny, ignore, and even despise. It’s the place where the Highly Sensitive Person’s processing naturally occurs. There are a number of ways that undercutting our processing mode effects our lives based on the way intuition and logic appear so oxymoronic. We believe:
- “Intuition” and “logic” are directly opposite source elements
- “Intuition” and “logic” have directly opposite results, outcomes, effects
- Using our “intuition” cancels out any tendency, ability, or attempt at using “logic” or reasoning to move through life, make choices, take action
Here’s an example.
My husband used to use financial astrology (planetary cycles) to trade the financial markets. I’d watched him for years, but never felt in the least bit capable of even dabbling. Looking at spreadsheets of any kind has been known to throw me into heart-pounding panic, so no, putting money in the markets was not a risk I myself was willing or could consider taking.
Yet, lately, as I’ve practiced being in alignment during financial transactions—whether it’s doing my taxes, paying my bills, or receiving payments for services—I find my terror slipping into freedom. So I decided to open a brokerage account with a small amount of money. My premise was this: I would not trade any stock base on technical information of any kind; I would not do any research on the stock; I would not look at any charts or graphs nor listen to any financial “advice” on the stock or any other market matters; I would simply wait until I “got” a ticker symbol that felt right to me, then take it from there.
I looked up the three letters that came to my mind one day to see if the stock was publicly traded in the U.S. When it was, I began watching it. At the end of the day, I used my “Intuitive Logic” to project and note whether I felt the stock had gone up or down, then looked the stock up to see if I was correct, always carefully avoiding looking at its chart, projections, and so on. After about a month of correct “intuitions,” I was guided to buy some of the stock. Over a three-month period, I bought shares when I felt guided to do it—then and only then, regardless of price (or directional trend). One day I knew unequivocally that it was time to sell my shares…so I did, and was fairly shocked to learn I had made 48% on my investment.
While I was slightly disappointed that the next day the stock went up another $2.00 (darn it!), I could not have been more pleased that I had entered a world previously foreign, scary, and completely off limits, and had had a positive experience, validation that I am absolutely a hundo P able to trust my sense of alignment, my Intuitive Logic.
For me, this was a BIG moment. I was truly using my high-sensitive abilities and elevating them to benefit me and my life! I had stepped into unknown territory based ONLY on my Intuitive Logic (my IGS, my Intuitive Guidance System) and come out ahead in every way.
I had stepped up and into a way of being that would bolster me, validate me, credit me, and inspire me, and would be with me for the rest of my life.
Which stock is next? I’ll let you know when inspiration strikes again.
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Heidi Connolly is the Celestial Professor, Purveyor of Down-to-Earth Spirituality. Discover the tools of Intuitive Logic (energetic alignment) in Heidi’s new 8-module course, The Highly Sensitive Person’s Treatment Breakthrough, available at heidiconnolly.com.
