Life as a highly sensitive person
a sensitive and powerful life
I felt like I was tripping on acid.
I’ve never dropped, popped, or tripped on acid but I imagined that’s what this undertow of energy felt like. Purple and green fluorescent lighting of the North Carolina State Fair filled everything but the outside corners of my eyes. Tiny bodies clinging to translucent blue cotton candy sticks and big bodies smacking on giant, greasy turkey legs passed through my vision in blurry streaks. The blurry end of one body collided with the blurry start of the next. Like a minnow in a shark’s mouth, I was just another body undulating in the mirage of madness. Darkness encroached on my vision, pulsating in the arrhythmia of my heartbeat.
I pushed through the crowd with my shoulders pulled inward. With both hands, I carried a 2-foot-long black licorice rope in tow. Bodies bumped and banged into mine like percussive instruments. I wobbled in staccato strides. Warmth crept up behind my eyes until it grew hot. My tears distorted my surroundings like the reflection of a circus mirror.
“I have to get out of this crowd,” I said as I pushed through the only narrow opening in sight.
Just a week earlier I was struggling to explain this sensation that has grown in intensity as I’ve aged to my therapist - D.
“Lights aren’t bright, they’re blinding.”
“Noises aren’t loud, they reverberate throughout my whole body.”
“I don’t experience sadness, I experience overwhelming grief.”
“I don’t experience joy, I experience euphoria.”
“I experience life in extremes, there is no in-between.”
D shook her head rhythmically up and down as if checking off boxes inside her head as I spoke. Textbook words like sensory processing disorder and HSPs stood in place of our usual friendly conversation. My shoulders drew in, tension held my back rigid - the posture of a patient I hadn’t held since my first visit.
My eyes glazed over. Sensing my confusion, she clarified, “HSP stands for a highly sensitive person.” And then she began to list off characteristics that felt like my body’s manuscript. Starting with the good, she stated that HSPs often have lively and deep inner worlds, are perceptive, think deeply, and are profoundly moved by beauty. And then came a mirror of the negatives; HSPs are often emotionally exhausted, withdraw frequently, and are time-conscious to a fault. Even the graze of certain textures against their skin can send them spiraling into a tailwind of overwhelm.
She explained that sensory processing disorders and HSPs cannot be clinically diagnosed nor tested for but are terms generally accepted in the medical world and used to classify specific personality traits or temperamental dispositions.
D gained an assuredness that has slowly built over a year of working with her. “You are most likely neurodivergent,” she told me.
That word - neurodivergent - floated around my head like a helium balloon. It bounced, boinged, and bumped off the walls of my head. When it finally settled, I was left with a tingling sense of validation and the agitation of fear. New words entered my vocabulary that would prevent me from writing myself off as crazy. But this new understanding of myself would require me to relearn some of the ways I navigate this world.
I’ve always been this way.
Sensitive.
Emotions aren’t tufts of wind, they're gale force. I feel with everything. My toes and my nose, my eyes and my thighs, my emotions are grandiose, intoxicating like an overdose.
The fire of my emotions has always been extinguished by tears. Whether it is beauty - the illusion of fire trailing behind a red-tail hawk as its auburn feathers catch the final glimmer of a setting sun - or sorrow - the sensation of fire that creeps up my cheeks when I know I have upset someone - tears are inevitable.
For most of my life, my body’s tear response was the barrier that prevented me from perceiving myself as an adult. I thought I lived in the land of in-between with one foot into adulthood and the other firmly planted in childhood. I assumed that as I aged, this sensitivity would phase out like my sweet tooth. But both stuck around.
My emotionality was as unpredictable as the weather. Like a flame in the wind, I felt helpless to my own fickleness. This lack of stability oppressed me with shame. My feelings were untamed, impervious to the "emotional maturity" one is supposed to develop in adolescence. The child within me captained my emotions. I was a baby at the helm of a ship in tempest careening toward safety. Or at least that is what I internalized into my own belief system.
Until recently.
Sensitivity, like all things, lives on a spectrum. But recently I have found that sensitivity, when controlled, feels like a possession of power. Behind my eyes, the separation of the senses converges - the division between colors, sounds, and textures blur. The color of autumn leaves sounds like Appalachian bluegrass and the texture of a bushy-tailed squirrel smells like acorns. And then there are human emotions. My senses are perceptive to even the slightest change in body language or facial expression, shift in energy, or displacement of interest. My mind archives these moments like an art museum. I carry this archive with me through life; my perceptiveness grows stronger as I age. But as my perceptiveness grows, my sensitivity compounds.
Crowds are often suffocating. The emotions of my passersby permeate me as a frog’s skin absorbs air. The archive becomes too heavy as my vision blurs and sounds conglomerate into the complex rhythm and tempo changes of a metalcore band.
Knowing that I am a highly sensitive person changes how I view myself in this world. I no longer feel the urge to fight my nature. My mind is simply wired differently. Emotion is art. My senses are portals to different star systems. My eyes show me a world that is vividly complex and complexly vivid. I am sometimes temperamental. I cry often.
But I am not a minnow in a shark's mouth, I am a steady river of sensitivity, unwavering and sure of my path. I nurture emotions on their journey, slowing to steady them around rough edges. Stories, like colors, ripple through me. I am all that I have seen and touched and felt. I am a sensitive and powerful coexistence.
Week 3 of Write of Passage has come and gone and what a wonderful journey it has been thus far. Thank you to my dear friend
and my new friend for their edits this week.In other good news, we went under contract on a beautiful home in Fayetteville, WV this past weekend. I couldn’t be more excited to finally get to call this place home in a few months.
If this piece resonated with you, please consider dropping me a comment below or sharing it with a friend. Your support means so much to me. See you here next Wednesday!
This resonates hard Haley.
Your intro story simultaneously made feel like I was in a crowd and reminded me why I hate them (and cities and concrete and noises). I went to the fair in Toronto with my mom this summer, because it made her happy, but had a hard time.
I was called sensitive for as long as I could remember. As a male it wasn’t something I initially liked hearing.
You wouldn’t be able to write this beautifully if you weren’t sensitive.
“smacking on giant, greasy turkey legs” also made me smile. Reminded of Fred Flintstone.
Thank you for this post. Do you think that an HSP would typically be an introvert? Not necessarily shy, but someone whose batteries get run down when surrounded by too many people for too long.
I think of myself as a non shy introvert. My wife is a shy extrovert.