I’m Highly Sensitive. How Do I Toughen Up?

There is a certain percentage of the population that falls into the category of being highly sensitive. The good news is that being highly sensitive gives you added insight and experience into a lot of different situations. The bad news is that most highly sensitive people suffer from not being able to “handle” the experience and information that comes to them through their sensitivity. They become distressed in situations where less sensitive people have no reaction at all.

Over stimulation physically, mentally and emotionally are common among the highly sensitive. Because of this over stimulation there is a pressing need to rest and recharge on a regular basis where if that need is ignored often times it results in depression, sadness and anxiety to name just a few conditions. Some people are so sensitive that they over empathize with people and actually experience what the other people are experiencing. If they are with positive, healthy people then that is a good thing but all too often they fall prey to their over sensitivity/empathizing in negative situations and experience the negativity coming from other people , things and places. Healthcare providers are particularly susceptible to this and many of them actually take on the physical, mental and emotional distress their patients present with.

So how does the sensitive person toughen up? I’ve found that many highly sensitive people lack a core focus. What I mean by that is that they are not centered and connected to themselves and bodies. When our attention is not in our bodies it tends to drift and many times it drifts into negative situations. At that point the highly sensitive person will mistake someone or something else’s experience for their own. When that happens the highly sensitive person will absorb the “other” experience.

Until lately there has been no widely available training to help highly sensitive people “toughen up” and create a solid centered core in their own body. Mindfulness is the training that connects people to their own bodies and allows them to remain connected in the face of negativity. A mindful person will recognize and experience negativity as something other than who they really are and by focusing on the anchor of their own body will be able to “toughen up” and not be susceptible to the negativity coming from elsewhere. Mindfulness, or keeping ones’s attention in the present moment by being fully connected to the body has been around for a long time but has only relatively recently become known enough to be available to the broader population. Helping highly sensitive people “toughen up “ is only one of the many reasons to practice being present.