5 Hopeful Signs You’re Becoming An Empowered Highly Sensitive Person
Do you have this superpower?
Martin Dimitrov / Getty Images Signature via Canva Being a highly sensitive person can be difficult since we tend to take things to heart.
Alissa Boyer, who serves as a mentor to highly sensitive people, recently shared five you're one your way to becoming an empowered highly sensitive person, emphatically reminding the HSPs among us that you are "not destined to a lifetime of overthinking, worrying, and second-guessing everything you do just because you’re highly sensitive."
5 Signs You’re Becoming An Empowered Highly Sensitive Person
1. You aren’t stressed over social interactions.
If you are an empowered highly sensitive individual, you’ll likely find yourself not stressing over social interactions.
For instance, you know those long awkward pauses that tend to happen in conversations? Maybe someone said something weird and now they’ll be thinking about it for the next twenty years. Well, with empowered individuals this isn’t happening!
"They don’t care and they certainly aren’t stressing or replaying a conversation 20,968 times", writes Boyer.
But why are they like this? You see, empowered highly sensitive individuals know that they are enough, no matter what mistakes they make. "They love and accept themselves as they are", says Boyer.
A huge bonus for empowered highly sensitive people (other than not replaying every weird thing they said before falling asleep each night) is that having this social connectedness is extremely beneficial. Through having close bonds with others and regular social exchanges, you prevent serious illnesses in the long run, says the CDC.
2. You can keep your defenses down and are mindful not to take things personally.
As I stated before, highly sensitive individuals can’t help but take things so personally. But the difference between a highly sensitive individual versus an empowered one is mindfulness.
An empowered individual keeps themselves in check and reminds themselves that not everything needs to be taken so seriously.
Licensed clinical psychologist Joel Minden discusses an experience where he took something too personally. He writes, “I found out that one of my close friends had an extra ticket to a football playoff game, and he invited another friend instead of me.”
He admits that he was hurt by this and thought he did something to make his friend upset. But when he confronted his friends about it, they simply said, “Yeah, I thought about asking you, but I know you don’t like football.” Talk about jumping to conclusions!
He laughed it off, but this personal experience highlights 2 biased forms of thinking:
- Personalization — in which you believe you’re the cause of a negative event
- Mind reading — in which you believe someone is judging you with no evidence
Both are dangerous and must be handled correctly. Minden suggests distinguishing between feelings and thoughts, looking for signs of personalization or mind-reading. Then list the evidence for and against your thoughts. What did you find?
Minden also reminds us that uncertainty in social situations isn’t always a bad thing and sometimes we just have to accept it.
3. You put yourself first, and you don’t feel guilty about that.
Even I struggle with putting myself first sometimes. But putting yourself first isn’t a bad thing and sometimes “selfishness” is necessary. As Oxford CBT puts it, “If you live your life to please others, then it will have a significant effect on your mental health.”
They remind us that we can’t begin to look after others if we haven’t taken care of ourselves first. By putting ourselves first we show others how we want to be treated.
Boyer writes, “This means setting healthy boundaries, leaving the party early when you need to get some rest, excusing yourself to go meditate, following a specific diet that makes you feel best … and whatever else you need to do to care for you.”
She adds that if you experience guilt from this, use self-regulation tools to ride through these feelings. As well as be sure to practice self-care.
A couple of examples of self-care shared by Oxford CBT include:
- Taking a bath
- Reading a magazine
- Engaging in exercise
- Going outside
4. You follow the passions that light you up.
Empowered highly sensitive individuals tend to reconnect with their passions and that makes perfect sense.
“When you’re no longer wrapped up in people-pleasing and overextending yourself all the time… you make space for yourself,” says Boyer.
Certified transpersonal coach and education Jules De Vitto, gives us some insight on how to empower ourselves if we aren't empowered already.
She says that to be an empowered individual requires you to connect to your core self — and core self doesn’t just mean your thoughts!
Vitto writes, “Trying to change our thoughts with the conscious mind alone is not enough, and the traditional cognitive behavioral idea of replacing an old thought with a new one is outdated.”
She argues that 95% of our programming is within our subconscious. Meaning, that although our conscious thoughts can be aligned our body may not be.
And as you can imagine, this can cause some serious issues! Through meditation and guided visualization, our brain shifts into an imaginary state, which helps move us into our subconscious programming, says Vitto.
All of this can foster significant transformations that will allow us to pursue our passions with renewed energy.
5. You believe in yourself and your intuition.
Finally, if you are an empowered highly sensitive person, “You don’t need to ask everyone for their opinion for every single decision you make.” Boyer continues, “You trust yourself to make solid decisions. You trust your intuition.”
She hits the nail on the head with this one. Highly sensitive individuals have a gift for intuition, which can be used to their advantage. As psychologist Jill Suttie finds, highly sensitive individuals have many "superpowers" — but not like you imagine.
A few "superpowers" highly sensitive people have, according to Greater Good Berkely are:
- Empathy
- Creativity
- Sensory intelligence
- Depth of processing
- Depth of emotion
Through these gifts, you can learn to trust yourself and view your sensitivity as a strength rather than a weakness.
Although navigating life as a highly sensitive person has its challenges, you are now armed with the understanding of what it takes to become a highly sensitive and also empowered individual!
Marielisa Reyes is a writer with a bachelor's degree in psychology who covers self-help, relationships, career, and family topics.