Ep 12 | When Sensitivity Is Intelligence: Slowing Down to Live in Alignment | Highly Sensitive Series
Welcome to Rise & Realign: Conversations for the Sensitive Soul. I’m Melissa, and this space is for those of us who feel deeply, love fiercely, and sense the world in ways that are hard to explain but impossible to ignore. Here we honor your sensitivity as a strength, not something to fix.
As I connect with my heart and speak to you, I think about how — whether we have the high sensitivity trait or not — we’re all so completely unique. I love using Human Design and the BG5 business side to just have a visual of how different each of us are.
And I find that although there’s no one perfect system that’s going to explain everything that makes us who we are, there’s just so much complexity and multidimensionality. But I love the reminder that even though 20% of us — up to 30% now — have this high sensitivity trait, this depth of processing, this ability to see more, hear more, sense more. And that’s not just in our external environment. It also is what’s going on in our inner world.
But what I find really interesting is there seems to be more and more people — and maybe this partly has to do with our ability to see what others are experiencing with social media — but it’s very interesting to see how much contrast there is in the world.
I’m somebody who learned years and years ago how I needed to tend to my own nervous system. I had to tend to the emotional response that I was having from different topics that were being discussed by certain people. So whether that means we’re being exposed to the news presented in a specific way to induce fear, to try to control us into making choices that can calm the fear in a sense.
But I definitely discovered that as highly sensitive women specifically — and again, I’m speaking to those who are in my world — the highly sensitive women in my life were family, friends, colleagues, but also the clients that I was supporting. And I did not know about this trait in the early parts of my career. I really only learned about this trait maybe 15 years ago. Well, maybe longer, but I didn’t delve into the real research around it to really understand it until about 15 years ago.
So many have, and again, this is the way I view those of us with this trait — this depth of caring. And when we understand that a key part of the trait is this depth of processing — taking in more stimuli, taking in more information energetically as well — and then you’re processing it more deeply throughout your system. And so what naturally comes is this depth of caring.
And when you’re somebody who has felt pain so deeply within yourself, and you have more mirror neurons, so then the empathy that you’re experiencing maybe feels more intense as well. The idea of self-care is really crucial to our well-being.
So I didn’t always understand that. And I certainly became a mom after years of fear and started out as what I called myself — an overprotective mom. I would do anything to make sure that my children were safe. But as you see from even my own experience, when we don’t understand how our nervous system is the communicating aspect of this depth of processing, we don’t know how to care for it and we don’t know how to listen to it. Because I definitely was high strung. I didn’t see another way to be in the world, and fear really was a strong driving force for a big portion of my life.
But as we come to understand that as highly sensitive individuals, we have a sensory intelligence — we’re actually receiving communication in our felt sense quickly, sooner than those who don’t have this trait. That is how sensitive to subtleties we are. We’re not only sensitive to the subtleties in our environment from an external perspective, we’re also more sensitive to the subtleties on the interoceptive level — what’s going on in our inner world.
And so that’s really an important thing to know. Because when we’ve been kind of pushing through what life says you need to do next, and ignoring or pushing aside your own felt sense of “Is this best for me right now? Or is this best for my child right now?” — we end up a bit disconnected from our true self and our true path in the sense of what could feel more aligned for us.
And again, this is no fault of ours. Each of us are born and then we have this high sensitivity trait. Parents might not know anything about it, especially for any of you in older years, because the research didn’t come out until the early 90s.
But it’s important to know that slowing down and really connecting with your breath and your body helps you understand the communication of your own nervous system. So important to understand this depth of caring that we possess often has us giving and doing, because we care so much about others. But it’s often at the expense of ourselves.
So I really want to just raise awareness to why you taking care of you is number one. And again, when I’m speaking from my heart, I’m doing so with no judgment, because I’ve lived my own journey and have done all kinds of different things before I had this awareness, before I had a spiritual awakening that showed me an even broader perspective of our journey of life.
But this is an invitation for you to bring things back to you. To really start every day aligned with what is true and best for you.
Now, what’s really cool about being a highly sensitive individual is our environment — those we’re with and the environment that we’re in — has such a strong positive influence on us. Not only the negative. So when I say in the past I learned watching the news was not healthy for me, so I learned to say, “That’s not for me. I will learn what I need to know about in other ways,” because that is just feeding fear in the way that news gets presented in some places.
But the beautiful thing is understanding that as highly sensitive individuals, a positive environment — being around other loving, caring, kind individuals — has a huge impact on our felt experience and therefore our life. And so when we think about positive environments, like nature — nature is so healing. It’s peaceful. And again, depending on where you are and what you’re doing, because obviously you can go into nature and be surrounded by a lot of people that may not be your vibe. But that’s okay.
Nature — wide open spaces, going for a hike in a forest, or relaxing at a beach or a lake — just knowing that the more you bring yourself into natural environments, that helps your nervous system to feel that sense of safety, or at least a sense of calmness or more relaxation.
And this is something that’s really important to understand. As highly sensitive individuals, if we are only going to give time and attention to ourselves and relaxing here and there, that’s not going to be as supportive as making sure we’re tending to it every day.
And I’m really a big proponent of how you start your day is how the rest of the day is going to unfold. Because the moment we’re waking up, if we’re not choosing what to give our attention to, then yesterday’s information will just come gliding right back in and keeping us in the same patterns.
So I just really want you to know — it’s never too late. It’s never too late for us to learn this information. It’s never too late for us to start choosing ourselves and still being kind and caring. We don’t need to abandon ourselves or exclude ourselves in any way.
Just know that if you sense that you are a highly sensitive person, you’ve got this depth of processing where you notice more than most people. You notice that your nervous system might get overwhelmed more quickly. You might be the person who needs to cry more because that’s in response to an overwhelmed system. There can be that emotional responsivity — whether that’s getting angry or just having a quick response because of how your nervous system is attuning to your environment.
These things are important to understand because when we don’t address that and care for ourselves, then these things don’t stop happening. They just become chronic. And that’s when we deal with more patterns that we really wish we could just get a break from. And sometimes that’s when people may choose to use substances or some other approach that is more of a short-term Band-Aid, but it is not addressing why it’s happening to begin with.
So I really, really invite you to just take a moment, connect with your breath, connect with your body. Even just allowing your breath to be what it is, but tuning into it. And just noticing — what is your breath doing? Is it moving slow and deep? Do you feel a sense of flow moving within you? Or were you holding your breath? Are you feeling contracted? Is your nervous system bracing?
This is really important to notice. Because having a more finely tuned central nervous system, it’s more responsive to your environment. It’s more responsive to how you’re living. And we can make different choices. And oftentimes one small choice can have the biggest influence on positive change.
So I invite you to consider — how often are you connecting with your breath and making sure that you’re inhaling through your nose and then exhaling nice and slow out your mouth? How often are you stepping outside first thing in the morning to greet the day? To see the sun — whether the clouds are there or not, believe me, you will still get the benefits. The sun is so healing.
But I invite you to consider — how do you start your day? From the moment your consciousness comes back into the form and you’re aware that you’re in bed, what are the first things you are doing? And how is that nurturing you? Because you deserve love and kindness and care.
And depending on what you’ve lived through, that may not have been how your mornings began. And we’re all creatures of habit. We all develop different coping mechanisms. But it doesn’t mean that it’s good for us to continue.
I remember times I was never a morning person. School was not my favorite place. It’s actually a place where I experienced the most anxiety. I almost didn’t graduate from high school because of how much school I was missing because of gut issues. Of course, back then I did not know about the vagus nerve. Nobody was telling me about the importance of slowing my breathing, about nasal breathing, about slow exhale out my mouth to calm my nervous system. Doctors would give medication and order all kinds of tests.
But we know a lot more these days about what it means to be highly sensitive and what naturally nourishes us. So I really invite you to consider how the breath is nourishing. Inhaling through your nose — you’re oxygenating your body, you’re hydrating your body through inhaling through your nose. And when you exhale out your mouth, that’s signaling to your nervous system that it’s okay to relax. It’s okay. You’re safe.
That’s not something that many of us felt was true — to feel safe. That depth of processing has us thinking about our experiences. So we process our experiences more deeply, and it helps us prepare for a future experience so that we can make, quote unquote, a better decision. But “better” is not a judgment of the last experience. It’s more of “How do I ensure the outcome or what I experience feels less intense, less disruptive, less uncomfortable, less painful?”
Again, this is an innate survival strategy, so there’s a lot of strategizing in our everyday experiences. But when that’s been happening repeatedly, and we don’t actually get to a place where we feel that we can relax, that we feel safe — maybe we’re staying on high alert because we’re afraid. We want to avoid any kind of painful experiences because of the depth of emotions that we feel.
So can I really invite you to reflect — how are you starting each day? So that you can come home to yourself. Where you can feel loved, where you can feel safe, where you can feel supported. And where you can remember that you are not alone.
So I did reference this blog, the Highly Sensitive Series, and I certainly invite you to explore the first part — I’ll put the link in the notes.
And I just want you to know that having walked the path of a highly sensitive woman with health challenges, anxiety, fear, miscarriages, traumatic births with children, and just having my life turned upside down to really help me understand the gifts within being a highly sensitive person — this truly is a sensory intelligence.
And when we start tuning inward and developing a relationship with ourself, so much can be transformed. There really are infinite possibilities.
So this spring equinox, I’m opening a small, intimate spiral of the Re-Aligned Journey. And I’m hosting *A Moment to Pause and a Space to Inquire*. If any of what I’m sharing resonates with you, you’re welcome to join and ask any questions. Because being highly sensitive has a lot of challenges — not only gifts and strengths and superpowers. There’s a lot that we’ve been carrying forward that has kept us more in that stress response, more reactive to life than creative.
And being highly sensitive individuals, there’s absolutely enormous creativity within you in a variety of ways — not one way. We’re all unique. But I would love for you to join me and bring any questions. And I will put the information in the show notes, but you can always go to realignwithmelissa.com/links and you will see any of my offerings there.
So as a reminder, we’re here together to rise, reclaim, remember. Where the heart leads, the body remembers, and the soul awakens.
Before we close, I invite you to return to your breath, to your body, to what feels true for you right now. There’s nothing you need to fix. Just notice what’s here.
So take good care of you. Much love and light.
Related Reading:
Highly Sensitive Series (Part 1 of 9): Embracing the Depths of Your Inner World (Mind Series 1 of 3) https://www.realignwithmelissa.com/blog/highly-sensitive-series-embracing-the-depths-of-your-inner-world
