My Name is Kate and I am a Highly Sensitive Person

A colleague recently posted an article about being a highly sensitive person and although I thought I knew all this stuff, it really shook me up. When I first went to counselling after my breakdown the counsellor said immediately that I should read a book about highly sensitive people, but whilst bits of it resonated, it wasn’t enough to convince me. On the surface, at least as an adult, I was a highly practical, efficiently functioning, down to earth no-nonsense doer. My nickname at work was Diligent Deliverer. That doesn’t feel very sensitive, does it? Looking back, I hadn’t really realised how different I was until I met the animal communication crowd, and now I’ve found my tribe, I suddenly realise that’s exactly what I am. Even reading the article again, it triggers a reaction in me – the title “it’s more than overreacting” brings up a lot of painful memories of my Mum insisting that I was over-sensitive, attention seeking, or worse, weak and pathetic.

It’s become almost fashionable now to describe yourself as an empath, as if you are damaged in some way, like a bruised TV detective with an alcoholic past. Well on the one hand, thank goodness that “faults” that one day would have been embarrassing to acknowledge are now “features” that can be worn as badges of honour (since I have so many of them), but on the other, it’s easy for people to be blasé about the reality of living with these conditions or circumstances if they are bathed in a sepia glamour. Being addicted to alcohol is a slow, miserable, lonely death (for as long as you are drinking); being an empath can be an excruciating existence, but unlike alcoholism it has its upsides to compensate. The upsides are that you are sensitive, you have an empathy and understanding of people (and animals) far beyond the norm, you are more open to your psychic senses and intuition, even if you don’t yet know it.

Even now, if I see a child throw a teddy on the floor, it viscerally upsets me. Less so if it’s a doll, but if it has eyes and looks like an animal, even watching someone punch a cushion with an animal face on it will actually, physically upset me – racing heart, anxiety. You can imagine how much fun the boys at boarding school had with that. I can’t walk past our door-stop (an owl, a fabulous gift from my lovely Sis-in-law) without pulling his feet straight if they get twisted underneath him, because he looks uncomfortable. Maybe this is showing my mania rather than empathy.

If I observe an animal that is in distress, or even hear about it third party, I will quite literally obsess over it. I will have to put it out of my mind or it will drive me crazy. I might have to do this by rationalising (someone else will see it, I can’t move it because it may belong to someone), by passing that responsibility on. Passing an injured deer on the road will affect me for days, and I will torture myself trying to find a way to alleviate any suffering. I have learnt that if there is nothing I can physically do to help the situation, I just have to stop thinking about it, but more often or not, you think may be something you CAN do and that’s when you live your life, as I do, on constant high-alert, endlessly vigilant for the opportunity, nay, duty, to fix suffering around you. It is exhausting.

When Niala started bullying Pink (both chickens), the pain I felt was suffocating. I had to separate Niala from the others to try and shake up the dynamics and let Pink bond with the rest of them without Niala. Niala wandered alone, at the back of the house, sad and confused, not understanding why she wasn’t allowed with the others. Writing this makes me cry in memory – THAT’S what it’s like to be sensitive! On the one hand I was furious with her for bullying Pink, but as soon as she showed confusion and lack of understanding, it would tear me apart. It was 3 days of hell. It was supposed to be for a week, but I couldn’t stomach it. At times like this, either Pink or Niala, or indeed even me, dying, seemed a preferable solution to separating them and watching Niala suffer, or putting them back together and watching Pink suffer. I’m not suggesting suicide was an option, I just mean that the pain was so real, and so all-encompassing, that the idea of any party dying, including me, would have at least brought the suffering to an end. I realise now, ironically, that the strongest driver was not saving Pink or Niala but to end my own suffering of witnessing it. I think that was the first inkling that I had that the feelings I experienced were not “normal”. Instinctively I knew that, but this was the first prolonged situation where I realised that my reaction was a long way from what other people felt. It hung over me like a dark, wet, cloud. The sort of grief when someone dies or a relationship ends and it’s just silently hanging over you, when you wake up in the morning, knowing instantly that something is wrong but you can’t quite remember what, until you do. The heavy, sucking sorrow that weighs you down like a life sentence, and you feel that you could never be happy again.

Thankfully it did pass, not because I came to terms with the grief, but because I managed to relieve the bullying through energy healing (this was what made me become an energy healer). And what a wonderful gift my girls have given me. I know now that they are showing me so many things, but this was the first that I can acknowledge.

What remains though is an knowing that I will, forever, be affected by what I see around me. There is nowhere I can go, nowhere I can be, where there is not the potential for me to witness suffering in animals or people, and I have to learn to be OK with that. It’s like being OK with my lists. I can never, ever get to a stage in life where there is nothing that needs done (and as Abraham Hicks points out, just as well, because you’d be dead), so rather than battle endlessly and pointless to clear my list, I have to be OK with the list. Likewise, I have to be OK with the suffering. That doesn’t mean I have to condone it or not help where I can, but to relieve myself of the impossible task of being solely responsibility of every living creature’s comfort in this world.

I recently watched a video on the horrors of dairy. I knew I shouldn’t, but I stubbornly made myself perhaps in some twisted penance for all dairy consumed thus far in my life (isn’t religion wonderful, even though I know longer believe in punishment for sin, the old habits run so deep). Dairy, in my low carb world, has been the only allowed “luxury” food for me for years but I now want to give it up. I do understand intellectually that it’s quite disgusting to drink another species milk – would you, as an adult, drink human milk? Rats’ milk? Why then do we drink cows’ milk? Even acknowledging that, I knew it would not be easy, so I made myself watch the video. Over a week later, I will have to go and wash my face to distract myself and play with the cat for a bit, or watch the chickens doodling around to raise my vibration, as even thinking about writing about it brings a lump to my throat, tears to my eyes and a breath-stopping punch in my heart and gut.

What has been brought, front and centre, to me, is that I cannot change the world with my sorrow, only with my love. That I have to turn my eyes away. As Abraham Hicks says I cannot get sick enough to make other people well. I cannot get poor enough to make others rich. Likewise I cannot suffer enough to save others from suffering. I found an early clip from Abraham on the subject of animals suffering and it brought me much needed relief, not entirely, but a bit. Essentially, when I witness their suffering (and this is the bigger picture, I’m obviously not suggesting I ignore an animal in distress that I can help), the most powerful thing I can do, in fact, the only thing I can do, is to think about what I want and feel, embody, live, that vibration.

What I want is a world where every human being sees the value of all other living creatures. Where every human being respects, and even admires, all other living creatures.  Where every human being appreciates all other living creatures as sentient, beautiful, loving beings. Where every human being recognises the right of, and delights in allowing, all other living creatures to live with dignity. Where every human being allows their love to be stronger than their hate or fear.