The Alchemy of Sensitivity
Bella CalcaraShare
Sensitivity is a superpower- as long as you know exactly how to alchemize it correctly.
If you are a highly sensitive person it is your assignment, your responsibility, that your sensitivity does become fragility.
Your sensitivity makes you highly attuned, highly aware. You are like the most broad spectrum radio, channeling so many frequencies. So much chatter, so much noise. It can become overwhelming. And the overwhelm can become depression. You may feel the need to shut off entirely.
How do I make the noise stop without just shutting down?
You need to tune out what isn't necessary by dialing in.
It takes a high level of skill and focus to be a sensitive person that is strong and unshakable.
You must first cultivate the ability to Observe Not Absorb.
When you pick up on information revealed to you by somebody’s body language, a subtle shift in their eyes or vocal tone- a very subconscious, most likely unintentional, cue that most people would never register at all, you must observe but not absorb. Yes, you have this ability to understand the things that are going on around you. You have this ability to know what someone is thinking. No, you are not crazy, but this information is not yours to do something with.
When you feel the need to take someone else’s experience into your hands, or carry the weight of it, that is a major misuse of your energy. Other people’s experiences are not yours to fix or carry. Your only responsibility is your own energy.
It is when you feel the need to fix everything around you, that your experience becomes too heavy. You must have hard and fast boundaries. Keep other people’s bullshit out of your field.
If you can master the ability to have awareness but not take responsibility you are one step closer to alchemizing your sensitivity.
Now when it comes to emotions, you must learn how to Find the Positive Meaning in the Emotion.
When you have strong emotions you must remember that this is not how it is going to be forever. Sadness is a place you visit, not a place you stay. Emotions come in as informants. They show us where the weak spots are- leaks in the roof, cracks in the foundation.
Yes, deep suffering hurts, but you must learn to not identify with this pain. This suffering is a visitor. Suffering is weather in your climate of self. Weather passes through, but doesn't stay indefinitely. When you are able to sit with the deep emotion and expand it out as far as it can go, you’ll find you can manipulate the storm. You can make it dissipate much faster if you are willing to confront it head on. As a sensitive person you must never try to escape from the painful emotions. Trying to escape from an emotion is like putting a band aid on a bullet hole. It is going to demand attention eventually. Examples of band-aids are: overworking, distraction through relationships, drugs, drinking, doom scrolling, any form of binging content from TV shows to books, etc. When you use band aids, the emotions eventually become bigger ailments like depression, anxiety, physical sickness, eating disorders, and other neuroses.
Avoid the bigger problems, by confronting emotion and finding the meaning in it as soon as it passes into your awareness.
When you can observe the world with a selectively permeable membrane and find the positive meaning in the deep emotions that you are steadily tapped into, this is the foundation to becoming unbreakable.
You aren’t sensitive like glass, you are sensitive like a hair trigger in highly trained hands.