I am a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and it has helped me so much to finally know

I have always kind of “suspected” that I am one. I have just never confirmed it. I know I am sensitive and borderless and absorb my surroundings, explained in astrology with the moon placement in Pisces, and Neptune and Mercury conjunct in my first house. I also know I am a “projector” in the Human Design System, and we have “empty centers” and pick up the energy of other people very fast. For many years, I described myself as an introvert, but lately I realised that this just doesn’t quite fit the bill. How come?

Well, what I have realised during the past 7 years of living in Ibiza, through running my own business, living with an abusive partner and having two kids in a short period, and during this period being constantly surrounded by people due to my home also functioning as a guest house, is that I don’t just need to get away from people; I also need a quiet, calm, and DARK place to recover from the energies and impressions, sounds and smells that seem to literally seep in through my pores.

But once I started reading about what it means to be an HSP - Highly Sensitive Person - it all fell into place.

According to HSP expert Elaine Aron, 15-20% of the population has this trait. Do the test here to see if you are an HSP.

I’ve been struggling with this all my life. Needing to be alone after being out. Needing to be out after being alone. It’s like this constant filling the cup, and then emptying it. Because I am also what they call a “thrill-seeking” HSP, so I am not happy to always be alone at home. No, I need to fill up with impressions, particularly new ones. I get super bored and depressed by always seeing the same thing. I take different routes every day to avoid seeing the very same sights. So I crave the stimuli. And then I need to digest the impressions and sights, alone. In a room. With no light. No smells. No music. And no sounds. Weird? Hmmm…

I have always (or, okay, half of my life!) been a traveller. And if I watch my patterns during travels, I see that I used to spend about half my day out, and the other half in the hotel room. In more intense places, I had to do smaller portions of “out,” followed by a portion of “in.” For example, in Bangladesh. One of the most intense places on the planet. Chock-full of people, smells, dirt, death, animals, betelnut-spit flying crisscross through the air and much more.

Just walking down a street in Dhaka, the capital, brings with it a natural array of a trillion impressions. There are street stalls frying samosas in giant pans, beggars with disfigured limbs from polio rolling on purpose built skateboards through the crowds, rickshaws literally pouring forth in all directions, shops selling second hand rubber wheels with piles reaching for the heavens, women dressed in bright colours carrying loads of wood on top of their heads, and so much more. Every time I went out of my hotel, it was like being in stimuli-heaven which I loved. I took it all in. I walked excitedly around town with my camera, and I tasted every paratha and chai with all my heart and soul. 

But then, suddenly, came the overload. I don’t know exactly how to describe it… it’s like my cup is full and unless I go and empty it, I will explode. I start feeling fogginess in the head, irritability, sensitivity to noise, painful tension in the shoulders, the headache starts brewing… and I know that unless I go inside and rest, the migraine will soon be bringing me to my knees. It’s like I my whole body is screaming to me; “No more!” and unless I obey, the system goes into total breakdown. I feel heavy in my muscles and joints, sore in the bones. I have to get away.

So what I did at this point, was to go to my room. I shut the windows and I turned off the lights. It was still noisy, of course - it’s the most populated country on earth - but the darkness somehow soothed all those impressions that had imprinted themselves onto my being, through entering my eyes. All the colours, sights, movements - all of it - just ENTERS me. That’s how it is for me, being an HSP.

Towards the end of the 7 year period in Ibiza, I started being able to travel. Short trips to Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, Florence, Paris. Some periods, I’d go almost once a month. Because I love to travel and walk down a bustling street in a beautiful city, but…. then I need to go “in” and process it all.

So somehow, the most important part for me during my travels, was the hotel. I had quite a good budget to use for the hotel, and I preferred using my money for the hotel rather than outside entertainment or clothes shopping or nights out. The hotel was like my blissful heaven of recovering, rejuvenating and relaxing. Like coming home to myself. There is one room I stayed in, in Rome, that I think must be my all time favourite. 

A boutique hotel right next door to the Santa Maria church in Trastevere, where you open the windows and literally face the church towers, and look down at the busy narrow streets lined with restaurants. The bed was so perfect, like sleeping on a cloud; the decor minimalist, white and with a massive splash of yellow, soothing lightning with beautiful lamps, soundproof windows, and a bathroom with a mega luxury waterfall shower.

Here is the website for this piece of heaven. Thee is something so magical about opening your window and seeing the rooftops of the city.

The hotels were usually luxurious, with elegant interiors, almost always very clear and minimalist design with only little splashes of colour here and there. When I’m doing my “in” moments, the environment has to be calm, neutral, soothing. No bright colours or overbearing interior designs. One of my absolute favourites are the Midmost Hotel in central Barcelona, where I always feel so good. The decoration is white and blue, and gives a cool, calm feeling. Another one I’ve kept going back to is the Barceló Raval where I love the clean simple design and the magnificent views (that can be shut down whenever needed by very efficient curtains that darken the room to perfection.)

After the whole 7 year period literally came crashing down, carpet literally being pulled out under my feet, and I had to start over with absolutely nothing but myself and my two beautiful children, I started experimenting with this stuff in my daily life. With no resources for getting away and travelling, but instead a whole lot of more time to think about life and where I was headed, once I really became aware and started accepting this fact of being an HSP, I understood that to avoid those migraine attacks that I get, and that overwhelming tiredness and irritability, I desperately need time alone. 

And not just time alone take a walk in the woods type time of alone, no. I need to be ALONE and it needs to be a room with four walls and doors closed, and I need it to be kind of dark. So I started literally scheduling it into my life.

Because even daylight affects me. If I go to the beach for a few hours with tons of people around me, I need to counterbalance that, otherwise I’ll get this dryness in my eyes, foggy brain, tired joints and muscles, headaches. So weird, I know. But it’s like I have no filter; it all comes straight inside my soul. I notice things and details other wouldn’t ever notice, and I take in other peoples’ feelings and states of being. They enter my body and affect me.

So, this last period of experimentation has been really fun and interesting. I love experimenting with my states and finding balance, getting to know myself better and better. It’s been a lifelong struggle, this hypersensitivity, and it’s been hard to manage it, in regards to other people and relationships. 

People get hurt, people don’t understand my need for solitude. Well, neither did I, so it was so hard to explain it. And with having two children, I am still trying to figure out how to deal with the whole thing.

During those months of the Total Breakdown of My Recent Reality, I started thinking deeply about how I wanted my life to look. It was a real chance to start my life over from scratch and build it the way I wanted it to be. To live my life for myself was a new revelation for me; always having lived it to please others, a slave to my own sensitivity and empathy for others but with a definite lack of understanding, compassion and empathy for myself.

At the moment I have decided that while I am in this process of massive change and growth, the only way for me is to work from home, from my computer, so I at least get that “in”-time during my work hours, so I can save my “out”-time for my children, and try to be as present with them as possible. This is still a work in progress that I am figuring out with trial and error.

I am going to order this book on Amazon about HSP’s as recommended to me by the wonderful life coach and photographer Carla Coulson, and can’t wait to dive deeper into this subject. It’s such a joy to travel inwards and understand ourselves on a deeper level. It’s the most exciting journey!

Some other curiosities regarding my hypersensitivity (every HSP is different, of course!)

·    For now, I have cut down my usual three coffees every morning to just one, I now meditate and visualise one hour every morning, I go to bed early and I shut off my phone at night, I drink much less wine than before, I avoid stress like I avoid the plague, and if I know I’ve had a day with too many impressions, I know it’ll most probably be very hard to fall asleep, so my best emergency solution is: WATER. Not as in drinking it, but SHOWERING, literally feeling the energies and impressions washing off me. Emergency fix! All of the above really help me stay balanced. I only realised recently that I am so overly susceptible and receptive to everything, so I need to be very moderate. If i sleep with my phone on, I can sometimes feel who is sending me a message or email. I feel them contacting me. (Weird! But true!)

·    If a new person enters my life, I can sometimes literally feel them entering my sphere. I have come to accept this as fact, it’s not something I can cut off. The process of letting a new person into my life is deep for me; I feel them on so many levels. I can never, ever sleep the first time I sleep with someone new. It takes usually three sleepless nights before I get used to their energy and vibration.

·    Certain movies or pieces of art affect me so deeply that I think of them for days. Some movies have stayed with me for 20 years and I feel as if they’re part of my being. Stealing Beauty is one of them, and Malena another one. Oh, and Chocolat. And The Beach.The latest one is Call me by your name. All affected my life story deeply and I have my own stories that have sprouted off of their storylines. They are like seeds that plant themselves in me and then I grow them into follow up chapters and sequels, in the story of my own life.

·    I can feel anxious very easily, but I can also feel excited very, very easily. I sometimes am not sure which feeling I am feeling. Anxiety and excitement seem to have the same symptoms for me; heart beating harder and faster, hard to regulate my temperature, forget to eat, can’t sleep, on edge, weight loss.

·    My body reacts very fast to exercise, but also to lack of exercise. It responds quickly to everything. I exercise 6 days a week, but only for 10-20 minutes. Too much is no good. Not doing everyday is also no good for me.

·    If I have a lot to do or long lists to accomplish, I can’t relax. I literally stay awake all night, rehearsing all I have to do tomorrow.

·    I fall in love easily. Sometimes I don’t know if I am in love because the other person is in love and I am feeling their feelings. Sometimes I don’t know which feelings are mine and which belong to the other person.

·    I tried being a vegan and raw foodie for a while but that led to memory loss, hair loss, cancer cells, candida and much more. Once I started studying my blood type (B+), my reactions to foods, how I felt after eating and comparing it to how I felt after eating other things, I realised that I really need a diet rich in protein and dairy, as if to hold me down, glue me together, keep me on the ground. That journey really taught me about how different all of us are, and how crucial it is to listen to yourself, and not to try to fit yourself into an ideology or philosophy that is made up by another person.

I really think it is so incredibly important that we get to know ourselves. Maybe I have had a harder time due to my hypersensitivity, I guess so yes, because of this wide open space thing around me, taking in the feelings, opinions and desires of others, and because of that, not being sure about who I am, what I feel, what my opinions and desires and needs are. Always so worried about other peoples’ needs and wants and desires being met, led me to not being connected to myself. But now, at the age of 40, I feel like I am getting straight to the center of myself, finally. And it feels so good to finally be here.

I returned here quite a few times, to the tiny village of Bibbona in the Bolgheri wine district of Tuscany. It’s my own personal heaven, this area. So many memories and beautiful experiences that I wrote about in my book, “Escaping the Magic” - still in the editing process but soon, soon…. it’ll see the light of day!

Finding my balance as a lover of travelling, hotels, my children, culture, art, film, Italy, yoga, books, writing, reading, food and wine… with my need for peace, stability, calmness, tranquility, alone time… getting very close now to my perfect equilibrium!

Lots of love,

Linda xo