Are you an emotional sponge?

I am a highly sensitive person and it’s been the bane of my life. Sure it has it’s upside, I use it in my job as a intuitive healer, but on the whole the way my brain is wired to take in stimuli can be very overwhelming.

Highly Sensitive Person’s (HSP) brains are wired differently. It’s inherited. There are alot of characteristics to it ie:

• Feel anxious and overwhelmed in crowds.
• Noise and smells have a powerful effect. Loud or constant noise.
• Really aware of other peoples moods.
• Bright lights affect you.
• Frazzled when too much to do in a short space of time.
• Startle easily
• Violent movies are very intense.
• Music is very moving.
• Easily overwhelmed.

Every highly sensitive person I know has tried a myriad of things to help themselves. We require alot of Alone time to recharge. Some days it feels like we dont have any skin, as if the world has encroached too far into us.

I’m also sensitive at night, I wear an eye mask and earplugs to stop the sensory input. Otherwise is someone walks past my bedroom at night I feel it on my skin, like a wave of energy washing over me, enough to wake me up.

Going into Malls I have found that if I listen to an ipod with quiet music on then it cuts out alot of the outside stimulation.

Ultra violet lights in supermarkets are terrible, they make me feel like the ground is moving.

Something I also work quite alot on is wherever I go I consciously close down my navel chakra, i just see it as an eye closing. I also visualise a cloak around wrap it around me. Shutting myself down is something I dont feel I’ve mastered at all.

As an empath its very easy for me to be *in* someone else’s experience. In fact I often see life from someone else’s point of view and not my own because I see their point of view and their reasoning so easily. But I have to keep reminding myself that I end up at a standstill in my life doing this all the time because I lose my own perspective.

Something I often do is bring myself back to myself. It takes a split second for me to zoom into someone else’s space with my consciousness, and I have to practice not doing this. It’s very easy to take on other peoples depression or anxiousness doing this. And most of the time I don’t know its not my feelings because I am in someone else’s consciousness so easily. One way to check for this is to work out what you were feeling before you came into contact with someone else and to see if you had a drastic change of mood with being in contact with them. Then walk away and break engaging with them for a few minutes and see if your mood changes. Chances are if it does then you’re picking up their underlying mood.

HSP feel like they are an emotional sponge, soaking up whatever is around them. And at the same time feel like a colander with their own energy. It doesn’t take much to drain us at all.

I have to withdraw alot to recharge myself, and there is a tendancy to isolate doing this, because it takes so much energy to be engaged with people.

So are you an energetic sponge?