Are you hypersensitive? An Empath? Do people deride you as being “too sensitive?”
These five coping strategies can help you gain more substantial mastery over your emotional sensitivity and turn it from a “weakness” into a strength!
1. Own Your Personal Power
Engage in this thought experiment for me:
“Nobody DOES anything TO you. Nobody can DO anything TO you. Separate the actions of other people from YOU and your sense of identity.
Here’s what I mean.
Other people’s opinions and words cannot alter the true, underlying person that is YOU. The core of who you are and your true identity remains immovable, unchanged.
Alternatively, you cannot help people. You cannot change people. People will continue to do, say, think, and believe whatever they want to. No amount of evidence, logic, or proof will alter someone’s perception of reality once they’ve become emotionally invested in it.
2. Eliminate False Identifications
If you are wrapped up in falsely believing that you are your job, your career, your status, your net worth, or anything else that’s “out there” in the material world, you have missed the mark.
Your true self is eternal and ever-present.
Once you deeply identify with this fundamental truth, the winds of changing fortune, be they in the form of financial loss, reputational damage, or health decline, can no longer knock you down.
3. Identify & Heal Your Buried Emotional Wounds
The more you bury emotional wounds, the more they emerge through other people. In astrology, one of the indicators of emotional wounding in the psyche is Chiron, a minor planet AND a comet.
Once Chiron moves past Aries, and you overcome the issues with your ego and your identity as a wounded person, it transitions into the sign of Taurus.
This is when you’ll have to work on wounds with regard to your core values and your relationship to material security and “abundance” in the world.
Before that time comes, however, it’s important to start identifying, coming to terms with, and healing your emotional wounds. Once these are sealed and cauterized, other people’s jabs and pokes won’t affect you.
4. Embrace Emotions and View them Objectively
Once an emotionally painful moment occurs, it can feel overwhelming. But in that very moment, you have the power of awareness to put upon the emotion. You are AWARE that you are feeling.
Look at it. Examine it. Who is doing the looking? Who is doing the examination? THAT underlining awareness is the true you – NOT the momentary emotion.
Any emotion is just a temporary sensation; it passes. This isn’t the time to act rashly.
These emotional highs and lows come and go. It’s difficult to get anywhere once you base your entire life on them. There will always be obstacles and difficulties in life. It’s ingrained into living.
5. Reject Cultural Conditioning of Emotions
Our culture teaches us that emotions are BAD. We do ANYTHING and everything to escape from feeling difficult emotions rather than simply stay with them and honor them.
That emotion is telling you something: “Hey, pay attention to me!”
It is communicating something about your psychological state that you’ve been ignoring for years. It’s not really about that person or situation that “caused” you to FEEL a certain way. It’s illuminating a truth about YOU.
Once you begin to look at emotions for what they are – energy in motion – you’ll gain a deeper knowledge of yourself, a stronger awareness of your personal truth, and find it easier to navigate through life.
Online Resources for Empaths
- Dr. Judith Orloff’s book, Empath Survival Guide Strategies.
- List of therapy treatment options for empaths
- Grounding meditation for empaths to rebuild their energy
In Conclusion: Why Mastering Hypersensitivity is Critical for Living a Good Life
Being an empath is a double-edged sword. The greatest strength and the greatest weakness.
You have two paths. You can choose to do what most people do. Suppress the emotion and run to the internet to live a plastic, empty life, either through social media, gaming, entertainment, or pornography consumption.
Or, you can start living a real life that, on your deathbed, you can look back on with satisfaction, knowing that you didn’t waste your time ignoring the true you. You lived a life in accordance with your truth.
