Why Highly Sensitive People Often Feel Like They Don't Fit In and How to Feel More at Home in Yourself

 By the end of this episode, you’ll understand why highly sensitive people often feel like they don’t fit in, and how your experience can start to soften when you stop treating your differences as something that needs to be fixed. In this episode, you’ll discover why so many highly sensitive people grow up feeling different from the people around them, what can happen internally when you start believing that that being different means something is wrong with you, and how that lifelong feeling of not quite fitting in can begin to soften when you stop treating your sensitivity as a problem to solve.

Welcome to this edition of Self-Compassion Wednesdays, where we dive deeper into understanding ourselves as highly sensitive people by exploring the unique traits that shape our experience. Many highly sensitive people carry a feeling that they’ve had for as long as they can remember, a feeling that they don’t quite fit in.

And it’s not that they were even necessarily rejected. Uh, maybe nothing terrible actually even happened, but it’s just a quiet sense that other people seem to move through life differently So when you discover that there is such a thing as being a highly sensitive person and that it’s normal and that 15 to 20% of the population has it, and not only in humans but in over 100 different species that they’ve looked at, then it can start to feel relieving and it can start to feel like, “Oh, maybe there isn’t something wrong with me.”

And this is the feeling that being different is not necessarily a bad thing. And even after learning that you’re an HSP, sometimes that feeling continues that there is… It’s like, “I’m different. I wish I wasn’t different. I wish I wasn’t so sensitive.” You may find yourself thinking that even though you know that you’re an HSP and you’ve felt a lot of relief in understanding that.

So that’s what we’re gonna look at in this episode today Being highly sensitive doesn’t simply mean being emotional. It, it’s a very complex trait. So what does it mean to be highly sensitive? According to the research, there are a lot of characteristics that fall into this category of what makes us highly sensitive.

First of all, we notice more information in the world around us. We pick up on nuance. We notice things that others don’t. I sometimes say, like, if you ask an average person to count from one to 10, they’ll go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. But if you ask a highly sensitive person to do the same, they’ll go 1.1, 1.2.

Oh, wait, there’s a 1.21. And it– you can get, you can get the idea of how many details we naturally see that others miss Being highly sensitive means that you not only notice more information, but y- that you process those experiences that you have and you process that information that you get more deeply.

And so we are naturally good at analysis, and we tend to look through things thoroughly, and we take our time processing both our emotional experiences and our intellectual ones. As highly sensitive people, we’re also more affected by both positive and negative experiences. We feel things deeply, and so we feel the positive deeply.

We can be moved to tears from the positive, and we feel the negative deeply. We can be moved to tears and moved into emotion because of that. We pick up on subtleties that others may miss, and they may think we’re crazy for seeing things that they don’t see. We may need more time and space to process what we’ve taken in because of our depth of processing.

So you may noi- notice that noise affects you more than it seems to affect other people. This is due to the increased sensitivity of our nervous system. You may need recovery time after social situations because they are complex and emotional situations that we are involved with deeply and need time to continue processing after the fact.

You may notice that criticism stays with you longer as a result. You may think deeply about decisions. You may notice changes in other people’s mood or their tone of voice or just the feeling that you’re getting from someone or from a group. Beauty, music, nature, and meaningful conversations all affect you deeply.

And as a highly sensitive person, you need more downtime than many people around you, more sleep, more some time alone on a daily basis, and more rest. So when you look at it, this may describe us as highly sensitive people, but it doesn’t necessarily describe the rest of the world, the other 80 to 85% that is making up the rest of the population And as a child, you probably didn’t know you were highly sensitive.

I didn’t even realize until a few years ago. But you probably put one and two together and noticed over time that other people seemed less affected, or that other people seemed to recover faster, or that other people seemed to be less bothered by certain things. So the conclusion that can happen just innocently as a child is that you may start to think, “I’m different.

There’s something going on here.” And many highly sensitive people spend years comparing their internal experience to what they s- uh, they hear is the internal experience of other people with a completely different kind of nervous system. And so what happens is we’re a minority. 15 to 20% is not that many people.

And so that means that you’re gonna see much more, many more people who have the, the, uh, non-highly sensitive nervous system. And if you compare that and think that’s the norm, there’s gonna… you’re gonna think there’s something wrong with me Imagine growing up in a left-handed– like if you’re left-handed in a world that’s designed primarily for right-handed people.

I imagine that right– left-handed people experience this. Then you’d constantly have small experiences of friction, and it’s not that le- being left-handed is any kind of a problem, but the world around you is largely built with a different experience in mind. So being highly sensitive can feel very similar.

The world is built in a way for a different kind of nervous system. Now, that’s not altogether true, but it can feel like that. And so the issue isn’t necessarily that something is wrong with you, which is easy to conclude, “Oh my gosh, I’m different. What’s wrong with me?” It’s that your experience often differs from the experience of many people around you.

So unfortunately, many of us don’t stop at just being different. We don’t just see ourselves as different. We start see- thinking that there’s something actually wrong with us, and this can be a negative spiral that can just take us down. And as sensitive people, when we go into a negative spiral, we go deeper into the neg- negative spiral because of our natural depth of processing, and so we end up, uh, feeding back on ourselves, and we can go, uh, quite low as a result of that

So difference becomes interpreted as deficiency, as something wrong instead of just being different. And the common beliefs that show up for highly sensitive people in this regard are thoughts like this: “I’m too sensitive.” Now, where do we get this? Partly from comparison, partly from self-judgment, and partly from what others have actually told us.

I can count so many instances where people have told me, “You’re too sensitive. You know, you just think too much. You’re too emotional,” or, “You’re too complicated.” So… Or, “You need too much.” Right? If you hear that enough from enough people, you start to believe it’s true because we’re taught when we come into this world that truth lies outside of us, that truth lies…

That other people have truth. The world has truth. There’s this objective reality out there. And so if enough people agree out there, then they’re right and I’m wrong. And this is how we can take on this feeling of being deficient, that there’s something wrong with us. And then we believe it ourselves, and then we perpetuate it, and we compare, and we see the advantages of being fast and furious, and we think, “Oh my gosh, that’s not me.”

And then we think, “Oh my gosh, I got a bad model. There’s something wrong here. I, I’m, I’m missing something,” or, “This isn’t good. I’m too emotional. I’m too complicated. I need too much. I should be more like everyone else, and life would be so much easier if I was just different.” So this is how we can start getting into an argument with the way things actually are, and we can start to suffer quite quickly So when you discover the HSP trait for the first time, it can be so relieving.

And to just dip back into it from time to time and refresh your understanding of the HSP trait, this can be so relieving. You are not alone. There are many, many people, huge percentage. If you think about it, 15 to 20% doesn’t sound like much, but when you think about the world’s population, like that’s one-fifth of the world’s population has this trait.

Okay, that’s not an accident. There’s nothing wrong going on here. So for many people, learning about high sensitivity creates a powerful sense of release, of relief. Suddenly, years of confusion begin to make sense, and there’s a reason for the experience that we’re all having, and that there’s nothing actually wrong with us.

This is the most relieving part of understanding this So this is understanding and it touches our actual felt experience, and that’s how we can feel weight falling off of our shoulders and tears rolling out of our eyes when we first understand that this is normal, that we have a role, that, that being highly sensitive has a specific evolutionary purpose, and that we’re here to sense danger earlier and to process things deeply and to hold communities together and to hold relationships together.

So when we get this, then something starts to relax inside. But sometimes the intellectual understanding only goes so deep and doesn’t touch the emotional part completely or doesn’t erase that training that we had, uh, that, that we fell into as we were younger and all those years of thinking that there was something wrong with us.

So it doesn’t always necessarily change your r- emotional relationship with the experience. A part of you may still believe, “I really shouldn’t be that way.” Or I’ve heard many people say, “Oh, I just wish I wasn’t so sensitive. You know, I, um, I’m glad I’m an HSP kind of. Yeah, I, I am. It’s good. But I wish I wasn’t that sensitive.

I wish I could turn it off sometimes or something. I wish I was different and I still don’t fit in.” So that kind of thinking can persist even with understanding and even some emotional shifts from learning about the HSP trait. You may still be thinking that other people seem to do life better than I do, and that’s a problem So understanding something and being free of it are not necessarily the same thing.

They can come together, just depends on how deeply that understanding goes. If it stays on the intellectual level, there’s not gonna be a lot of shift on the in- on the emotional level. But to whatever degree it can, can trickle down and actually touch the experience on the emotional level, then that’s when things can change.

So many highly sensitive people understand why they felt different, but the deeper challenge is that a part of them may still be at war with being different. So what actually helps? We can see that the goal is not trying to become more, quote unquote, “normal.” The goal is to understand our sensitivity, accept our sensitivity with every part of our being if possible.

That’s when the stress falls away. That’s when being different is okay Many people at first spend years trying to fix their sensitivity and trying to become tougher or trying to need less or trying to feel less or trying to keep up with everybody else and their fast pace. And when you realize that you’re wired differently for a reason, some of that may start to change.

But some of the suffering comes from this ongoing belief that I mentioned that is deep on an emotional level, that there’s something wrong with me, that I need… That this sensitivity is not really a good thing. And that requires some deeper work, some deeper inner work, where you allow the emotional part to come up to the surface and be heard and be seen, and let it complain, and let it say, “Oh, I just wish I could be so much faster at doing things,” or, “I just wish I didn’t have to have so much alone time and so much need for rest.

It’s, it’s too much.” Or, “I just wish I didn’t have to be so particular about how I eat.” Like, these are common HSP experiences, but the emotional part that wants to– that, that complains about it, that part has to be brought up into the light. If we use our understanding of HSP to push it down, push that emotion down, then it’s called suppression, and we end up just pushing down a feeling that eventually will pop back up again So the way to actually address it is to give that emotional part the light of day.

Give it permission to complain. Give it permission to see what it’s actually thinking. Not because you wanna be swept away by its complaints, not that you’re gonna give it free rein to take over your life, no. But in a safe environment, create a space for it to say, “Ugh, this is what I’m frustrated about.

Ugh, this is what bothers me. This is what I think.” And once it’s given that, once it’s shared that, then invite it to question its own thinking. This is why I love a little process called the work of Byron Katie, which I’ve been doing for about 20 years. And it’s a way of letting the emotion come up, hear the emotion, and then listen to it, but then gently s- challenge it.

Uh, and, and not to change it, but to ask it what its actual opinion is. Like, “Hey, are you sure there’s something wrong with you? I wanna hear from you, the emotional part of me, not just the intellectual theory. I wanna, I wanna walk through this with you. What, what are you actually thinking? Are you sure?”

Like, you know, and then look at the reactions that come up when you believe this and imagine who you’d be without it. By quietly questioning a thought on the emotional level, it starts to get clearer on the emotional level. And then you can look at opposites, turnarounds, and see like where, oh, that’s actually not a bad thing that I’m slow or not a bad thing that I’m…

that I need more rest or whatever it is you’re looking at. And this emotional part starts to look from different angles at its own experience and starts to see it in a different way. When that starts to happen, that’s when the real shift starts to happen, and that’s when you start to really own that it’s, and it’s great that I’m this way.

This is wonderful that I’m built this way. I get it. I own it. And the argument starts to fall away. So this is the importance of going deeper. We as highly sensitive people love to go deep, and this is how you can go, uh, allow something that’s already been remedial, just understanding that we are highly sensitive people is a remedy.

But letting that remedy go deeper into us, that’s where you can use particular situations that trigger you as doorways to look even deeper at the emotional part and allow it to be experienced there as well So the feeling I’m left with today is that we are different as highly sensitive people, and that’s a good thing.

We evolved this way to play an important specialized role in society. When we recognize and own this role, even if others don’t appreciate it, we can stand with more confidence knowing that we have a place in this world. And the level of freedom that we experience with this depends on how deeply we can take it in.

Inner work allows it to land on the deepest level inside us In this episode, we looked at why so many highly sensitive people grow up feeling different from the people around them, and that is because we are different. We process things more deeply, we take… We’re slower as a result. We notice things that other people don’t, and they think that’s weird.

They think we’re crazy sometimes. So it’s natural that we would grow up thinking we’re different because that is actually the case. We also looked at what can happen internally when you start believing that being different means something is wrong with you. And this is where the downward spiral can begin, where we start judging ourselves or we adopt the judgments from others and then apply it to ourselves, and we think we really are too sensitive or that something is wrong with us.

When we do that, it pushes our emotions down. It makes us feel bad about ourselves. It makes us lose confidence. And then we just go, um, from, from the strength that we have in our sensitivity into a weakened place where we’re just kind of short-circuiting ourselves and judging ourselves and are unable to participate.

And finally, we looked at how that lifelong feeling of not quite fitting in can begin to soften when you stop treating your sensitivity as a problem to solve. And most of us do that i- as soon as we understand what it means to be a highly sensitive person. “Oh, this is not a problem to solve.” And so there can be a lot of relief in that.

And today, I just wanted to invite you to a deeper level of that, a deeper level of accepting your sensitivity. And that comes through this kind of inner work where you begin to look on the experiential level. Stress will tell you when there’s still a little bit of believing going on that there is a problem, that your sensitivity is a problem, or that there is something wrong with you.

When you find that, no matter how much you understand it, then this is a chance to give attention to that emotion and let it find its way back to balance. So thank you for listening. It’s always great to explore with you. This program comes out three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Join me next time for Strategy Fridays, where we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress as a highly sensitive person.