Why Meaning and Purpose Matter So Much for Highly Sensitive People and How to Find More Alignment

 By the end of this episode, you’ll understand why highly sensitive people can feel so drained when life feels misaligned, and what begins to change when you stop fighting where you are while still moving toward what matters. In this episode, you’ll discover why highly sensitive people naturally search for meaning, depth, and coherence in their lives.

What happens internally when your life or work feels misaligned with who you are, and what begins to change when you stop forcing your life into the right shape and allow alignment to deepen gradually. 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.

So why do meaning and purpose matter so much for highly sensitive people? You may have noticed that others around you are not too concerned with this. They are happy to just go along and take it as it comes, and while in some ways that’s a very great way to live, it doesn’t always work for highly sensitive people.

And you may notice yourself craving some kind of direction, some kind of clarity, some kind of coherence and depth. And this is because as highly sensitive people, we’re wired a little bit differently, and we are naturally drawn to looking for depth and looking for meaning, and this is actually the role that we play as a part of our species.

About fifteen to twenty percent of the population is made up of highly sensitive people, and our role is to notice nuance and to explore the meaning that is behind some of these observations and to be aware of things often before others do. That’s our role. So we ponder on things, and we look for hidden meaning, whereas other people, their role is different, to just to jump right into action and take care of it on that level.

So because of this, as highly sensitive people, we can feel that meaning is extremely important, and when it’s missing, we can feel stressed. If we look a little more closely at what it means to be a highly sensitive person, there’s a little an acronym called DOES. D stands for depth of processing, O stands for overstimulation and E stands for emotional responsiveness And S stands to, for sensitivity to subtleties and to, to our surroundings.

So these four traits are the core traits of being a highly sensitive person. There are many kinds of sensitivity, and what we’re talking about specifically is is sensitivity that is connected to… It’s sensory processing sensitivity. This is what the scientists call it. It’s a sensitivity that is connected to depth of processing, and it comes with reactivity to overstimulation, and it has a depth of emotional processing, as I mentioned, as well as an awareness of the subtleties in our environment and within ourselves.

So the number one attribute is the D in DOES, which stands for depth of processing. When you’re interested in depth, when you’re wired for depth, then direction matters. If you start making a long-term, deep exploration in one direction, we would hope that it’s in a direction that’s going to be fruitful.

If you change the direction, even by a few degrees, and then you go deep with it, you’re gonna end up a long way from where you would have found yourself if you’d gone in the original direction. It’s just like when a ship crosses the ocean. They just change the direction on the compass, by two degrees, and you could end up thousands of miles apart when you finally cross to the other side of the ocean.

So as a result, it’s important for us as highly sensitive people to pay attention to meaning and to purpose and to direction. Because if we don’t, then we can end up diving deeply into an area that doesn’t actually isn’t actually where we’re wanting to go. It doesn’t actually go where we were hoping to go.

And so that can lead to frustration, wasted effort and many other things. So one of the characteristics of being a highly sensitive person is that we tend to look before we leap. We tend to explore deeply what are all the options on the table, and then we pick the one that seems to make the most sense, and then we go deeply into that direction.

So it’s the desire and need and just basic nature that we wanna go deeply that requires having alignment be so important. Also, when something is not aligned, then it can end up making us feel fragmented. We can end up There’s a lack of coherence because we’re going in a direction, but we’re not sure that’s really the right direction, and then we’re not sure if what is the right direction, and you can end up thinking about where you’re going while you’re actually moving forward, and this is a difficult kind of thing to do.

So the ideal is to ponder what is my direction? What is the direction I wanna head into? And then commit to that and go deeply into that. That’s where highly sensitive people thrive. We don’t thrive in switching from one thing to the other and trying to flounder around in different directions, and we don’t thrive when we’re going in a direction that’s clearly not aligned with with ourselves.

Remember, the E in DOES is emotion, so it has to resonate with our hearts. If it’s not, then we we don’t have our heart into it, and then we can’t go the distance with it, and it’s not satisfying. So this is why we are built this way. This is why meaning matters so much to us, and it’s why we are attuned to this and looking for how can we be more and more aligned with ourselves, with our purpose, whatever that is, and so that there’s a kind of coherence between internal and external.

I can’t, as a highly sensitive person, persist for very long if what I’m doing outside is not matching what I’m feeling inside. Those two have to align on some level, and that’s what we’re looking at here today. So misalignment interferes with depth. Misalignment makes you– kinda blocks you from going deep, and so you will feel frustration as a highly sensitive person who’s built to go deep if there’s a kind of misalignment and you’re unable to go deeply.

The analogy that comes to mind for me is, like if you’re drilling a well, then you have a drill on a truck and it just goes down very deeply, and you can just keep adding sections and keep going deeper and deeper. And some wells go down, hundreds and hundreds of feet to reach water.

But imagine if you had a drill that got bent along the way. It just the, this– It was no longer straight, and now you’re trying to turn it, and it’s no longer aligned with that direction of depth. It’s going to be causing all kinds of problems. You’re not gonna make any progress. It’s going to end up getting stuck, and it’s gonna be costly, and it’s gonna be frustrating, and it’s not helpful.

So- This is the way it works for us too. When we find a direction that is aligned with us, when we– and when we just go deeply into that direction, then our energy moves towards it, and our attention deepens with it. And we feel like our life is coherent because we’re making tracks, we’re making progress towards something that we’re interested in, and the excitement actually builds as we do.

But if we’re doing something that doesn’t feel aligned, then we’re gonna be hitting with resistance, and we’re gonna feel like, “Oh, this is empty. It’s staying superficial. I’m not feeling like my authentic self here.” And you may even find in cer-certain situations that you’re almost feeling like you’re playing a role instead of like role-playing.

Like you’re… It’s not really you, but you’re just playing. You’re going along doing this thing, saying yes to the wrong things and living out of external expectations instead of having the full energy of your being behind what you’re doing. So when you’re going for depth and you’re unable to do that because of some misalignment, then it causes friction, it causes rumination, it can cause exhaustion, and it can cause a kind of existential heaviness ’cause it’s like, “I don’t know if this is really what I should be doing.”

And I’m sure you know that feeling. Instead of feeling grounded and feeling clear and feeling like there is an immediate connection between what you’re doing and who you are. There are basically two types of misalignment. One is the kind of misalignment that comes from doing something that doesn’t fit your nervous system.

The other is doing something that doesn’t fit your values or your interests. And a lot of times, we may have something that aligns with our values. For example, we really wanna do something, or maybe we’re very interested in making a change in a particular area of the world, and we’re excited about that.

But we get caught up into a job that is not supportive of being a highly sensitive person. And so we end up burning out because we’re pushing really hard on something we are interested in, but it’s not paced at a very nice way, and we end up just getting overwhelmed by the amount of responsibility that is poured onto our plates.

So that’s a kind of nervous system- misalignment. But the other kind of misalignment would be, oh, maybe you’re taking care of yourself, you’re have a nice routine, all’s good, you’re resting and leading a fairly balanced life, but your actual job or your actual whatever it is that you’re looking at may even be relationship, is not aligned with who you are.

Maybe you’re doing something that goes against your values. Maybe you’re actually I don’t know, like doing something that feels wrong to you or doesn’t feel like it’s why you’re here. And so you feel this resistance, and you feel this misalignment, and that’s what can cause the friction to begin. Now, one thing that’s important to notice is that misalignment doesn’t always feel dramatic.

Sometimes it feels like just a low level deadness or a lack of motivation, or even just a subtle irritation or an emotional flatness. Just that slight feeling like something is off. And this is important because many HSPs tend to invalidate themselves here, where we think, “Oh, it’s just, I’m just not feeling that great,” or, “I’m just not, not…

it’s just no big deal. I’m, I know I’m doing fine, but I’m just feeling a little flat or something.” And so you can end up discrediting your own sensitivity towards yourself and just pushing forward with what you think you should be doing. So that’s a big difference right there. What I should be doing versus what feels right to be doing.

There’s this huge world of difference there, and one is intellectual, I should be, and it’s often referring to others and what others will give approval for. But what I feel to do is much more connected to who I actually am, and that’s the one to listen to, more likely. So the next thing I wanna look at is a kind of trap that can happen where you start thinking that, okay, alignment is good.

I want alignment. I’m all in. Let’s see if we can get some alignment here. And you can end up getting caught in trying to find perfect alignment and getting frustrated that your work isn’t perfectly aligned or your relationship isn’t perfectly aligned. And you can end up accidentally creating a kind of place where perfectionism can go rampant, and you can get stuck in a kind of fantasy or future dependent kind of life.

“Oh, my life will be good once I finally get the right job,” or, “Once I finally get the perfect relationship,” or, “Once I finally- Find my purpose. And this is still dependency. This is still not peace. This is still getting caught on something that may not may take time to evolve and may not come at all fully.

You never know. So there has to be a way of being okay with the process of deepening and finding alignment that is not dependent on some kind of perfect outcome. So alignment is not finding the perfect life or the perfect work or the perfect environment or the perfect purpose even. Alignment is something that evolves naturally over time.

And so if you’re impatient with this, it can cause a lot of stress. And what I’m suggesting here is to slow down and allow for purpose to become clearer and clearer with each step of the journey. Allow this to deepen gradually, to listen to what’s going on and adjust again and become more honest over time.

Don’t just expect yourself to become perfectly honest and then your life will be perfect. It’s too big of a leap. It’s, it sounds great, but what really happens is I get a little clearer about something and I adjust my course, and then I get a little clearer again and I adjust again, and I get a little clearer again and I adjust again.

That’s the natural way of evolution. Other than that, if you try to just find the perfect way right out of the gates, then it’s too unrealistic and too impossible, and then you set yourself up for disappointment and frustration and self-judgment.

So this is an important thing to look at. You can improve alignment externally while sometimes at the same time creating a disalignment internally by arguing with what’s actually here. And so if we get ahead of ourselves, this is what I love to think of as getting ahead of my own evolution. I’m wanting to get to the endpoint, but I have to go through the steps.

And I’m so focused on alignment in a big sense that I miss the disalignment that I’ve created right here in this particular moment. So you may genuinely want different work, and you may genuinely want more meaning, and you may want different relationships, and that’s fine. That’s good. That’s like the long distance sight.

But if you’re resisting the current moment and you’re mentally fighting reality That of what’s happening right now, and you’re believing that life shouldn’t be the way it is right now, then that creates an immediate inner conflict. So there’s two kinds of alignment here. One is external alignment, which takes time, over time to get clear on it and to actually make it happen.

That’s the work of a lifetime. Internal alignment is always available right now, and that is when you adjust yourself to the reality of the situation, accept where it is, and then start moving towards your longer term goals, but without fighting with what’s actually present in front of you at this moment.

So wanting change is not the problem. It’s fighting reality internally that creates suffering. And the idea here is that finding purpose, looking for meaning is something that we’re drawn to do naturally, and it’s something that is enjoyable to explore, but doesn’t happen all at once. And so as you’re in the process of finding more and more honesty, more and more purpose, more and more alignment, can you listen more honestly and move gradually towards deeper alignment without fighting where you are right now?

That’s the art of living, and that’s something that can deepen with practice, with inner work, and with just awareness. So the feeling I’m left with today is that alignment is deeply important for HSPs, but it can also leave you feeling powerless if you don’t hold it gently. Alignment is something that improves with time and experience.

And if you’re really open to it, you can also find alignment in every moment, even if your bigger purpose isn’t clear yet. In this episode, we looked at why highly sensitive people naturally search for meaning, depth, and coherence in their lives. And that is because we’re built that way. We’re built for depth.

And when you’re built for depth, having direction is important. Having a direction that aligns with that allows your deepest inner depth to connect with the deepest part of the external world, and that is very satisfying. We also looked at what happens internally when your life or work feels misaligned with who you are.

And we saw that it creates tension and resistance and stress, just like the well that the drill has bent and now it’s rubbing against the sides of the hole that’s being dug and it becomes just not pleasant. And finally, we looked at what begins to change when you stop forcing your life into the right shape and allow alignment to deepen gradually on its own.

You can find when you do this, you can find fulfillment at every step of progress. There’s no longer an argument with the way things are, but an ability to enjoy where you are and see what could be improved there and see where you’re going and keep moving in that direction, but with patience and that makes a huge difference.

So thanks 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.