Now that I’ve gotten your attention, do me a solid and hear me out.
Hello, I’m Antesa, and I am an HSP.
The world often feels very loud for me, and also very sensational. My body can go into complete lockdown if I spend too long in an environment that doesn’t feel good for me. I can’t share a bed with most people, and those I can share a bed with have to sleep on my right side, because if they touch my left side while I’m asleep, I feel like I’m being electrocuted.
Making physical contact with certain people has been known to make me vomit or result in me being sick for days afterward. When someone is mad at me, they don’t need to tell me. I can feel it in my body and I know exactly who it’s coming from, no matter how far away they are, without them saying anything to me.
Sometimes it’s hard to tune out the noise, and I have struggled in the past to know where my body ends and another person’s begins. Hello, codependent relationships!
You can probably imagine by now that I really love to hide in my home and take Epsom salt baths after spending more than two hours in public crowded places.
And all this while most of the world labels me as an extrovert!
I have gone through many phases of coming to terms with my heightened sensitivity, from trying to not feel any of it, to allowing it to rule my life, and everything in between.
All of that to say, I totally get it. Being an HSP is a great challenge.
While there is plenty of media out there about how people like us — the empaths of the world — need protection, how all the dangerous narcissists are going to come get us and ruin our lives, and how we’re powerless against our feelings and against energetic vampires, I have a different perspective that I would love for you to consider. Consider this an invitation from a woman who’s been there.
What if all that sensitivity was a gift and an opportunity, and not a weakness or a burden?
What if you weren’t a delicate flower that needed to be protected?
I know what you might be thinking:
“I know it’s a gift, the problem is that everybody else doesn’t!”
And maybe:
“But I feel like a delicate flower when I’m around energy vampires.”
You’re right. Not everybody knows that being sensitive is a gift. Society has painted sensitive people as weak and almost disabled for at least the past 100 years, if not longer. Therapists contribute to this narrative by diagnosing you with HSP, and spiritual leaders insist you learn to protect yourself against toxic people, all of which results in you feeling broken and helpless.
I know how it feels to be around proverbial energy vampires. It absolutely feels like being sucked dry. When the life force is being sucked out of us, it’s very hard to feel strong and powerful.
But here’s something to consider about the energy vampires of the world. Of the two of you, which of you do you think is aware that that’s happening?
I’ll give you a hint by sharing a statistic with you. Of all perceived narcissists out there, only 1% are consciously malicious. 1%. The rest are just unconscious, and absolutely undeserving of being villainized.
You, on the other hand, have not only been gifted with the extraordinary power of being able to feel people profoundly, but also the consciousness around it.
That is extremely powerful.
And with that power comes great responsibility, namely personal responsibility, boundaries, and also the opportunity to influence the awareness of those who are less fortunate than you, which, in case you were unaware, does not happen when you’re also accusing them of being toxic.
When you add personal responsibility, boundaries, and a desire to make an impact on the world to the already highly sensitive person, you have an incredible elixir for precisely what the world needs right now.
With that said, I want to introduce a new archetype onto the scene:
The Magnetic, Influential, and Extraordinarily Powerful HSP.
Most of the women I coach are HSPs in disguise, much like I was for most of my life.
Like me, they tend toward the trying-to-not-feel-it and shut-it-down side of things because feeling everything can sometimes feel brutal and horrific, which makes them feel powerless and out of control, which of course clashes with their identity of who they are in the world: high-functioning, successful, powerful, have-shit-figured-out, solution-oriented, affluent women.
But, magic happens when women like this recognize their innate sensitivity, and integrate it into their already established positions of power.
Who they become is truly extraordinary by every definition of the word. Their presence defines the energy of any environment they find themselves in, rather than the reverse. They are compassionate, passionate, fierce, and humble, and their magnetism shifts the organization they work for, the families they are a part of, and the relationships they are in.
Such a woman is a model of the future of leadership: vulnerable, authentic, empathic, resilient, assertive, decisive, and confident. She no longer lives in a world of either-or, but rather, has embraced a world of both-and. She is both tender and mighty.
But of course none of this can happen until she takes back her power.