High Sensitivity and Self-Belief

Why HSPs require constant self-anchoring.

Ever since I announced a few days ago that I’m temporarily making my newsletter free to everyone, it felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. I suddenly felt a surge of intrinsic motivation to write again. There is so much research suggesting that when we do things for external rewards, our mind starts to convince itself that the reason why we are doing that thing is for that reward, even if we loved what we were doing before the rewards.

I am working on changing my relationship to money. I live a very intrinsically motivated existence and have never quite squared that away with the need to well, pay my rent (which is a constant concern). But for now, at least, the deep within me love of writing is starting to come back and I’m excited about that!

Something I feel more inspired to write about is the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). I think this trait is so misunderstood. It’s one of those IF YOU KNOW YOU KNOW traits. If you’re in the approximately 15% to 30% of people who is an HSP, you certainly don’t need me to tell you that you are HSP. You live it every damn second of your life! But if you’re far, far away from that trait, it might be hard for you to comprehend what the inner experience of an HSP is like.

Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is the link between being an HSP and self-belief. I think being an HSP can really do a number on your self-esteem. Because HSPs tend to be really attune to the perspectives and emotions of other people, and are in such deep touch with their own emotional lives, I think it’s really easy for HSPs to have a constantly in flux sense of self-belief.

Self-belief is an interesting thing. I went to middle school and high school with Kobe Bryant (may he RIP) and was fascinated with his unflappable self-belief. He just knew he was destined for greatness, or at least acted as if he was enough that others started to believe him. What is that inner experience like?

Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of self-belief, and I needed a heaping dose of it to fight my way out of special education and show my school that I was highly capable. So it’s definitely possible to be both an HSP and have high self-belief. But I still think there are unique challenges for the HSP in this regard.

I can feel really good about myself and confident and excited, but if I express myself fully and authentically and the person doesn’t like what I’m offering or has a very neutral response (“Whatevs”), it can really affect me. I wish I could just say “haters gonna hate” or let it just brush off my shoulder, but I think part of the issue is that I care (too much, arguably) why the person didn’t receive me in the way I intended or hoped. It’s kinda like a puzzle for me to figure out. I just really want to understand everything. It’s in my DNA. That’s part of being an HSP.

Also, because I am really good at perspective taking, it can be super difficult separating my mind from the mind of another person. I can feel super confident and excited to express myself and if someone is wholly unimpressed, for a moment I automatically become unimpressed with myself. Again, it’s something just wired into my DNA, because I can just go into their head and see the world from their perspective. But it sometimes makes me lose my own perspective, and thus, my own internal sense of self-belief.

I’ve been working on this for decades and have come a long way. I’m not quite at the “haters gonna hate” level (and I’m not even sure that level is healthy and most conducive to growth in the long-run anyway) but I try to just stay super mindful and ACCEPT that not everyone will receive me as I intended or hoped. I have slowly transformed myself into harnessing a greater level of acceptance. You can honor your people (you know who your people are) and also honor that someone else can experience the world fundamentally different from you and have different preferences and filters on the world, and that’s OK. That’s what makes humans so beautiful.

So I think doing this “self-anchoring” work is extremely important for HSPs. It’s not a course that is taught in high school or college. HSPs have to figure this stuff out on their own in a world that is so noisy and judgmental and quite frankly, insensitive. My dear friend Susan Cain wrote a beautiful book about being an introvert in a world where people won't stop talking. I would add that it’s also tough being a sensitive person in a highly insensitive world.

Hopefully posts like these can help. Drop me a comment below if this post resonated with you. Where are my beautiful HSPs at?