Coming Back to the Body as a Highly Sensitive Person
- Louise Sheridan
- 6 hours ago
- 3 min read
"I don't really feel my feelings," said my client, right at the end of our very first call.
Having spent an hour with them, it seemed clear to me that they actually feel a lot of things very deeply; they have a dazzlingly quick intellect, intensity, and passion for life.
Apparently, I could feel my client as they couldn't feel themself.
Afterwards, it occurred to me that their "problem" is not that they can't feel their feelings (the mechanisms for feeling are all there), it's that they don't feel safe doing so in their body.
The "not feeling" is a well-oiled defence mechanism and a symptom of my client detaching from their body, even as they're being felt powerfully by those around them, as I was on the call.
Intensity of feeling as a Highly Sensitive Person
Whilst a tendency to avoid feeling "difficult" or "bad" feelings is common in all human beings, HSPs might go further in their avoidance, avoiding even "good" feelings if they come with a level of intensity that we fear will be "too much" for us and other people to handle.
Since we know that HSPs feel and process everything more deeply, it follows that HSPs might struggle with their general intensity of feeling more than other people, and do more to compensate for it.
HSPs might struggle with their general intensity of feeling more than other people, and do more to compensate for it.
I remember so many occasions where I was moved to tears in a public setting and having to do everything I could to stop myself from bursting out crying, or sitting in a large audience having to grip the sides of my chair to stop myself from leaping up as I was filled with an overwhelming sense of joy and aliveness. Often, I worry my excitement and energy for a particular topic is overbearing and a turn-off for people so I stop myself short, or don't say anything at all.
The safe zone
Once I discovered I'm an HSP, I could see how much of my life has been an exercise in trying to constrict my feelings to keep them within what I call the "safe zone" (AKA the socially acceptable range of feelings that most people are comfortable with expressing and receiving).
I see this in my HSP clients too.
Our greatest strengths as HSPs lie in the margins of human experience and yet we spend a huge amount of our precious time and energy trying to stay within the "safe zone" and be "normal" like everyone else.
Why we detach from our bodies
From a young age, HSPs learn to shut off and shut down the parts of themselves that are not welcomed or safe to express (those things that stray beyond our caregivers' "safe zone"). By doing so, we splinter our connection to our bodies, our feelings and, most crucially, our intuition.
By the time we're adults, this disconnection looks like:
Using our intellect to detach from our body (I call this "floating head syndrome"): we do this by thinking at a million miles an hour, overanalysing, ruminating, rationalising, and keeping busy.
Ignoring our body: we do this by forgetting to hydrate, eat, sleep or move enough (this typically accompanies floating head syndrome, and when we get locked in our intensity as HSPs).
Numbing our body: we do this by overeating, overexercising, drinking, binge-watching TV, or mindlessly scrolling on our phones.
Coming home to our ourselves
A core part of my work as a coach is about having clients slow down and come home to themselves.
We do this by re-establishing trust and safety in the body (through feeling and processing our feelings), acknowledging our innate gifts and abilities (through conversation and self-reflection), and owning the unique insights and perspectives we bring to the world.
The result of this homecoming is that we feel completely and spectacularly alive. Alive to the fullness of our experience and all that it entails; alive to the power we have to create in our lives, over and over.
When we can be with the fullness of our feelings, we discover that our capacity to experience grows exponentially.
When we can be with the fullness of our feelings, we discover that our capacity to experience grows exponentially.
With love,
Louise x
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