My primary client base as a hypnotist are people with anxiety, otherwise known as Highly Sensitive People. The blog post below is an email from one of them who sought me out based on an article I wrote almost 15 years ago. She has graciously allowed me to post this anonymously.
I get emails like this one two or three times a year, all from the same source.
The next blog is my response to her.
Hello Ms. Moore,
My name is Mary (not her real name), and I am a 20-something student somewhere in the U.S. I’m writing to you today for some help or insight, if you are willing and able to provide it. I read your article on healing.about.com on empaths and highly sensitive people, and thought I’d take a chance and reach out to you. I honestly feel quite silly about it, as I am a overly-stubborn person and think I should be able to do everything on my own. However, I have reached a point where I feel like I’m not quite sure where to go from here, and decided to swallow my pride and ask for assistance.
So here is the core of what I am struggling with.
I am a hypersensitive person, HSP, highly sensitive person, empath, or whatever you would like to call it. I have known it all my life, but didn’t know it was something anyone else experienced or that it had a label. Once I heard about this group of people, I took tons of “quizzes” and read articles describing it. I have cried on numerous occasions feeling the truth of the descriptions. And I have no doubt, that I am an HSP.
The trouble comes from the other aspects of my readings, and the left side of my brain. While I believe myself to be somewhat spiritual (I have always felt best in nature, and inexplicably feel like everything has a “life”), I struggle with the rationality of it all. I feel like a personality divided, struggling to connect my often erratic and dramatic emotions with my logical, practical side that is so strongly present.
When I read articles that talk about auras, chakras, past lives and the such, things stop connecting. I don’t feel like I can relate to the article anymore, because it feels cheap, fake, or just simply not right. While I fully admit that I will never know for sure (in fact I don’t think anyone can know anything for certain), I am extremely skeptical of things like mediums or psychics. I understand the idea of an aura, as I often describe people’s personalities as relating to a certain color, but i never actually “see” the color like most articles suggest. Basically, I have trouble believing anything that science or my own personal experiences don’t support.
What I do know is that I have an overwhelming feeling to create. I feel this innate urge to create some big, something truly impactful. But I don’t know what it is. I am good at writing, good at painting, good at sewing, etc. but I am not great at any of it. I rarely finish a project that I start, losing the heart behind it rather quickly. I have done this for years. And I continue to search for my passion, my life’s goal, to no avail.
I have everything I could want. A wonderful and supportive boyfriend, who I wouldn’t trade for the world. A great future career with tons of possibilities, a loving family. And somehow, it just feels like there needs to be more. Not more for me, not in a wanting to take in more. But the exact opposite. Like I have this extreme energy, or potential or something inside me that is bursting to get out to be shared with the world. But I can’t find the key that unlocks me. I have this intangibility inside me that has no release, no escape, no purpose. And I feel like it is slowly devouring me. I have meltdowns for no reason, feel unexplainable emptiness at times and unreal levels of frustration. And I don’t know what to do.
Well, now that the dramatics are over with, the logic part of me is doing what it always does. It’s telling me to suck it up, just keep pushing and eventually everything will work itself out. I’m just afraid that the more I do that, and the less I deal with this, the worse it will get.
So, if you took the time to read all that, let me first say thank you. Thank you for taking the time to read the ramblings of a girl who really has nothing to complain about, in the grand scheme of things. If you have any suggestions for me, comments, ideas, any input whatsoever on what my next steps should be, I would appreciate it beyond words. Feel free to contact me back here at email withheld.
Thanks again for your time.