The Silent Super Powers of Sensitive People
When you hear people talk about sensitive people, they often get the image of crying females, softies of society, wall flowers, introverted shy grey dressed shrinking violets in the office, a person crying in front of a musical TV, and images of fairy dust and pastel colors.
What a lot of nonsense! I am highly sensitive or what they call a Highly Sensitive Person, HSP for short. I started my career as a navy merchant seafarer, sailing cargo around the world on mainly old rusty ships. I am a woman with a marine engineering degree background, love the big outdoors and wild seas and I am opinionated, headstrong, and maybe even blunt according to my co-workers. Believe me when I tell you, I am not a shrinking violet.
But I am also a highly sensitive and empathic person. Without knowing this, my high sensitivity resulted in a lifetime of intense experiences, people pleasing, conflict at the workplace, unable to find my place in the world, and emotional burnout more than once. Not knowing how to stop from feeling everybody's emotions so strongly, I always tried to lighten up the atmosphere in the room and help others by giving and oversharing my energy.
Until I discovered that being a highly sensitive person was part of my purpose here on earth and I became an Intuitive Coach, not only for people in the maritime industry but also for my fellow workplace warriors who feel overpowered by others and overwhelmed on a daily basis.
So, what is high sensitivity and what does this even mean? According to Melody Wielding, a fellow HSP Coach, HSPs pick up on more stimuli within and around them and have a more highly attuned nervous system.
That means HSPs notice more details and process information more thoroughly than others. The HSP brain is more active in areas related to attention, emotion, action-planning, decision-making, and having strong internal experiences.
There are lots of forums, and newsletters around that give you tips on how to overcome high sensitivity and lead a 'normal' life, which is a ridiculous statement as it's not something to 'overcome', but to use as an advantage, especially at the workplace.
HSPs are excellent leaders and change-makers. They are strong people persons and excel in counseling, coaching, and leadership types of roles. They have the unique capability of knowing to choose the right people for their team, leading them through darkness and despair by being giving, kind, strong, and visionary. They feel something is wrong before everybody else does. They are highly intuitive and with the right type of work culture, management, and motivation, they will flourish at work.
