When you’re an HSP, you are highly sensitive to lots of things even when you’re on your own. Even if you’re alone. Even if you’re in a float tank in the dark with all sound muted to the point of extinction. Why? Because your mind never gets left behind.

As they say, “You take yourself with you wherever you go.” And this is never truer than when you’re in relationship with someone else. Family . . . friends . . . partners.

The partnership spectrum

Today we’re talking about partner relationships. You know, those intimate kinds. The ones where you check in with the other person, you know what they like and don’t like, you have kids together or work together or ski together or garden together. Whatever kind of relationship you have, the basis of it is that you and this other person have committed to “be together.”

Did you ever notice that in many relationships one of the people feels less heard? Maybe they feel misunderstood. Maybe they’re more emotional. Maybe they want to talk about feelings more than the other person who just wants to “do things” and not “belabor” territory they already feel they’ve covered. These are only a few of the relationship snafus couples experience. We used to attach them to gender. (You know, women want to talk about feelings and men . . . don’t.) But it’s really only the degree that changes—how much and in what ways you might want and need what you want and need and how much and in what ways I might need and want what I need and want.

Moving from a 2-Pronged to a 3-Pronged Approach

When you throw HSP-ness in the mix, you’re adding a whole ’nother level of complexity. It’s no surprise that many HSPs choose partners who are less sensitive to the world’s energies, who are more grounded and calm—at least in the sense that they moved through life with less drama, turmoil . . . a more logical approach. For me, it was like the difference between being a 2-pronged electric plug and a grounded plug. “A grounding prong creates a new, low-resistance grounding path down to the main electrical panel. This trips the breaker, stopping the electrical current and preventing damage to your appliance, a house fire, or an electrical shock.” Or, in this case, to a meltdown.

Who’s grounding whom?

It felt good to rely on certain partnerships that kept me grounded because most of the time I felt as if I were floating in the air, my mind and my emotional state zipping around like a combo roller coaster and tilt-a-wheel. Not such a good look, I assure you.

I never imagined there would be a way to be highly sensitive and grounded at the same time! To feel like a 3-pronged plug all by myself—without giving up my intuitive senses along with all the other heightened sensibilities that make me who I am.

You can be your own 3-pronged plug!

As a 3-pronged, I am my own grounding mechanism. I am free to think with my heart first without losing my capability for logic and reason. I am safe to live life with an open heart without fear of being hurt, vulnerable, or victimized. I am free to be me.

What could be better than that?

The post HSPs & Relationships: Why Does It Have To Feel So Hard? first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

This morning I had a lengthy conversation with a fellow gym rat. Not that I’m much of a rat…more of a mouse, really. But still. Anyway, seems a dear friend of his from the past, someone he’d lost touch with the last few years yet someone he’d appreciated and revered, had died. This guy at the gym, let’s call him Stew, was obviously experiencing sadness, and disappointment in himself for not having stayed in contact because “now it’s too late.”

I’m an HSP with certain abilities, so it’s up to me.

As an intuitive medium, I was already connecting with Stew’s friend “Jim,” seeing him in my mind’s eye as the powerfully built former linebacker I would soon discover he was (from Stew’s later description), and a man with a heart of gold. Although Stew knows that I “talk to dead people,” we’d never gotten into it before during our brief convos passing from Stairmaster to elliptical. You know, friendly at the gym, but not that friendly. His discomfort (okay, fine, skepticism), apparent by the immediate sliding away of the eyes whenever the topic of my “work” came up, was clear enough. And, since I wasn’t there to disturb his chi or anything, I’d always let it go. But now, Stew had tears in his eyes and I wanted to help. Jim was asking me to help.

Should you share the messages you get? Share what you know, feel, see, hear?

I figured, well, what the heck. Spirit never steers me wrong. I had nothing to lose. Oh so gently I posited to Stew that it might help to know that Jim was feeling pretty good on the Other Side, at ease. That he knows his family misses him, but his death was what he chose because it was easier for everyone than it would have been had he hung around any longer—that a long illness toward death would have been even more painful for everyone. Jim was suggesting that Stew might want to think about writing a note to Jim’s wife to express Stew’s love for this kind-hearted man who thought as highly of Stew as Stew did of him.

Spirit will never guide you wrong.

This afternoon as I sit at my desk waiting for a client to arrive, I keep thinking about Stew and Jim and about the delicate space that exists around sharing when you aren’t at all sure how your sharing will be received. When my phone pinged I was a little surprised to see a text from Stew. We aren’t texting buddies, and in fact had never exchanged more than phone numbers. Still, I felt as if I’d been waiting for the message. Attached were two images, one of Jim as a young sportsman and one of him a couple of years prior to his recent passing. Stew, without admitting to any kind of belief around Spirit, had found a way to let me know, and let Jim know, that connecting with me had connected him to Jim…and that the connection had transmuted some of the ache he’d been holding due to his own guilt over letting the friendship fall by the wayside into a less troubled space. And Spirit, in this case, Jim, was assuring me I’d done the right thing by speaking up with love in my heart.

Miracle or not?

I call this a mini-miracle. I know, I know. Many might, even reasonably, disagree. I mean, what’s so miraculous about someone who absolutely positively doesn’t believe in “stuff like that” feeling potentially comforted by something someone like me or you says? Someone who, just perhaps, understands loss, death, dying, and matters of Spirit and is willing to express that in a moment of need? I’ll tell you.

Turns out, like with everything else, it’s all a matter of perspective. I never saw miracles in my life because I didn’t believe in them. I didn’t believe in them because I had a definition of what they were that couldn’t possibly be supported by “real life.” I also had a long history of hiding what I saw, felt, heard, sensed, knew, and believed when it might have rocked the proverbial boat of reason.

The thing is that keeping quiet is no longer an option. I want to share the loving messages I receive.

• I want to express my truth.
• I want to be authentic.
• I want to feel relaxed and in alignment.

None of which I can do or be if I’m hiding who I am. An HSP, a Highly Sensitive Person, and a person with unique talents and abilities to share.

What are you hiding that is begging to come out of the closet?

The post Coming Out of the HSP Closet first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

It took me quite a while to get up my nerve. Truthfully? I was almost afraid to ask what it meant, why he’d stuck it there. I mean, who tapes a piece of paper that says “RA YA KOO MA YEE” on it to his back car window?

Randy, that’s who.

The Language of the Emotions

The only thing he’d tell me—my husband who passed in 2012—and only after many months of asking, was that it was the only written bit of “his language,” the one he was born with and had never shared with anyone, the one he’d never heard anywhere else from anyone else. He called it the “Language of the Emotions.” As our relationship grew, Randy used to speak words of this language to me, mostly during intimate moments, but also when verbalizing during times of extreme emotion, as if there were no other way to articulate what he was feeling without its use. Looking back, it doesn’t really surprise me that English was actually his second language, given his dyslexia and problems with spelling and grammar.

The other thing Randy always did that left me wondering who exactly this brilliant guy was that I’d fallen in love with who held a steady job, but was also one of the weirdest people I’d ever met, was to sign his name with little superscripts at the end, like this: Randy Connolly*” Again, I had to be content with the non-answer I usually got until, one day, he admitted that the asterisk and quotation mark were his way of nodding his thanks to the Great Mother and the Great Father of the Great Oneness.

Several amazing events have taken place over time that have revealed just how these things are connected, and just how deep their meaning goes. A few weeks ago, I was listening to a chakra meditation my good friend and author Sherri Cortland has on her website in which she takes you through a chakra clearing and balancing that incorporates chanting syllables that relate to each chakra’s energy. I responded strongly to the meditation, but the real kick came when I asked myself What if….? What if the single-syllabic tonal chakra chants were similar to Randy’s language? What if the syllables of “Ra,” “Ya,” “Koo,” “Ma,” and “Yee” each had a meaning beyond an emotional communication?  And why the heck hadn’t I ever thought of asking that before?

Flashback to about 12 years ago, as Randy made his transition and spoke his language for the last time. Only a few words, but words that would matter more than I can say. I felt the circumstances even more painfully because, as he lay dying, he also kept pushing me away. Literally pushing away the love of his life. His wife. His partner. I was pretty hysterical at that point. Let’s face it, who wants to be rejected at a time like that by the one you love? And so I sat and cried a couple of feet away, not knowing what to do, afraid to watch as he took his last breaths.

Not only didn’t I realize what I was doing with my hands, which, it turns out, were, of their own volition, fiddling with a tape recorder on the table, but, because I couldn’t see through my tears, I wasn’t aware that I’d pressed the PLAY button. In fact, it wasn’t until months later when I turned the recorder back on that I heard the few precious syllables of Randy as he spoke his final words…in “his language.” And it wasn’t until a couple of years after that, at one of the recording sessions for my audiobook of Crossing the Rubicon, the producer said, “Gee, it’s too bad we don’t have any audio of Randy. It would be a perfect way to incorporate his energy into the book since he wrote it with you after he died, right?”

Right.

Which is when I shared the recording with a medium I knew who was able to translate the words for me: “Goodbye, my love…I’m coming home.”

This message was exactly what I needed. The one that would, at long last, shift the energy of shame I had been carrying since Randy’s death.

Randy always said he (we) came from another planet. That his real name was Two Lakes of the Star Clan. When he napped, I found myself imploring him to remember to come back to me because he always seemed to go so far away when he slept. Now I had my answer. He was not pushing me away because he didn’t want my love. He was pushing me away so he could “come home.” Apparently, the more I held onto him, the less his spirit and his body could do what they had to do—leave the physical realm.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. As I said, I’d meditated to Sherri’s guided chakra meditation and suddenly got it in my head to research each of the syllables of “Ra,” “Ya,” “Koo,” “Ma,” and “Yee.” What I found, if revelations are ever really “found,” was both obvious and mind blowing.

Bear in mind that Randy misspelled everything, so I had to be generous with my own spelling as I researched.

• RA: Egyptian sun god, the creator of the universe and the giver of life.
• YA(H): One name for God; YA(A): goddess of fertility and love.
• KOO (KU; also known as Akua): God of war, fishing, farming, with supernatural powers. (And now I appreciate why Randy called himself a “frequency farmer.”)
• MA: Moon goddess; Mother goddess; warrior goddess.
• YEE: As in John 10:34, “As ye are gods.”

To me, and I know to Randy who felt strongly on the matter, one finds the kingdom of God within. So if “ye” is the plural of “you,” we are all Gods…God is within each one of us. We are all God and everything is included in that oneness.

Is the trajectory of these events and discoveries beginning to come together for you as it did for me? Because between the gods and the goddesses and the oneness, we’ve pretty much covered the territory of Randy’s daily reminders: the way to consistently express his powerful belief that he was a spiritual being having a human experience—and was grateful for that opportunity.

It was his way to give a nod of thanks to the Universe.

Every time he signed his name. Every time he climbed into his car. His way to give a nod of thanks to the Universe.

I keep Randy’s original printed 4” x 11” “RA YA KOO MA YEE” sign on my desk. Over the years it’s been on a shelf, in a filing cabinet, packed away, and misplaced. Since chanting the tonalities of the chakras and feeling the frequency of the sounds, however, it has taken on a whole new meaning and will continue to sit front and center in my life.

We are the sun. We are the moon. We are warriors. We are lovers. We are frequency farmers. We are all God. We are all one…speaking the same language.

And, most importantly, as HSPs, the Language of the Emotions is our language,

and paramount to the state of the world.

The post HSPs have their own language–The Language of the Emotions first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.