Labels

Frankly, it’s hard for me to really understand this question, one asked recently by a fellow HSP-er whom I admire and respect greatly, in light of my perspective on being an HSP. In my life, as a Highly Sensitive Person, I used to feel anxious. A lot. Often. Even constantly. But now I know that the label of “anxiety” only serves as an indicator of HSP-ness (ohmigod, I know how that sounds when you say it, so forgive me, but please, carry on). In other words, there is no “either/or” situation here. I mean, how many HSPs do you know who aren’t anxious—or who have become really, really good at hiding it?

Labeling us as HSPs rather than “anxious” does not really help me shift in the way I want to shift. All it really tells me is that I have an excuse to be anxiety ridden. Which, honestly? Doesn’t really work for me. What I want?

As Abraham-Hicks would say . . .

To be “tapped in, turned on, and tuned in,” as Abraham-Hicks would say.

Or, in my terms, to be in touch, in tune, and intrepid.

• To be truly in touch with who I am in a way that lightens what feels like a burden.
• To be truly in tune with my higher self, consciously aware of the choices I am free to make about how I perceive myself and the world.
• To be truly intrepid about moving ahead in life in a way that not only feels less threatening, but actually feels more comfortable, more enjoyable, and more engaged.

So, how do we get there?

I think the very first question should be:

“Are you truly anxious or taking on someone else’s energy?”

HSPs go around taking on other people’s energy all the time. As I’ve said, we have a good reason to do it. We bond that way, connect that way. It’s how we empathize, understand, and relate. Only real problem is not that we form connections, but that we lose ourselves in the process. We end up in a state of perpetual confusion and/or fogginess where nothing feels sure or certain or safe.

Which leads to (drumroll please) . . . That’s right: the psychic octopus. You don’t have to stop being the incredible HSP you are. You just have to know:

1.  What your energy feels like so
2.  You know when you’re not in it, and then
3.  How to stay in it.

Refer to my posts on the psychic octopus and your UES, your Unique Energetic Signature, for more depth on those subjects. They are all tied together. You need to know who you are before you can stay in who you are. You need to feel good about who you are and where you are energetically to want to stay there, be there, exist there, and live there.

For you. For me. For the world.

It’s time.

The post Are you truly “anxious” or an HSP looking for answers? 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’s taken years to even begin to get accustomed to knowing the difference between acting on my thoughts and following guidance. What I now call my Intuitive Guidance System, or IGS. So when I ask a deliberate question and get—you guessed it—a whole lot of nuttin’, well, it feels like something’s gone awry. Like in a really big way.

This is what happened last night. I’d traveled to the Oregon Coast to do one of my metaphysical Afterlife Meetups, which had begun several years ago in the tiny coastal town where I lived with my husband and after he made his transition to the Great Beyond. After moving to Washington State a few months ago, it felt like it was time to head back, to see as many as I could in my beloved community, and maybe even put a little bit of a period at the end of that decade’s sentence. I asked my team in the Up There to support me in whatever way was in the best interest of everyone: me, all the participants, the friend with whom I was staying, Source, the drivers on the road…you get the picture. I also asked for some suggestions—a good solid download would be nice—on what to talk about. I mean, I assumed I’d be doing some mediumship because that was always in the cards (so to speak), but what would I talk about? What did I have to say that might be inspirational, that might get minds, bodies, and souls up and doing a little jig or maybe a two-step?

I asked the week before. Then every day up through my landing at my friend’s house the night before go time. At that point, only the tiniest of little red flags was only beginning to show up on the horizon. Yet, as I unpacked my suitcase, I wondered why a room full of people would show up (sans masks for the first gathering of its kind in over two years, I might add) if I had nothing to say?

Are you telling me I’m supposed to trust my gut? Me???

I was sharing that fact with my friend and expressing that I was still waiting—patiently, I thought, IMHO.  She only laughed and said, “It’ll come to you. It always does. You just have to trust it.”

Duh. Maybe it was a good time to send up a little white flag instead?

Cut to the next night. Library. Afterlife Meetup night. 5 PM. Turns out the person who was supposed to post my flyers in town had been busy with other things and forgotten. It occurred to me that maybe that’s why I had a basket so overflowing with nothing—because no one was going to show up. But then one person strolled in. And another…and another. Until every one of the 50 chairs was filled.

Suddenly, I knew exactly what I wanted to say. Because all I needed to do was be there and reflect and express gratitude for all the love that was being generated in that room. To talk about how, in the midst of nothing, everything gets a chance to surface. How validation that you’ve been listening to your IGS shows up when you least expect it, when you’ve reached the point where you’re pretty darn sure you’ve used up your allotted supply and your Intuitive Guidance ATM account tells you its pockets are empty.

The HSPs Intuitive Guidance System

It’s like the old Gerry Seinfeld series: the show about, you guessed it, nothing. How does a show about nothing end up running for a gazillion or so season end up to be one of the greatest shows ever? You guessed it. Because in the very nothingness there is also the everything.

It’s where you have “nothing” to talk about until the last minute and it reveals exactly what’s been on your mind and in your heart and in your soul.

It’s where your ego/shadow side decides to rear its snide little self and scream (or whine, as the case may be), “I’m not good enough. What am I doing here? And here I thought I had something worthwhile to share?”…and demands you take a good hard look at what’s driving you.

It’s when you realize, just as you do during meditation, that there’s more in the “nothingness” than you could ever have imagined.

Maybe it’s even where, if you settle in, your mind takes a break and your spirit gets to shine. Where, if you’re willing, you can find and trust—your true, highest, Self.

And where, if your IGS is invited to steer the car for you, you can actually relish the ride.

The post Is Nothing Really Nothing or is your gut telling you something? first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

From Highly Sensitive Person to Heroically, Inherently Bad-Ass

I’ll tell you what . . .

I got tired of being told I was too sensitive by the time I was about 5. That’s when I began to understand that I was being told in no uncertain terms that my feelings didn’t matter as much as other people’s and that in order to “get along” I needed to stop expressing them. Not that I was able to truly comprehend the magnitude of such an understanding. Over time, it simply seeped into my brain, soul, and heart. The constant message that it was risky, dangerous even, to express what I felt, what I felt I knew, what felt right, what my “gut” was telling me. Naturally, the more time that went by, the more my happy little joyful free child self became an introverted, terrified-I’d-be-discovered self. It’s taken me years (you don’t want to know how many) to unlearn that behavior. To discover that the fearful person I was, is not the confident person I started out as when I came into the world.

I meet people every day that are . . .

• Afraid to speak out/up
• Are afraid to be who they are
• Afraid to put forth their opinion
• Afraid to be “wrong” (according to the standards of others, whoever those others are in that moment)
• Afraid to “fail” (according to the standards of others, whoever those others are in that moment)

It could be the lovely, shy person behind the counter at the gym or the gas station attendant afraid to look you in the eye. The musicians who have  a hard time communicating other than on their instruments. The alcoholic or the drug addict who’s more comfortable hiding in those places and spaces than they are expression who they are.

Birth………..Life………….Death

Birth

The beginning of life as a human is birth, at least in terms of awareness as we know it. We come into the world, out of the womb, not only with the awareness our soul had while in that womb, but now with the awareness of all our senses that engage in a whole new way.

Death

We often consider the opposite of LIFE to be DEATH. But BIRTH is actually the opposite of DEATH. It is the beginning and the ending of our physical form in the 3-D world as we know it. Birth is the entry into life and death is the exit out of life. The inhale . . . and the exhale.

Life

LIFE, on the other hand, is what happens between birth and death. It’s all the stuff in between. It’s where we spend however many years breathing in . . . and out to perpetuate the life we’ve been given.

For most of us the fear of death is seen as the fear of the ending of life, but I think it’s much more than that. I think the fear of death starts at a very early age when all the other fears begin to manifest. All those fears listed above start the trend. The very act of breathing becomes difficult when you’re afraid, and breathing is everything. The shallow breath is representative of these fears that result in the biggest fear of all: death. The Biggest Ending of All. Yet, in my way of thinking, it is really the fear of letting go that has evolved into the fear of dying. Letting go of is another way to say “able to express.”

• If I let go of the fear of speaking up, I feel good about expressing myself.
• If I let go of the fear of being who I am, I feel capable of evolving as I move through life.
• If I let go of the fear of putting forth my opinion, I can also be unafraid of listening to the opinions of others.
• If I let go of the fear of being “wrong,” according to the standards of others which have now become my own beliefs and standards and values, I am free to develop my own definitions of what feels right for me.
• If I let go of the fear of “failure,” I not only let go of the tendency to self-sabotage, self-criticize, and potentially bully others, but step into the realm of creative, inspirational thought for no other reason than to see where my thoughts, sensations, and feelings might lead.

In other words . . . Be the Bad-Ass: Let go of the fears we have been taught into the freedom of being the BAD-ASSES we truly are.

Every day is about reminding myself to remember that the “Highly Sensitive Person” I thought and felt I was is actually the Heroically Inherently Bad-Ass being that I am.

The post How to get from point A to point B when you’re an HSP first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

Leaping was easy when you were a kid. It’s time to leap into being the brilliant HSP  you were created to be!

How do you get to be a BADASS . . .  the abundantly brilliant, consciously aware, amazingly dynamic, unapologetically adept, and unambiguously sensational being you were created to be?

First, you probably need to have a “psychic opening.”

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend doing it the way I did. You know, the whole dark-night-of-the-soul experience that takes you so far down into the morass of hell that you almost forget there’s any other place that ever exited. Yeah, that place. So, no, if you don’t need to go there, don’t.

On the other hand.

Sometimes that’s what it takes to have the psychic opening you need to crack wide the tightly wrapped egg-like structure (feels hard until it breaks at the slightest touch) of the depths of you.

What happened to me: My psychic opening

There I was, stuck in British Columbia, in a place I knew nothing about, with people I’d never met, working on a book with a medium I had just met, because my dead husband had told her to contact me.

I know. I thought it was nuts, too.

Randy had only died a few months earlier and I was in no condition to travel anywhere. I could barely get out of bed in the morning, let alone think about getting in my car and driving to Canada or to an airport to fly on an actual plane with actual crowds of people. My panic attacks were worsening. I woke up to my heart pounding and went to sleep—eventually and only after sheer exhaustion—with my heart pounding. The incessant, rapid thumping in my chest was telling me, “You’re in trouble. Your life has caught up to you. You’re dying. You’ll never make it–wherever that might be. Give up.”

Honestly, if it weren’t for this woman’s phone call (“Hello, my name is ____ and Randy told me to call you to say we have to work together on a book”) I may have opted out. The discomfort of living in my own body with my own thoughts and my own emotions was so great that shutting down once and for all felt like a viable option.

The Spirit World is on your side.

Without explaining herself with any specificity, this woman I didn’t know told me I was supposed to stay with her in Canada, work with her, and help her write her book. That Randy was guiding the process. Orchestrating on my (our) behalf.

Looking back, I know it was the lifeline I needed. I felt myself moving through the murky waters of grief to renew my passport, buy a suitcase, pack my bags, purchase a laptop for traveling until one day I arrived on Vancouver Island wondering how in heck I’d gotten there. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I fully began to realize the way the Spirit World and my “gatekeeper,” Randy, was orchestrating so brilliantly to help me live a happier life.

She told me I was having a “psychic opening.”

It took a month for me to hear anything anyone was saying to me, even while I was writing and editing. It took another month for me to hear the words “psychic opening” and understand it had anything to do with me. That everything I knew, believed I knew; felt and believed I felt; thought and believed I thought was pretty much wrong. Or at least upside-down or something other than correct. The first time I heard it I went speechless. They were words, but words that could not possibly apply to me.

What if what you feel is not what you feel?

If you’re reading this, you probably know what it’s like to live life with anxiety and fear and emotional excess. The idea that someone would tell you that it’s because “you’re having a psychic opening” is just as probably not something you’ve ever heard before. But, when I tell you it’s what turned my life around, I’m not exaggerating. I’m not using hyperbole to make a point. I’m simply stating a fact.

When I share the news with clients that this is what is happening to them, most often they look at me like I’m crazy. They’ve been told their emotional states have been “over the top” and “too much” for so long that looking at them any other way seems completely unfathomable. Ridiculous even.

As “HSPs,” It’s time to embrace the concept that YOU can be highly intuitive and phenomenally strong at the same time. . . .

Be the Brilliant HSP You Were Created To Be!

As I said in my last post, it’s time to take the leap into your “BADASS-edness”: you abundantly brilliant, consciously aware, amazingly dynamic, unapologetically adept, and unambiguously sensational–being you were created to be!

It’s about going from unhappy to happy, unempowered to empowered. Into laughing and loving and generally feeling that life is more, not less, than it was cracked up to be. 

Will you feel this way all the time? Probably not. Neither do I. But the pauses in between are getting smaller.

Or you might say that I’m living in the pauses themselves.

Yeah…no. It’s much too far from anything they know, much too off the wall from anything they’ve ever heard, to consider.

And yet, it’s the truth.

Take the leap into your BADASS-edness!

And once you step into the truth and work within its brilliantly high-frequency resolution of competency and awareness, the release is stupendous. The relief is like the biggest breath you’ve ever taken. The renewal is as powerful as the strongest adrenaline surge.

But the best thing about being a brilliant HSP?

You’re one forever.

The post You can be the Brilliant HSP You Were Created To Be! first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

I’m Heidi Connolly, aka the Celestial Professor, and I readily admit that there’s no one quite like me. You might ask, “Who Is Heidi Connolly & Why Is She Writing about HSPs?”

The truth of who I was lies in the past

The truth is that I thought I knew who I was for many years: an over-emotional, hypersensitive, albeit intelligent, “creative type” who was unworthy due to weakness, instability, and lack of confidence. And it didn’t matter how functional I became or what I accomplished, that belief, instilled in me by parents, teachers, and the world at large, stayed with me and walked beside me like a constant shadow. It was not just who I believed I was, but I knew I was.

In fact, it wasn’t until the death of my husband in 2012 that the world shifted on its axis as I was faced with either giving up on life altogether or somehow moving on through the pain, desperation, depression, anxiety, and fear that I’d been born with and still lived with every day of my life.

The reality of who I’ve become lies in the lessons

That is when my journey changed direction. I started to hear from Randy and other spirits on the other side of the veil. I learned I was an HSP, a Highly Sensitive Person. Well, I knew that, right? But now I learned it wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, it was the best thing ever, if only I could shift my paradigm, channel my abilities in a new direction, see them as blessings and not the curses I’d been taught they were. Understand the role that intuition, energy, and consciousness plays in everything.

The purpose of who I am in the now lies in the present through conscious awareness

The conundrum in which I found myself, however, was that, in thinking of myself as someone who felt “too much” in some ways, and wasn’t capable enough in others (using logic to navigate the world), I still felt mired in a place of self-victimization. I needed other people to understand my sensitivities and accommodate me. I was triggered by just about everything.

The world was still a dangerous place because of how strongly I reacted to it. Basically, um, not working for me. I needed to understand how to be who I was, sensitivities and all, without requiring massive compensation from the world.

Who Is Heidi Connolly & Why Is She Writing about HSPs?

Listening carefully to spirit

The tide didn’t shift until I fully committed to the opening of my spirit to spirit. The more I listened rather than reacted, the more I trusted the quiet inside of myself, the more the messages could come through. The more carefully I listened, the more clarity I received. The more clarity I received, the more calm I felt. The more calm I felt, the less I resisted and fought against my life, the more my actions played out in results that felt positive and the more I received validation for moving forward.

It’s what I call having a “psychic opening.”

And, yes, it can feel scary at first, which is why it helps to have a support mechanism in place. Someone who fully comprehends the process and can offer tools (like the psychic octopus) to navigate it.

Be the BADASS

I started playing the flute again. I wrote a novel. I created afterlife meetup groups to help other High Sensitive People—what I might call BADASSES–Abundantly brilliant, consciously aware, amazingly dynamic, unapologetically adept, and unambiguously sensational–beings they were created to be!

It’s about going from unhappy to happy and unempowered to empowered and into laughing and loving and generally feeling good about life. Are you going to feel that way every minute? Probably not. Neither do I. But the pauses in between are getting smaller. Or you might say that I’m living in the pauses themselves.

My approach differs from that of traditional coaches, counselors, and medical professional who deal with the physical, emotional, and psychological, because I use my ability to see things beyond the 3-D to help my clients. I step way outside the box by using my innate abilities as an intuitive medium to work with higher concepts and levels of consciousness. I do this in combination with my expertise in research, writing, and development to explore unconventional yet profoundly concrete solutions. I draw from information that no one taught me, and no one can replicate. In that way, I work with HSPs interested in discovering who they really and the gifts they offer so they can feel the joy of living a higher frequency life—a more woke, fulfilling, satisfying, and divinely driven life—and sharing that amazing invitation with the world.

If you are interested in turning your life around, taking it from miserable to magnificent, the path is calling and I am here if you need me.

The post Who Is Heidi and why is she talking to me about being an HSP? first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

Sensitive, Schmensative.

When you’re an HSP, you’re sensitive. We’ve pretty much figured that one out. But what we want to do is open up to life, not shut it out.

I have a friend who is also an HSP. For my friend, whom I shall call Stella for our purposes here today, indicators of high sensitivity include all the usual ones like anxiety, depression, and phobias. In purely physical terms, there are allergies (to everything from bug bites to the scent of flowers), massive chemical sensitivities (from dryer sheets to cologne to anything and everything with any kind of smell), and social sensitivities (from crowd aversion to simply needing to spend most of her time alone).

Does Stella sound like anyone you know? Does it sound like you?

Everything is an indicator, but an indicator of what???

For Stella, life has become very small. She has to choose avoid all the things in the world that make her miserable or deal with the resultant misery. Most of the time she stays home because going anywhere has become a challenge. Friend’s shampoo? NO! Window cleaner? NO! The laundry aisle of the supermarket? HOLD YOUR BREATH OR ORDER ONLINE! Stand behind someone in line who wears perfume? HEAD FOR THE NEAREST EXIT!

Because no one understands better than I do how shutting out all the things that offend us feels like the only option, I have lots and lots of compassion for my friend. Who, it has to be said, has lots and lots of compassion for me when I go off. (Like just the other day when the smell of a friend’s Irish Spring soap had me sneezing and sneezing…and sneezing.) It’s never a one-way street. Yet I would like to feel that my ability to tune into the true purpose of the manifested indicator is developing over time. How does that happen?

Through conscious awareness.

For example, here’s how I would have reacted in the past to this one of my personal common indicators.

“That’s the third sneeze in a row. Am I feeling okay? I’m not sure. Now I can’t stop sneezing. Now I’m sneezing uncontrollably. Where’s the darn Kleenex box?  I could be getting a cold. I could even have Covid. Do I have any Covid tests lying around? Who did I see lately who could have given it to me? What if I gave it to someone else? Omigod, what if I’m really, really sick? What would I do if I got sick and had to go in the hospital? Who would take care of my house? What about all my clients, all my work?”

People have lots of names and commentary for this kind of thinking. As Eckhart Tolle says in The Power of Now, “As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings, those needs, wants, attachments, and aversions, and apart from them there is no ‘I’ except as a mere possibility, an unfulfilled potential, a seed that has not yet sprouted.”

My own mind used to go around in so many circles that I rarely, if ever, felt capable of making a right decision. Not only that, but once I’d made the decision, I was always sure it was the wrong one. In the instance of my sneezing indicator, when it shows up, I immediately cop to the fact that it’s associated with having been “out in public,” in the airport, maybe, on a plane, or on a first date. While it wouldn’t be accurate to say I am miserably uncomfortable in those circumstances since I’ve gotten so used to reeling in my good ol’ psychic octopus, it’s usually after the fact, once I get home, that the sneezing begins. What is my sneezing an indicator of? The fact that I am processing whatever leftover resistance I was experiencing during whatever it was I was experiencing!

I was on the plane without an issue. I got all the way to baggage claim before the sneezing kicked in. Relief, once again, at feeling I was back on my home turf.

The date was uncomfortable. I felt in alignment during the date, but relieved to leave, I immediately began to sneeze.

These episodes used to last days, if not longer, and be neatly, conveniently categorized, as “some kind of bug that requires attention…medicine…a doctor…concern…worry…etc. Now? Rarely longer than a few hours at most.

If you were in my head, here’s what you’d be hearing. “Oh. I’m shifting. I’m having one of my shifts. Isn’t this interesting? I don’t particularly like this one because my nose gets so sore, but I know it’ll be over soon because all I’m doing is reacting to the effort I made to handle my recent experience. I know that as it gets easier and easier to be in alignment, with my octopus tentacles snuggled in close, this kind of thing is happening less and less often. I’m really looking forward to the time when it stops happening altogether. Yay for me!”

(In the meantime, where’s that Kleenex?)

The post HSPs and the “Real” World: Is it really what you think it is first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.