HSPs & the Red Coat: Part 1

When something feels like yours, isn’t it yours? Remember the Bible story of “Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors”? In a nutshell, Joseph, his father’s favorite son, was gifted a magnificent coat, which made his brothers jealous. So jealous that they hatched a plot to sell him into slavery for 20 pieces of silver. In Egypt, Joseph’s his gift for telling the future helped him turn his fortunes. Let’s take a look at what happens when you’re around “someone else’s coat.”

HSPs & the Red Coat Questions:

• Is your “coat” like Joseph’s?
• Is it really yours?
• Does it really have your UES, your Unique Energetic Signature?

We’ve been talking about your Psychic Octopus for a while now, and have started to get into the nitty-gritty of how to apply that life-altering tool with the last couple of posts on your Psychic Sponge (Energetic Sponge). But which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

In other words, “wringing out” sponge energy that you may have soaked up from your environment is a great thing, but until you recognize you’ve taken it on, there’s not much you can do about it. Which brings us to the next critical bit of information to ensure your roadmap to amplifying your vibration and celebrating your sensitivities takes you where you want to go!

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Present Day

You’ve just arrived for dinner at your favorite restaurant, a small, intimate place you’ve been going to for years. You’re wearing your favorite coat, the one you wear as often as weather permits. It’s red, with a velvet collar. It fits you to a T. It’s comfortable and luxurious at the same time, which isn’t the case with too many clothes, so when you wear it you feel fantastic. You especially love that the pockets are nice and deep so you can store things like your wallet and cell phone. When you wear it you couldn’t possibly feel more like you.

Anyway, there you are at the restaurant. You remove your special coat and hand it to the waiter who’s been there forever and knows you by name. You ask for Guido’s family and he asks for yours. He takes your coat to the coat room for safekeeping.

You have a meal that’s as tasty as ever (probably eggplant parm) and are ready to leave. Guido brings you your gorg red coat and helps you into it. It’s begun to snow outside and you are glad for its warmth as you pass through the door to walk home.

3 Months Later: Whose Coat Is It???

Your phone rings. It’s an unidentified number, so you let it go to voicemail and forget about it for a couple of days. When the same number calls through again, you’re distracted and pick it up automatically and say hello. The voice on the other end of the phone sounds hesitant.

“Um, I know this will sound strange,” says the voice, “but I really think you have my coat.”

“Um, I know this will sound strange,” the voice goes on, “but I really think you have my coat.”

You look at the phone, shocked. What is this person talking about? “What do you mean, I have your coat?” you repeat. “What are you talking about?”

“I know,” the voice says again, “it sounds crazy. But you were at Antonio’s Ristorante three months ago, right?”

“Well, yes,” you say slowly, thinking back, “but how did you know that? Who are you? What do you want?” You’re beginning to get suspicious.

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad,” continues the voice. “It’s just that I really think you went home with my coat . . . and I went home with yours.”

“That’s impossible,” you say.

“Nooo, I don’t think so,” says the voice, irritatingly self-assured.

“I have that coat right here with me,” you say, well on the way to peeved. “It can’t possibly be yours. It’s my red coat with the black velvet collar. It fits me perfectly. I love this coat. I’ve had it for a long time and I’d know if it weren’t mine.”

“I’m really sorry,” says the voice once again, not really sounding sorry at all, “it’s just that if you look in the pocket you’ll find something I left in the pocket that’s really special to me. I thought I’d lost it, but then, when I was at Antonio’s last night, Guido thought I was you at first, that there was another customer who always wore the same red coat. That’s when I realized we’d probably walked off with the wrong coats.”

You can’t believe it. It’s ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense.

You can’t believe it. It’s ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense. How could something that feels so right not belong to you? You’ve worn it forever; wouldn’t you know if it was not yours? Wouldn’t you know by its feel or its smell? Still, you hesitate. Finally, you say, “Okay, so what you’re saying is that you left something in the pocket that you want back, right?”

“That’s right,” says the voice. “Can you check for me?”

You sigh. This really feels like a very strange conversation. Although you are still not willing to admit the coat is not yours, if it were you, you know you’d want your coat back—or at least the thing in the coat that you thought you’d lost, so you slowly stick your hand in the left pocket and feel around. You remove a used tissue, a receipt, and a mint, but nothing else. You turn to the other pocket and, still feeling stupid, stick your hand in. Out comes another tissue and a stick of lip balm. You don’t feel much else. You’re relieved, much more relieved that you think the circumstances warrant, and you don’t know why.

“Nope, there’s nothing here,” you say, sounding a bit smug.

The voice sounds small this time. “Please,” it says, “could you check just once more? It’s really small, so it often slips way down into the corner of the pocket. It’s a little metal coin of an angel that my father gave me when I was little and before he died. It means a lot to me.”

You sigh an even bigger sign, but agree to check again when you hear the catch in their voice. This time, you make sure to delve deep down in the corner where you feel something that catches you up short. Sure enough, there’s something there, something small and thin and round. You almost don’t want to remove your hand to see what it is. Somehow you know this is the angel coin this person has lost.

Which is when the moment you realize that, if the coin in the pocket belongs to someone else, so does your coat. That it’s not your coat at all.

2 Days Later

You have just exchanged coats with the person who called you on the phone. You met at Antonio’s, which seemed appropriate. You looked at each other and took each other in. You’re about the same size, and have the same hair color, but other than that, you are not the same at all. When you offer back the angel coin to this person, you feel both uncomfortable and relieved. You cannot believe that all this time you were wearing a coat that you were convinced was yours, but belonged to someone else. You are thanked many times over by the person whose coat you were wearing and who was wearing your coat before they leave.

This is when you ask yourself the following questions:

• If wearing someone else’s coat can feel so right, can feel as if it’s mine without a shadow of a doubt, then what else could be going on here?
• What else am I believing is “mine” that really belongs to someone else?
• How do I know if/when I’m in my own Unique Energetic Signature or diddling around in someone else’s?
• What about all the feelings I feel and the thoughts that come into my head unbidden?
• When I feel sad or angry or upset, are those feelings really mine?
• Because if they’re not mine, I don’t really want them.
• If I know I don’t want them, how do I give them back—or not accept them at all?

These are questions you have never asked before, but realize in this moment of life-shattering brilliance that they could change your life.

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STAY TUNED FOR PART 2 of “HSPs and the Red Coat.”

The post Your you feel what you feel, they’re your feelings…right? first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

In Part 1 of HSPs & The Psychic Sponge we talked about how easy it is to soak up “water” when you’re an energetic sponge. When the world is like a bowl of water and you’re a dry sponge just waiting to be dunked, deluged, and left dripping. When, because you’re such a High Sensitive, you go around picking up all sorts of things from people and the environment (the greater energetic field) that, it turns out, you wish you hadn’t.

In Part 2 of HSPs & The Psychic Sponge we’re going to talk about what you can do about it.

Step 1. First you have to recognize that’s what you’re doing. You can’t change something if you have no awareness that it’s happening. The good thing is that as soon as you are aware you’re doing it, you can take several steps forward in one giant leap.

Step 2. Okay, so you have become aware that you are affected by the energies around you. What else is new? Still, you may never have looked at what you do so automatically, so easily, and realized that perhaps you have a choice what to do about it.

Step 3. You now ask, “What choice do I have?  Do I leave the environment? Escape? Hide? Put up walls and barriers to people, circumstances, and energies? Or, do I change who I am to meet the needs of that environment, of the people in those environments?

Step 4. I’d like to say that Step 4 is the biggest step of all, but without Steps 1 through 3, it can’t happen. Because Step 4 takes you to a whole different place. The place where you no longer feel out of control or irrelevant or overloaded or fearful or ready to hide at any moment behind makeup or laboratory doors or a false persona.

Here’s what happens in this new place of awareness. You:

1. You become aware. “Oh, I’m feeling this way. It feels uncomfortable. I don’t like feeling this way.”
2. Instead of running away or hiding, you stay and process. “What if the energy I’m feeling does not actually belong to me? What it if belongs to someone else, or to the energy of the group? Hmm . . . If it’s not mine, do I need to know whose it is, what it is, or what it means?
3. You realize in taking on other people’s energy, you have put yourself in a vulnerable position. In doing that, you have let go of your sovereign state of natural, innate empowerment. You want to get that back! But what can you do to “get it back”?
4. You realize have another incredibly powerful option: The option of self-alignment.

Self-alignment is the key

The only really good answer to stepping away from the invasive energy around us is to be 100% secure in our own energy. What I call the UES, your Unique Energetic Signature (see previous posting on UES). If you don’t know what it feels like to be in your own energy, how can you know if you’re psyche is busy digging around in someone else’s? You feel as if its their energy bearing down on you, but, in reality, it’s that we’re inviting that energy in. How? By being the sponge.

It’s as if we’re saying to the world, “Here I am. I’m a sponge (being) permanently soaked with water (energy) so the world feels like a permanently threatening place.”

You know what really messes with your head, though, once you take on this label of HSP in the way the world uses it? We become the victims of our own game. “Poor me, I’m so vulnerable. I feel so much, it hurts so much. I want it to stop. Please understand why I can’t be here, can’t do this, can’t . . . can’t . . . can’t.

It was when I realized I’d willingly taken on the role of victim that I knew something had to change. If YOU are the psychic/energetic sponge, YOU are the one who can change your own reality.

1. Wring yourself out. When you come out of the “water” dripping wet, you can wring yourself out. Literally see yourself wringing out all the energy of whatever and whoever is around you.
2. Reel yourself in. If you’d rather picture yourself as the Psychic Octopus, go for it. I love imagining all my tentacles curling back in where they are snug and happy wrapped comfortably around myself. Remember, it’s not about pushing away (resisting), it’s about inviting in your sense of you, the energy of who you are, because that’s where you feel so free to be you.
3. Learn what your Unique Energetic Signature feels like so you can live it all the time. Once you know the difference between your energy and the energy “out there,” the choice to stay in your own energy becomes a viable option.

Staying in your own energetic signature feels so good that you will never want to leave. It’s like the  energetic land of Shangri-La where all is well because you feel calm, at peace, and one with all there is.

Wow.

***Find out more about how to identify, recognize, and utilize your UES, your Unique Energetic Signature here.***

The post HSPs & the Psychic Sponge: Part 2 first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.