Are you still looking for a magic pill to change your life?

In Part 1 of HSPs & The Magic Pill, I talked about the way HSP-ism interacts with and is interlaced with symptoms, labeling of those symptoms, and diagnoses of those symptoms when you are an HSP. I talked about how much I yearned for a “magic pill” that would change my life.

Again, I do not advocate for nor am I against the use of medication for any purpose prescribed by your medical professional. What I present here is simply another way to interpret some of the symptoms–psychological, chemical, mental, emotional, and physical, you may be experiencing as a high-sensitive person. Like me.

Are you living in the label you’ve been giving?

In Part 1, you read about how I began taking Prozac against my husband’s wishes and fully immersed in my own shame that I “needed it.” I don’t think that shame has ever completely gone away. Needing something implies a weakness, and being weak is bad, right? That’s what I thought.

The incredible thing was that within days I was getting out of bed in the morning for the first time in my life that I could recall with actual enthusiasm. Gone was the “Omigod, another day, groan” thing. GONE. I couldn’t believe that this tiny pill called Prozac could make such a difference in my experience. The cloud of shame under which I lived had to stay buried in order to allow this new me to shine. Because I kept the fact that I was “on an anti-depression medication” under wraps, eventually Randy stopped asking me about it; we silently agreed to not speak about it, pretend it didn’t exist. The shame didn’t go away, but I gave up trying to make it go away.

Life changes in ways you cannot possibly expect

And now it’s 2012 and Randy is dying. Over the almost two decades we’d been together, I’d been on and off meds periodically, but  mostly off. I really wanted to “make it on my own” without the help of drugs. I cannot stress how much energy it took to pretend everything was okay. Especially after Randy’s illness began taking a more severe toll and my level of anxiety ramped up and the thought most prevalent in my mind was, “I can’t deal with this. I can’t deal with this.” Over and over it ran, even though I was dealing with it, one painful day at a time.

When the worst happened, all the “what ifs” came to pass, when I was left to scrape myself together, I’m really not sure why I didn’t go back on medication. I can see where it would have helped carve out a space for me to begin to cope. It seems I’d developed a sort of stubborn sense of what was right and what was wrong and what was weak and what was strong—and that no matter how weak I felt, I could not give in.

I don’t share any of this in support of medication or to steer anyone a way from medication. And I do not share my story to whine about the past. My only purpose here is to share how I made the transition from someone who “needed drugs” to someone who doesn’t.

Label, labels, and more labels

I know that my “anxiety disorder” is just another aspect of hyper-sensitivity, but that hyper-sensitivity is just another aspect of being highly intuitive and it’s completely within my power to use that intuition without getting caught up in the energy of it. Now it doesn’t feel like anxiety; it feels like the energy of intuition, curiosity, and inspiration.

I know that my “chronic depression” is just another mislabeling—believing that my intuitive sensitivities  were wrong, bad, and a problem, and that shutting down was the only way to survive. Now I know that when/if I feel the energy, the frequency, of so-called “depression,” it’s really only an energy reminding me to listen, really listen, to whatever message might be coming in. Just because I assign a label to a feeling, an emotional feeling like “depression,” does not mean that’s what it is.

So often, in fact almost always, these kinds of feelings are not what they appear to be. If no label existed, would I still feel the way I feel? Quite possibly. And yet, what if the label were not “you are depressed,” but “you are being guided to listen to your intuition”? How might that change our perception of that energetic experience?

For me, it changed everything and continues to be the way I live my life. Things are not always what they appear to be, even by consensus. “Uncomfortable” is not necessarily bad. What looks like a duck and quacks like a duck is not always a duck.

Consider new options. Learn a new way. Give yourself a break. Think differently. Wonder. Be curious. Open to the possibilities.

You won’t regret it.