The cure to the HSP’s psychic sponge syndrome: Laugh!!!!!

I’m back today with another bit of down-to-earth spirituality. Today’s topic? Spiritual irreverence.

Can you handle the fallout if you’ve forgotten how to laugh?

It’s not every day that you find yourself doing something that causes an uproar of divergent opinions—and resultant advice. Well, at least it hasn’t been that way for me.

I mean, it’s true that “coming out” as a medium caused quite a stir. There I was, Harvard Girl, the writer, editor, book designing, publishing consultant of Harvard Girl Word Services, suddenly saying I was talking to dead people. So, I guess you could say that I know something about strong reactions. And we won’t even get into family. Telling your mother you’re hearing from good ol’ Dad? Mmm, turns out, not the best convo starter ever….

Anyway….

When I started writing books (with my dear departed husband) and talking about us all being Vacationing Angels, I learned pretty fast how to spot the dedicated, true-blue skeptics from the “well, I might be willing to hear more” type. I also learned, really really fast that it didn’t matter. That the only thing that mattered was being true to myself.

• Which brings me to today’s down-to-earth spiritual subject matter [slide of CP animation]
• When you’re true to yourself, you attract other people who are true to themselves.
• When you’re true to yourself, it doesn’t matter if other people agree with you or not.
• When you’re true to yourself, most of the people you attract are willing to listen to what you have to say, even if they end up disagreeing with it.
• When you’re true to yourself, you feel good.

Which…leads me to the title of my new book, Elevating Your HSP-ness….

I can hear you….

Go ahead. Say it out loud. Reading the words just doesn’t do it. When I spoke the title aloud for the first time, I couldn’t stop giggling. Naturally, I discounted its use. I mean, right? Who’d willingly, knowingly, use a word for a spiritual book about being a high sensitive that sounds like penis?  Not me!

After that, the title went through months of iterations. “The HSP’s Owners Manual.” “The HSP’s Roadmap to Greatness.” “Embracing your High Sensitivity.” The problem was that no matter how much these titles described what I was trying to convey, none of them made me FEEL GOOD. None of them resonated, vibrated with the frequency of YES!!! THIS MAKES ME WANT TO GIGGLE AND LAUGH AND FEEL JOYFUL!!!

My psychic sponge was picking up everyone’s opinion but my own.

I didn’t know what to do. I kept going back and forth, back and forth, buying domain after domain and reworking my potential book covers. What to do?

Ultimately? I did exactly what I talk about doing in this book: I let it go. I worked on other things—the writing, the blogs, the vlogs, all that stuff. And then, one day, I was talking to a friend and colleague (who just happens to be in my video Summit linked below), Jill Lebeau. When I mentioned all my potential names, she thought they were “fine.” Which we all know is code for BORING. Then, I said, “I wanted to name it Elevating Your HSP-ness, but you know, that would just be crazy. Too irreverent. What would people think?”

The reality is that my psychic sponge was too darn overloaded to check in with my own guidance–that Intuitive Guidance System we all have!

There was a moment of silence. Then Jill got it—and cracked up. She laughed and laughed and kept on laughing. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. But, finally, when she got herself under control, she said, “There’s nothing irreverent about bliss and joy in spirituality! We need to laugh to raise our frequency. And that’s what you’re talking about—living a high-frequency life! I think it’s perfect.”

It took me a while, but I couldn’t ignore the high vibration of what she said—and what I felt. So, yes. The name of my book is ELEVATING YOUR HSP-NESS. After all, I’m talking about “down-to-earth spirituality” here. And that means applying spirituality to everyday life as an Angel on Vacation. Celebrating those qualities of you that are the absolute highest frequency. Because we can’t spend our time “way up in the clouds” and live “down here” without some kind of mechanism that invites us to stay present. To use all our “up in the clouds”-ness for the express purpose of enjoying the earthly aspects of our being.

So I say go for it. I’ll be right there, laughing along with you in loving irreverence.

The post The cure to the HSP’s Psychic Sponge Syndrome: Laugh!!!!!! first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

Just because someone is high-functioning doesn’t mean they’re not highly sensitive. All it really means, at least if they’re in a healthy state of mind, body, and soul, is that they’ve somehow learned to direct their sensitivities and kick them up a notch or two.

Anderson Cooper is a journalist, and a great one. But he’s also, apparently, an emotional and loving father. You have to imagine he’s pretty adept at organizing his life, and was probably a darn good student as well. All great qualities, but nothing to do with the qualities of being an HSP.

Could Anderson Cooper be one of US? Could he be an HSP?

I think he might be. How do I know? Because—though I’m the first to admit that I’m no Anderson Cooper in a zillion different ways!—I am, and have been, high-functioning for a large percentage of my life.

But the real point I’m trying to make is that being an HSP does not preclude being deliberately, determinedly, and successfully high-functioning.

On the other hand, just because you’re high-functioning does not necessarily mean you’re happy or even content. It certainly doesn’t mean self-satisfied, self-reliant, or full of self-worth.

All it means is that you have the skills to do whatever it is you want or have chosen or sometimes have been coerced to do well enough to get the job done. You could be a dishwasher or you could be a museum curator. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re convinced you’re good at it or feel good doing it. It’s even possible you suffer from Imposter Syndrome, where, no matter how good you are at what you do, you still feel inadequate.

Ever wonder why actors tend toward screwed up personal lives?

We usually attribute their “problems” to too much fame and fortune. And, certainly, without those things they wouldn’t be in the situation they’re in.

But there’s more to it than that. There’s also the obvious fact that so many of them are highly sensitive people.

Can you imagine being an HSP who knows you take on other people’s energy, but don’t know what to do about it? Can you imagine being on a movie set with hundreds of movie people all milling about doing their jobs—many of them interacting with you—for hours and hours every single day? Can you imagine what it’s like to feel the feelings of the character you’re acting without feeling some kind of aftermath of leftover energy trails?

I can’t.

Sure, I’ve worked as a musician in orchestras; a human resource trainer in corporate America; a counselor for teenagers. But at no point did I recognize that the tremendous weight I carried around was due to all the energy of others flooding my being.

Sadly, even once I had an inkling that was what was going on, I still had no idea what to do about it.

Sometimes people seem to figure it out on their own.

Anderson Cooper seems to have figured it out on his own. Not that we have any idea what it’s like being Gloria Vanderbilt’s son, born and bred in his unusually eccentric circumstances. Maybe he’s had years of therapy, right? I mean, who can say? We surely don’t know how much of what we see is an act, being that he’s a TV personality and all.

But when I heard him talk about the loss of his brother to suicide and the recent death of his mother and how he wants nothing more than to pass on to his children who these people were to him “without it being cloaked in sadness,” I felt his willingness to dip into the pain of the loss and rise out again through love for his children.

We are not all Anderson Coopers.

We are not all super smart or super rich or super talented.

Yet, as HSPs, we are ALL fully capable of bringing out the best in ourselves by elevating the sensitivities we have so they serve us and all of humanity.

The post High-Functioning versus High-Sensitive: Are they mutually exclusive? first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

(Or . . . Why can’t I just let go and be in the flow like everyone says I should be?)

When I was growing up, everything bothered me. Everything upset me. Everything made me cry. Everything scared me. Everything was hard.

Now, the word of the day is “trigger.”

“It’s such a trigger for me,” we say. “You’re triggering me.” “You know that triggers me.” “If you know that’s a trigger for me, why don’t you stop doing it/saying it?”

What’s the one thing all these ways we express ourselves have in common? Well, I hate to say it, but it’s that all of them are putting the reason (the blame) for our being triggered on the person, place, or thing that’s getting in the way of our comfort.

• “The scent in here drives me crazy; I hate scented candles.”
• “He knows I hate to be yelled at, so why can’t he learn to lower his voice?”
• “I can’t stand green pepper, so why would they put it in the food?”

  

All of these statements have something else in common, too: They all express significantly low-vibration language, use of which, frankly, probably won’t catapult you into a *high-frequency life.*

Please understand that I’m not complaining about other people’s complaining about their triggers–as such. I’m not saying that we all don’t have valid reasons for having developed our triggers. Things like poor parenting, growing up with abuse, feeling ignored, unloved, unappreciated. We could go on and on. Most of us have at least one or two, if not dozens, of things that draw us in like a spider to a fly. “Come on in, you’ll love it in here.” And then . . . ZAP! You’re caught in the middle of something from which not only does it appear there is no escape but that sends you spiraling into the HSP’s Land of the Lost.

What really matters, though, is that at some point in our lives, we start to look at our triggers as something we have at some point decided we are willing to react to instead of something happening to us that we cannot control.

No, we can’t control someone who decides to yell or put green pepper in our dinner. But we certainly have a say about our reaction to it.

I’ve learned the following:

1. Going around all day talking about the things that trigger me only triggers me more.
2. Using language that has a low frequency like “I hate it when you…” “Why is this happening to me?” “It’s not fair…” “They should know it hurts me…” are all downers. Say them out loud or hear someone else say them and immediately the energy in the room goes south. If and when YOU say it, your own vibration has just crashed.
3. Talking about what triggers me triggers me into finding reasons I’m triggered that justify my reaction.
4. Talking to others about the fact that I was triggered by someone or something feels satisfyingly reassuring.
5. I like being reassured because it feels like someone is responding to my need for understanding or love or support or whatever else I want

If I turn my low-frequency HSP language into high-frequency language, the Land of the Lost turns into the Land of the Found.

Let’s start with the triggering episode.

Trigger: My friend is upset and has been talking to me in a louder-than-usual voice.

Response: I’m immediately back in my childhood being yelled at by my father. I can’t hear anything my friend is saying because all I want to do is run and hide and cry and scream. In the corner.

Reaction: I yell at my friend, “You know that I can’t hear you if you raise your voice to me! You know my father used to yell at me and I hate that. Why are you yelling at me?”

What’s really going on: Deflection, Victimization, Defensiveness, Justification, Avoidance, Blame, and Self-righteousness–not that there’s not a whole lot of hurt in there, too.

What I do differently

Trigger: My friend is upset and has been talking to me in a louder-than-usual voice.

Response: I’m immediately back in my childhood being yelled at by my father. I can’t hear anything my friend is saying because all I want to do is run and hide and cry and scream. In the corner.

Realization: Wow. I’m really out of alignment here. I know what brought it on and I don’t particularly enjoy it, but even if it feels uncomfortable, it’s a huge opportunity to work on pulling in my psychic octopus tentacles and practice my newfound awareness that I have the wherewithal to reflect on what I’m feeling even as I’m feeling it. Even a moment of objectivity in that kind of situation can switch off the “I’m freaking out” and switch on the “Oh, how interesting” switch.

One step back = a giant leap forward.

TIP OF THE DAY:

1. Write a list of 10 things that trigger you.
2. Put a checkmark next to all the ones that feel justified based on your life experience.
3. Now erase them.

The post Why Does Everything In the World Seem To Trigger Me So Much? first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

Heidi Winkler, colleague, author, and founder/ CEO of the Winkler Leadership Academy agrees that people who are highly sensitive, such as many of the sales reps she trains, are quicker to adapt to their customers, what their underlying motivations and needs are, and, as a result, write more business.

Naturally, I am not surprised.

In a Forbes interview in 2020, Dr. Elaine Aron, author of The Highly Sensitive Person, and pioneer in this field of work, said:

“John Hughes [HSP, successful entrepreneur, author, sponsor of the movie Sensitive–The Untold Story], wrote an article [that] describes the three specific abilities that he believed HSPs to be [that make] them uniquely effective leaders.”

3 Reasons HSPs Make Better Leaders, by John Hughes

According to Hughes, the first is Subtleties (“taking in environmental subtleties is an invaluable leadership ability”). The second is Processing over Action (“HSPs are better equipped to lead because they naturally fall to the background, allowing team members to freely speak and share and shine”). The last is Resonance (“Resonant leaders seem to say and do the right thing at just the right time. This isn’t luck or magic, it’s their innate ability to feel deeply, process richly, and patiently consider the right words and actions for the moment”).

Hughes, on his website, goes on to say: “We also carry a responsibility to do something with all that we create inside our minds and hearts–as if it’s not ours, but something we owe back to the world. This emotional sensitivity, deep connectedness, and rich inner life feed an HSP’s ability to lead teams in a way that others simply can’t.”

Wait!

No one is saying that HSPs can automatically lead teams, or that only HSPs are good team leaders, or that others aren’t potentially great team leaders. However, we do have innate abilities that allow us to lead, should that be our choice, in uniquely rich and profound ways. Some generalizations include:

1. We’re the ones who notice when the normally chatty manager stops talking.
2. We’re the ones who normally sense discomfort or tension in a room and, instead of ignoring it, look for its cause and for ways to diffuse it or address it.
3. We’re the ones who listen as much as we talk because we want to hear what others have to contribute.
4. We’re the ones who believe that promoting, elevating, and praising others is a significantly improved way of increasing production.
5. We’re the ones who want others to succeed.

And yet . . .

Being a good leader when you’re an HSP does not always come naturally if you’ve led a life where you have felt underestimated, undervalued, and/or misunderstood. If our sensitivity to language, conversation, non-verbal cues, sound, scents, emotions, and so on, is something we have determined is a deterrent, it is unlikely we will use those traits in ways that contribute, not detract, from anything we choose to accomplish.

Withdrawing into the background will not, in most cases, bring us the attention we deserve for the work we do and will not, in most cases, reveal our invaluable leadership qualities.

We need to believe that our sensitivity is our secret weapon in whatever environment/field in which we choose to invest.

We need to believe that we are better equipped to lead because we do not have the common need to push our own agenda.

. . . And that it’s not luck that causes our success, but our inherent abilities put to use in ways that serve us and the world around us.

The post Why Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) Make Great Leaders! first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

I still like to fall back to sleep in the morning. For some reason it seems to be when I get my best sleep time. You know, from the time I should get up to the time I actually get up. Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes it’s a matter of moments, but often I’ll look at the clock and focus on contemplating my gratitudes . . . and then, boom. It’s an hour (or so) later. How does that happen?

How does it happen that even these days, when I want to get up and be the person I am and do the things I do, I still feel that old hankering to dive back under the covers like a mole underground.

“It’s so darn hard.” (Or is it?)

I have a feeling that it’s due to my old conditioning, my old cell patterns, that are still signaling me that life is HARD. That getting up only means more HARDSHIP. That once you’re up you have to deal with everything that’s HARD that is sure to happen that day.

Wow. What a realization.

Even though I’m no longer that person, apparently, inside, there is still a kernel of the old me that says, “Are you sure you really want to get into the day when you don’t know what it will bring?” It’s the control thing again. The belief that life is out of our control and that staying in bed will solve everything because if I’m in bed nothing will happen and if nothing happens then I’ll be fine.

Talk about circular logic.

I recorded some music a while back that is encoded with the frequencies of cell-pattern restructuring. Its purpose, like all my guided music, is to bypass the natural levels of human resistance and get directly into the DNA where energy really shifts. More than that, though, this specific recording is meant to deal with the long-ingrained beliefs and emotions we hold around why and how we deal with life. Big stuff, like the legacies of our families, the generations before us that spawned our genetic makeup, and the generations to come.

With any kind of tool from the HSP toolbox, you have to use it to experience what it offers and the results it can have. If you have a hammer, but don’t use it to bang in the nail, what good is it?

This morning I reminded myself of the following:

1. What good is knowing about your Psychic Octopus if you don’t bother applying it?
2. What good is conscious awareness if you ignore it?
3. What good is guided music if you don’t listen to it?

The answer? Not much.

So today I opened up my audiofiles and set “Pushing the Reset Button” music to loop all day long. Eventually, I put it on mute because who wants to hear the same music all day long, right? But it doesn’t matter. The energy vibrates at a frequency that somehow automatically burrows in deep into the soul, deep into the DNA where it is needed the most. Where I need it the most right now.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up looking more like this.

I’ll let you know.

The post It’s Just Another Day and I’m Still An HSP . . . Or Am I? first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

I thought that writing on one topic every day would be a really tough call. What could I possibly have to say each day that would matter to me and all of you? I asked myself this question for the last couple of months . . . until today. Because I realized, suddenly, that the subject of high sensitivity is a never-ending fruit ripe for the picking.

Every day is a whopper-tunity!

Every day my life as an HSP offers me whopper-tunities to practice the tools I teach. To reach into my knowingness and my ever-evolving awareness and come up with some way of being in the world that doesn’t feel like a struggle, and instead feels like a cool puzzle I’m putting together. One minute it’s a relationship puzzle, the next it’s a dealing-with-negativity puzzle or a being-in-a-crowded-place puzzle. I may look like your average person going about her business, but inside? I’m doing everything I suggest to you.

1. I’m asking myself if my psychic octopus is out.
2. I’m asking myself if I’m soaking up someone else’s energy/emotions/thoughts like a psychic sponge.
3. I’m reflecting on whether I’m feeling aligned or like a twizzle stick on steroids.
4. If I recognize I’m not in alignment, I ask myself what’s affecting me, why I’m reacting, what I’m reacting to, and then deciding to get back into alignment.
5. Once I decide to get back into alignment, I pull out my trusty psychic octopus and get started.

It happened again today.

I was in the car with someone who was talking about all sorts of things that were wrong in the world. And, while I could not possibly disagree with her opinions on climate change and other important worldly events, I also felt myself shutting down so I wouldn’t take in that energy of “I hate this . . .” and “I hate when . . .” and “I hate when people . . .”. I felt my jaw tense as I clamped my mouth shut. I felt my breathing move high up in my chest. I didn’t respond because I could not even nod my head without feeling that I would be indicating I was good with how they were expressing what they were thinking…the frequency of the words alone was distressing.

You see, while I might agree that the world is going through a tough time, I believe there is a certain perfection in all of it, even in my own HSP-ness, and even in my friend’s need to express her discouraged outlook. So, I don’t want to nod along as if to say, “Yes, I feel that way, too.” If I do that, I will be vibrating in that same energy of discouragement and distress, which I know very well from experience, will only invite me to spiral down into a place I really do not want to be.

I am a committed self-guided HSP with an HSP-ness toolbox that rocks!

I love this person with whom I was traveling. I love my time with them. What I need to love more, however, is my alignment within myself. Because, as an HSP committed to celebrating my sensitivities and uplifting the world, I need to address that first before I can shine my own light.

And we all know you need a toolbox full of great tools to do that.

Let me know how you feel about this topic.

Because it matters.

Watch my short video on HSP-ness here!

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Private coaching sessions are also available here. Many more musical recordings are available here. My new novel The Gateway Café can be purchased here.

Keep an eye out for my new book, soon to be published: Elevating Your HSP-ness: How To Live a High-Frequency Life by Amplifying Your Vibration, Celebrating Your Sensitivities, & Uplifting the World

Thank you for shining your light into the world!

The post The HSP High-Sensitivity Everyday Toolbox (Heidi’s Playbook) first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

It’s no wonder that being a person with heightened sensitivities carries with it an extra charge around the experience of loss. I mean, think about it. Put a person that experiences your deeper than average feelings and sensations and add the death of someone beloved? It’s a recipe for combustion.

But it’s also a recipe for freedom.

It’s really not enough to say, “I’m more sensitive, so of course I’m going to be more affected.” The fact is that we are constantly looking for ways to express how we feel—the freedom to express how we feel—because so much of our time is spent trying not to express how we feel. You  know, all the sticky stuff. The things for other people that may seem all in a day’s work, but for us mean trepidation or panic or pain or exhaustion.

What happens when death is involved

In our society, when you lose someone to death, suddenly an opening occurs. You are offered a sort of reprieve from the “buck up and deal with it” way of life. People are more willing to let you cry openly, talk about your feelings, reveal your emotional state through what you say, do, eat, or undertake. Even if it still makes them miserably uncomfortable.

In other words, grieving becomes a logical reason for your emotional state, which somehow makes it easier and more acceptable for others to handle.

Is grieving a good thing?

The thing about grief is that being in that state also makes it okay for us. You know, the ones who are doing the grieving. It opens the door for our more authentic selves to peek through the curtains behind which we are constantly, dedicatedly, hiding. We get more leeway to be who we are, act the way we might act, and respond the way we might respond when we can point to loss as the reason behind it all.

I’m not saying that we are using death as an excuse! All I’m saying is that it takes an inordinate amount of energy to plug the valve of your state of being on a constant basis. Energy to control, mitigate, calm, or annihilate through whatever means you decide works for you. Is it food? Or drugs? Or isolation? Whatever it is, it takes a powerfully high level of energy to deflect attention from the state of your being. It’s as if we’re storing it up like a bunch of nuts in a squirrel’s hideaway that we never get to use unless something “acceptable” comes along. Something like death.

Death sucks

I’m also not saying that death of someone you love (or have any kind of relationship with) isn’t a big deal. In fact, there’s pretty much nothing like it on the scale of what sucks. Still, I know that if I hadn’t been so weighed down, so burdened by my own need to hide what I felt about everything under the sun, I might not have collapsed so completely upon the death of my husband. The plug in the value came off and out came years of repressed, suppressed freak-out.

The first step in not feeling you have to hide is accepting your HSP-ness for what it is: A true blessing. In order to do that, we need to dedicate ourselves to knowing there is another answer beyond “coping.” A much easier, user-friendly approach that is committed to opening, heightening, and exemplifying.

We all admit that loss and death are part of life, but that doesn’t usually help us when the time comes to deal with it. As a Highly Sensitive Person, though, death does not have to crush us like a bolder on an ant.

Know yourself. Express yourself. Be yourself. Love yourself. That’s where it all starts.

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Check out my posts on the Psychic Octopus (globbing onto other people’s energy); your UES (how to identify and stay in your Unique Energetic Signature); and your IGS (how to confidently and consistently tap into your Intuitive Guidance System.

Thank you for shining your light into the world!

The post Death, Loss, & The HSP first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

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!.

HSPs and Automatic Writing: It’s Good For Who You Really Are

First, let’s set the scene. Sherri Cortland (the amazing author and coach) is my guest speaker for my online Meetup. I’ve been hosting these meetups for several years, mostly on zoom since the pandemic, where I offer mediumship, meditation, and guided music. Sherri and I had been meeting right up through the day before, and had fully agreed on our intention and presentation, and had completed the usual zoom/tech-related checks. Everything should go off without a hitch.

Yeah. That’s what I said.

It seems the Spirit World had a different idea entirely. No matter how many links I sent, Sherri couldn’t seem to join the meeting. No matter which computer she tried, she couldn’t access the class. Finally, using her phone, she made it in, but couldn’t see any of the participants other than me. She couldn’t share her PPT presentation, nor could she play the flute music I’d sent her as background for her meditation.

Technology, right?

Fortunately, given our knowledge of the perfection of the universe — even when it feels as if we’re being thrown overboard without a life preserver — we plowed ahead, and Sherri facilitated all of us, sight unseen, through layers of guided chakra meditation and automatic writing, her tools for direct communication with Spirit. And we all loved it.

Especially me.

Being mostly a clairsentient HSPs , I don’t think of myself as someone who does “automatic writing.” And yet, here I sit yet again, having the words flow through my fingers as if they were written already and I’m just typing them into the computer. As if I’m hearing them for the first, and yet not at all the first, time. Before I do a mediumship session with a client, I sit quietly and write down all the things that come to me, no matter how strange, unsettling, or crazy they may appear to be. I get song lyrics, names, visuals of all sorts of things that don’t make sense to me, but always, in some shape or form, make sense to the client. I’ve had to learn to trust that in order for me to receive validation, I have to have the courage to speak the information out loud. Not an easy thing to do until you keep doing it…and doing it…and doing it.

At the meetup with Sherri, after listening to her incredibly articulate explanation of how auto-writing works and we’d watched as she demonstrated her process first-hand, we got to give it a try ourselves.

When things happen that you don’t expect

What I didn’t expect is what happened, of course. Not only did I receive information in the same way I do prior to seeing a client where words, thoughts, and pictures come through my pen, but Jeremy, one of Sherri’s Spirit Guides, made his presence known. I argued with him that he was Sherri’s not mine, but he insisted he was “on loan.” Five minutes later I had words like “speckled hen” and “thumbtack,” along with a very loving message reminding us all to know how magical we are. To know and own our own magic and share it with the world.

I don’t know about you, but it was the speckled hen-and-thumbtack thing that really got my attention. Not that it made any sense at the time. But, like I said, the stranger the information, the more certain it is that it means something important. In this case, to my new client today, who had just lost her husband. The look on her face when I mentioned the hens was sheer incredulousness, but when I got to thumbtacks, there’s no way to describe her reaction. Words that mean nothing to me meant everything to her.

The upshot?

• Use automatic writing.
• Use meditation.
• Use any tool that feels good.

Just keep doing it.

****

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The post HSPs and Automatic Writing: It’s Good For Who You Really Are 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!.