I always feel like an alien, but now I know I’m only an HSP.
“I feel like an alien.”
If you think this is a strange thing to say, think again.
Google search it. You’ll see that putting “I feel like an alien” in the search bar brings up about 92,700,000 results. Plug in a few variations and, well, you can just imagine how that number skyrockets.
Let’s start by eliminating the ones about alien abduction because, frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever been abducted and wouldn’t know what to say about it. What I do know a lot about is feeling like a stranger in a strange land. A misfit. Someone born into a world they don’t understand and will never feel a part of. Someone who always felt out of place, like a star that fell from the sky—and landed on its ass. Where it would remain in the realm of Aaaarrrrggggghhhh! What am I doing here? forever.
Sound familiar?
For HSPs, Highly Sensitive People, or High Sensitives, this is basically our status quo. We truly feel like aliens who have been living our entire lives feeling we don’t belong, that we have been “somehow misplaced (displaced?) from another time and place … deposited on earth by aliens … like an experiment when some species wants to see what happens when one of its own is left to its own devices to fend for herself” (if I may quote my own words from The Gateway Café, as stated by Thimble, our protagonist). As I myself have always said, “I feel like I’m from another planet altogether.”
If this is you, and it may well be or you wouldn’t have found yourself on this page, you are not alone.
I’ll say it again: YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
In fact, I speculate, based on my own experience and that of my clients, friends, and family, that you and I are not only not alone, but, in fact, typical. Think about it. It’s as if by some unexpressed energetic worldwide agreement we’ve gone from all one, that is, some kind of collectively experienced existence, to all alone in one fell swoop. Afraid to express our feelings of alienation. Terrified that we will be discovered for who we really are, what we think, and the feelings we have. So what do we do? Stuff them down. Shut them out. Shut them off. Relegate them to a place so deep inside that we end up Google-searching stuff like this out of desperation. Are we really that different? Are we really crazy? Are we really from somewhere else? Do we really not belong here/in this family/in this world/in this set of circumstances seemingly beyond our control????
And when few answers beyond the ever mostly unhelpful psychological, economic, and social factors become available, what do we do? Naturally, most of us find some way to retreat. We believe what people are saying about us: that we are too emotional, too sensitive, too this and too that. Not capable, not using our brains, not logical. Not this enough or that enough. Some of us retreat into drugs or alcohol or some other form of escapism. Some go so far as to believe that violence is the answer.
Such is the dark side of not understanding the true blessed nature of who we really are.
Because the truth, unambiguous and divinely expressed through each of us, is that you and I are perfect. Just the way we are. That you and I, HSPs that we are, are like little fireflies here to shine our light in the world, a world that needs it now more than ever.
It’s up to us. Yes, us.
Because the unadulterated truth is that being highly sensitive is not the curse we are so often led to believe, the curse we must get through, hide, get over, change, or deny, but a great gift, a blessing. That there are ways to channel our sensitivities, our abilities, our special intuitive talents, where they shift from being the bane of our existence to the greatest source of our happiness.
How?
Stick with me, folks. Because that’s what we going to do together. One step at a time.
Starting. Right. Now.
