HSPs are like hermit crabs, carrying ourselves everywhere

Good fortune and gratitude

I am so fortunate in so many ways. To be met at the airport by my gracious sister is only one of them. It might seem like a small thing, but to know that someone who loves you will be there when you walk through the baggage claim doors after a flight into a whole different world, let alone a whole different state and frame of mind, is like waking up to breakfast in bed when you’re normally responsible for making enough breakfast to feed ten hungry mouths.

I’m also incredibly fortunate to have been welcomed home by my house: quiet, serene, backed by woods full of gently swaying trees, and stocked with enough coffee and toast so I didn’t have to stop off at the supermarket at 10 pm on the way.

(I did just notice a giant spider on my window as I type these words, so forgive me while I go make sure it’s happily spinning or resting or meditating, or whatever spiders do on the outside of the window. I’m one of those people who prefer the insect world and mine don’t coexist too closely. …Okay, we’re good. It’s out there. I’m in here. Back to business.)

The “City of Angels”? Really???

As a highly sensitive individual, and someone who appreciates solitude, quiet, and self-reflection, Los Angeles did not unexpectedly exist at a vastly different vibration. Everything seems to be turned up several notches in intensity there. I’m am proud of the way I held my alignment during my time in the City of Angels and while I traveled back to Washington.

The old me (the unhappy hermit crab)

The old me would have lost my boarding pass, misplaced my Kindle, and spilled my coffee by the time I got to the gate. On the plane, by the time I’d landed, I would be stricken with flu-like symptoms and sure I had Covid. I still take a baggie full of Kleenex with me when I travel because I’ve had that happen so many times—step on the plane, start sneezing; get off, symptoms dissipate, although sometimes it takes days.

It never once occurred to me in all my decades of life that such symptoms were indicators of my HSP-ness. Not in the sense that I understand it today. You run around doing your life, going places, interacting with people, etc., but the apparent reasons for your reactions can always be tied to one “logical” thing or another.

• You’re sneezing/coughing: There must be something in the air that’s making you sneeze because you’re so sensitive to chemicals and perfumes or you’ve caught a bug from someone.
• Your heart is pounding: You must be afraid of flying or crowds make you wanna hide.
• Your stomach hurts: It must be something you ate or you could be getting colitis.
• Louise Hay, Bruce Lipton, and other “biology of belief” advocates would say otherwise. They—and I—would suggest your body is responding to some sort of belief that you have integrated long enough for it to manifest on a physical level.

I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about HSP “indicators” before, and how everyone’s vary. Mine kind of sound like the ones I mentioned above. So, last night, as I made it to the gate without mishap . . .

• ate my snack of sushi in a nice corner surrounded by empty seats,
• got to my seat easily and my bag stowed away above my head,
• sat on a crowded plane and found there would be an empty seat next to me,
• saw that the man sitting a by the window was the man I’d noticed in the boarding area whom I’d known spirit would bring into my field somehow because we were supposed to meet,
• he and I spent the next two and a half hours gabbing about every subject under the sun . . . .

It wasn’t until I actually stepped off the plane that I realized I’d sneezed only once. Could it be a new me??? Could I be the happy hermit crab who’s carrying her over own “home of alignment” with her everywhere she goes?

• I hadn’t coughed at all.
• I didn’t have a headache.
• I wasn’t worried that I wouldn’t be able to find my sister in the bedlam of “no-idling zones” outside baggage claim,
• and I wasn’t feeling that I’d traveled across the planet instead of state lines.

Would you like to switch it up so the experiences that once had you crumbling are now, dare I say, pleasurable? You can. You’re an HSP. You’re awesome. You have the HSP Toolbox in your hands.

Go forth and be awesome.