Incredible joy and deep challenges. I didn’t choose a complicated, intense, amazing kid. The world chose me for him and it was right.
UNIQUE is the word of the day. Every highly sensitive person and youth is unique. There are as many ways to be sensitive as their are sensitive being in the world, and teaching sensitive youth to revere the unique is key to their success.
Messages to highly sensitive youth are varied and often negative or shaming. We have these messages and experiences inside of us adults as well. They are our cultural legacy.
“You’re too damn sensitive.”
“If you don’t change (toughen up) the world will eat you up.”
“Why are you crying again? It’s not that bad.”
“I so often heard how sensitive I was, how I overthought things and yet by my teenage years I feel like I stuffed so much in order to adapt and try to be ‘normal’.”
“I remember being a talker and outgoing when I was little, but in adolescent years I became very quiet and self-conscious.”
What are the negative messages and how are they living in you? How do you reframe and transform these messages? How do you make sense of your/your child’s place in the world as a sensitive being?
Sometimes I wonder, “why me, why us.?” The WHY is simply genetics and evolution. Every species needs and has members who are the sensitive minority which means they are:
- Emotional leaders
- Noticers and observers
- Thinkers and processors
- Wisdom advisors
- Feelers with empathy
- Truthseers and truth tellers
Is it comfortable to BE or RAISE a youth with these qualities and tasks? Decidedly NOT.
We transcend the negative when we learn to:
- Acknowledge the experience(s) of living with the trait.
- Educate the child and oneself about the differences.
- Find faith in a greater purpose.
- Accept the truth of what is.
- Make a plan to create success in your life.
Accepting and understanding a unique existence is the key. It’s about diversity and difference. It is human nature to avoid unique and different experiences. Even for the “Why Be Normal” t-shirt-wearing-radicals, the subconscious drives us to be like the majority because it is what feels safe. Indeed, throughout evolution, it is what has always been safest.
A minority of us, a minority of every species, is born to be different. And the survival of our species and every species is dependent on the existence and continuation of that sensitive minority.
I hope you are inspired by the importance of this topic. We are in charge of and responsible for the results.
To learn more about Unique HSPs please check out this blog by Elaine Aron: On Being a Unique HSP https://hsperson.com/on-being-a-unique-hsp/
And this interview I did on Honoring the Unique in Youth for Choose Love:
