A shout out to highly sensitive persons (HSP) and empaths

So, let’s talk about being a highly sensitive person. A disclaimer is that I only recently realized (thanks to Anita Moorjani, who I briefly mention in the About section) that I am also an empath, and as far as I understand it, not all highly sensitive people are also empaths. Because I myself am both HSP and an empath, I may have trouble differentiating between the two when talking about them and referring to my own experiences, because for me, they go hand in hand. The short version of what these two concepts mean is that a highly sensitive person is extremely aware of the energies of other people, which can be draining when you are in a setting with many people as your sensivitity creates too many impressions – you don’t filter things out the way that people who are not highly sensitive do. This means that social gatherings can be tiring for you – however much you enjoy them – and that you often need several hours or even days to yourself afterwards, in order to recharge your batteries.

Empaths are equally sensitive to other people’s energies, but empaths, unlike highly sensitive persons, involuntarily make those other people’s energies their own – they are not able to differentiate between their own energy and other people’s energy. This means, that if an empath for example walks into a room full of sad people (actually, it could be a room where only one person is sad, but let’s exaggerate a little bit for illustration), the empath will not only sense the sad energy, but also become sad themselves! This makes empaths go out of their way to make other people happy, as they cannot stand other people not feeling good since that makes the empaths not feel good. Therefore, empaths unfortunately often become so called doormats, which is something that Anita Moorjani so beautifully describes in her newest book “Sensitive is the new strong”. I actually read it only about two months ago, and for the first time ever while reading a book, I felt a bit worried how the author could know all these things about me, as the descriptions were so spot-on. I got the feeling that Anita absolutely must have been a fly on the wall in my home this whole time! I had never before realized that my feelings and behaviours were actually a “thing” and not unique to me, which was equally fascinating as it was comforting. If you suspect that you are an empath, I highly recommend that you read Anita’s book, as I am sure it will help you as much as it has helped me.