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Join me for Enough as You Are: A 3-week Journaling Adventure, beginning on Monday, September 30th. A daily journaling practice can help so much with increased self-awareness, stress reduction and enhanced creativity. I’ve been off my journal game for a while and am excited to gather with others to give some focused energy on self-reflection and self-love through journaling. Details HERE.
Hi Friends,
Today I’m going to choose a page from Enough as You Are, share the piece of writing on it, and then free flow write about what the message brings up for me in the moment.
Here’s the writing, from page 108:
I’m super fucking sensitive. I love this about myself only slightly more than I can’t stand it. Sometimes I wish I were an unfeeling stone who didn’t take everything so personally and didn’t need so much space all the time. Feeling can get exhausting fast. Mostly, though, I know my sensitivity is a superpower, perhaps my greatest, and it’s the thing that keeps me loving our world in a profound way. When I’m not too busy hiding from it, that is.
Here’s how it’s hitting me:
Lately I’ve been struggling with my sensitive nature more than embracing it. I mentioned in the last newsletter that I’ve been checking out more than usual over the course of this year. In moments it feels like a full body aversion to the world around me, particularly what I often see on social media. I know there’s a lot of good there, and yet even glancing at Facebook or Instagram these days instantly alters my state of being. For the worse.
What I’ve noticed is that I’m allowing my mind to take the reigns too often and too dominantly, to convince me that the best / most peaceful / safest place for me to exist is in my own, quiet, insular world. And as much as I believe that the peace I seek in my life can only come from within me, I also know it’s not true peace if I can’t exist with it and the world at the same time. I don’t want to be a hermit. More accurately, I don’t feel that being a hermit is the most aligned and fulfilling choice for me. I also don’t believe it’s the way I can be of greatest service to the world around me.
One thing I’ve spent very little time doubting for many years is the power of love to create healing, in our individual lives and our world as a whole. There is nothing more powerful than love in action. I think that’s been one of the hardest aspects of this past year for me: as our country (and world) continues to fracture in numerous ugly ways, I’ve been doubting the power of love to create healing here. Well, I’ve been doubting the power of my love to make much of a difference. I think it’s this doubt that has had me staying pretty quiet for many months now.
I’ve been asking myself what’s the point?, as I did in this essay, but rather than coming up with a list of heart and soul-centered responses, I’m often landing on: I really don’t know, or worse, there is no point. This is not an energizing thought. It’s also not what I truly believe.
The mind is a master in its capacity to play all angles in order to keep us stuck, or feeling hopeless, or afraid. My ego has been as effective this year as it’s been in a very long time at keeping me quiet, at keeping silent the full-throated all about love part of me that I’ve come to appreciate and honor about myself. One constant in life I’ve come to realize is that there are few constants in life. Every time I think I will always… or I will never…, life shows me yet again that always and never are rarely true. In all of this, I do appreciate being shown time and again how much I don’t know. How much can’t really be known. It’s frustrating, but more so, liberating. At least for me.
When I think of my sensitivity right now, I’m reminded of something I wrote a few years ago:
Some days I feel like an open wound and the world around me is all peroxide and salt.
I've been struggling. My sensitivity is on high lately and I can't seem to shut anything out. The outside world overwhelms me. My inside world (read: mind) overwhelms me. When I remember to take deep breaths, it helps, but mostly I feel like I'm either holding my breath or gasping for it. I wish I were a slab of cement, cold and unfeeling, immune to all the energies out there, unfazed by all the ugliness. Instead, I feel too much, way too much lately, and I can't turn it off. Sure my sensitivity is a superpower, but right now it feels more like kryptonite. I wouldn't mind having back some of those walls I worked hard to crumble, some armor against the pain, anything to keep from feeling everything.
I know I'm not alone. I know many of you feel what I'm feeling in your own way. I know things will shift, as they always do, and I'll be wearing the red cape of sensitivity again, empowered by my empathic ways. Right now, however, I'd rather the cloak of invisibility, some protection, and a cottage somewhere high in the trees, far away from the chaos of this world, far away from everyone and everything.
One thing I greatly appreciate about all the self-work I’ve done is my capacity to be compassionate with myself, no matter what I’m feeling or doing, as well as the understanding that what I’m feeling right now will not last forever. Nothing does. A regular refrain these days, from me to me: This is just what’s going on right now. And it’s okay.
This too shall pass. Right? It always does, even when it takes longer than we would like for it to pass.
All this said, I am starting to feel the heart-centered me waking up again. To be more accurate, the heart-centered me is ready to make more music again. (I wrote more noise at first, but I’m not interested in adding more noise to a too-noisy world.) Because as much as it can feel safe to isolate and be quiet and to some degree disassociate from the world around me, it’s not ultimately fulfilling. Or helpful. At least to me.
I’ve been telling myself I’m at a crossroads this year. Coming up against my desire to be a voice for love with an aversion to being a voice for anything. Looking at how it is I truly want to be spending my time, and how I can be a presence for more kindness, compassion and love in our world. I won’t pretend to have clarity around these questions, but I am getting clearer (again, at last) that when I’m speaking for love I feel most at home. Most grounded. And most alive.
Today’s newsletter is an example of what I’m imagining my upcoming 3-week journaling adventure workshop to be like. Each day I will share an excerpt from Enough as You Are, and each day we will freestyle write in response to the excerpt, seeing what insights and reflections want to come through us. Always with the intention of creating a deeper, more honest and loving relationship with ourselves. We start on Monday, September 30th (big discount for paid subscribers to this newsletter), and I’d love to see you there if you feel the call.
The more honest we are with ourselves, the more transformation we can create. And the more loving we are with ourselves, the more honest we’re likely to be. With love and honesty, there are no limits to the amount of healing we can create, in ourselves and our world.
Sending you all a huge hug and so much love,
Scott
Sensitivity: superpower or kryptonite?