Going to the hardware store for milk is a way of saying that we go to people and places for things we know they can’t provide us—in fact, experience has proven this time and time again, yet we refuse to believe it. Doing something the same way over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
As Sensitives, we go to people who are incapable of supporting us, or providing Love and Nurturing in the way we need it all the time. For many of us, this is because our first experience with this happened as children within our own family of origin. Statistically, approximately one in five people is highly sensitive, so the odds are that you were the one in your family.
Image © Danilea Diaz/Unsplash
Parents and grandparents are also not always capable of loving the way we feel or learn that they “should.” Yet we are wired to go to them for Love, which all children need for survival. Within the Sensitive community, specifically, we went to our families for information on how to process all that we were experiencing and feeling. More often than not, they didn’t have the answers. How could they, when they were built differently?
We show up in relationship expecting others to be there for us the way we are for them—over-giving, over-extending, and anticipating our needs. We forget (or don’t even know) that we are able to do these things because we have superpowers of understanding and empathy, and the other 80% of the population doesn’t yet have access to these things—at least to the same depth.
We are built to feel/see the entirety of a person’s soul and hold that vision so that they can realize their purpose for being here. Very often, we lose sight of the person as they are now and interact with them as if they are living from this place of higher potential. When we do this, three things happen:
1. We set them up for failure, because there is no way they can live up to our expectations based on their current capabilities.
2. We are perpetually disappointed.
3. Our needs never get met.
This is not fair to anyone, and it affects spiritual self-esteem all around. If we truly love the people in our lives, we have to start accepting them for who they really are—limitations and all—and interacting with them from a much more realistic place. We can still hold the larger vision of their potential, and gently encourage them toward it, but we can’t treat them as if they are already there. The same is true in reverse!
Another important fact for Sensitives: People always show you exactly who they are as soon as you meet them (or very soon after). BELIEVE THEM.
When we have an intuitive hit about someone or how they show up in the world, we tend to try to override it because we feel we “just don’t have enough evidence” to make that judgement. We try to talk ourselves out of it or convince ourselves that people need a certain amount of chances.
Listen to your intuition. This is the practice of discernment, which is very different than judgement.
Being present with people exactly how they are showing up in any given moment—and accepting that—helps us to choose our actions wisely and prevents us from being disappointed over and over again.
We begin to see where we are and are not getting our needs met, and we can start to make better accommodations for them. Of course, this means we will need to change relationships. Maybe we will have let go of people or the ways in which we interact with them, but we will also strengthen many interactions as we let go of false expectations—of others and, eventually, of ourselves. We will also make room for new and more aligned partnerships of all kinds.
This is the way we will change our world and the world at large—one interaction at a time.
