I’m sharing this because I know some of you sensitive folk will relate.

I feel all my emotions very deeply, so sadness and grief can take me over very quickly if I’m not very careful; perhaps you feel the same.

So I’ve come to learn, I don’t want to deny the feelings or store them up…I need to feel all of them and am getting much better at processing them when they want to be properly felt…however I also can’t take on more than my allotted quota. I’ve learned, the hard way as a very highly sensitive person who tends to think too deeply as well as feeling too deeply into other people’s pain, that I also need to curate the best possible experience for myself. I do this as a buffer to the onslaught of overwhelming feelings that might otherwise take me over if I was to continue to be undiscerning about what I expose myself to in the world which, as we all know, is going through some pretty dark times.

I’ve also come to realise that it’s not bad to allow good feelings when bad things are going on in the world, something I know that I have felt a great deal of guilt about in the past because of the way we are conditioned to get involved in everybody’s business, more so than we ever were before the advent of global news. It’s just a case of knowing what is mine, what I can honestly help with and what the limits are of what I can realistically handle having in my awareness.

So awareness of what is going on is not linear as the three-dimensional world implies; its quite possible to be feel good things simultaneously with bad things happening and we get to choose far more than some of us allow ourselves to realise until we let ourselves off the hook from being party to all of the stuff that is happening in the wider world. We can, and should, get better at focusing on what we are experiencing in real-time, right in front of our eyes and not allow ourselves to be so easily sucked into an information channel that takes us way out of our depth.

By being more discerning, I get to choose to be a beneficial presence of calm, of optimism and of uplift even when upsetting things are happening out there, even right under my nose, because I’m not so utterly depleted by the overwhelming sense that everything around me is all bad news. It’s alright for me to focus on my zone of positivity and not have to give that up because the news told me something sad or bad happened today. I can care but I don’t have to go looking for other things to care about as the basis for my day, meaning I can still keep that optimistic flame alight, which we all need inside of us to keep us going.

If I succumbed to all the awfulness out there, I’d have no resources left to do that for me or anybody else. This isn’t denial or not caring or hiding or masking…it’s doing the best that I can do, being the best source of light that I can be, the best way I know how. I realise that, if I join in with all the woe then, given my high sensitivity and the depth of my feeling, it would be show over for me in no time at all as I would suck it all into myself deeply and be in such despair it would deplete me utterly. My immune system would be shot full of holes and I’d have no will left to live, which I then know would manifest quickly as ways to curtail my life played out as rapidly worsening health.

Instead, I choose where to put my focus and I state my intentions to uphold the light in whatever ways that I can, big or small, in each moment, every day, as far as I can remember to do so. At each cross-roads, every junction, when I get to decide whether to act either one way or another, I try to choose the lighter way, the way of least harm, to myself and to others.

And, for a long time now, I’ve limited my diet of overwhelming news and am extremely selective about my sources of information!

Unnecessary exposures to sadness, negativity and grief suck vital life force out of people; take this from a hypersensitive person who knows all too well the cost to vitality and health! That also includes exposure to people who bring down your energy by discouraging you or offering unwanted critiques and opinions. Sometimes (and this is a hard one for me as I’m such an open book…) you’ve got to really consider who you share your stuff with and even decide to tell it lastly, or not at all, to some of those people, perhaps even family members (at least wait until their opinion no longer holds the power to undermine your intent). You’ve basically got to learn how to, fiercely, do whatever it takes to hold yourself intact and to thrive as best you can.

In my case, I have to accept that I’m full of compassion but that compassion has to start with having compassion for myself. This is something I’ve had to work very hard to instil into myself for quite some time now, as it can often go against the grain of the way I was reared (as were most of us) to put my needs last but I finally realise I have to make this top priority, along with eliminating all the negative self-talk.

We all have our unique essence, the very soul that we expend our life-force attempting to realise as a positive and creative force in the world. However, none of us can bring our essence forward when it spends all of its time cowering in the corner far too afraid and depleted to come out!