HSP emotional temperature and energy

The last blog piece was about physical temperature.  This one is about our emotional temperature.

As HSPs, we feel everything – good and bad – more strongly than others.  We can get ‘disproportionately pleased’ about good things and ‘disproportionately affected’ by difficult things.

What seem like highs and lows are simply the way that deep reactions to events and experiences look and feel for an HSP.

When things are difficult, we HSPs tend to ‘absorb, absorb, absorb’ rather than let our real feelings be known.

It’s the combined legacy of being told our feelings are ‘too big’ and our sensitivity to impacting adversely on other people.

But we still feel these emotions. Unexpressed, they build and heat up every time we do our deafult ‘absorb, absorb, absorb’.  Containing them is exhausting.

Eventually, we can’t contain the pressure.  We burst.  Seemingly out of all proportion to the immediate situation. And yet totally in proportion to the emotional load we’ve been carrying.

As a child, my mum used to refer to my “puggy being up” when I burst.  The ‘burst’ lasted about three seconds – a sudden flare, followed by almost immediate burn-out.

I loved my mum and there was no doubt she loved me.  But I really didn’t like that description of me expressing my frustration and emotions!  It felt like a source of fun – which it wasn’t to me.

To add to the frustration, I could never find a way to say this.  Because when you think your reactions are flawed, it silences you.

Now, as an adult who knows I’m an HSP, I can regulate my emotional temperature much better.

What helped was acknowledging what caused my temperature to rise in the first place.  A boundary might have been crossed or a tender spot touched.  After all, we don’t burst for no reason!

Honouring feelings more in the moment automatically reduces emotional heat.  It naturally allows us to speak at a lower level than letting things accumulate.

Others tend to hear us more easily at this ‘volume’.  And to see the connection between our reaction and what prompted it.

I also find it’s more important that I speak my truth than that someone agrees with me.  Which used to surprise me and now doesn’t.

Honouring how we feel is one of the biggest gifts we can give ourselves.

Fear about speaking up and frustration about not doing so fuel our temperature. And hoping that others will notice what we feel or need so we don’t have to say, never works … does it?

It’s time to speak up, fellow HSPs.  Even if it’s unfamiliar, and at times or at first, it’s only to ourselves.

Because that valve is the secret to our emotional temperature control.  And to having more energy.