Same answer, different question

Have you ever been asked to share a quality you appreciate about yourself?  I ask because I was asked last week as part of a class I’m taking.

My answer was – sensitivity.

It made me chuckle.   ‘Sensitivity’ would previously have been the answer to a very different question – “If there was one thing about yourself that you could change, what would it be?”

So what happened?  How did I come to view the same thing so differently?

The journey started with …

An event:  Senior work managers decided to shelve a project I’d led for two years, the day before the report was due to be published.  It was the last of many straws.  Enough was finally enough.

My response:  I decided to leave the job I couldn’t do the way I wanted and the organisation I had never fitted.  It was time to follow my heart and retrain as a psychotherapist.

An out-of-the-blue discovery:  During research for a course assignment, I came across an article about the gifts and curses of being an HSP.  Serendipity or the universe looking out for me?

A whole new perspective:

If HSPs are 1 in 5 of the population, that’s 1.1 million people in Scotland, 13m in the UK.  So my sensitivity was now a shared thing, not a lone occupation.

If being an HSP has a genetic basis, it was my ‘operating system’, not my flaw.  And the answer to “What’s wrong with me?” is … nothing

If HSPs are deep processors and emotional beings, “no wonder” I analysed, felt and reacted as I did.  That reframed my past experiences and my attitude to my sensitivity.

If being highly sensitive has gifts, maybe I didn’t need to carry my sensitivity as a weakness and source of shame.  That freed me to embrace, own and manage it.

Other changes: I found that self-understanding → self-forgiveness → self-compassion → self-worth.  Being at ease with myself meant I was more at ease with others.  Now it was safe to be me.

Sensitivity became my friend, not my enemy.  My gift, not my failing.  Something to welcome rather than shun.

Questions for you: What quality do you appreciate about yourself?  And what has your journey been with it?

Maybe you’ll choose your sensitivity.  Maybe something else.

Sometimes we just need a prompt to remind ourselves of our qualities.   It’s so easy – especially as an HSP – to focus on our faults.

So, today, do something different – celebrate what you bring to the world.