On reclaiming sensitivity (and how it opens the world of choice to us) - Read time: 6 minutes, plus invitations

For Emily. And my 10 year old self. And for anyone who’s ever been told, “You’re too sensitive.”

“Sensitivity is the highest energy that we can have under our control and is the limit of our ordinary awareness…It is only when we are aware that there are alternatives that we can choose.” — John G. Bennett

A deeply ingrained misconception that covertly shapes the psyches of exquisitely perceptive women I have worked with for nearly two decades is that sensitivity is something to overcome. 

It sneaks in: that we must be strong, that being soft is equivalent to being weak and vulnerable—and that vulnerability is the least desirable of all survival strategies. 

This makes sense because we have grown up in an overculture that glorifies hyper-masculine ideals—strength, achievement, toughness, winners at the expense of losers. Many of us received the message that being tender-hearted is somehow inferior, and that in order to survive (or thrive), we must “toughen up,” “push through,” or “get on with it.”

Right place, right now

Have you ever felt this way?

Sensitivity is mistaken for sentimentality because often it expresses itself as grief and confusion when it lacks the space to be honored for what it truly is—wisdom.

While we may be fueled the idea of vulnerability as courage, we subtly veer towards fitting our delicate awareness into an impenetrable, hardened version of ourselves.

A pattern I’ve noticed in my own life and in lives of women drawn to my work is this: when she is thrust out of touch with her sensitive, perceptive nature, she is more likely to make unwise decisions. This is the most dangerous place to be in because then she is navigating blindly, without her full intuitive or emotional intelligence. (She often ends up in a paradox where the overculture ‘proves’ itself to be right by demonstrating the idiocy of her choices and her need for ‘logic, advice or direction.’)

The truth is, it is actually sensitivity and perception that guide us toward choices that are rightly aligned for our lives. Yet much of the world has lost touch with what sensitivity really is—a receptiveness to impressions and an ability to be aware and responsive, from the French sensitif (“capable of feeling”) and the Latin sentire (“to feel, to perceive”).

In all of her intelligence, she draws up a defense strategy against feeling put down, scrutinized and vulnerable: she hardens, just under her own skin.

Some keys that she may be caught in a loop of dysregulated, defensive strategizing in order to protect her sensitive gifts: 

❥ Overthinking

❥ Worrying about how others will respond

❥ Presenting an ultra-competent and “un-needy” self to the world

❥ Distancing herself emotionally from friends or family whose opinions or projections she internalizes

❥ Looking outside herself for signs and answers as a base strategy rather than grounding in her own knowing

❥ Becoming hyper-attentive to others' perceived or imagined needs (at the expense of her own)

❥ Viewing others as adversaries and shutting out their humanity

❥ Struggling with internal shame and unworthiness

❥ Researching, yet delaying taking any real action

❥ Numbing through substances, fantasy, entertainment, sex or food

❥ Sensing chronic stiffness in her body and the inability to organically relax

(These are just a few I have personally experienced and witnessed—you may recognize others or have your own to add.)

And yet . . . she feels a longing to be in connection with herself and with others, intimately. This is when I know she is on the path to her wisdom being fully expressed and valued, initially by her and then by those whose lives she touches. 

The missing piece I’ve seen is this—She needs walls around her so she doesn’t have to create them within her.

When we are held in safe walls or boundaries—physical, energetic, verbal—our nervous system senses this safety. She can step away from the outer world. She can envision a loving shield around herself. She can articulate her agreements and non-negotiables. Then, her sensitive being resides within a glowing, radiant form—her own body. She doesn’t have to shut down anymore.

Walls are also safe places of sacred gathering: the imagined walls of my women’s group Zoom room, the very real stone walls of the French country house that holds us on retreat.

What I have come to learn though my conversations with hundreds of women is that we need more safe places—we’re not flawed, not “not strong enough.” 

Our sensitivity as women is a life force—our connection to breath, intuition, and our creative and spiritual lives. In many wisdom traditions, sensitivity is a refinement. Finer. Less dense, more pure. A way of sensing the essence of things. A way of seeing with the heart.

As Angela Farmer teaches in her yoga classes: Softening is not about collapsing because when you soften and receive, you can create a space into which the breath flows—and so you actually feel fuller, more you.

A sensitive woman can have the experience of both being larger than her physical body, extending into the space around her, while at the same time being firmly present within her own bones. The desire to move comes from an inner, grounded impulse rather than an external reaction. 

From this place, she softens into her delicate perceptiveness as strength—a power to be respected. She walks through the world as a woman who knows how to listen to herself and her callings. Tuning in to sensitive energy, she allows it to guide her attention and actions.

—Shari

invitations to go deeper

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invitations to go deeper 〰️

• 🧠 • Deb Dana, a therapist and author, uses the concept of neuroception of safety to describe how our nervous system can sense safety and connect with others.

• 🖋️ • Grab a pen. Draw your a quick sketch of your body (a stick figure is fine) and then draw your surrounding energy field. What do you notice? Do you need more space around you? Boundaries of some sort so you can live into your fullness? Roots to ground it? Trust whatever intuitively comes.

• 🌎 • There is such a big focus on being a “strong” woman often out there “making change,” and I seek to bring balance to this by reminding us that the intelligent and secure “soft” woman can tune in to sensitive energy to guide her actions. For more on how you can play your role in a social change ecosystem, check out the inspiring work of Deepa Iyer.

• ♥️ • Muse on this: Breath as the key to refined and powerful sensitivity.