Are you an HSP or empath? Differences between the two, and ways to support your unique system.

One of the biggest hurdles of my life was figuring out how to manage my energy and my body’s experiences as an highly sensitive person and an empath.

For most of my life, I didn’t understand why things felt so hard. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t do all the things other people did without feeling depleted, exhausted or irritable.

I didn’t understand why I was moved to tears by commercials, or felt people’s emotions or pain so readily. (I even used to feel bad for my stuffed animals when they weren’t getting enough attention.)

I didn't understand why I had such a hard time figuring out how I felt or what I thought, because I was so inundated with everyone else's experience.

Or why I would lay awake for hours after an exciting experience, a stimulating TV show or novel.

When I first found out that being a highly sensitive person was a thing, and when I read the book ​The Highly Sensitive Person​ by Elaine Aron, I can’t tell you how validated I felt. Everything clicked into place and I had a framework to tend my unique nervous system.

The same was true about understanding what an empath was, and how to tend to my specific energetic needs as someone who is naturally more open than others.

Differences between HSPs and Empaths:

The highly sensitive nervous system is found across the animal kingdom, with about 20% of us animals being highly sensitive. It's thought that this is an evolutionary advantage: to have some of the pack be more heightened to shifts in the landscape or environmental patterns so as to notify the group when something dangerous (or potentially life-saving) was afoot.

Being highly sensitive means your sensory aperture is more open - that you perceive and receive more "bits" of information than the average person, which also means you need more time to process this information so you don't get overwhelmed. (​This is a cool article about it​).

Being an empath, on the other hand, means you're more sensitive to energy, emotion, and feeling. You can feel another person's emotional state and read someone energy so easily, that if you're not careful, you take on their emotions and energy as your own. Supposedly, only about 2% of the population are empaths.

Gifts of HSPs and Empaths:

I'm not gonna lie, being an HSP and/or an empath has a lot of challenges. But it is also an incredible gift that I’m so utterly grateful for it every single day. Even though my nervous system and energy body requires more tending and nurturing than the average person's, it is a worthy cause.

HSPs and empaths are some of the best medicine for the world right now.

--> We are caring, sensitive, attuned, perceptive, considerate, empathetic, and compassionate.

--> We are able to listen to the voices of the unseen realms and the more-than-human beings more easily.

--> We are able to have empathy for others, for the land, for all of life here. We feel at home in nature and therefore act to protect it more.

--> We can feel the pain of destruction and greed more easily, and therefore will take more concrete actions to better the world.

--> We can see patterns more easily and therefore have insight into how to fix or shift things before others can.

--> We can also dream more easily into all-that-could-be. We are a force of beautifying, a force of love for this earth.

BUT. In order to realize these gifts, we have to know how to tend to ourselves and our energy.

We have to learn to tend to our needs, our bodies, and our energy, or we will end up burnt out and depleted, over and over again, unable to be the effective force of good for the world.

Patterns I see in HSPs and Empaths:

I work with a lot of HSPs and empaths in my practice.

While each has their own distinct patterns, in general, the pattern I see is that their body acts as if it’s been significantly traumatized, even if they haven’t experienced any “known” trauma.

I feel the hyper-vigilance and lack of safety they carry in their tissue, and sense the resistance their energy-body has to trusting their body on this earth. It hasn’t ever felt safe.

Their energy body is wide open, but their physical body is tense and anxious, unsure of whether they can settle into being ok.

This modern world isn’t sensitive. It's challenging for even non-HSPs and empaths, with information overload coupled with witnessing so much pain all at once globally.

HSPs and empaths feel these things much more acutely and deeply than the majority of people.

And this often lands as trauma in the body, as the sensitive body has a really difficult time processing all that needs to be processed in the moment, especially when it's not tended to or resourced. So part of the body freezes. Emotions get stuck. Hyper-vigilance sets in.

But this isn't inevitable. There's so much you can do to take care of yourself in order to be healthy, resourced, and effective in your life.

Basic everyday tending for your highly sensitive/empathic system:

To start, give yourself ample time and space to process the day. Both empaths and HSPs need time and space alone to feel themselves, and process the extra information coming in. Try to give yourself an hour upon waking to ease into the day, and at least an hour before bed to let your system settle from the day without stimulation. (And definitely don't start or end your day with the news!)

Take sensory breaks where you're closing your eyes and turning off lights and audio.

Turn off news notifications, and seek out staying up-to-date when you feel you're in a resourced state.

Check in with your body every day, multiple times a day. Ask yourself what you need.

And of course, spending time with the earth and the plants is always so nourishing for both HSPs and empaths.