When You’re Sensitive, Intuitive, and Deeply Aware

When you’re sensitive, intuitive, and deeply aware, everything hurts more.

That’s the part people don’t always see. They might admire your insight. They might come to you for advice. They might even say you’re “wise beyond your years.”

But the thing they don’t see is the cost of being awake. How it started when you were just a kid. Picking up the tension in a room before a word has been said. Watching your parents faces closely to read their expressions. Trying to stay one step ahead of everybody else’s mood, because no one ever asked how you felt.

They don’t see how deep the cuts went. How every betrayal landed with greater weight. How the moments other people could let go of in an instant lived inside you for years, sometimes decades.

They don’t see how you’ve spent your life walking around with translucent skin, feeling the full force of everything. The fractures in your family, the sorrow of your friends, the injustices in the world that no sensitive person can fully bear.

And because you’re intuitive, you see through people too. The subtext. The manipulation. The things not being said. And sometimes that’s a gift. Because it keeps you safe. But more often than not, it’s just more weight you’re forced to carry.

What people don’t see is how deeply exhausting it can be to stay this wide open. To have no way not to let everything in. To spend night after night lying awake, wondering when everyone else will finally tune in.

Some were just born this way. But most of us were trained for it.

We became sensitive because we had to be. We had to be intuitive because no one told us the truth. We had to be aware because we couldn’t afford to miss the signs. Of temper, impatience, and even worse things.

But now…we’re older. We have far more choices and much greater strength. So maybe it’s time we turn that sensitivity around, from projecting it outward to reflecting it within. To stop using our gifts only to understand others, and start using them to care for ourselves.

To be sensitive with our own pains. Be intuitive with our own needs. Be kind in the very same places where all our woundings live.

The places they abandoned, and we can no longer afford to.

Maybe we don’t have to shut down to survive anymore. Only to learn to stay open without giving everything away.

- Will

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Hi friend, if this piece resonated, I want you to know you’re not alone and that these patterns don’t have to run your life.

Dr. Lindsay Gibson and I created Healing From Emotionally Immature Parents to share practical tools to break old dynamics, reclaim your true self, and build the emotionally secure life you deserve.

I know how much it’s helped me, and I hope it can bring you the same relief. 💛