Perhaps you have never heard of an HSP.  You may know them as other descriptions such as too sensitive,  anxious, depressed, only has a few friends, doesn’t like school, often sensitive to overhead lighting, loud noise, overstimulation, too many people, often the brunt of bullying, cry baby.  Teenaged HSP’s get diagnosed as bi-polar (particularly females), ADD, ADHD, depressed, or anxious.  Big Pharma makes a fair amount of money “fixing” these beautiful people to make them “normal”.  But all they do is shut off their innate abilities.

I held in my hands a women’s magazine and read the small captioned news bit.  HSP, or Highly Sensitive Person, is a person more in tune with their natural surroundings.  Often sensitive to artificial lighting, loud noise, crowds, overstimulation, and….  I think my mouth must have dropped open.  Never in my life had I read such a perfect description of myself.  I was always told I was “too sensitive”.  An HSP certainly sounded nicer.  I have talked with more plants, trees, and animals in my life than people.

Now, here is the thing about HSP’s, they are also often times very intuitive, clairvoyant, whatever your comfort word for it is.  Some can see spirits, some are our medical intuitives, some are the foreseers, and always, always empaths.  The reason we are so dang sensitive is because we literally feel everything that we see or read about.  I cannot read novels of violence or suspense, I will feel the violence.  Same with movies.  Sadness in other people made ten times more amplified.  News…forget about it.  HSP’s must never read the news.  Happiness is felt more intensely as well.

HSP’s are what many call “old souls”.  Many of us remember past lives even.  Many are wise before they ought to be and just seem….odd.  HSP’s are not considered autistic but may border the autism frequencies, highly intelligent, intuitive, aware of everything.  Our healers.  Our lightworkers.  With an intense desire to become a hermit!  But we cannot hide out.  There is much work to do.

As a child I don’t know if I ever met another HSP but as an adult, as the phrase became more known, I have met more.  My mentor, old roommate, Hopi friend is an HSP.  We talk about it quite a lot.  He is a hospice chaplain and brilliant at his work.  He told me once that there are not very many of us and I, at the time, believed him.  Until I opened my shop.  My shop is a magnet for HSP’s.  Parents bringing in “anxious” young people, young adults coming in on their own that have been classified as one thing or another who just need to know that their abilities and gifts are important and are not a malady, older adults that never could put their finger on it.  Our healers.  Our light workers.

Elbert county is an interesting place.  Part rancher, part cowboy, part home on the range, with an inordinate number of energy healers, artists, right brained society and young people, many more than I ever would have guessed, who are intuitive.  My work morphs from simply making plant medicines to teaching these young people how to filter, how to work with their empathy, their “knowing”, their light.  That they are indeed normal.

If you know or meet someone like this, smile at them.  Know that they are the healers of tomorrow, and that there is an entire society of too sensitive folk out there about to make the world a much better place.