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Common shared experiences of highly sensitive introverts (HSI) are any combination of the following:

Self-doubt. Low self-esteem. Low self-confidence.

Feeling fundamentally flawed.

Feeling powerless.

Perfectionism

Procrastination

Feeling overwhelm and exhaustion on a regular basis.

Overworking to prove our worth

Isolating/distancing

Pushing through to exhaustion, then needing days or weeks to recover, which can become a chronic pattern.

Feeling dead inside, uninspired, unfulfilled, like something is missing.

Analysis paralysis and overthinking

Feeling guilt, shame and regret often

People-pleasing

 Harsh self-judgment and criticism

Judgment of others

Physical health issues due to chronic stress

Mental health issues: anxiety, depression and challenges with social interaction.

Excessive self-soothing, over-indulgence in comforts and distractions.

Substance abuse, self-medicating

Because we’re different from roughly 80% of the population, we experience being misunderstood and judged on a regular basis for being different. These discouraging kinds of experiences, when repeated over and over, tend to reinforce a common belief that we don’t quite cut the mustard, and this strengthens our destructive sense of self. Psychologically, this rejection is considered a moderate form of mental and emotional trauma that we experience on a regular basis.

Our culture sees our highly sensitive introverted traits as disadvantages.  This message speaks to us through the games we play, the songs we sing, political organization, religious observance, through art and philosophy, even in psychology there’s a biased view that HSPs are less happy, less mentally healthy, less creative and even less intelligent.  It’s tough to be happy with that kind of consistent discouragement. Everywhere we look we see how we’re different from others and how we’re apparently lacking.  In general our culture misses the essence of our trait and gives it a negative tone.  When we identify with that negative tone, our confidence levels drop and we become more anxious and awkward.

Our nervous systems are highly attuned to subtleties and we’re generally quite good at reading people.  When interacting with others, we’re often able to tell pretty quickly when something is off, and if interactions become awkward we tend to immediately blame ourselves for not being better or different in some way.   This pattern contributes to social anxiety, which many of us are diagnosed with.  Having a nebulous sense that we’re not what we should be is enough to give anyone anxiety. 

Introverted and highly sensitive people make up the majority of the population who seek psychiatric care.  We’re the ones poring over our problems, trying to figure them out.  We’re exhausted by life and keep trying to find an easier way so we can finally stop having to work so hard.  Life is exhausting and it can be challenging for us to thrive.  We’re trying to live up to a social standard that doesn’t fit who we are. Many of us lose hope and have a really hard time, feeling lost, desperate, alone and often resigned about the possibility of finding the relief we seek.  On the outside, we might appear to have it all together, we’re fighters and have learned to tough it out, but behind our smile, we’re often dying inside, trying like crazy to hold ourselves together.  Many of us have developed a determination of steel that keeps us going.  Some of us lose hope and turn to addictive distractions for relief from the seemingly constant uphill climb.  We can waste a lot of time and energy tending to the wounds of everyday living instead of tending to the source of those wounds.  Most of us don’t understand why we feel so different, or why life is so hard, so we either hide in distractions and addictions, or seek to perpetually improve ourselves to find and fix what’s wrong. Often we do both.  We have an insatiable drive to free ourselves, but  that can drive us into the ground and become too much to handle, so we hide/retreat through whatever means necessary in an effort to recover our strength and find relief.

Often we don’t seek help.  We don’t want to burden other people with our problems or reveal our weaknesses, so we keep to ourselves and try to figure it out on our own.  We tend to be independent and self-sufficient to a fault.

We can be very strict about following rules and careful about how we conduct ourselves because we don’t want to experience the shame, guilt and regret of doing something wrong and being rejected or getting in trouble for it.  We can find ourselves lost in our heads, worrying and overthinking on a regular basis, overly conscientious about being accepted and doing a good job.  We can also be just the opposite, rebelling against the rules and rejecting the social requirements that don’t fit who we are, and are then stamped with labels such as misfit, rebel and outcast.

We can experience emotions quite deeply and can carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. We tend to take on the emotions of other people due to having a greater number of mirror neurons, which gives us a more acute sense of the experiences of other people.  When we’re around too many people or people with intense emotions, we can experience what we call emotional and social hangovers, which can take days or weeks to recover from.  Some of us prefer socializing online where there’s less of a tendency to be affected by the stress and emotional intensity of others.  

Many of us tend to avoid exposing ourselves to things that are violent or upsetting because it affects us so much.  Sometimes we isolate and distance ourselves from people because the world can feel so overwhelming.  We often don’t know how to explain how we feel because we don’t understand it ourselves.  As a result, we’re often viewed as anti-social and aloof, overly dramatic and intense, or socially awkward and hard to get to know.   This can bring with it deep feelings of loneliness.  We often have a profound love for people and want to connect more but that desire competes with the more basic need for rest and down-time and those basic needs usually win when we have busy lives to manage.  Either that or we push ourselves until we get sick and are forced to slow down.

Kindness is a trait people tend to undervalue.  Our conscientious, thoughtful nature can easily be overshadowed and stepped on or taken advantage of. We can be people pleasers because we want so much to fit in, be accepted and feel as though we have value.

 We can’t live our best lives or contribute to others when we’re caught up in all these problems, which is a problem. In a nutshell, self-empowerment, self-understanding, self-acceptance and direction are often missing. Living in a world that values aggression and competition, highly sensitive, introverted people are consistently receiving feedback reinforcing that what we bring to the table is sub-par. This is generally because we’re trying to do it the way everyone else is doing it. We have a different nature with different strengths, but we often don’t understand what those strengths are or how to use them fully because the majority of the population doesn’t see them as strengths, and our weaknesses and differences are so often brought to our attention that we don’t see our value.

There’s nothing wrong with us, we’re just round pegs trying to fit into square holes. We’re free spirits and tend to either stray from the mainstream or find ourselves miserably trying to conform to social norms and the expectations of others.

Being both introverted and highly sensitive, the cards seem to be highly stacked against us.  Roughly 1.4 billion people in the world are highly sensitive (15-20% of the population) 70% of that 15-20% are introverted.  We were born to be outsiders so we can bring a new perspective to the world and work to re-vitalize social structures that have outlived their usefulness.  We can’t heal the world until we heal how we see ourselves in the world.  Introverted Alchemy was created to empower sensitive introverts to see how truly amazing we are and how much incredible value we have to bring to the table.

The Treasures we Carry are Greatly Needed.