If you’re a highly sensitive person (HSP), you probably read the title of this article and wondered how it’s possible: How can HSPs possibly thrive in stimulating social environments? And, you know what? I get it. 

Well, consider this, how research has shown that while HSPs are more susceptible to displeasurable sensory input, we are also more susceptible to receiving the benefits of enjoyable sensory input (which also means increased capacity for recovery). It is under this idea that I have found ways to enjoy large social gatherings — even just for a few hours — and better sustain myself if, and when, the stimulation becomes overwhelming. 

So, below, I’m going to give you real, actionable steps that I take to better prepare myself for large social events as an HSP and set myself up for the best experience possible. And you can, too.

7 Ways to Thrive in Stimulating Social Environments as an HSP   

1. Do as much preparation as you possibly can

One key to doing well in stimulating environments is to prepare — both mentally and physically — as much as you possibly can beforehand. If I know I have a large social event on a given day, I try to make sure that the rest of the day will be relatively slow and/or soothing for my nervous system. Then, about an hour before I leave for the event, I meditate (preferably outside) and engage in energy work practices. First, I feel myself connect to both earth and spirit through my spinal cord. Then, I imagine earth elements filling in any holes in my energetic field and envision a beautiful pink bubble of love surrounding and protecting me. Doing this energetic work beforehand has been a game-changer for me, and there are a variety of techniques that you can employ if you’re unfamiliar with the practice.

I also prepare for an event via spiritual scheduling. To each their own, but for me, I notice a big difference in how I take in sensory and emotional input during different phases of the monthly cycles (both the moon’s and my own). So I try to avoid scheduling long social events within a day or two of the full moon, as well as toward the end of my premenstrual phase and the beginning of my menstrual phase. These tend to be the times that I feel most “spongey” to external input, so if I do have to fit something in during these time frames, I make sure to choose environments and people that I feel extra comfortable with whenever possible.

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2. Scope out the place as soon as you arrive

The moment I arrive somewhere, the first thing I do is a “vibe check.” As overused as the phrase is, HSPs tend to pick up on the subtleties of their environments deeply and quickly. This gives us the advantage of being able to detect the most friendly people, areas, and objects for our nervous systems from the get-go.     

For me, these spaces are usually farthest from the music and alcohol, and closest to any plants and comfortable seating areas. If you are unable to choose your seating, try to locate a sensory input that is pleasurable to you and come back to it as often as necessary. This could be a silky tablecloth, the fruit water in your glass, or a beautiful piece of art in your line of sight.    

3. Engage: Focus your attention on certain people or activities

I know, it might sound counterintuitive to engage with people or other types of input (like sounds, tastes, or sights). But if you  focus on ones you like, it will improve your experience. 

I’ve often found that while the overall atmosphere of a large social gathering is overwhelming, when I focus my attention on one person or activity, other input becomes somewhat peripheral. I think of it as a sort of “flow state,” if you will. If you are in a particularly stimulating area (i.e, one with lots of noise), you can also ask whomever you are talking to if they’d like to move somewhere else. People say “sure” more often than you think!

4. Take lots of breaks — they will help lessen any overstimulation

Regardless of how much fun you’re having, it is likely that you will eventually need a break (or five). Sometimes, it’s easy to step outside and get a breath of fresh air. If this is the case, it’s even better if you can find a dirt or grassy patch where you can take your shoes off and connect to the earth. After all, nature makes highly sensitive souls happy.       

If this is not the case, I’ve often found solace in taking an extended bathroom break (individual rooms are better, but a stall can work, too). This is where a well-packed purse can come in handy. These are my purse must-haves:

• Water and healthy snacks (as I am sensitive to spicy + extra sugary foods)
• Lavender essential oil (talk about calming)
• Flower essence remedy of your choice 
• Phone charger (to ensure car playlists can be played to, from, or during the event)
• Hair tie (putting my hair up if it gets too warm is a simple and effective way to decrease or prevent overstimulation)
• Grounding stones or crystals (great to hold in your hand if you start to feel overstimulated)

So when you’re on a break from socializing, apply your lavender oil and hold a piece of the earth in your palms! I like to practice the emotional freedom technique (EFT), too, wherein you tap various energy “hot spots” on your body while reciting a phrase such as “I am safe.” The tapping helps you access your body’s energy and sends signals to the part of the brain that controls stress. I also like to practice conscious breathing during my breaks to calm my nervous system and recenter. Pro tip: When you wash your hands, imagine any unwanted energy falling down the drain — works like a charm!

5. Have go-to phrases ready to make leaving easier

When we highly sensitive souls need to leave a social gathering, we need to leave. We’ve had enough and just want to be alone! After all, we want to avoid getting an “HSP hangover”! So it helps to have some go-to phrases ready:

• “Thank you so much for inviting me. I need to get going to (insert commitment here), but it was great seeing you!”
• “I have a long drive back tonight, but I want to thank you for having me at this lovely event.”
• “I’m feeling a bit tired and have to get up early tomorrow, so I’m going to get going. Thank you so much for the time and energy you put into this gathering. I hope I see you again soon!”

With these in mind, you won’t get even more overwhelmed trying to think of reasons to leave. (You can also have these written down on a piece of paper in your purse or in a Notes app in your phone!)

6. Schedule in alone time afterwards

We sensitive types need alone time after we’re overstimulated — there’s nothing we love more than holing up in our HSP sanctuary to do something calming, like reading a book or taking a nap.

In order to figure out what you need after a social event, listen to your body. After a particularly stimulating social event, I tend to feel one of two ways — exhilarated or exhausted, depending on what kind of event it was. Usually, the first occurs during smaller events if I happen to connect with someone in a really profound way and am feeling excited to have meaningfully connected with someone. Either way, though, neither feeling falls within a state of regulation, so it is important for me to tune into my body and feel which direction I’ve swung to guide my rest and recovery process.

A few months ago, for example, I celebrated my college graduation with my close friends and family the day before Mother’s Day. Needless to say, I had to sit in a quiet room by myself the following Monday to decompress from two days in a row of social activities. Usually, I try to avoid this by scheduling out multiple days in between long social gatherings and by limiting them to 1-2 times per week when possible. This helps decrease my sense of overstimulation a lot. In cases when this is not possible, I try to schedule in time for a restorative practice — like yoga, tai chi, or a simple meditation — before jumping from one activity to the next. Speaking of which…

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7. Have a post-event decompression method ready

I find that what I do to decompress after an event all depends on the type of social event I just attended. For instance, if I’m all keyed up afterwards and feel jumpy or antsy, the sensory information that my body tries to process can be too much to bear. The first thing I will do in this situation is literally shake it out. A great way to do this is to jump around and let your arms flail without trying to control a single muscle in your body. Similar to how your dog periodically shakes off extra stimulation, I’ve found that this freeform movement has a similar impact on us humans. I also make an effort to breathe slowly and choose slow-to-mid tempo music for the car ride home so that my nervous system can re-regulate back to center.

However, if I’m feeling depleted, I’ll use another technique to restore my HSP balance. I can always tell I’m depleted when I feel tense and dried up — figuratively, I feel like sandpaper that’s been stripped of inner and outer barriers and resources. The first thing I will do in this situation is move my body in a more flowy way — think Phoebe Buffet — to allow any tension to start to shift, and I will combine this movement with some EFT.  

Drinking water is also very helpful in this situation, as it literally feels like my body becomes rejuvenated with this life-giving liquid (our bodies are around 60 percent water, after all!). I also imagine myself breathing in vital life force energy and exhaling all tension, and will often drive home in silence (but if I do choose to listen to something, Essie Jane is usually my top choice).

Or, I’ll take an “HSP recovery bath” — here’s how:

• Take a physical shower and imagine the day washing off
• Take a warm bath with Epsom salts and your favorite scents
• Take an energetic shower — either in the physical shower or somewhere else you feel comfortable — and practice some of the energy techniques described above
• Take a forest bath and feel any excess energy compost into the earth

All in All, Do What Works Best for You

Although it may take some trial and error, soon, you’ll know which decompression methods work best for you. The bottom line? Curate what you can, and trust that these choices will help you enough to move resiliently through what you can’t. While it may not be easy, learning to thrive — and not just survive — in these stimulating social environments is possible for us HSPs. So, the next time you’re invited to a large social gathering, prep your schedule, pack your toolbox, and enjoy the party.

Fellow highly sensitive people, what are some ways you thrive in socially stimulating environments? I’d love to hear in the comments below!

You might like:

• How to Prepare for Your Next Emotionally Charged Event
• Why Your Physical Environment Is So Important If You’re an HSP
• How to Restore Balance as a Highly Sensitive Person

The post How to Deal with Overwhelming Social Events as an HSP appeared first on Sensitive Refuge.

Don’t get me wrong — I’ve always been emotionally sensitive, and I’ve never for a second thought I wasn’t. If I did, my parents would have snapped me out of that fantasy the moment I tried to convey it. 

There was a time, however, when I did not identify with my visceral presence in this world (you know, the one that gives highly sensitive people (HSPs) our trademark sensory “superpowers”) and I lived largely in my head (and other fantasy lands that I kept to myself). Compared to my textbook-HSP best friend, who I bonded with as a teen over our preference for “deep” talk, I was the playful and energetic one who could talk her way through a room with ease — though even that, at its root, was largely an incomplete judgment of my internal experience during those galivants.   

Nonetheless, since I felt so spaced out all the time, I did not realize how much my environment impacted me. But, looking back, I think that the intense impact from my environment is what catapulted me into space in the first place. Luckily, I came back down to earth in college, and have been living as a healthy HSP ever since. So, if you have ever questioned whether you, too, are highly sensitive, here is the story of how I “lost” (and reclaimed) my own trait of high sensitivity.

The Highly Sensitive Child

Some of my earliest childhood memories are with my grandma. Since my mom left early for work in the mornings, she was the person who ran my bath and washed my hair with apple-scented no-tear shampoo (we thought it would stop me from crying — ha!). You see, I was too afraid to put my head under the faucet because the feeling of water near my eyes, even without the soap, was atrocious. (In fact, I still prefer to crane my neck to avoid submerging my full face under the showerhead — but that’s a different story.)

After bathing me, she would wrap me in the softest towel and carry me to her bed. She would then present the outfit she chose for me that day, which we quickly learned could not have any inside tags that touched my skin and could absolutely not include a turtleneck. Tutor Time was my next destination, where my pre-school teachers would let two-year-old me visit the babies because I was so gentle with them. My mom was so proud that she gushed to the whole family about it.

There were other instances, however, that left my mom feeling perplexed. When she took me to Disney World, for example, I would have a meltdown every time we stood outside to watch the fireworks. In fact, I was very prone to meltdowns for seemingly nonexistent reasons during my youth, which often invoked the dreaded phrase from others, “You’re too sensitive.” Sometimes, my meltdowns did have a clear cause, but did not make sense to others around me. For instance, my mom had no idea what to do with herself when I busted out into messy tears during Miss Hannigan’s drunken rendition of “Little Girls” in the Annie movie. 

These intense sensory reactions during my youth shaped my eventual aversion to new sensory experiences. I felt consistently misunderstood — and labeled — by my peers for being a “crybaby,” a “goody-two-shoes,” or generally unwilling to play. I found solace in fictional characters and Bratz dolls, where I could create and immerse myself in other realities, since in my reality, I felt like there was something wrong with me as a person. 

Eventually, I learned to deal with the fireworks, the clothing tags, the crowds, and basically every sensory input that I “overreacted” to — all of which led me into my period of “forgetting” that I was highly sensitive (but didn’t yet know it, of course).

The Heady T(w)een

As I grew older, I often found myself disconnected from my body and very much in my head. While I considered myself a deep thinker, I had no problem going on “autopilot” and whizzing through a list of activities. My deep thinking tended to occupy the rest of my time — with physical experiences playing an auxiliary role in my life — and I held pejorative attitudes toward those who enjoyed rich sensory experiences. This often isolated me from my peers and left me to swim in some heavy feelings that I was never fully able (or wanting) to disconnect from. 

As I entered my teen years, I became more openly gregarious and playful, though often still serious when compared to friends. By the time I hit high school, I would have never even related to the idea of being overstimulated — I was so “out of my body” that I was seldom aware of my physical surroundings. This was a running joke between my not-yet-identified HSP best friend and me. In fact, I sometimes even pushed her to not spend so much time processing and “just do it.” But I was always aware of my emotional state and tendency to tire out in large groups, along with the undeniable fact that I reacted more strongly to these circumstances than others.

By my freshman year of college, I had rallied up a small group of close friends who possessed milder personality traits than I did (or, in a few cases, extremely contentious extroverts who were likely HSPs themselves).This was also the year that I discovered the art of meditation. Though I didn’t realize it then, my irate reaction to the sound of my roommate “click-clicking” on her laptop when I tried to sit still was an early sign of reclamation. And as I got better at meditating and seemingly less bothered by my roommate’s typing, I found myself relearning how to exist inside of my body (rather than what felt like above it). 

One morning after a particularly successful meditation session, I felt more grounded than ever. I found myself feeling empowered, walking with slow intention to the dining hall for lunch and listening blissfully to a song on Spotify. But as I neared the dining hall, the sound of my music began to fade as the sound of a leaf blower grew closer. (As I write this, I shudder.) The deeper into the grass-filled complex I walked, the more landscapers (and the more machinery) there were. I remember exactly where I was standing when I felt my forehead scrunch and a waterfall pour out of my eyes. As the tears flew, my mind filled with questions: Why am I crying? I got over my weird noise thing in fifth grade. I haven’t cried at loud noises since the 4^th of July in 2009. Why can’t I stop? I was mentally and emotionally flooded. After taking a leap forward, I suddenly felt like I had taken a giant leap back. But, as someone once famously said, this was the dark before the dawn.

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The Highly Sensitive Adult 

A fated synchronicity that day led me to a tweet (via Maryam Hasnaa) about the trait of high sensitivity. It emphasized that being sensitive to your surroundings is a challenge when not properly acknowledged, and a strength once you learn how to clear your energy. This lit the flame for a longtime, ongoing journey of reclaiming my high sensitivity as a positive character trait rather than a character flaw. 

Here are some ever-shaping conclusions I’ve reached about relearning what it means to be highly sensitive (beyond the label of “too sensitive”):

• Sensitivity is not inherently good or bad — it is a genetic trait that I have, and I choose to love it since it’s mine. I grew up harboring an oscillating inferiority-superiority complex, especially when it came to my emotional sensitivity. After the initial wave of shame, it was tempting for me to believe that my sensitivity made me “better” than others in some way after learning about the strengths of HSPs, like I had secret powers. As of late, I have found the most solace in using my knowledge of my high sensitivity as a guide for understanding the way I process the world and how this shapes my experience — whether that means emotional reactivity or heightened empathy is up to me.
• I am not trapped into any limiting patterns due to my high sensitivity. I’ve realized that I have the power to take care of myself, and even enjoy, stimulating experiences on occasion. High sensitivity is not a limitation, and it does not doom me to a fate of taking on the emotions and sensations of the world without rest. This ties into my first point: when I take care of myself and listen to my body, I can show up in the world in a more vibrant, empathetic, and authentic way. Sometimes, this even means enjoying a group outing and dancing with friends, which I can do because I know my body will tell me when it’s time to retreat. 
• I can choose to savor enjoyable sensory input and play a greater role in constructing both my physical and emotional resilience. Owning my first Himalayan salt rock lamp was a game changer for me — I never realized how much easier it was for me to wind down at night with a simple shift in lighting! I have also come to appreciate flower essences, rich foods, the sound of trees blowing in the wind, and countless other sensory inputs that make me feel at peace (and sometimes even in euphoria). Even though I am more sensitive to less enjoyable input, I am also more sensitive to more enjoyable input — and this makes me even more susceptible to the benefits of restorative practices.

I am still young, and there is still so much to experience. But if there is one thing I know, it’s that I am with me for this entire lifetime. So if you, like me, are a born-again HSP, I hope you find the courage to claim it: not for the superpower, but for the peace that comes with accepting yourself as you are.

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You might like:

• 7 Ways Your Life Will Change for the Better When You Embrace Your Sensitivity
• These 3 Sets of Genes Make You a Highly Sensitive Person
• 9 Secret Powers of Highly Sensitive People

The post How I ‘Rediscovered’ My High Sensitivity Trait appeared first on Sensitive Refuge.