We may know Frida Kahlo by her reputation as a free spirit, or the iconic self-portrait of her in a flower crown, dark hair parted in the middle with a unibrow. She was indeed a unique artist who left her mark, and image, on the world, but her story goes deeper than what we may see in pop culture. The symbol of her has taken on a life of its own, to the extent that you can find versions of her self-portraits everywhere, like on tote bags, and Beyoncé even dressed like her for Halloween one year.

I am old enough to vaguely remember the 2002 film Frida, starring Salma Hayek and directed by Julie Taymor, based on her life. I rewatched it recently and found signs of not only a free spirit and feminist icon, but also a sensitive person. I also really enjoyed seeing a few of her paintings come alive on film, though it’s important to note that only about a third of her work was self-portraits, and the rest were portraits of others, animals, or of still life.

In the spirit of sensitivity, this piece will try to look below the surface at Kahlo and draw out some deeper lessons from her life that apply to highly sensitive people.

3 Things Highly Sensitive People Can Learn From Artist Frida Kahlo

1. The deep pain you endure can lead to your powerful legacy.

Kahlo’s life was partially defined by her health and her body’s limitations, due to an accident when she was 18. She also had a limp when she walked, ever since childhood polio. She was bullied for it as a child, but her father encouraged her to exercise and be physically active. 

Then, at 18, she was in a bus when a streetcar crashed into it, resulting in many broken bones and three spinal cord injuries. For several months of recovery, Frida couldn’t move and laid in bed. Incidentally, it was during this time that she began to really focus her considerable intellect and creativity on art. Highly sensitive people (HSPs), too, are usually creatively inclined. 

But this wasn’t all an opportunity to get in touch with her inner self through the pain — it was also a matter of medical bills preventing her from going to medical school herself. The terrible accident definitely changed the course of her career, but also affected her voice as an artist. 

Kahlo’s ongoing disability also led to suffering the first of several miscarriages at 30, which unquestionably also caused emotional pain. She underwent dozens of surgeries, and her body probably hurt for most of the days of her life. There are many factors in Frida’s story that she summed up in brief quotes as causing physical and emotional pain, revealing her sensitive nature. These include: “I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.” and “I don’t paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.”

Though she came of age in a privileged family in the roaring ‘20s, one way she expressed herself was through her iconic attire, which reflected the same reclamation of Mexican folk art as her paintings came to do. She wore jade necklaces and rebozos from the Tehuantepec region wrapped around her shoulders. These became noticeable, and sometimes appreciated, when she and her husband, Diego Rivera would travel to the United States. 

Together with long skirts, this attire also worked to cover Kahlo’s plaster corsets, back braces, and limp. She embraced her eyebrows, bright ribbons, and lipstick, possibly as ways to draw attention to her head rather than her body. But we can infer she was not trying to hide, in part from the way her self-portraits stare at us with confidence. Though her image may now be fetishized or appropriated at times, it is fair to say she painted yet another self-portrait in the form of her unique personal style.   

While Kahlo was an artist known for her self-portraits, Rivera was an artist known for helping to establish the mural movement in Mexico. They first married when she was in her early 20s, and he was over 20 years older and had been married twice before. The two divorced in 1939 and remarried a year later. Kahlo was also bisexual — Georgia O’Keeffe was one woman she allegedly spent time with — and both she and Rivera had numerous affairs. 

Frida Kahlo lived life in a body that wouldn’t do all that she wanted it to do and probably caused her daily pain, and yet that is not the first thing her legacy brings to mind. If anything, thoughts of her now evoke color, life, independence, and a strong sense of self. All these decades, Kahlo’s legacy has remained, and even more than just the sum of her art or pain alone.

2. Do not let anyone reduce your complexity — embrace it.

Some people have simpler stories and backgrounds than others, or fit more easily into the status quo. Although Frida Kahlo has become a fetishized icon, she had a complex identity that cannot be reduced to simple categories.

Kahlo’s identity was always complex, especially for her time. For one thing, she was born and lived much of her life in Mexico, but her ethnic background included her photographer father of German and Jewish background and her mother of both indigenous and Spanish background. She honored her family tree in one particular painting, “My Grandparents, My Parents, and I,” and through her dress. She loved her parents and sisters and grew up with supportive family relationships that continued into adulthood, for the most part.

As we know, Kahlo grappled with her unique and complex physical struggles through her art, as well. While her paintings were much more than self-reflection or personal therapy, she did address her identity and her body through her art. She painted herself with a broken spinal column, as a dead person, and with arrows shot into her. We know the first to have literally happened to her, while the latter two are even more symbolic. She exposed her disability in this and other paintings. If she was a highly sensitive person, perhaps art was an outlet for her trauma.

One of her memorable self-portraits is called “The Two Fridas.” It literally portrays two Fridas sitting beside each other and holding hands, and is full of the symbols characteristic of her paintings. One Frida has a broken heart, wears white Victorian dress and holds scissors, ready to cut both Fridas’ veins. The other has a full, healthy heart, is dressed in Tehuana clothing, and holds a small portrait of Diego. The duality present in this painting represents her complex identity, as well as her sensitivity and experience of pain, in multiple ways. If you’re a highly sensitive person, you’re aware how HSPs are deep, big thinkers.

Politically, Kahlo, like Rivera, was a socialist. She made sacrifices and dedicated her life to this cause to such an extent that we can also call it part of her chosen identity. Her style, hearkening to indigenism, was also related to the revolution that had taken place in Mexico during her childhood. Later, as an adult, she and Rivera hosted Leon Trotsky, a Russian political rival of Joseph Stalin’s, and his wife at their home (and she had an affair with Trotsky). She even painted a piece of art for him for his birthday. Kahlo’s and Rivera’s modernism both related to an artistic movement that had very much come of age along with certain political movements.

Even though Kahlo’s identity sometimes gets commodified in pop culture, she would probably not mind being a role model for unique and complex people. She once wrote:

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world, but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me, too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.”

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3. Your sensitive powers of observation and way of seeing the world are a great gift.

Shortly after meeting Kahlo, Rivera said of her, “Her works conveyed a vital sensuality, further enriched by a ruthless, if sensitive, observational capacity.” Frida was not only emotionally sensitive, but also sensitive in one of the best ways a visual artist can be: able to deeply observe. And as an HSP, I can attest to how we notice even the slightest details and nuances, which probably helped Kahlo enhance her art.

She and Rivera lived much of their lives in La Casa Azul (The Blue House), designed by her father. Because of her disability, she was confined to home much of the time, but she and Rivera filled their home with art pieces and other things that were meaningful to them. The contents of her home often found their way into her still life paintings or as symbolic items in her portraits. She sensitively selected and observed all of the things she surrounded herself with. Oftentimes, highly sensitive types create HSP sanctuaries — where they can recharge as well as thrive — and it certainly seems like Kahlo’s home was one. 

Kahlo did learn artistic techniques from Rivera in part, and also from her father, who was an architectural photographer. She learned photography from him when she was growing up, which of course requires a keen observer’s eye. She was also very quick to draw from aspects of both the art of European masters and modern European movements, like Surrealism. (It’s important to note, however, that her subject matter differentiates her from the Surrealist movement with which she has sometimes been grouped). 

As for the sensuality Rivera and others observed in Kahlo’s art, her paintings do show pleasure and the fullness of the senses through such forms as still-life works of juicy-looking fruits. They also, as we know, strongly portray pain. Symbols of life and death in her art represent another duality that she presented, which appeals to the viewer’s senses and through the keen observations of her own.

Looking at Kahlo’s life gives us takeaways for sensitive people, but also leaves me in awe of her strength and passion. I am amazed at how, in the midst of joy but also much pain, she seemed to live so fully and leave such a legacy. If she was indeed a highly sensitive person, she certainly accentuated the strengths of being an HSP in her works of art. Her artistic talent was her power, and her work continues to inspire people around the world.

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The post 3 Things Highly Sensitive People Can Learn From Artist Frida Kahlo appeared first on Sensitive Refuge.

If you’ve watched X-Men or Wolverine films, the X-Men animated series, or read X-Men comics, you know of superhero Jean Grey. Extremely powerful, telepathic, and telekinetic, she has always been one of my favorite “mutants” and superheroes. The deep-thinking Grey brings new meaning to the idea that being sensitive is a superpower, a gift we should embrace.

Her powers are both mental and empathetic — she can read people’s thoughts and feel the fullness of what they are feeling. 

As a highly sensitive person (HSP), I appreciate this paradigm shift of sensitivity as a strength. I bring this up because I think we all know that being called “sensitive,” and especially “too sensitive,” isn’t necessarily a compliment in our culture. Sometimes the word “sensitive” has less-than-positive connotations and may conjure up the concept of weakness. 

To address that, Grey’s deep sensitivity overpowers her at times. She can see, and even influence, way, way beneath the surface of people, animals, and the literal world around her. But because she has such deep mental powers, sometimes what she is sensing and feeling is almost too much for her to take. Like HSPs, she gets mentally and emotionally flooded.

Highly sensitive people may not literally be cosmically powerful like Grey (despite our strong intuition and sixth sense). But, like she demonstrates, “sensitive” is just another word for “deep thinker” (which is part of why our high sensitivity is a strength).

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How ‘Highly Sensitive’ Translates to ‘Deep Thinker’

We HSPs are deep thinkers through and through. If sensory information didn’t hit us so deeply, for instance, we wouldn’t be so deeply moved by music or other works of art, as well as the happy and beautiful times in life (that others often miss). 

When I go to an art museum, for example, I might gasp out loud or start to tear up when I see an amazing piece of work — and I consider this a gift. And, sometimes, I will have a “thinking” expression on my face versus a smiling one. This doesn’t mean I’m not happy; it just means I’m absorbed in deep thought (part of my nature as an HSP).

We also experience things through our heightened five senses. Our brains combine this input with our experience, doing an involuntary Google search of our mind to see what that sensory input meant when we experienced it before. 

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, said: “There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.”

For example, I can quickly tell when my husband is ready to leave a gathering, even if he hasn’t dropped any hints in conversation. Without making a conscious Sherlock Holmes-like deduction, we HSPs “just know.”

Even if it’s not someone we’re super close with, when we look at another person and are able to infer their current mental and emotional state — since we HSPs excel at absorbing others’ emotions — well, we’re actually thinking deeply. When we are talking to someone and they avoid eye contact or make certain facial expressions, we notice. 

We are pros at reading the subtext and seeing below the surface. Our active brains synthesize all the sensory information we are getting and draw quick and informed conclusions about what is really going on. As a result, we may appear intuitive.

We sensitive types are not psychic, but we also won’t necessarily be able to walk you through every step of how we made our determination, even if it’s super accurate.

How Our Intuition Helps Us Think Deeply, Too

Intuitive understanding happens when we sense certain things in the present based on past evidence and experience. 

HSPs are predisposed to look deeper, think deeper, and feel deeper. If you grasp what the physical evidence from another person tells you so readily, your empathy will also engage more deeply and so will your awareness of the experience of another. 

It only makes sense that highly sensitive people, being naturally able to take in so much sensory information, find it hard to avoid the intuitive conclusions it leads them to on a deeper level of understanding. We HSPs have trouble turning off the things we perceive that others often don’t.

Sometimes my HSP self, for example, will realize that someone feels sheepish or embarrassed about something. Then I feel worse because I know they didn’t want anyone to pick up on their embarrassment. We could get into a whole meta cycle about feeling embarrassed about feeling embarrassed!

The opposite of a highly sensitive person is probably someone whose five senses function highly, but who cannot process the emotional and relational meaning of what their senses tell them. For instance, they could probably repeat back what someone said, but may not pick up on typical social cues, like the way tone of voice indicates a joke or sarcasm.

Now, of course, there are some folks whose five senses are heightened, but who don’t always get the meaning of what they see, hear, and so on. This could be due to their particular neural wiring, and they deserve respect and love, too. Highly sensitive people, however, often feel, think, and perceive things more deeply than most people — and our intuition plays a big part, too.

Need to Calm Your Sensitive Nervous System? 

HSPs often live with high levels of anxiety, sensory overload and stress — and negative emotions can overwhelm us. But what if you could finally feel calm instead?

That’s what you’ll find in this powerful online course by Julie Bjelland, one of the top HSP therapists in the world. You’ll learn to turn off the racing thoughts, end emotional flooding, eliminate sensory overload, and finally make space for your sensitive gifts to shine.

Stop feeling held back and start to feel confident you can handle anything. Check out this “HSP Toolbox” and start making a change today. Click here to learn more.

Being Sensitive is Being Deep and Strong

Like fictional superhero Grey, even in real life, sensitive people who think deeply might experience inner conflict. We, too, want to use our power for good, but we also paradoxically feel the burden of exercising it.

In the X-Men stories, Grey cannot make her powers go away, though sometimes she wants to. She can choose, however, to use her abilities to help, rather than harm, others. Similarly, she can use her sensitivity and deep mental abilities to rebuild and heal rather than to destroy. And so can we.

When you are an HSP, you think and understand deeply. With your sensitivity, you also have deeper decisions to make all the time. It can be difficult to know what to do with all that a sensitive person understands and observes.

Let’s say I somehow realize, for example, that a woman I know has been through a miscarriage, even though she didn’t tell me. Now I have to consider whether she’d want to talk about it or not. What to do with that information feels like a big deal, and maybe I even feel a fraction of her pain.

That is part of why HSPs can become overwhelmed. The good news is, there are ways to make a difference and use our powers for good that fit who HSPs are. 

Thinking, seeing, and feeling deeply doesn’t have to be debilitating, even though it’s completely understandable if we need a rest sometimes. For me, when I am in a place with a lot of conflicting noises for a while, I need time afterwards to regroup in a quieter setting.

Being sensitive and a deep thinker are synonymous — both are strengths, our superpowers, not weaknesses. Like fictional character Grey, when highly sensitive people use their unique depths for good purposes, there is very little they can’t do.

You might like:

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The post Does ‘Highly Sensitive’ Mean You’re a Deep Thinker? appeared first on Sensitive Refuge.

Something people who know me don’t expect is that I love the music of rapper Kendrick Lamar. One of his early hits, “B****, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” has a line that says, “I can feel your energy from two planets away.”

That part of the song always resonated with me, even if I took it out of context. (It may have been meant as a reference to the idea that “men are from Mars, women are from Venus.”) The concept of feeling someone else’s energy even if they are really far away might imply that their energy is very strong. 

Or their emotional energy just feels really strong — perhaps to someone who is highly sensitive to other people’s vibes and emotions, like I am. Instead of “I can feel your energy from two planets away,” for me it’s more like, “I do feel your energy from two planets away.”

If you’re a highly sensitive person (HSP), you may not only become overwhelmed when your five physical senses are overloaded, but also absorb other people’s emotions at every turn. You tend to quickly pick up on how other people are feeling when you enter a room, especially if you know them well. And their feelings don’t just whisper to us, they’re loud — very loud.

The Science Behind All the ‘Noise’ We Feel

There is science behind being highly sensitive, and research shows that emotions really do hit HSPs harder.

Yet there is a lot scientists don’t yet fully understand (or agree on) about how human brains work, from mirror neurons to the prefrontal cortex, but we do know that HSPs’ brains function somewhat differently. To put it simply, parts of HSPs’ brains — areas that are responsible for making us aware and process emotions, values, and sensory data — may be more active than non-HSPs’.

Because of all this, HSPs often have vivid dreams, experience beauty deeply, can’t stop thinking about the needs of others, and, yes, can feel someone else’s emotional energy from “two planets away.”

One thing experts seem to agree on is that, highly sensitive person or not, emotions are contagious in a small group, commonly referred to as “emotional contagion.” This might explain the effects of the emotions we “pick up,” both positive and negative. (Thankfully, positivity spreads to us highly sensitive types, too, not only negativity.)

Emotions Are Contagious Even When You’re Not In Person

For me, not only do I feel others’ feelings in person, but also through social media. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy social media, as it’s a great way to keep in touch with people, especially these days.

While some people seem to share everything, others are more reticent. Some people are all about selfies whereas others seem to focus more on current events or sporadically share meaningful experiences. And then there are those who use social media to vent. Through stories or posts, they may share a lot about everything that’s on their mind lately or their life struggles.

Now, I should make it clear, I actually really like most of these friends. If I don’t watch all the Stories or read all the posts, honestly, I feel like less of a good friend. Sometimes, though, I just want to say something about how their extensive sharing about all their difficulties affects sensitive people — like me! — connected to them online.

After I watch or read their post, I feel the negative feelings they’re expressing through their tone, expression, and word choice. In addition, if their struggles are something super common — such as the effects of all the events of 2020, budget and financial concerns, or relational things — it also brings up the emotions that go with any similar issues I have.

I definitely care about what they are going through, but it hits me kind of viscerally and I get mentally and emotionally flooded. I may not be two planets away, but even if I am 1000 miles away, I sure can feel their “energy” — their moods and attitude — like they’re dominating the room.

In my head, I even think things that aren’t very nice sometimes, like, “Don’t you know that almost everyone is going through something like this? Does this have to be shared with all of your friends or followers, even though you don’t know what they’re going through at this moment? Yes, I can feel your feelings — and they’re loud!” 

What I do admire, though, is that these people sharing everything on social media are being real: that’s how they feel and how they’re doing, and they’re not afraid to say so. I’m not an advocate of pretending to be OK when you are not. For HSPs, though, it can come across like speakers booming at high volume.

And let’s not forget about the contentious “discussions” people have in the comments section.

Sometimes, it reminds me of road rage — if people are behind a screen or a windshield, the awareness of the emotional impact they could have on others is dulled; they say things online they would not say in person. 

Once again, when you deliver all of this in a short moment to a person that easily senses and absorbs other people’s emotions, the impact is even greater. 

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How to Deal with Someone’s ‘Loud’ Feelings

To deal with people’s “loud” feelings both in-person and online, I think it’s critical for HSPs to create healthy boundaries. I think awareness is key and that HSPs can gently train their close friends to do something that’s more and more common lately: ask you if you have the capacity for them to vent (before they do it). 

Recently, I actually kind of wanted to vent. I tried asking someone close to me, but I knew they were coping with a lot. They implied that another time would be better, and I understood. If you do this as the listener, it might even open up a conversation about what it’s like to be a highly sensitive person.

And when it comes to social media, I’ve learned to cut myself some slack. Maybe I’m not a bad friend if I don’t make it through all dozen of a person’s Stories or their latest posts. Maybe, some days, I need to choose to mute certain accounts or take a break from social media altogether. In fact, when I do the latter, I get to take the time-out that my highly sensitive self so desperately needs.  

And if I’m really invested in a certain friendship, I even find kind ways to start a conversation about how their posts may affect others. Those are conversations that take courage and have to happen at the right moment, but HSPs can bring their natural genuineness to them. And, most of the time, the friend is receptive to hearing my thoughts. 

You Don’t Have to Shoulder the Burden for Someone Else’s Feelings

As much as we can try to educate our friends, for lack of a better word, about our high sensitivity and how their feelings impact us, the burden shouldn’t all fall on us to set boundaries. It would also help if others understood HSPs better and how to be a good friend to us.

Once, someone close to me was in a trauma treatment program and I attended a meeting with one of the doctors. At the end, I asked him a question related to absorbing some of my loved one’s emotions, day-to-day. (I actually used the word “absorb” because it felt like the best description of what was happening before I even knew that was something HSPs did.)

The doctor answered with something about being independent and boundaries. I’m sure he wasn’t wrong, but it would have also been helpful if he’d acknowledged that some people are just wired to absorb others’ emotions. We can’t help it — we’re predisposed to empathize and be extra sensitive.

As a female, too, I am all too aware that it’s only been a handful of decades since women were deemed “too emotional” to have careers (that were stereotypically male-oriented), vote, and so on. Some women of color have also shared that they are expected to uphold an image of strength, which feels at odds with being naturally sensitive and emotional.

That’s why I think it’s extra important to emphasize here that being an HSP does not mean there is anything “wrong” with your mental health or intellect. Man or woman, it does not mean that you are “too” anything or that you are weak. In fact, we highly sensitive folk have many unique strengths, including high emotional intelligence, creativity, intuitiveness, and much depth of thought. 

So HSPs need to be better understood by society at large, starting with those closest to us, both online and off. 

Remember the friend I described who shares — erm, overshares — quite a lot on social media?  Even though I never told her how “loud” her sharing came across to me sometimes, lately she’s made an effort to share more positivity, good news, and beauty. And I’m pleased to report that I’ve started “catching” those positive feelings from her Instagram more than the negative ones. 

When we can find a balance — between the loud negative feelings and the positive ones — it makes all the difference. And, with practice, even the “loud” feelings sound more like a whisper sometimes.

Need to Calm Your Sensitive Nervous System? 

HSPs often live with high levels of anxiety, sensory overload and stress — and negative emotions can overwhelm us. But what if you could finally feel calm instead?

That’s what you’ll find in this powerful online course by Julie Bjelland, one of the top HSP therapists in the world. You’ll learn to turn off the racing thoughts, end emotional flooding, eliminate sensory overload, and finally make space for your sensitive gifts to shine.

Stop feeling held back and start to feel confident you can handle anything. Check out this “HSP Toolbox” and start making a change today. Click here to learn more.

You might like:

• Do You Feel Emotions ‘More’ Than Other People? You’re Not Alone
• Why Highly Sensitive People Get Mentally and Emotionally ‘Flooded’
• 16 Ways to Calm the Heck Down When You’re a Highly Sensitive Overthinker

This article contains affiliate links. We only recommend products we truly believe in.

The post Yes, I Can Feel Your Feelings — and They’re Quite ‘Loud’ appeared first on Sensitive Refuge.