Anxiety and Depression in Highly Sensitive People
I was 17, graduated from high school, and planned for college the first time severe depression and anxiety struck me. I was excited about preparing for college when a sudden illness change everything. It started with a terrible backache the day my parents had planned to pick up a summer exchange student from France, something we had done for several summers. I thought I had strained my back as I worked as a nursing assistant and often did heavy lifting at work, so I stayed home and didn’t greet the exchange student at the airport with my parents. The next day, it worsened, and I ended up at the hospital with a severe kidney infection and a 108-degree fever. I almost died more than once that summer and had made a hospital record for the highest temperature without dying. It turned out to be a kinked ureter, and thus surgery was required. I spent much of that summer before college in the hospital.
I had it in my head that I was going to attend college no matter what, and I remember the tube came out of my kidney the day before I started college. I couldn’t even carry my books or climb up the ladder to my bed loft in my dorm. My arms covered in bruises from all the IVs, and I was pretty sure people thought I was a drug addict. I did not look well and should have stayed home to recover and get support for the trauma I had endured before starting.
Ignoring trauma doesn’t work because it doesn’t just go away; it can stay with you for a lifetime if untreated. It tends to bubble up into anxiety and or depression when left untreated. HSPs can be even more impacted by trauma. I struggled the whole semester and ended up taking the next semester off. It was then my depression and anxiety hit the hardest. I was in a terrible space and even felt suicidal. I didn’t know about trauma, and what I had been through was a trauma. I didn’t know about the trait of high sensitivity and how trauma might be especially hard for me as a sensitive person and that there were some tools I needed and didn’t have.
I didn’t have self-compassion; instead, I was hard on myself, which made me feel worse. I didn’t have self-love. I didn’t even like who I was at the time because I had gotten so many messages that being that sensitive was wrong, so I felt like a failure, and all my plans were out the window. I didn’t even know about therapy, and no one in my family had ever been. In my family, you work hard and don’t have time for feelings, and you wake up to do it all over again. Life on a farm was hard physical work. You weren’t supposed to have strong emotions, they were looked down on and considered weak, except that I did have strong feelings. When I was hurt or emotional, I heard “get over it” or that I was “too sensitive,” so I got the message that how I was feeling was wrong, and I had all these extreme emotions that I didn’t know how to handle. My body was weak, and my feelings intense. It was a challenging combination that I didn’t know how to navigate at 17.
I think that’s a big reason why my passion for helping HSPs is so strong. The research shows us that when sensitive people get the right types of support, they are less likely to experience anxiety and depression. Without the correct kind of support, we are more likely to experience the challenges of depression and anxiety, and that makes everything harder in life. I know those experiences helped shape who I am today, and I am thankful to have the tools I need now, but I suffered a lot for many years, and I genuinely hope my work can help prevent that same suffering in others.
We must start understanding the needs of sensitive people so we can support them and give them the tools to thrive. Research also shows us that HSPs benefit the most from therapy and the right types of support. I needed a parent who would have validated my feelings, given me physical and emotional comfort, and encouraged professional help. Sensitive people have real emotions, and sometimes they can be quite strong. Even if someone else doesn’t feel something as intensely as another, it doesn’t make it less so for the person having the intensity. Without tools, I felt like I walked around like an open wound, absorbing everything painful on top of the trauma I endured and didn’t understand.
Instead of thinking our intense emotions are wrong, we need to accept who we are and validate our experiences and learn skills to cope with strong emotions, self-soothe, and emotionally regulate. We need to give ourselves the gift of developing self-compassion and self-love so we can be friends to ourselves in those tough moments. We need to carefully take care of emotional wounding and trauma, just as we would treat physical wounding and trauma. We need to shift the culture that tells us how the 80 percent experiences the world is how we should experience it. We need to embrace why we are sensitive. There’s a reason.
There are gifts that sensitive people have that the world needs and the majority of the world depend on you sharing those gifts because the world is a better place with sensitive people thriving. Once sensitive people learn these healing tools, we can genuinely thrive to our fullest potential, which often means helping people or making the world better in some way. We need to embrace the sensitive.
Supportive Resources I recommend for HSPs
2 Online HSP Courses
Brain Training for the Highly Sensitive Person, Techniques to Reduce Anxiety and Overwhelming Emotions (HSPs report improvement within 1-2 weeks).
Blooming Brilliantly, Understanding and Loving Who You Are as a Sensitive Person. (This course helps you develop self-love, set healthy boundaries, and teaches how to protect your energy and release negative energy).
Julie Bjelland is a sensitivity expert, psychotherapist, and author. Her online courses developed for HSPs and her Sensitive Empowerment community have helped thousands of highly sensitive people (HSPs) around the world reduce their challenges, access their gifts, and discover their significant value to truly thrive in the world. Known for her ability to teach people tools that work quickly, Julie is on a mission to empower sensitive people to live their best lives. For more HSP resources and to take Julie’s free Sensitivity Quiz, visit JulieBjelland.com