The HSP’s Guide To Awaken Your Highest Self By Amie Dean
Guest Post
As a Highly Sensitive Person, your sensitivities give you the unique opportunity to connect more deeply with your Soul's wisdom (also known as your Highest Self) and then provide the tools to journey inward, where you can activate your Higher Self to overcome stress, anxiety and the overall uncertainties of life.
You are incredibly intuitive, compassionate, and creative. However, one of the most significant obstacles to tapping into your unique gifts is fear. Fear keeps you from trusting your intuitive knowing and blocks the creative flow.
Fear can cause you to make decisions with a background scarcity mindset that what you do isn't enough, and what you have isn't enough.
And suppose you are an empath as well. In that case, you're likely feeling other people's emotions, which makes it even harder to discern personal vs. collective fear.
To better understand fear, it's helpful to consider that we all have sub-personalities or different parts of us. Everybody has sub-personalities, whether or not you are an HSP. Still, some sub-personalities show up more for HSPs than others.
For instance, HSPs typically struggle with these sub-personalities: people pleaser, a conflict avoidant part that finds it challenging to set boundaries, a perfectionist, and/ or a strong inner critic.
Sub-personalities are masks we wear, but we don't realize we are wearing them- we believe we are these sub-personalities. Sub-personalities are part of our ego system that protects us from experiencing our deep core wounds of shame, abandonment, disempowerment, and survival/scarcity. These wounds often begin in early childhood and cause almost all of our human suffering. While sub-personalities try to protect us from this wounding, they inadvertently cause an imbalance that makes us feel less authentic and less empowered than we are.
But what if it is just as simple as recognizing that these parts of you are present and noticing that they are NOT you? The key is deepening self-awareness, mindfulness, and self-compassion to take the mask of subpersonalities off one at a time.
When you begin this process, you might wonder - who or what is underneath these masks? And how will you know when you have removed all your masks?
I've developed Seven Soul Qualities that point toward the essence of who you are so you can better pinpoint when you are seated as your Higher Self instead of acting from a conditioned part of you.
The Seven Soul Qualities are:
Love, peace, joy, freedom, courage, power, and trust.
When experiencing or feeling one or more of these qualities, you tap into your authentic essence- your Higher Self.
I created a robust four-step daily process to help you uncover more self-awareness of your inner patterns so you can discern the difference between parts of you vs. your Higher Self. In each step, the sub-personality masks begin to come off.
The most critical first step is to name your experience in your mind or out loud. For instance, you might say.
Step one:
"Parts of me are active, and that's okay."
You know parts of you are active whenever you are not feeling any of those Seven Soul Qualities. Another way of knowing if parts are active is if you are experiencing distressing emotions, ruminating thoughts, or an overall negative mood.
By stating this to yourself at least once (but even better several times a day), you activate your brain's prefrontal cortex, which helps bring your decision-making, logical mind back online. This can help externalize fear or other negative thoughts or emotions.
Step Two:
Choose your mindful anchor: an anchor is anything that helps you become more present. For instance, you might choose your breath, sounds around you, or the feeling of your body where you sit or stand.
Choose one anchor to practice for 30 seconds to a minute - it can bring you back to feeling more grounded.
Step Three:
Allow: Now it's time to practice just being with what is. For instance, if you notice negative thoughts, you just let them float through your mind. If you feel a tumultuous storm of emotions or sensations inside, breathe deep and ride the waves.
When we contact our inner landscape, we can become the watcher or witness of our experience. If it is too intense, try what mindfulness meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein shares as a framework for your experience.
For example, you might say to yourself:
"Emotions are being known."
"Sensations are being known."
"Thoughts are being known."
Practice allowing for at least a few minutes. This helps to externalize your experience further.
Step Four:
Soothe: Simply place your hand on your heart, which helps to settle your nervous system. Close your eyes if it feels safe, and say some kind words to your parts/sub-personalities, such as:
"you are not alone; I am here with you."
"it's truly okay to feel this way right now."
"This is temporary. I am strong and resilient."
You can switch this around depending on what feels best to you.
In this step, you choose to turn toward your sub-personalities with love and step into the seat of your Higher Self more fully.
By the end, you may or may not feel one or more of those Seven Soul Qualities. That's perfectly fine!
In some practices, activating one or more of your Soul Qualities will be easier than in others. If you practice these steps daily, you will continue to see these masks come down, and your Higher Self will be revealed.
Another essential piece is that it might seem like our goal is to feel better by the end of this four-step practice. While that can sometimes be the case, what is most essential is that you can better be with what you feel.
As you continue to practice, you will grow in self-awareness and resilience. And over time, it becomes clear that you don't have to get rid of complex thoughts, emotions, and sensations to tap into your Higher Self and these Seven Soul Qualities.
Instead, you might find that exploring your inner world is like watching a movie - you might discover that you are not the characters in your mind movie. Instead, you begin to feel more like you are the watcher of that movie.
While you may feel everything you see on the screen (just like any intense movie!), you can also be aware that it is just various energetic shifts within and that the mind movie is not who you are.
I would love to hear about your experience as you practice these four steps. I also invite you to take the Core Wound Quiz to determine which core wound (shame, abandonment, disempowerment, or survival) is keeping you stuck in complex sub-personality patterns such as people pleasing, a strong inner critic, and more.
Core Wound Quiz
https://one-awakening.involve.me/corewoundquiz
To Learn About The "Heal Your Core Wound Mini-Course":
https://www.oneawakening.us/CoreWoundCourse
One Awakening Website:
Free Akashic Core Wound Guidebook
Amie Dean is a Clinically Certified Trauma Professional and Awakening Transformation Coach specializing in high sensitivity. Her Awakened Living Community and online courses have helped hundreds of empaths and HSPs break free of the four core wounds hindering their growth in their spirituality, relationships, work/career, and life purpose. She guides them to fully align with their Higher Selves to awaken their true essence and live meaningfully while sharing their gifts with the world.
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Julie Bjelland is a psychotherapist specializing in high sensitivity, Author of The Empowered Highly Sensitive Person, host of The HSP Podcast, and founder of the Sensitive Empowerment Community. Her books, blog, online courses, and free Webinars have helped thousands of highly sensitive people (HSPs) worldwide reduce their challenges, access their gifts, and discover their significant value to thrive to their fullest potential. Her HSPs in Heart-Centered Business Group connects and supports HSP healers and practitioners. Julie loves connecting in her Sensitive Empowerment Community and warmly invites you to join this positive, safe, and welcoming space. JulieBjelland.com❤️🌈❤️ (she/her)
Some men have expressed frustration about my focus on women’s autism experiences, but this emphasis addresses a longstanding research gap that makes women-centered support essential.