Highly sensitive people and empaths have the ability to sense emotions, underlying sensations, the energy in the room, and the underlying meaning of what someone says or does to a large extent.

This makes it possible for us to see things other people are unaware of and many of us are good at reading situations and people.

Being sensitive (or highly perceptive) can feel like both a gift and a curse, and navigating this world as a sensitive person is far from easy. I am an HSP and an empath myself, and I know it can be challenging to block out the emotional noise and the energies of the world.

But we also have the capacity to feel deeply and to experience life in a very rich way with all the nuances and our depth, and many of us would probably not want to miss out on that aspect of our reality.

All HSPs have our personality trait in common.

Still, there can be a vast difference in how we experience and deal with what we pick up on in our environment, depending on whether we have awakened and if we have begun doing inner work.

An HSP or empath who has not yet become self-aware or done much inner work often responds differently to their environment than those who have started their inner journey, even though they may pick up on the same things.

One significant difference is that those who haven’t started their inner journey tend to judge what they pick up on more often. This means they give it a meaning it doesn’t (necessarily) have.

They don’t do it on purpose, of course, but because they have yet to learn to separate their experiences from their thoughts or beliefs about them.

So when they feel something in someone else, they believe the feeling they are picking up on means what they think it means. And often, it doesn’t.

What is happening is that they are projecting their own inner conditioning onto that feeling and interpreting it – just like anyone else who hasn’t yet learned to separate their experiences from their thoughts about them. The difference here is that the HSPs project it on the subtleties they pick up on instead of the more obvious behaviors many others react to.

Giving everything added meaning like that can cause an enormous amount of stress and anxiety, especially for us empaths and HSPs who pick up so much all the time.

It can also cause a certain rigidness and unnecessary suspicion toward others. And sometimes, it can cause some HSPs to get involved in other people’s business without any invitation, violating other people’s boundaries.

And that doesn’t feel good to anyone.

But there are ways to experience more freedom from what we pick up in the world. Doing inner work and becoming self-aware is vital.

The more inner work we do, the less we project our old conditioning onto what we feel and pick up on in others and ourselves. And the more ease we can feel in our lives.