I am, perhaps, a lucky HSP.
My parents allowed for the high levels of sensitivity in their little boy (me) and my childhood was a good one. Full of love and happiness.
My parents were not well educated people, nor did they have the language to describe what high sensitivity was. But without a doubt, my Father had the HSP trait. I suspect he recognised part of himself in me and parented me the way he wished he was raised.
Where I grew up was, at the time, on the outskirts of Melbourne and classified as semi rural. My home was surrounded by farmland, dirt roads and barbed wire. The terrain was flat and climbing onto the garage roof meant you could see way off to the horizon. The small mountains of the You Yangs was the only prominent feature on the horizon.
It was before the internet, game consols or mobile phones. Our entertainment was often epic cricket matches with the other kids in the street, or exploring the building sites of new homes as they started to appear.
But I liked time to myself.
I was comfortable with my own company.
Solitude was my friend.
I would spend long hours watching and caring for my lizards in the enclosure my dad had built for me. I would climb the trees in the back yard and just watch the world go by.
Some Saturdays I would get on my bike and ride for an hour down to the Werribee River, where I would explore the rock pools and water ways, collecting samples of water and pond scum to take home to look under the microscope. The only rule was I had to be home before the street lights came on.
Solitude and nature were a normal, and encouraged, part of my childhood.
These kept my HSP battery charged and I never felt out of place.
School was the first time I remember feeling a bit different to most. I didn’t mind sport, but preferred art. I would play with friend at lunch time, but was just as content to be on my own. I knew when friends were upset and was able to consol them. I tried very hard to please my teachers and do the right thing all the time. I avoided the school yard fights and became the peacemaker. I enjoyed the learning and my results were a little above average. Enough for me to be the first person in my family to go to university.
University was a new world. I went from a school of twelve students to a university of twenty thousand. The commute by public transport took ninety minutes each way and the days were long. It was overwhelming at the start and I remember distinctly the feeling that I didn’t fit or belong at uni. I made some friends though and after the first year found my tertiary education rhythm. I would sit contentedly by myself at lunch time, sitting under a tree in the university grounds. Sometimes reading. Often people watching. Always recharging. My friends would sometimes comment on how content I seemed with my own company.
I completed a science degree and my first job in the real world was in industrial research. It was a good job, with good pay, and good career progression possibilities. But making money for a group of faceless shareholders who more concerned about profit than the environmental impact of what were doing, or the longevity of the products we were creating, never sat well with me. I wanted to feel like what I was doing was significant and making a difference. In this job, neither was the case.
So I left.
And ended up working for the Baptist Church. I should have known that this move was going to end badly.
As a child I had a deep sense of their being something bigger than myself. I felt most connected in the bush and would sometimes find myself having conversations with the trees and birds. It was my community. My folks could see that there was something spiritual about their son and, despite not being a church going family, they sent me to Sunday school.
I embraced the spirituality of religion. As a child, then teen and young adult, I felt that this was something that could make a difference. There was something beautiful in the words, rituals and music that inspired me and I dived in. When the opportunity presented it self to work in that space, I embraced it with everything I had to the point that ten years later I was an ordained minister.
At university I made lots of new friends. Many of them from them identifying as LGBTI. When I started getting more involved with the church, I realised that these beautiful people that had become my friend and travelling companions for years, were not welcomed. Often they were spoken of in a negative sense. Sometimes they were called evil.
I could feel the pain these words and this belief system was causing, and so eventually I was asked to leave church ministry as my affirmation of LGBTI people and support for marriage equality was not compatible with the doctrinal beliefs of the church.
I was asked to leave.
So I did.
And never returned.
It was a dark and painful time. I lost a job, a career, a community and most of my friends. I couldn’t quite believe it was real.
I started seeing a psychologist to help me process the grief and trauma of what I had been through. At that point I had no idea what the future of my working life was going to be, but he suggested that I pursue counselling. He could see that I had a heart for helping others and wanted to make a difference. It seemed to make sense.
So that’s what I did.
And that’s when I first encountered the concept of being a highly sensitive person.
A colleague had read about it and shared that she may be a HSP. She looked me in the eye and said, “And so are you.”
I read as much as I could on being a HSP and understanding the trait. It was one of those times that made much of my life make sense.
The comfortableness with solitude and the continual draw back to nature – the two things that fill the HSP’s tank the most.
The push to please my teachers – the people pleasing part of being a HSP
My attraction to spirituality.
My desire to help and make a difference.
My landing eventually in private practice counselling, with a focus on HSP.
It now all made good sense.
I like being a highly sensitive person. Yes, there are times when it is challenging. There are times were I resent it.
But mostly I like being able to see beauty in things that others might miss.
I like that my intuition helps me pick up on things my clients might not have words for.
I like that sometimes I just know.
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Matt Glover is the director and lead counsellor at MGA Counselling Services, providing counselling and supervision both in person and online. Together with Erica Webb, he is the founder of High Sensitivity Australia.