Why Highly-Sensitive People Need More Time Alone
When "me time" becomes vital. Highly sensitive people experience the world many times louder, more intensely and more strenuously than their fellow human beings every day. In their daily interactions, they operate on so many frequencies simultaneously that the very idea could make us dizzy.
Highly sensitive people feel what others feel and can immediately register microscopic changes in mood. Visual and acoustic stimuli very quickly lead to overload and exhaustion. But there are even more reasons why time alone is vital in the truest sense of the word for highly sensitive personalities. We would like to introduce you to the most important ones in this article.
1. Life needs to be processed.
When we think of the countless impressions that we as average people have to deal with every day, the perception of highly sensitive people is hardly imaginable. Millions of data and information pelt them every day, completely unbidden. Most of them learn at some point in their lives to arm themselves against at least parts of these mental and emotional invasions.
Autogenic training and a strict focus on selective perception can be helpful. However, these techniques are not nearly enough to process all the impressions of a whole day. For that, highly sensitive people really need absolute silence without any distractions. Their mind and their emotional life must be given the chance to take a deep breath. This can only be achieved in complete seclusion at regular intervals.
The modern age of digitalization doesn't exactly make this task easier or simpler. Even for the most hardened among us, answering e-mails and text messages in real time, being constantly available and wanting to stay up to date is a real Herculean task.
Our lives threaten to overtake us some days. If we're not careful, we'll fall under the merciless wheels of social media, digital energy vampires, and the weird phenomenon of wanting to compete with the whole world. For highly sensitive people, these prospects are not only sheer horror, they can barely withstand them, so intensely are they inundated with messages of all kinds.
2. Other people constantly distract them.
With all the information about other people that highly sensitive people get presented with every day without being asked, it's easy to forget that they actually have a life of their own that they might want to devote some time to in between. Unfortunately, on the way there, other people keep getting in their way with their lives, their worries and all their energy.
Highly sensitive people have to completely isolate themselves from the outside world just to be able to celebrate their modest, normal and completely mundane private lives. Those who possess such fine antennae and who have an extremely detailed power of observation need voluntary self-isolation in order to be able to devote themselves to their own concerns, passions and interests at least from time to time.
In general, it is difficult to cleanly separate the views and life stories of our fellow human beings from our own story. At some point we run the serious risk of mixing the lives of others with our own. Hardly any person, and highly sensitive ones certainly not, can switch off so promptly and reliably in the evening that all the impressions of the day have disappeared at the push of a button.
3. Aloneness is synonymous with mental health.
What sounds like the psychological end of the line for some people, "loneliness," is the guarantee of resilience and mental health for highly sensitive people. Being able to indulge in one's thoughts in complete silence is a luxury for sensitive people that others cannot explain at all.
Those who fear solitude have perhaps never tried it. For highly sensitive people, however, it is an absolute necessity when it comes to staying psychologically balanced and not letting the noisy and demanding world outside drive them crazy.
4. Feelings need to be sorted in peace.
Much like thoughts, the feelings of highly sensitive people often come up short if they don't pay attention. Emotions are a difficult chapter for many people anyway. If you not only have to take care of your own emotions every day, but also have to work through those of all your fellow human beings, at some point a part of your personality falls by the wayside.
Phases of loneliness thus serve to make one clear about one's own emotional needs. What is often suppressed in everyday life and literally suffocated by a flood of stimuli from outside needs attention at some point. Emotional dry spells are no vacation for highly sensitive people either. If you have to constantly fight to not fall short in your own life, you will eventually be forced to learn to fight for your needs.
5. Your mind will never rest otherwise.
A simple and practically self-explanatory reason why highly sensitive people have to spend an above-average amount of time alone is their almost endless brain activity. Like a beehive, thousands of thoughts constantly buzz through their heads as long as they are exposed to the company of other people.
Only when they are at rest can their brains recover and shut down to normal operation. This process is not only systemic, but vital in the longer term. Every human being, even the averagely sensitive ones, thinks 24 hours a day. Even at night, our intellect is still working, even if it is temporarily replaced and partially disengaged by our subconscious.
In the case of highly sensitive people, these processes potentiate so tremendously that without rest periods they would probably lose their minds at some point.
6. Thoughts sometimes need free rein.
Self-control of their thoughts and feelings is a much-needed survival mechanism for highly sensitive people. For them, it sometimes feels almost as if their minds have to play dead in their daily lives to avoid risking a system failure. Then, when they can enjoy time alone, their own ideas can finally be let off the leash. Forging plans or tracing creative ideas can only succeed in seclusion.
Some scenarios need a lot of space in our heads before they take shape in reality. Highly sensitive people love time with themselves simply because their own mental cinema can then finally get going to their heart's content. During the day, surrounded by countless people, all the functions of their perception are already more than busy enough.
Letting our inspiration run wild for once is refreshing for every mind, not only for the highly sensitive one. All areas of our existence benefit from these castles in the air and sometimes a useful and hopeful idea actually emerges from them.
Today’s Conclusion
Silence as a universal panacea. What sounds more like punishment or torture to some averagely sensitive people is an absolutely vital escape for highly sensitive people. Spending time alone sharpens their own thoughts, rebalances their emotions, and helps them regain their mental strength.
Space for innovation can be created as well as the certainty of being fully ready for the noisy and demanding world out there the next day. Going through life as a highly sensitive person is an enormous challenge. If you don't want to end up a complete loner at some point, you need to learn the art of self-love and self-care, take it from us.