Feel Your Connection with Other Sensitive, Intuitive, Creative Souls Living in This Crazy World.
There are times when you just want to scream.
Even though you’re a pacifist. Even though you have empathy that overwhelms you. Even though you’ve been told that you’re super-smart and compassionate. There are those days when you just want to screech, “Why are there so many fucked up, insensitive, clueless humans in the world?”
Am I right?
But this is not something that you can cry to your cousin Randy, your neighbor Millie, or your friendly plumber, Rupert. They wouldn’t understand. You’re supposed to be the sensitive one. The smart one. Not the screamer. And then, you think: How can I be so critical of anyone else when I feel fucked up, insensitive, and clueless myself?
I have a theory.
See if some of the following describes you.
You never feel like you fit in anywhere.
You wonder how your coworkers can take so much time solving a problem when the answer is obvious to you. You don’t understand how your relatives can be satisfied watching mindless TV all afternoon or reading one book every few months. You question why your friends stay in one job for 10 years. You don’t grok why introspection isn’t as important as football.
One track in your mind is always aware of how much you’re not doing for all of the suffering beings on the planet.
You have been frustrated with humans since you were five.
In school, you were confused that the other kindergartners couldn’t read Harry Potter. You had a hard time not throwing a chair when your teacher told you that you must wait for the others to catch up, again. You wondered why teachers didn’t appreciate your corrections of their spelling, or why they ignored your raised hand.
You felt that it was your duty to explain to the other kids how they weren’t playing the games correctly. You were sure they’d appreciate your direction.
They didn’t.
And now, as an adult, you’re still frustrated. And lonely. Because you have high standards for accuracy, justice, and quality, you are irritated by the shoddy workmanship of your contractor, by the irresponsibility of your supervisors, or by the petty arguments among your colleagues and relatives. How could they not know what is so obvious to you? How could they miss all of those details?
How could they not care about the environmental impact of their actions? How could they be lacking in empathy, awareness, and sensitivity? How could they not consider the multiple many-faceted implications of life, the universe, and everything, instead of their ridiculously simplistic, narrow-minded assumptions?
Perhaps, you have felt frustrated and lonely for a long, long time.
I hear you.
What can you do?
- Understand that you have a rainforest mind. A mind-heart-spirit-body that is extremely sensitive, emotional, empathetic, intelligent, intuitive, and intense. Life can be both more beautiful and more terrifying when you have a rainforest mind.
- Use the vast capacity that you have for knowing, thinking, and feeling to expand your connection with sensation in your body-mind-heart. You might find great pleasure just by sinking into yourself and your connection with peace and beauty within and around you. If you need guidance, try a mindfulness app, a spiritual practice, Judith Blackstone’s Realization Process, or hikes in the forest or by the ocean. Feel your connection with everything. Let your intuitive abilities expand.
- Get enough psychotherapy so that you calm the fears of your traumatized inner child. Then, imagine that you have one year to live. What do you just have to do? What do you have to create? What is your purpose here on earth? What do you want to leave for the next generations?
We humans can be extraordinarily frustrating, irritating, ignorant, fearful, narrow-minded, and confusing. You may still want to throw a chair.
I get it.
Let us scream together. Then, take a moment. Breathe. Feel your connection with rainforest minds around the world.
With the Universe.
With everything.
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Paula Prober is a licensed counselor, consultant, author, blogger, and tango dancer in private practice in Eugene, Oregon. She’s spent over 30 years working with gifted youth and adults in her practice and in schools, universities, at conferences and webinars. Paula invented the expression ‘rainforest mind’ to describe humans who are highly sensitive, intense, curious, smart, and misunderstood. She consults internationally with rainforest-minded adults and parents of gifted children. Her book, Your Rainforest Mind: A Guide to the Well-Being of Gifted Adults and Youth, was released in June 2016. She blogs at Your Rainforest Mind, a blog in support of the excessively curious, creative, smart and sensitive.
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