Noisy

Things have been shifting and changing and it feels uncertain. It got noisy recently, it just got so noisy. There are always patches of noise, lulls in between and then more noise and sometimes the noise hits me hard. It builds and builds inside me until my thoughts are other people’s voices and they drown out my own. It’s part of being highly sensitive, to hear others, to feel them, to fill up with other people’s stuff and to get exhausted by it.

I couldn’t hear my own voice for a little while there and the worry about what that meant, why it was happening and if I’d ever get it back just added to the noise. Without that voice I don’t write, I don’t know…what to do next. The feeling of looking around, outside of me, to know what to do next is terrifying now. I don’t want to go back there.

The layers of noise and worry about the noise kept building until I had to surrender, pull my hands off my ears and crumble as it all came crashing down around me. It takes a lot for my inner voice to be drowned out. Since I found it, peeled back all of the layers that had grown over it and got to know it again I have held it close, held tight for fear of ever being without it again. So it takes a lot for it to be drowned out, it takes a lot of noise but there is and has been a lot. When I’m filled and surrounded by that much noise I get disconnected and lost. The loudest voices try to become me and often it’s loud opposing voices. The loudest on each side of something trying to drag me over to join them. My voice gets lost and forgets that there is more. That there is space between, there is grey amongst the black and white.

My voice gets lost trying to decide between two options that both feel off and wrong…because they are not mine. Everyone is doing the same thing right now. Everyone is doing what makes sense to them, going with what they see as safe and smart for themselves and for the world. Every one of the loud voices believes that they have it right, the loud voices want us to believe that they have it right too. They want us to hear how others are wrong, how if we want to be right and good and ok then we should agree with them…with their version of the truth.

The noise is the problem for me. The shouting, the dominating, the need to appear to know. None of us know. None of them know. Not what tomorrow brings and not how this point we are at in history will play out. Those who insist that they know are the ones I am wariest of, those who are being so loud that I can’t hear my own voice when they are around. The noise is what is hurting me no matter what is being said.

I need to be able to hear my own voice. Now that it is back, now that the noise has erupted and dissipated it is clear that the loud ones, the ones dominating and opposing, they are the minority in this. Somehow they’ve become a minority that holds the majority of the power. There are so many more of us making our way through this quietly, getting sore necks looking from side to side as they pull us and coerce us to join them.

They don’t want us to realise. They don’t want us to notice each other in this grey area, this middle ground where we can all actually be ok. If we just listen in, just turn the volume on them down so we can hear our own version of the truth, so we can see this and each moment for what it is. So we can live through what is happening, has always and always will be happening around us. LIFE.

Being heard is not what it was. It’s not about being loud anymore, raising your voice above the rest. It’s not about gathering as many echoes as you can. It’s about keeping clear and quiet enough to still ‘be heard’ in your own mind.


I can do that now with or without an audience or a following to share my thoughts with. I’ve unraveled and lifted the layers, I’ve practiced and now I can do it without them or any of it and while I do then I’m being heard in every moment and every conversation because my truth is in me, around me- it is me. It’s not under all those layers anymore.

I’m not here to write someone else’s voice, I can’t and that’s why the writing slowed and then for a short time stopped. I’m not joining a team here or sharing a message for any cause. I’m just writing about what it feels like to be a highly sensitive person in this world right now, raising a highly sensitive child and when big things are happening in the world then those are the things that I’m feeling. The stories, the confusion, the insights, the questions, the challenges. Some go in the Sensitive & Aware Group where we can pick them apart and look at them more deeply from different perspectives and angles with a shared understanding of the trait and the experience. Some go out here to reach those of you who may not know that sensory processing sensitivity is a thing, that some people around you and in your life (1 in 5 statistically) may be experiencing the world in a different way to you or that it may be in you and playing a significant part in the challenges you face in your life.

I share because I want others to have the opportunity I had to read about SPS, to feel curious and to follow that curiosity towards a changed and much more beautiful life.