[81] Highly Sensitive? 3 Techniques To Protect Your Intuition

Are You Highly Sensitive?

Hi, my name is Elise Lebeau, I’m the Left Brain Intuitive, and your intuition is calling. Let’s see what it has to say. Today we’re talking about the relationship between being sensitive and being intuitive.

If you have ever thought or heard the sentence, “You’re way too sensitive,” this episode is for you. It’s probably one of the most heartbreaking things that I see when I’m giving an intuitive reading or working with a woman in a coaching session who is very sensitive, that she had to learn to suppress that in order to function.

We all have to go to work and get things done. For someone who is very sensitive, this is a bit of a challenge because the world we live in is very loud. I worked as a software engineer in departments where everybody was in a cube. It was all open space, mostly men, with a lot of egos, people talking on top of each other, jostling to be at the front of the priorities.

For someone who’s sensitive, this is tough to handle. It’s overwhelming, but I still had to go in, get my work done, go home, and raise my son. So, I got it done and had to move forward like that. But we learn to manage that. We learn to suppress the things that are maybe not convenient to hear, or it’s too much right now.

The Struggles of Being Sensitive

Because I was so sensitive, I could feel if the coworker three cubes away from me was having a really bad day, even though I couldn’t see him or hear him, I could feel it at the energy level. This was really debilitating initially before I figured out how to fine-tune this.

I’m a sensitive person, I’m an intuitive person, and over the years I developed ways to tune my sensitivity up and down. When I went to work, I could turn down the volume on my sensitivity and not pick up on the guy in the third cube. When I gave an intuitive reading, because I had both jobs at the same time, secretly of course, I didn’t tell my coworkers that I was giving readings, I would turn up my sensitivity to do the readings because that was necessary. I need to be able to hear you even though you’re far away from me when I’m giving you an intuitive reading.

This situation was difficult in the beginning, but once I figured out that I could modulate my sensitivity, things got a lot easier. Now, I can pretty much walk into a mall, I can walk into a room full of angry people, and I can hold on to my own energy and not be overwhelmed by what’s happening to them.

Sensitivity + Intuition

Sensitivity and intuition are both trying to bubble information up to your consciousness. When you’re sensitive, it’s much easier for you to pick up on the fact that you just got an intuitive hit, an intuitive insight about what’s going on here, and then you can go and retrieve it.

Intuition lives in the basement because it’s subconscious. It doesn’t live in the consciousness. When you get a hit, you know, “Oh, something’s going on here.” You can go look in the basement, turn on the light, and figure out what’s going on. This is best done by asking the why question to your intuition, not your conscious mind. If you ask your logical mind why something is happening, it’s going to give you a reason based on logic or your experiences. It’s not going to give you an answer based on intuition.

The Dangers of Suppressing Sensitivity

To tap into your intuition, you need to specifically ask your intuition and have a process to do that. Once you do, your sensitivity becomes your alarm, signaling that something’s going on. Do you see how that’s a problem if you’re suppressing it, especially if you’re suppressing it constantly so that it becomes a habit? To go to work, you have to put on your full body armor and suppress your sensitivity so you can get through the day without someone telling you, “Oh, you’re just so sensitive.”

This is what we do to be functional at work. Then we come home, and there might be more intuitive insight trying to come in, but it’s hard to get the armor on and off like that. Usually, we keep it on. The window of opportunity where your intuition can deliver a really powerful, intuitive insight about what’s going on with you, your relationship with your husband, how you can improve it, why it’s been stuck, or about financial freedom, or your weight—all this cool intuitive insight that lives in the basement, in the subconscious—can’t come up because you’re wearing full body armor, and there’s no safe place for you to receive that information.

3 Techniques to Manage Your Sensitivity

I’d like to give you three different things today that I found useful in managing my sensitivity so that when I want an intuitive insight, I can get one. Even if I’m at work. The first one I call turning down the volume.

Turning Down the Volume

Intuition and everything that is not conscious in your body, like breathing, which you do without paying attention to it, are not based on language. So, when you want to breathe slower, you don’t tell your mind to breathe slower; you send a message to your muscle, your diaphragm. Intuition responds to images, physical sensations, and emotions. You can use this to your advantage.

If you want to modulate your sensitivity, you can use a visual image. Close your eyes and imagine a volume dial, the old-style volume dials, not the digital button that you turn left or right to adjust. Right below that button, imagine a label that says sensitivity to other people. What number is that on right now? Just look at it with the eyes of your mind.

You are already on an 11 out of 10. There are no rules here. Whatever image comes to you is fine. This is where your mind naturally rests. For some people, this is very high; it’s at the max, in the red zone, whatever image you get here. Reach out and see your hand in this visualization, see your hand touching the button, and turn it down a few clicks, one, two, three clicks. How does it feel now? What number are you on now?

A lot of people, when they do this with me, will feel a sense of relief. It’s not fixed, it’s not gone, but it’s better. The reason this is important is because being sensitive is part of who you are. We’re not trying to surgically remove that. If you take that volume button and slam it down to zero, that’s not going to work. Your mind is going to reject that message.

We’re using an image to send a message to your body, your mind, to all the subconscious parts that are not language-based. We’re saying, here’s what we want. We want the sensitivity to go down a little bit right now. Just a few clicks. If you’re on an eight, maybe you can get it down to a six or a seven. This is important because, first of all, it’s respectful of who you are. We’re not trying to shut it down to zero, but it’s also communicating with your sensitivity that you want this to go down because right now you’re at work. It’s not appropriate for you to be on a 10. You should not be that focused on other people’s energy right now because you have work to do.

Flushing the Buffer

Another way to manage your sensitivity so it doesn’t interfere with your daily life but also supports your intuition is by flushing the buffer. If you’re at work and all of a sudden you feel overwhelmed, you feel that you have been activated somehow, and sometimes you’re not conscious of it, but you feel there’s a lot going on, you feel full.

It can help to write it down, to vomit on the page. You’re not processing this, by the way. You’re just really transcribing all the stuff that is going through your head so that it can flush the buffer and you can go back to a neutral baseline.

Let me give you an example. I walked into the office one day and there were two people arguing very loudly, very close to my workstation. I sat down and felt really activated physically, like my palms were sweaty, and I was not involved at all in this disagreement. It had nothing to do with me, but it was very uncomfortable. I knew that if I didn’t do anything, this would follow me for the whole day. I would carry this energy for the whole day.

I had a journal with tearaway pages because we don’t want to keep the stuff we write down if it’s overwhelming. The last thing we want is to have a place in our desk that stores overwhelming energy. I would just start writing down whatever went through my head, even if it seemed unrelated. I would vomit on the page. Sometimes it would look like, “Wow, this is so loud, they’re really angry. I need coffee, I feel so uncomfortable, my stomach is hurting. Oh, this feels a little bit better.” Eventually, I would write enough words that I would run out. The flow would slow down, and I would be like, “Okay, I’m empty, I’m done, I’m complete.” Then I would tear away those pages and throw them into the shredder or any place where you can get rid of it.

It’s really important to do that because you don’t want to be sitting on a journal of stuff that energetically activates you. That’s counterproductive. Make sure you get rid of it in some way. I usually like to burn that stuff. If I do it at home, for example, I have a

fireplace and I just throw it in the fireplace and watch it burn.

Notice that this is not processing. When you are overwhelmed, it’s not the right time to process. When you’re overwhelmed, it’s the right time to open up your pipe so that all the stuff can go through. When it’s done going through and you’re back to neutral or somewhat in your baseline, then you can start processing, after work, after you’ve got your stuff done.

Counting Backwards

Another technique to manage your sensitivity so it doesn’t get suppressed and ruin your intuition is to count backwards from a fairly large number. Fifty is a good number, but only count the odd numbers. So, 49, 47, 45, and count slowly. This is not about getting it done. This is about slowing down the flow of your thoughts.

When I look at someone who is overwhelmed, it looks like their energy is white water rafting. That’s the speed of their energy. It’s really fast, with lots of waves, and they’re trying to hold on in a little tiny kayak that’s not supposed to be on this river at all. This is what overwhelm feels like and looks like in someone’s energy.

When you count backwards on the odd numbers, your brain has to do something. You have to remember what number you’re on, then minus two, and then count slowly. It helps slow down that river so the kayak can navigate the flow and eventually it’s a calm flow. While you’re counting, it’s hard to think about something else. The number of thoughts you have while doing this goes down. As it does, all the other information you’re picking up from other people subconsciously also goes down. It slows everything down, which is really helpful.

Finding the Right Technique for You

Which of these techniques will work for you? You’ll find out quickly when you try them and feel better. Maybe you’ll like all three of them. Or maybe there’s one that calls to you more and when you try it, you’ll feel better using that one, but the other two don’t do anything for you. That’s fine.

I’m a results-based kind of intuitive, and for me, the best technique is always the one that works for you. What I found in my life, my very logical and intuitive life, is that intuition is very specific to you and logic is very generic. We build common systems with our logic.

For example, if you want to do a budget, there’s probably a spreadsheet online that can give you a good place to start with your budget. All the categories are there. The logical mind is good at that—making general rules that apply to many situations.

Intuition is the opposite. It’s very specific to you and the particular problem you’re having. That’s what intuition provides. Together, they provide a great solution.

Today I’ve given you the logical mind perspective with three different techniques you can use. Through your intuition, you’ll pick the one that works best. You’ll know it if it feels better, and you have that sigh of relief. That’s what we’re looking for. From there, your brain will naturally want to do it again because it had a good experience. It will think, “Oh wow, that feels so much better.”

Next time you walk into the office and see two guys screaming at each other, you’ll reach for your journal, like me. I was still a sensitive, intuitive engineer, but my life became a lot more balanced after I mastered this skill of modulating my sensitivity so that it worked for ME.