Your Sensitivity is Your Connection to God

A reframe that stopped me in my tracks.

Recently, I reached out to an amazing coach who's been guiding me through these past few months of burnout, job changes, and just feeling utterly overwhelmed.

I drove an hour away to meet him, and poured out my heart to him over a cup of coffee, expressing the pain I was feeling from continuously splitting off from my ‘true self’ to play different roles every day. There's my work persona, my friend persona, and my ‘passion and purpose’ side all kept meticulously in their boxes and very separate from one another. Heaven forbid these selves cross. But over the years this has become exhausting, and unmanageable and has left me feeling disconnected from myself and has felt like I have abandoned myself.

Lately, though, I've been feeling a strong pull to bring all these pieces of myself together somehow, to be more authentic to who I am, even if it's messy and confusing to myself (and others). A pull to integrate.

"I'm scared of putting myself out there publicly, and of feeling embarrassed or humiliated", I admitted to my coach. And his response hit me unexpectedly hard: "It's no one’s responsibility to accept you. That's your job."

Oof.

His words stopped me in my tracks. I realized I'd been seeking acceptance from others without fully accepting myself. I'd been trying to control how others saw me, instead of being true to myself.

It made me think about how I've always viewed my sensitivity. How it’s caused me so much pain and how often I have felt misunderstood and overwhelmed by life. How every rejection has hit me to the core. How could this be a gift?

But then my coach said something that changed everything,

"Your sensitivity is your connection to God."

The words felt like a revelation. A reframe I had never heard, and one that somehow broke through right into my very core. That, my sensitivity wasn't just a strength or a positive attribute but that it is my truth and direct access to the universe. And I have been running away from it my whole life.

Leaving that session, I felt something shift inside me. I cried all the way home, mourning the years I'd spent rejecting myself, and keeping my deeper self locked away like a dirty little secret. But I also felt a newfound sense of self-compassion and heart-filled power that I hadn’t felt for a long time.

True self-acceptance. Or at least a very glimmer of it.

So I did something small, but very scary that day and updated my LinkedIn profile bio to be a little more inclusive of some of the other sides of me. If you have been following previous posts you might remember how I detest Linkedin for all its posturing, and somehow this feels like a revolutionary step for me, and I hope it invites others to do the same too. It felt like I was giving myself the validation I desperately craved from others, and it felt good!

So here I am, taking the first small steps toward accepting myself. Terrifying, but also liberating.

Let’s see where the next step takes me.

How have you felt in terms of full disclosure to those around you and colleagues or do you find yourself wearing many different hats?