Several empathic and sensitive readers have shared that they struggle with knowing when they're experiencing their own feelings versus feelings they have "picked up" from someone else.

As a sensitive soul, it's easy to get overstimulated. With stimulation all around, it's not surprising. Our urgency-addicted culture and mainstream work ethic is overstimulating. Sound bites, billboards, spam, and constant advertisements surround us. ... On top of all of this, our own negative internal dialogues can overstimulate as well. On the other hand, positive excitement can also be overstimulating.

As a sensitive soul, good energy-management skills are a must. This means tuning in to yourself on a regular basis and continually reassessing and adjusting what you take on.

Have people always called you “too sensitive?” Do you try to hide it, pretend it doesn’t exist, or work around it as much as possible? Many Highly Sensitive Souls believe that our sensitivity makes us weak, weird, or different. Actually, being sensitive makes us highly aware, caring, and perceptive.

Highly sensitive people don't like to work under stress and pressure. It makes us nervous and lessens the quality of our performance. As people with particularly high standards and conscientiousness, the conflict between wanting to do well and feeling unable to do so builds into an intense and painful internal struggle.

If you’re highly sensitive, you may see your sensitivity as a limitation. As a client said once at the outset of coaching: “I see my sensitivity as a handicap, not as a gift.” You, too, may feel like being highly sensitive is a burden. But what I’ve seen is that when you work with your sensitivity instead of against it, your life flows easily, peacefully, and naturally.

As a sensitive soul, you are likely to have a high degree of empathy. Empathy is the ability to feel another person’s emotions as if they are your own. In many ways, being empathic is a gift, because it allows you to fully experience, understand, and support others. In other ways, it can feel intrusive, overwhelming, and frustrating to have your personal space “invaded” by other people’s emotions and energies, and sometimes, even their physical symptoms.

As a sensitive soul, working in a “regular” job is fraught with challenges. Many of society’s seemingly tried and true working standards are simply intolerable for us. Mainstream work culture and ethics exacerbate what is already seriously misaligned for sensitive souls.

Sensitives are often unknowingly affected by the energy, emotions, and desires of others. This can be both confusing and overstimulating because we are unable to distinguish whether we're operating from our own center or someone else's.

As someone who is highly sensitive, you’re likely to be easily disturbed by loud noises, temperature extremes, glaring lights, other people’s emotions, pressure-filled deadlines, and violent news – to name a few. But you may not be aware that you can also be affected by a lack of light, particularly during the winter months and cloudy spells.