From an early age, you were sensitive. Not just to your own feelings—but the whole world. Your nervous system took in the sights, sounds and experiences around you at greater depth and intensity than others (adults included). Because of this, you might tend to be an introvert and a natural observer, usually content to let others take the lead. But having a sensitivity in an often insensitive world has always made life challenging. Meeting its even mundane, day-to-day demands may leave you feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.

Because your nervous system absorbs and feels so much, you process and reflect on life in a deep and profound way. This level of processing is often at a gravity and a depth that others don’t leave space for and that the pace of life doesn’t allow. On one hand, your depth is your superpower. It allows you to think, see and create what others can’t even imagine. Without it, you wouldn’t know who you are. On the other, it can feel like your greatest weakness, leaving you emotionally exhausted and overwhelmed in environments where others seem their best. Loud, high-energy environments, being forced to perform under pressure or facing life changes may be particularly challenging and seeing your way out of your own mind may often feel unimaginable.

Because you think, feel and process profoundly deeper than those around you, you have a vivid inner life (one that at times feels more real than the outer one). You’ve been this way from a young age and have probably always felt different from those around you (you sometimes feel you have to suppress your true self just to fit in). You feel drawn to things that are more than your family and peers care for and are seeking a deeper, near-spiritual meaning in all areas of life—mentally, emotionally and existentially. Because of your rich inner world, others might describe you as shy, withdrawn or ‘in too much’. But this is just who you are.

You’re deeply touched by the gentle, beautiful things in life. The right four chords or just the right combination of lines in a poem can induce a near trance-like state and the sense of wonder and belonging you feel in nature can’t be expressed in words. The deep, almost spiritual appreciation you have for these things is one of the greatest gifts and sources of joy in your life.

People tend to view you as a safe space. You have a gentle heart and kind energy and often play the role of listener in your relationships and with people’s problems, listening attentively to their hopes, fears and concerns and truly wanting to help. You might pride yourself in being the person who’s able to support and empathize with others. But even though you’re always opening your heart, you often feel neglected and misunderstood, that your relational needs rarely get met and that maybe you’re seeking a level of intimacy and connection that others can’t provide. Still, you are always available for the hurts and hopes of others and strive for authenticity.

You have an innate ability to understand other people’s feelings and intuitively absorb their moods. In a group setting, you often feel what others are feeling—to a degree you might not always notice—and if anyone is hurt or feeling off, you can sense what they need. This is partially why you’re a natural listener and helper—because when others hurt, you hurt and through soothing the pain of the world, you self-sooth. Because of your connection with the inner workings of other people, you carry an almost constant awareness of others.

You are considerate and conscientious—sometimes to a fault. You might even feel that to prioritize yourself is to let someone else down. This, as well as your sensitivity to the world and depth of processing, can make decision-making emotionally and mentally draining because to care for yourself and follow your heart often feels like hurting others (and you hurt when they hurt). Boundaries and self-care might be difficult.

This desire to help isn’t limited to your close relationships. You feel called to play a role in healing society’s deeper hurts and feel hardwired for contributing to the greater good. A humanitarian and helper at heart, you can’t help but standup for the helpless and you long to right the wrongs of the world (even if it’s your undoing).

Given how deeply you feel and think, you require peace, quiet and calm in your life. This means alone time is a must. But this often feels at odds with your need for soulful connection and to be of service. On one hand, you have an undeniable calling to help a hurting world and hurting people. On the other, your own heart is often feeling and hurting so deeply that you need to retreat behind closed doors just to survive the day. This contradiction—wanting to run in and wanting to run away—might cause a lot of stress for you. When possible, you might tend to arrange your life in a way to avoid having too many unnecessary commitments.

Your endless quest for higher meaning and connection, combined with a heart that’s always in search of the deeper answers of life, makes you a natural spiritual seeker. You’ve always been drawn to a spiritual worldview and will settle for nothing less than one that is expansive, all-inclusive and loving. Because of this, at an early age, you probably felt the beliefs you were raised with were at odds with your own values, striking you as too narrow, judgmental and black and white (you might even feel that religion as a whole is adding to the hurt of the world—furthering fear, divisiveness and hate while damaging other gentle souls like yourself). While you may have felt rejection by those around you for cutting religious ties (if that was in your background), the irony is you feel a soul-calling to align with the deepest truths of the universe (and since leaving the religion of your youth, you might feel closer to ‘God’ than ever).

You’ve always been sensitive inwardly—and as a child, this trait probably wasn’t appreciated or supported. The world, and perhaps the people closest to you from the start, have made you feel ‘you’re too soft’ and that you need to ‘toughen up’. This sense of being different—and having something wrong with you—has led you to repress your authentic self and many of your deepest feelings from an early age just to get the love and belonging you need. Unfortunately, today, the rejection that others relayed to you as a child plays a large role in how you relate to yourself. You might have a tough time letting go of the pain of the past and shame has been and continues to play a role in your life.

While some of your most fulfilling moments come from your depth of feeling and your appreciation and connection to life, it’s also one of your greatest sources of pain. You often go about your daily life carrying the weight of a deep hurt and the shame of an undervalued self. You didn’t ask to care and feel so deeply and you often feel exhausted simply being you. This at times can leave you spiraling, feeling that everything is always challenging and that there’s no hope for relief. More often than not, rather than wanting to be happy, you simply long for it to get easier and for you to simply feel okay.

You’re always striving to improve yourself, whether through self-help books, meditation, therapy or even serving and helping others. You feel called to realize your deepest, fullest potential—personal and spiritual—and sense that self-actualization will lead to much greater fulfillment than material success. But since the world never fully embraced your sensitivity and depth of thinking and feeling—not to mention the trauma you might have experienced at a young age—, you are always striving to ‘fix’ who you are, feeling deep down you should be doing better (or being someone else). Because of this, therapy and other traditional healing paths haven’t led to wholeness and often feel more like rearranging furniture in a prison cell rather than showing you the way out. Because of this, you might have begun gravitating to the path of spiritual healing.