Quotes About Self-awareness

HSPs know all about being "too tired to sleep." They are actually too frazzled to sleep.

How nice to blame someone else for one's own lack.

I have noticed that not all HSPs feel discouraged by not being able to do everything their peers do. They have little envy. They appreciate their trait and know it gives them much that others lack. I think the discouragement, like the failure to buffer ourselves, comes from attitudes learned in early childhood.

Meanwhile, your body was learning not to respond as if threatened by each new experience. And in the absence of a response, the body did not experience distressing, long-term arousal. You found that your body was a friend to trust. At the same time, you were learning that you had a special body, a sensitive nervous system. But you could handle things by learning when to push yourself a little, when to take your time, when to back off entirely, when to rest and try later.

Also, while you go out into the world unconsciously seeking that long-desired security, without extensive experience with what you seek, you often repeat the same old mistakes, choosing again and again the same familiar sort of person who makes you feel insecure.

Have you imagined yourself in Jesse's place? What a confusing situation. The source of your arousal is utterly out of your control. Your intuition tells you that the other, usually so helpful, is now anything but help. Yet the other is laughing, having fun, expecting you to. Here is a reason why you may find it hard even now to know what you do and do not like, separate from what others like to do to you or with you or think you should like.

Sooner or later everyone encounters stressful life experiences, but HSPs react more to such stimulation. If you see this reaction as part of some basic flaw, you intensify the stress already present in any life crisis.

While it is wise to accept what we cannot change about ourselves, it is also good to remember that we are never too old to replace discouragement with bits and pieces of confidence and hope.

Just be careful about accepting labels for yourself, such as "inhibited," "introverted," or "shy." As we move on, you'll understand why each of these mislabels you. In general, they miss the essence of the trait and give it a negative tone. For example, research has found that most people, quite wrongly, associate introversion with poor mental health. When HSPs identify with these labels, their confidence drops lower

accepting that no one person can relate to all of you. Indeed, accepting the loneliness that goes with giftedness may be the most freeing, empowering step of all. But also accept its opposite, that there's no need to feel isolated, for everyone is gifted in some way.

there are often many things we feel we should do that, in fact, we don't really have to do. Getting to the point where we can tell the difference is a major milestone in the simplification process.

Almost every woman I have ever met has a secret belief that she is just on the edge of madness, that there is some deep, crazy part within her, that she must be on guard constantly against 'losing control' — of her temper, of her appetite, of her sexuality, of her feelings, of her ambition, of her secret fantasies, of her mind.

Education is...A form of self-delusion.

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day -- wisdom consists of not exceeding the limit.

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.

The great man is not so great as folks think, and the dull man is not quite so stupid as he seems. The difference in our estimates of men lies in the fact that one individual is able to get his goods into the show-window, and the other is not aware that he has any show-window or any goods.

If we cannot be happy and powerful and prey on others, we invent conscience and prey on ourselves.

Imagine guilt as an iron band fastened around something that is growing: the trunk of a tree, the neck of a child. Sooner or later, one of two things must happen. If the band does not break, the growing thing will be deformed. "Commit yourself to change, Lixia, to living in the present, to making and remaking who you are. Do the best you can. Understand what you do. And do not feel guilty.

Whether we do this explicitly or implicitly, we must learn to extricate ourselves from the narcissist's constant distortion of reality.

Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.

To be mature you have to realize what you value most. It is extraordinary to discover that comparatively few people reach this level of maturity. They seem never to have paused to consider what has value for them. They spend great effort and sometimes make great sacrifices for values that, fundamentally, meet no real needs of their own.... Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one's own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.

If you will forget about yourself, whether or not you are making a good impression on people, what they think of you, and you will think about them instead, you won't be shy.

You must try to understand truthfully what makes you do things or feel things. Until you have been able to face the truth about yourself you cannot be really sympathetic or understanding in regard to what happens to other people. But it takes courage to face yourself and to acknowledge what motivates you in the things you do.