In his book, Healing the Shame that Binds You, late therapist John Bradshaw includes a parable about a prisoner.  The original story is good, but I'm going to give it my own spin:

Once upon a time, a prisoner of war is dumped in an underground cave. Given enough rations of food and water to last three weeks, he is told there is an escape if he can find it. The dark is thick, the cave dank. Yet, he discerns a pinprick of light above. With his hands, he finds good-sized rocks around him and realizes he can mix water rations with mud to cement the rocks. Not wasting a minute, he devotes all his waking hours to building a mud and stone ladder.

The work is hard, but our prisoner is plucky. He knows his goal and works tirelessly to obtain it, the light inching closer day by day. Water is running out, but this only makes him work harder. Soon it is time to make his escape. Full of determination, despite weakness and dehydration, he climbs. He can see the exit! He foists himself up along the edge of the cave but his muscles are jelly. Not to be deterred, he pulls himself up, loses his grip, and falls. He dies from dehydration and wounds incurred by the fall.  Days later rescuers are incredulous when they find him. Only two feet from the prisoner's body is a tunnel that would have taken him out of the cave to freedom. The escape was close to him all the time—in the darkness.

How many of you have heard the comment “oh...you’re just too sensitive”?   Maybe you feel hurt when people say that and think there is something wrong with you.   According to Elaine Aron, Ph.D in The Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), approximately 20 ­percent of the population has a highly sensitive nervous system.   For these individuals (myself included), it's as if they wear their nerves on the outside of their skin.  In the first part of this series on sensitivity I will discuss those who find themselves on the highly sensitive side of the HSP spectrum.

If you’re an HSP, you can experience external and internal stimulation rather quickly and with more intensity and duration.  It’s as though your nervous system is an antenna running through your mind and body—always on and picking up signals from everything around you.   As an HSP, you can become overstimulated and this “noise” or “static” can result in a variety of mental and physical complaints that may be difficult to diagnose.