Attunement and the Highly Sensitive Person

The concept of attunement is one that is not taught to us overtly. When someone talks about being empathetic we’re getting close. A mothering instinct, closer. It is the process a parent goes through when we first bring the baby home. At first your child cries and your heart races until you can figure out what this sweet creature needs. By month two, you hear a cry and you instinctively think “that’s the diaper” or “feeding time!” That’s attunement. Knowing what your child needs even though they don’t.

The process of learning attunement uses all of our brain power to learn this skill. You have to have logic, creativity, empathy, focus, attention and compassion for this process to be successful. It takes time because you need to see the problem sometimes several times before you click into what is happening for your child. And not every personality type is going to be great at this. If you are less sensitive on the normal scale, less intrinsically empathetic, it is going to take a lot of trial and error to figure out why your 5 year old wakes up grumpy every morning and there is no soothing them. If you are Highly Sensitive, it might be easier for you, or at least you have a biological head start with your brain style of being more likely to be empathetic and feel other people’s emotions. But you also have to have had the training to be attuned.

Were your parents good at attuning to you? Did you learn from your parent when you were growing up that you need to eat, especially when you feel nauseous because actually you are quite hungry?  Beyond hungry!  Are you able to understand your body’s messages of anxiety or anger and know exactly why you are feeling a certain way about someone you just met? There are many different exercises you can do to work on attunement to yourself which will help you attune to other people in your life: partners, children, co-workers.

Some Highly Sensitive People need more of the opposite. When we grow up attuning to our parents because they are incapable of attuning to us, we always know what other people need but don’t necessarily obey our own inner messages. Learning to put yourself first is also a process of self attunement that is necessary to be a fully functioning adult.  Ask yourself this question: When last did you do something for yourself even though you knew someone else wanted you to do something for them? When last did you say no to someone, an adult, knowing it was going to make their day harder? Did you forgive yourself?