My (reluctant) One Word for the Year as an HSP: Open

One Year, One Word, Lots of Apprehension

For years I’ve read other people’s long-winded reveal of their Word for the Year. It’s a practice lots of people do, one that gives them focus and intention for the year to come.

I can appreciate their enthusiasm and the sense of anticipation their word provides them. I’ve never picked a word myself. I’ve probably tried before but never narrowed it down to a winner (which is a common problem for me: Too much pressure to choose something over something else! What if I regret it! The runners-up are perfectly good! Maybe I can pick 3 words or a paragraph instead!)

Neat and tidy practices like One Word, One Year have never been my thing. I can admire those who do them and see the merit in clean and clear goals and mantras. I’m afraid my mind has just never been neat and tidy enough to attain clean and clear anything. There is way, way too much going on up there and any attempt to cut through the clutter is exhausting and often a lost cause.

This is common, even characteristic, for Highly Sensitive People (HSPs). Dr. Elaine Aron describes the “rich inner life” that HSPs enjoy, noting it can be both a blessing and a curse.

With so much sensory input, so many anticipatory thoughts, all the nuances, subtleties, and uninvited observations that run through the HSP’s mind, it’s hard to quiet it all enough for One Word. I connect it with my inability to possess a favorite book or movie or song. There are far too many variables to make such a declaration!

But this year, a word has already been in the works for some time. In true Highly Sensitive fashion, I’ve had time to consider it, mull it over, ponder other possibilities, and evaluate whether it’s worth committing to.

After far too much consideration and deliberation, and with great apprehension and cynicism, I am reluctantly choosing a Word for 2023.

Open.

Old Words

There are ways in which I have always been an open person. There are also ways in which I have never been able to be open. It’s a paradox in me. I have always been open to ideas, allowing new information to guide my thinking. I can change my mind.

However, alongside an open mind has always been a guarded heart, a reality for many HSPs. Most of us have always experienced a rejection of how we move through the world. Even if some of us are fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who treasure our sensitivity, we still keep our guard up because the sensitivity itself is just too much to take.

I’ve known from a very young age that I possessed a lot of defense mechanisms. I was a thoroughly sarcastic kid. I worked hard to emit a vibe that I was untouchable, knowing all the while that I was more fragile than most. I was not as successful as I hoped to be. It’s the type of sensitivity that HSPs get stigmatized for. All the digs — Don’t take things so personally! Ugh, why do you have to be so sensitive? You sure can dish it out but you can’t take it! — built my walls up high by the time I was a young adult.

I knew my sarcasm was a problem. I remember one day sitting in the open office space at my first job after college. It was a very lax environment and we had some game up on the whiteboard where we were describing everyone in the office with competingly funny one-liners. The company had a creative department and one of the writers came in, looked at the board, and wrote by my name: Has the ability to insult you most efficiently with the greatest economy of words.

He wasn’t wrong.

I remember that upsetting me, though of course I didn’t show it. That was not who I wanted to be. But as Adele sings, “I had no time to choose what I chose to do.” Sarcasm was my faithful companion growing up. It kept me safe, insulated, and protected from the icy sting of the outside world.

Finally realizing sarcasm was no longer serving me, I slowly, painfully tore it down, brick by brick. It took a long time. It took even longer for those who knew me well to accept and trust that I had truly dismantled it.

Unfortunately, Sarcasm wasn’t my only method of defense. I have continued to hold onto avoidance, detachment, and isolation, among others.

It’s hard for me to label even these things as entirely negative because I can see merit in all of them. After all, I have kept them around because they have served me in one way or another, although I am beginning to see that their service might not have been truly beneficial after all.

Take isolation, for example. As an introverted HSP, I love isolation. Adore it, even. Being alone is wonderful and life-giving and my happy place. Though I’m learning that there is a difference between isolation and time to myself. The latter is all of those good things. The former is a way of protecting myself at the expense of myself.

In my defense, I am not an external processor by any means. My processing is 110% internal, thanks very much. I have to force myself, to make a conscious effort to share what I’m feeling or going through even with my partner and close friends. Most of the time it doesn’t even cross my mind to share. As a result, I can blindside those closest to me when the load gets too heavy and I fall apart — and they didn’t know of the load in the first place.

I have grown very used to keeping my sensitivity to myself because I know the burden it places on others. One glaring example of this paradox of openness is my view on faith. I’ve swung the pendulum pretty far from where I once was. It took a few years of questioning, unlearning and relearning, deconstructing, whatever you want to call it. The result, unfortunately, completely confused my husband because I sort of didn’t mention any of it to him as I was going through it. I didn’t really start talking about it until I had formed enough of my own opinion to feel well-versed in the particular ideas and theologies I shifted on. He felt like I had become a different person overnight, and understandably so.

While I tend to do it to myself, I’ve grown dissatisfied with my lack of external processing. It’s an ever-teetering combination of personal preference, mindless habit, and self-preservation. The result is a gnawing ache induced by my silence, which I’ve accepted over time, convinced it’s easier this way. But is it? I have lived with the pangs of inaction and living closed-off, telling myself that this is as good as it will get.

But maybe that’s not true.

Open as Mantra

In my journal a few months ago, I wrote these little mantras:

To live is to be open, to be open is to live.

I can be open and still protect myself.

I am safe now.

I don’t have to move through the world with constant vigilance.

I can try being open instead.

Openness is not unattainable.

It just takes practice.

Open to new experiences, open to interactions, open to relationships, open to interpretations,

Open to trying and failing.

To live is to be open, to be open is to live.

I went back to see what the context was, where these little phrases came from or out of. They popped up seemingly out of nowhere, though I know there is more to it than that. I know they must have been bubbling under the surface for some time.

When I think about how far I’ve come over the past few years, how hard I’ve worked at understanding and embracing my sensitivity for the very first time, these mantras are like a gift to myself. A hard-earned reward to mark how far I’ve come and guide me beyond.

I’ve tried to utilize mantras in the past. They have never really done much for me. But something about these words, and where I find myself now, it’s like I’m finally ready to receive them.

I am finally ready to be open (hey-o!) to them.

Open as Practice

Even though I knew that Open was already working in me, and even as I allowed myself to surrender to the work, to just let my inner guide do her thing and see what shakes out, I still doubted much would actually come from the mantras.

Then one night recently, I got into one of those discussions with my husband where we cover every hot topic under the sun. We usually get into these conversations late on a weekend night, which is both our only time to really talk with abandon of time and schedules and also a time when we are usually beyond exhausted and wonder why we did this to ourselves, again.

But we were in it and there was no easy exit. I could feel my blood beginning to boil, my guard rising up and my body readying for battle. I am very familiar with how that feels and I have always assumed I was powerless to stop it.

I looked at him and I could see the pain in his face as he was getting rilled up too. And then I found myself thinking, Just be open. To live is to be open. You are safe now. You can be open instead.

And it eff-ing worked.

It was still a heated conversation and there were still points that angered me. But the overwhelming urge to Win, to be Right, dissipated. And with them went my animosity and irritation, which are usually very present in me in these discussions, even while I know and trust that he is not intending to hurt me. The classic HSP’s struggle with conflict has always plagued me. But after hearing Just be Open reverberate in my mind, I just wanted to hear him, to understand him. And a sense of his true self washed over me — that he is a gentle person who worries about the same things I worry about. He was not an enemy to defeat.

I’m not sure, but I think he may have sensed my compassion toward him, which is not usually my vibe during heated conversations. We wound down the conversation with a unique tenderness and he made an admission that put the entire discussion on a different trajectory. He didn’t have to say it, he could have assumed that it went without saying. But it was as if I took the extra step to lay down my weapons, and he felt like he could reciprocate.

I went to bed that night wondering what else this little word open could do for me if I can just follow it enough to see.

To Live is to be Open

All my life, my sensitivity has been so intertwined in my defenses, it’s hard to see where a healthy protection from the non-sensitive world turns into an isolating moat limiting my experience.

I am beginning to understand that I have lived devoid of a lot of things for a long time, for no other reason than I believed I needed protection from them. Protection from trying something new, protection from failing, protection from seeing what I was capable of, protection from trusting myself and following my own interests and passions simply for my own sake.

As a Highly Sensitive Person, I know my perceived need for protection is not unwarranted. I’m just finally realizing I have mistaken healthy protection for constant vigilance.

I can prioritize a healthy protection of my needs while also laying down my ever-present perception of threat. I am safe now. I can be open instead.

Open to the unexpected. Open to inconvenience. Open to strangers in the check-out line. Open to new ideas. Open to new experiences. Open to trying. Open to failing. Open to conversation. Open even to conflict.

I recently completed The Empowered Highly Sensitive Person workbook by Dr. Amanda Cassil. She ends it with these words, “Embracing your differences [as an HSP] will open new doors to freedom, growth, and experiences.”

What the hell, 2023. May it be so.