“Kendra,” my father said to me one morning before school as I sat at our battered oak kitchen table eating Cheerios, “if I throw this cereal box on the floor, would that hurt its feelings?” I looked coolly at him where he stood by the counter, holding the yellow box. “No,” I said, affecting nonchalance.
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Stop hiding your gentle self.
This blog post is now a podcast episode!
Until I was nine years old, I went to a Montessori school where we weren’t allowed to use the word “hate.” We weren’t allowed to play any kind of game involving toy guns, or even pretend our hand was a gun. At home, I was allowed one hour of TV a week, Saturday morning cartoons (and probably only so my parents could sleep in haha). Violent non-cartoon shows were not allowed, even ones with staged sword fights. Sound extreme? Maybe.
At nine years old, I boarded the yellow bus for the very first time to go to public school. I instinctively walked down the aisle to the back – that’s where most of the kids were. And I learned that very first day that I did not belong there. It didn’t take long for those kids to realize I was different: soft, overly friendly, eager to please, naïve, open. I was like an alien among them. As for me, I came away with one overriding impression from that first bus ride and its twin later that day, when I sat at the front of the bus.
Kids are mean.
I can still feel my visceral shock at how mean those kids were. Not necessarily to me – for whatever reason I escaped any really bad bullying that first day (I suppose they simply didn’t know what to do with me) – but to each other. Riding the school bus became a daily exercise in inuring myself to extreme anxiety. And to some extent, that has followed me throughout my life. When I look out at the world, I see a very mean place. And it is mean. We live in an ungentle world, and for us gentle souls, it’s a painful place to be. And doubly so because the personality traits of gentle souls, and in particular our tender hearts, are viewed as weak and undesirable.
We live in a society where toughness, grit, determination, and aggressiveness are admired. I learned fast to hide those parts of myself that were kind, gentle, and sweet because they were met with derision and bullying. That kind of wound festers. To my shame, I occasionally turned that pain outward, even participating in a few instances of bullying myself. Like I said, kids are mean, and I wasn’t immune.
And grown-ups are mean, too. Gosh, they can be so mean. The only difference is that as a grown-up I now know that often the meanest ones are the most damaged.
You know what? I don’t want to be one of the mean ones. Even if all the cool kids are doing it. Not only that, I want to be the gentle, openhearted person I used to be. I don’t want to hide her away anymore, or try to convince myself that I need to toughen up even more to survive in the big girl world, or pretend I’m one of the cool kids who doesn’t give a shit, or coerce myself into believing that I’m supposed to be mean because after all I’m just speaking my truth and that’s how it’s done.
It’s not. That’s just one way it’s done. And it’s not my way. You do you. I’ll do me.
This is me: I want my world to be gentle. I want it to be a place where other gentle souls don’t have to brace themselves every moment against the inevitable meanness coming their way. I want to live in a kind world, and I think it’s possible. Does that sound eye-rollingly naïve? If it does, maybe take a look at your own wounds. We all start out as openhearted kids, looking out at the world with sweet and hopeful expectation. Most of us have that crushed in us. All of us have that school bus moment, when our eyes are opened to the truth. That people can be so mean. That we must protect ourselves, or join them in lashing out, or run away to hide, or… Or we can decide we’re going to keep on being our gentle selves in the face of humanity’s wounded soul.
I think people are exhausted by all the meanness out there. It’s always going to be there, because humans are human, but maybe us gentle souls have a greater role to play in all this. Maybe by refusing to hide our true gentle selves we can help neutralize some of that meanness. I know that there will never be a larger revolution of gentleness in the wider world – even I have limits to my naiveté. But by committing to a gentleness revolution in our own private lives, maybe we can make some small contribution to creating a kinder world. Who’s with me?
Gentle souls have personality traits that are counterintuitively adaptive in times of crisis.
During tumultuous times like those we’re all experiencing right now, it would be easy to assume that gentle souls are at a disadvantage. When you are an introverted, sensitive type living in a society that values extraversion and bold aggressiveness, you grow up feeling maladapted to your environment in general, unsuited to thriving “out there” in the world. And you’re not imagining things. Us gentle souls end up taking a back seat or outright fading into the woodwork not just because that’s where we feel most comfortable, but because those are the positions we’re forced into in a society that doesn’t value our skillset.
And now the world is changing, and fast. Many people are being forced to pivot, redefine their lives, reimagine their futures – and reestablish their emotional and psychological equilibrium on what feels like constantly shifting ground. It would be easy to think that people with those go-getter, outwardly positive personality traits like extraversion and competitive spirit would be better at these things. But I’ve observed something rather astonishing over the course of the last year of the pandemic and related economic and political upheaval. Among people I know, those who possess gentle soul traits have seemed to fare better or have actually thrived, contrary to all expectation. Could it be that gentle souls have personality traits that are adaptive in difficult times?
An obvious one is introversion. Those who are both adept at being alone and require alone time on a regular basis have almost certainly weathered the enforced quarantines and isolation of the pandemic better than extraverts. I know a number of introverts who feel their quality of life has increased substantially with work-from-home (those fortunate enough to be able to do this with their jobs). Their productivity has increased along with their peace of mind. But what about those other traits of gentle souls: the sensitivity, aversion to aggressive competitiveness, and well, gentleness? Even if you are a gentle soul who hasn’t felt these characteristics have benefited you during these times, keep reading – this might give you a new perspective as to how they can going forward.
Gentle souls’ highly sensitive nature can make them prone to mental health issues. I personally have a major anxiety disorder, and if my anxiety gets too severe, bam! Depression hits. You’d think that extraordinary stressors, like those that arise in extraordinary times, would make me worse. But in fact, the opposite is true. I’ve noticed throughout my life that I actually feel less anxiety when life is out of the ordinary, like when I’m traveling overseas. Ordinary life stuff, like going to the grocery store, stresses me to the max, but nothing calms me down like going to another country where I know no one and don’t speak the language. Weird, right?
Here’s what I think: as an HSP (highly sensitive person), I’m extremely sensitive to small stressors, and in ordinary situations, these stand out a lot, like tacks on an otherwise smooth track. But in novel situations where everything is a small stressor, in order to psychologically survive I have to rise above all of it. It’s almost like I enter a Zen calm, in which I can respond to my environment in a state of composed, alert presence. Seriously, I’m someone you want around in a crisis – just don’t ask me to get you groceries haha. A possible theory as to why this happens is this: because I have to manage so many stressors in normal daily life because of my high sensitivity, when a crisis occurs I can marshal that skillset and wield it very effectively.
Another trait that can make gentle souls seem less adaptive is our tendency to dislike competitive, conflictual interactions. Much of our understanding of human nature has its origins in evolutionary biology, in which the dominant theory is survival of the fittest, and our systems are set up to capitalize on this. It’s obvious that gentle souls are not adapted to this type of game. We simply aren’t, there’s really no question about it. But what if evolutionary biology was wrong about that whole survival of the fittest thing? More recent studies have shown that nature is in fact overwhelmingly cooperative. Competition is actually highly destructive, and this has been borne out in studies of the human realm as well (for example, see Kohn’s The Case Against Competition). What many people are really communicating when they say they like competition is that they like winning. Being an aggressive competitor may help you win, but it’s not an adaptive trait. It’s not going to help you win friends and influence people, in other words.
Gentle souls may not be adaptive in highly competitive environments, but the skills we possess, like cooperative spirit, a desire for kindness, and a capacity for empathy, make us very adaptive in general. And during tumultuous times, these are exactly the skills that are needed. So let’s not be shy about them. Being sensitive, kind, and gentle are awesome things to be right now, and we should be proclaiming that! At the very least, we should be valuing these traits in ourselves at a personal level. And we shouldn’t be afraid to say out loud things like, “I don’t find value in competition,” or “I’m glad I’m an introvert,” or “I think aggressive people bring everyone down,” or “Maybe the problem isn’t that I’m too sensitive, but that you’re not sensitive enough.” Or anything else that flies in the face of the hegemonic conventional thinking about these things. The way we can bring value to the world by valuing ourselves, so let’s do it.
Our society may not appreciate gentle souls, but they are indisputably awesome.
Those of us who are gentle souls – introverted, highly sensitive types – understand early on that we have an undesirable personality in the eyes of society. Most of us grew up hearing that we needed to be “more”: more social, more active, more participatory, more talkative. Trying to survive in a culture that celebrates extroversion, aggressiveness, and emotional toughness is painful for gentle souls. And that pisses me off. You can find lists of our positive traits everywhere online these days, e.g. we’re good listeners, but it always feels like they’re a kind of disclaimer: Quiet loner, but good for something nonetheless, maybe. Enough of feeling like societal undesirables. So I did some brainstorming about what is indisputably awesome about being a gentle soul. What kind of badassery do we bring to the table because of, not despite, who we are?
Two stand-out traits of gentle souls are their sensitivity and their capacity for deep thinking. Deep thinking is also known as conceptual thinking: understanding things through identifying underlying patterns and making connections among disparate ideas. I’m going to show you how these two traits make gentle souls totally badass.
Gentle souls are genius at problem solving
Sensitivity is a detail-oriented trait because it means you’re reactive to more stimuli in your environment and are therefore more aware of what’s going on around you. This feeds right into deep thinking: gentle souls put details into patterns so they can better protect themselves from painful stimuli. Problem solving is their natural mode of existence because regular human activity can require a lot of prep work in order to do it. It’s not unusual for a highly sensitive introvert to plan out a shopping trip with all possible contingencies, including parking availability, possible amount of people, and where items are located in the store, before they even leave their house.
Think this sounds like a disadvantage or a handicap? Nope. It’s actually an incredible skill. Gentle souls have a well-developed capacity for visualization, not only of problems themselves, but of different solutions and the possible outcomes of these solutions. The inside of their brains is like a complex interactive flow chart. They can see problems arising before other people are even aware of them and are masters of predicting contingencies and coming up with work-arounds. Creative problem solving is just how gentle souls live their everyday lives.
Gentle souls are society’s knowledge creators
A knowledge creator is someone who sees things other people don’t and then uses that insight to create new understandings. This is the next step up from problem solving, and involves systemizing knowledge into usable packages. If you are a gentle soul who’s struggling to figure out how to serve the world, this is a path to consider. You already have all the necessary skills: you’re detail-oriented and conceptual, a problem solver and visualizer. Introverted, sensitive people are intuitive, a skill that comes from their responsiveness to their environment – it’s what gives them the ability not only to see things other people don’t, but to see things differently, from diverse angles and points of view (what I call thinking outside of the outside of the box).
Knowledge creation can look like a lot of things. It could be helping other people understand themselves better and reach their potential: counseling, coaching, teaching. Or creating new systems: design, administration, software development. Artists are knowledge creators – they take in information from their environment, process it internally, and use it to create something that brings pleasure, enlightenment, and learning to others. Not surprisingly, these career paths are filled with gentle souls. But virtually any activity can be approached from a knowledge creation standpoint. Being able to see your role vis-à-vis society as knowledge creator can help you develop an identity based on internal confidence in who you are (because you are a badass!) rather than the job you do, which is something society assigns and is based on external valuation of your worth.
These are not by a long shot the only indisputably awesome things about gentle souls. So if you are a gentle soul, take heart. Being a gentle soul truly makes you amazing. If you aren’t a gentle soul, but know some, try telling them you think they’re badass because they’re highly sensitive and often quiet in group settings. See how they respond. I’m curious to know.
Empaths need to do more than just survive; we need to thrive.
Empaths are people who are sensitive to the emotions and thoughts of others to the point of absorbing and feeling them as if they are our own. We need lots of time to ourselves in order to process, and are often called too sensitive, withdrawn, or shy because our culture privileges extroverted personalities. In the last decade the character traits of empaths and other types of introverts have come to be more understood and less denigrated. There are now many resources out there to help empaths learn how to thrive. But most of the advice falls flat because it still defines us based on extroverted values. Its ultimate aim is to tell us how to adjust ourselves to fit into the dominant culture rather than helping us discover how to further develop our inherent personality traits.
That’s because standard advice for empaths isn’t really about helping us thrive. It’s about how to survive being one. How to protect ourselves. How to feel less. How to create barriers between ourselves and others in order to block ourselves off from negative emotions. This is based on the understanding that empaths need a lot of space around themselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This isn’t wrong, but the assumption that we need this space in order to recover from social interactions is a shadow truth – only true when you define empaths from an extroverted perspective. Imagine yourself living in a society of only empaths. In such a culture, introversion would be normal, simply human nature. In such a culture, it would be understood that empaths need space around themselves because it is in that space that we become fully ourselves.
The skills empaths possess are a gift, and if we spend all our energy learning how to subvert and block our true nature in order to “survive” in a hegemonic extroverted culture, we have nothing left over with which to develop our gift. We are not surviving at all, in fact. We are living at best a half life, living in a realm of shadow truth. And here’s the thing: blocking doesn’t work. At least, I’ve never been successful at getting better at it. I still feel all the things, and on top of that I feel inadequate for not being stronger.
But there is an even scarier side to this. Many empaths, instead of learning how to strengthen boundaries between themselves and others, end up instead creating one between themselves and their own emotions. The emotions are still all there, overwhelming us, but by refusing to let ourselves feel the emotions, we alienate them, turning them into something dark. Anxiety and depression are often the result.
What ends up happening is that empaths accommodate themselves to the hegemonic extroverted culture through an endless cycle of painful engagement and exhausted withdrawal. There has to be a better way. And here’s what I think it is: to stop defining ourselves using extroverted values. Try the thought experiment I mention above – what would life look like, who would you be, in a culture that is made entirely of empaths? We can start there, in a place where our personalities traits are normal, even celebrated.
When I imagine a society of empaths, I see a culture based on kindness, gentleness, and a soft approach to personal growth. No tough love allowed! Think the Great British Baking Show rather than basically every American competitive cooking program. Or maybe let’s just go straight to an episode of the Barefoot Contessa. I want to live in a world where people are nice to each other and see the best in each other. Let’s face it: that’s not what we have. The world we live in right now is pretty damn toxic.
We can’t change the way things are or other people, but we can begin to create the world we want to live in for ourselves in our personal lives. This can look a lot of different ways. For me it has meant deciding to no longer participate in toxic traditional work environments (I freelance now) and ruthlessly excising harmful people from my life (including some close friends and family members). It has also meant sitting with some very uncomfortable emotions. Rejecting a traditional career means that I don’t make much money, and that feels embarrassing. I struggle with regret and anger over past relationships that I stayed in too long. But I want something better. I want to be fully myself, and to see where that takes me. And that will never happen if I spend my life trying to accommodate myself to our extroverted culture by blocking myself off from my empathic nature.
Being an empath shouldn’t be defined as “too sensitive.” Maybe it’s time to define non-empaths as being not sensitive enough! We are empaths for a reason; we do have a higher purpose. We gentle souls are what the world needs right now, even if our individual impact seems confined to our personal spheres. You are more important than you think! And your daily work to become more fully yourself is important work.
You are not the problem, and it is not your fault.
This post is now a podcast episode!
You know who you are, you gentle-souled people. You are the ones that life hurts regardless of how strong you try to be. You are sensitive, intuitive, empathic. You feel things all the time, all day, in every moment. All your life, you’ve noticed that there’s something different about you. You’ve been called too sensitive and made to feel that this is bad. Other people often seem like they just don’t want to deal with your shit. You’ve learned to keep quiet and process it all inside. Or, because no one has taught you how to be who you are in this sharp-edged world, your emotions overload and come spilling out in torrents, creating a huge mess that feels like it’s all your fault.
I know you, I hear you.
You feel like there is no barrier between your soft, raw underbelly and the slashing parries of the everyday world. Some days are like sandpaper against your soul. Maybe you avoid going out into the world, because you know it will hurt. It’s not your imagination – you know that inevitably, you will hurt. Some days you can manage your shit and you feel almost normal. But mostly it seems like the world is just waiting out there to rough you up.
I know you, and I hear you.
There are many of us like you out there, more than you realize. But because we live in a society that denigrates our personalities – our gentleness, our introversion, even our tendency toward sincerity and kindness (you’re too soft, gullible, naïve!) – we have grown adept at hiding ourselves and do not recognize each other. Often we do not even understand ourselves. And often – usually – we feel that what’s wrong is within us, not out there in the world.
That’s bullshit.
The truth is this world was not made by, or for, the gentle souls. That doesn’t mean there’s no place for us! But it does mean we have to struggle harder to find our roles. We have tried so hard to fit conventional ones, and it has been uncomfortable at best, traumatizing at worst. Many of us are very strong (although we feel weak!), and can go years trying to mold ourselves to a world that is not suited to our particular skills and characteristics. Eventually, though, we will find ourselves experiencing serious burnout.
Understanding this cycle of burnout we undergo – attempting to contort ourselves to fit into conventional roles to the point of trauma to ourselves – is essential to breaking out of it. Complicating things is that we are often actually good at these roles. Our intuitive, creative natures give us special skills that allow us to excel. But the cost is too great. We are ultimately being harmed by the world we are trying so desperately to compete in. What we need to do is stop competing. We are the ones who forge new paths, not follow the well-trodden ways.
Is this challenging? Yes! Is it scary? Hell yes. But if you are one of the gentle souls, you will eventually arrive at a point where it is essential you break out. It may feel like your only choice, if you are to survive emotionally.
What this process looks like is different for each individual. But you will find that many of the ingredients you need are already a part of your life. Shifting your perspective will help you understand what is life-giving, and what is soul-sucking. It may take time – it took me years! – but it is never too late to begin. Take heart! Having a gentle soul makes you special. The first step is recognizing this and learning to accept and value who you are. This requires you go against a lifetime of socialization that taught you that it’s you, not the world, that is flawed. So start here: Repeat after me: That’s bullshit! Say it again. Keep saying it until you know deep inside that it is true.