Hyper Feelers: Navigating Intensity

Intensity isn't what we think it is! And while most of us experience it as a problem, hyper feelers have the capacity to navigate it!

The Volume of Feeling

Hyper feelers are human beings who live with an intensity of emotion and feeling that far exceeds the average person. This intensity is daily and constant. For some, the word intensity makes sense instantly. For others, they’re so used to this amplified state, and the subsequent tension required to contain it, that it takes a moment to recognise it.

Yet the feeling body of a hyper feeler is turned up so high, it’s like standing beside massive speakers at full volume. Most people experience feelings as a kind of background hum, peaking in moments of crisis. Some people can barely hear them at all. But for hyper feelers, it’s not just louder; it’s relentless and all-consuming.

The Pain of Misperception

Every hyper feeler I’ve ever met has spent their life not only grappling with how to be with their overwhelming intensity, but also carrying the additional pain and shame of being pathologised by the world around them. So much of their experience is seen as wrong.

In a culture that treats emotions and feelings as problematic, it’s difficult not to internalise this negative reflection. As such, many hyper feelers devote themselves to psychotherapy, trauma work, or spiritual practice in a desperate quest for resolution.

Or even just relief.

The Lingering Shame

While these paths offer deep insight and some degree of integration, they often don’t reach the core of what we’re truly seeking. Despite all the work we’ve done, that undercurrent of shame and intensity lingers.

It takes so little to activate that sense of wrongness, and the subsequent grip of intensity in the body. And if we feel really exposed or believe we’ve done something terribly wrong, we can enter a spiral of shame that lasts for days, if not weeks.

This is the life of a hyper feeler.

Part of it is bracing against the inner intensity we fear. Another is the need to contain it, so no one sees it, since it is rarely met without the lens of pathology. So it’s hard not to be left with a quiet, unsettling fear that we are either fundamentally broken, or skating somewhere too close to insanity.

The Feeling Tribe

If this resonates in your body, you are not alone. This is where our work begins.

The gift of being this kind of “crazy feeler” is that you are profoundly subtle-bodied, even if you don’t yet know it. And with this comes a natural capacity to navigate the unconscious dimensions of your being.

Meeting other hyper feelers can be one of the most healing, relaxing and joyous experiences you’ll ever have. Truly, it’s delicious.

I’ll be posting here regularly with tips for navigating the underworld, writings that bring clarity to your experience, and practices that offer profound soothing, insight, and access to long-lost dimensions of being.

I’m so looking forward to having a place to share this work with other hyper feelers. My hope is that it will not only radically change your relationship to the feeling realm, but that you might come to trust this wonderful, exquisite body you are in.

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