After coming up with Bright Blue Seeds, I asked a good friend for feedback on the name and she remarked that she wasn’t sure about the “Blue” as it conjures up a feeling of sadness, that it might be too ambiguous. As I thought about the feelings around color and specifically blue, the more I realized how it fit as Highly Sensitive people are sometimes a walking paradox – very, very complex beings who experience the world in bright colorful ways.
Colors do affect our emotions and perceptions. Color theory acknowledges that we associate the cool primary color blue with sadness but it is broadly used to represent calmness, peace, and dependability (for an interesting full description see here). I know when I picture a calming scene it involves blue sky and clear ocean.
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way; things I had no words for.”
Georgia O’Keefe
Bursting with empathy
I’m feeling everything
The weight of the world on my shoulders
Hope my tears don’t freak you out
They’re just kinda coming out
It’s the music in me and all of the colors“Mother” by Kacey Musgraves
Through the naming process, I had really focused on “Blue” as it relates to water – the calming, ever-changing, unique substance. Leonardo daVinci reflected “As the blood veins originate in that pool and spread all over the human body, so likewise the ocean sea fills the body of the earth with infinite springs of water.” Water is necessary for life – all living organisms are predominantly made of water, including human beings.
It is the only substance that exists in all three states naturally. It has delicate crystals (seen when frozen),yet has one of the strongest surface tensions of liquids. It is a powerful solvent, yet easily changed and moved by outside stimuli. It can be a strong force (iceberg, waves, mills), yet gently be sipped by a flower (against gravity!).
So, just as we need water to thrive, we need Highly Sensitive People – the deep thinkers, creators, compassionate souls that grow into inventors, artists, and helpers of the world. We need these beings to bloom to balance the other personality types.
I read posts regularly of parents trying to parent these amazing children and I empathize as I’ve experienced the storm as well as the rainbow that they offer. As they grow into themselves, the range of intense emotions inside those bodies often create raging waves. When the focus is on this dark side of blue, sensitive children feel that negative energy and in the rush of jobs, school, and activities, their nervous system gets overloaded and behavior problems emerge. This, of course, creates more stress on families, and an unhealthy cycle begins; we label them as deficient in some way because they are not able to absorb it all without their cup of tolerance overflowing.
No one is good at everything – so why do we expect that HSC/HSP’s can see the world in full color and organize it all in neat little boxes? Through kind, gentle guidance, HSC’s begin to understand their unique power and learn how to ride the waves of struggle.