Being HSP Taught Me to Stop Running From Myself

As told by Dave Ursillo, author, writing coach, and leadership coach

One of my earliest childhood memories is running. 

I remember the wind lapping my wet cheeks; my feet moving with impossible pace beneath me. It felt as if I was running forever. My breaths were short and terse as I gasped not only for air but for the hope that I might escape that place. 

The only thing that five-year-old Dave wanted to do in that moment was to not be exactly where he was: stuck, trapped, and as if he had absolutely no say in the matter.

The scene that replays in my mind as one of my earliest childhood memories is the day that I tried to run away from that unpredictable, uncontrollable, overstimulating, and altogether anxiety-inducing place called … kindergarten. 

It was my first day of school.

Today, almost three full decades later, I finally understand the reasons for my attempted escape in a way that no one has ever been able to explain to me. It has to do with what my nature was back then, and what my nature remains.

I was, as I am, a Highly Sensitive Person. 

An unwitting HSP, who learned to flee

Despite what I recall so vividly in my memory of my attempted escape from my first day at school, I do have reason to believe that it never, in fact, actually happened as I remember it. 

My father — the culprit who both left me at my grade school classroom and yet who remained my only possible salvation as I gave him chance that morning — contends that my dramatic sprint across the schoolyard to the parking lot to catch him before he reached his car was more like rushing out a just-closing door behind him and for perhaps a few feet. 

It may well be that what I now recall as “true events” in my mind were actually fictionalized representations of what I was feeling then, like a fantasy or daydream indelibly imprinted into my memory as if it was real. 

Perhaps my “recollection” is the false memory of a Highly Sensitive kid, overwhelmed at a spike of emotional overstimulation when prompted by the sudden awareness that he would not be able to leave or avoid or escape an environment that felt so beyond his control. 

Regardless of what happened that day, the actual events feel secondary in importance to what those “remembered” events signify, in hindsight: the start of a lifelong trend of struggling to understand my true nature as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).

The escape artist

I became, at each new stage of life, quietly consumed with feelings of stress about every different, daunting, potentially overwhelming, or eventually overstimulating environment.

As I grew older, the five-year-old became a 12-year-old became a 15-year-old became an 18-year-old, and so on, and so on. And with every new phase of life — from further schooling and college to suit-and-tie workplaces and beyond — each new environment came, as kindergarten first did, with its own designs, intentions, requirements, and expectations.

In turn, I became, at each new stage of life, quietly consumed with feelings of stress about every different, daunting, potentially overwhelming, or eventually overstimulating environment. Time and time again, I was equally desperate in my desire to escape them. 

While I stopped physically running away at age five, it was only because my tactics as an escape artist evolved.

— At the dawn of junior high school, I feigned illness for the first two weeks of school to escape the overwhelm of greater academic responsibilities, the weirdness of puberty, first boyfriends and girlfriends, and so on.

— At the start of high school, I quit the sport of soccer entirely, despite it having been one of my greatest childhood passions and pleasures, just to escape the overwhelm, judgment, and feelings of shame that I felt from being unable to complete the all-of-a-sudden, physically intense practices we were expected to complete.

— Even on my first nights away at college, I felt the familiar twinge again, once more, of wanting to pick up, take off, run away, and not look back.

But this time, I didn’t. 

I didn’t run away, or feign weeks’ worth of illnesses, or quit on something that I had always loved if it meant avoiding judgment and shaming.

Instead, I stood pat, which would seem at first to be quite a victory, if the new tactic that I had adopted wasn’t even more unhealthy than those previous. 

I overcame my overwhelm and anxiety by pushing my true feelings away, and down. Away, and down. Away, and down. 

Until I learned to deny my sensitive nature.

Instincts become patterns, become stories, become identities

My depression was a gift in that way: it codified and made physical and real something that I might sooner run away from or avoid, but this time couldn’t. This time, I could not escape from the feelings that were true and real, because they were a part of me.

Perhaps it comes as no surprise that, by the age of 23, I was facing an existential crisis of my own making. 

Just one year into my young career — a year outside of the highly regimented, rigorous private schooling that I had known ever since that first day of kindergarten — I was feeling splintered, pitted against myself, and pulled apart at the seams. 

I secretly sought out a doctor for help with feelings of depression and sudden breakdowns at work that felt like anxiety attacks. 

It felt as though the truth of who I was — something that I had been denying for years — was about to burst forth and be known, like it or not, lest it consume the whole of me, entirely.

I elected to learn what it wanted to teach me. 

At first, I thought my depression’s lessons had to do with the environments in which I found myself, just like that kindergarten classroom: overstimulating, overwhelming, anxiety-inducing places full of noise and people and expectations in which I felt trapped and unable to escape:

— There was the toxic, cutthroat, ego-ridden environment of politics where I thought I would make my career as a public servant.

— There were the all-consuming rat-race and drone-like workplace cultures of our post-industrial world that seemingly prioritize “living to work” over “working to live.”

— There were the hierarchies of power and “wait your turn” social constructs that finger-wagged at earnest desires to help others, now, today, and not in five or ten or twenty years’ time when you had “earned your chance” or been “granted permission”.

But no matter how far or how long I might run away from environments such as these, there was no running from the truth of my own nature — a nature that I had learned to deny, compartmentalize, silence, quell, quash, and think of as my true identity: a diagnosable “disorder,” just like a doctor had told my parents after my panic-stricken episode on the first day of kindergarten, all those years prior.

My depression was a gift in that way: it codified and made physical and real something that I might sooner run away from or avoid, but this time couldn’t. This time, I could not escape from the feelings that were true and real, because they were a part of me.

Thanks to my depression — which is to say, thanks to my feelings, my sensitivity, and my true nature as a Highly Sensitive Person — I committed to begin my life anew, through an urgent and unyielding and dedicated pursuit of my own self-knowledge.

I haven’t looked back since.

Even still, it would take me nearly twelve more years to finally crack the code of the truth to my nature — the nature that I had been seeking in my self-knowledge journey, all along.

And, it happened almost by accident, on a Wednesday afternoon in November, during a chance conversation with new peers on a Zoom call, when I was introduced to the concept of what it means to be a Highly Sensitive Person. 

Just like that, the impossibly-knotted ball of self-knowledge at which I had been pulling, untangling, and striving to uncoil for all my thirty-five years of living finally began to unravel.

Our true nature wants to be known

I have my HSP nature to thank for how my life, and all of my learning, and all of my professional work have developed, in turn. 

Today, I finally understand what motivated one of my earliest childhood memories of running away from the first day of kindergarten: a felt experience and expression of my true nature as a Highly Sensitive Person.

Much like the gift of depression — another expression of my sensitivity and lagging self-knowledge — today I feel genuinely grateful for only just having discovered the truth of my Highly Sensitive nature some six months ago.

After all, the urgency with which I had run away despite my nature was also the very motivation how urgently I have, in adulthood, learned to run towards myself, and deeper into the truths of who I am, through the journey of self-knowledge I have taken over twelve years.

I have my HSP nature to thank for how my life, and all of my learning, and all of my professional work have developed, in turn. 

Today, I find myself today a professional writer, author, teacher, coach, and guide to others: serving and supporting conscientious creatives, emergent leaders, and rising change-makers in their journeys of understanding their true nature — that they may share meaningful expressions, authentic stories, special creative work, and their callings of personal leadership aloud and in the world among others.

I’m not sure where my journey may take me next. But I trust that discovering my Highly Sensitive nature will keep showing me the way. And I know, for certain, that I will no longer run away from myself, or my true nature, ever again.

As for kindergarten, though? 

You could still never pay me enough to go back.

Learn more about Dave Ursillo

Dave Ursillo is a writer, an 11-time author, and coach. He’s also a highly sensitive person. Dave is on a mission to help creatives, business owners and professionals share their voices, stories, and messages in our world. Outside of work, he loves to travel, bake, and treat his morning coffee like some do fine wines.

Learn about his Claim Your Calling℠ personal leadership program for creatives and change-makers.