Feature Fatigue

When highly sensitives are paralyzed by overwhelm

Before we dive into today’s topic, I want to thank everyone who has subscribed to Holy HSP! I’ve only been on Substack for a little over two months, and I’ve been blown away by the amount of you who have subscribed! Thank you! I’m so glad you’re here.

 So many wonderful subscribers… yet radio silence in this neck of the woods! I didn’t intend for almost a month to go by without publishing something again here! The truth is…I’ve been experiencing what I like to call Feature Fatigue. Allow me to explain.

I’ve been doing Instagram for years. Funnily enough, I joined Instagram after years of swearing off social media. My capstone research for my social science degree was on the dangers of social media – back when Facebook was still brand new, and Instagram didn’t even exist yet. The research was still concerning! In the mid-2010s I was experiencing chronic stress due to a sick loved one and Instagram felt like a good place to document my nature therapy. I soon found fellow highly sensitives on there and the Holy HSP community was born! While mostly a pleasant experience, it can be hard to keep up with all the new features. When Instagram Stories launched, I eventually figured those out and posted regularly. But then came Instagram Live, then IGTV, then Reels, and most recently Notes! While it was too much for me to keep up with, it was easy to ignore most of what I wasn’t utilizing.

A year ago I joined Substack. The much quieter, simpler app. For a year I was simply a reader. Then, they added the chat feature*. Another feature I mostly ignored. When I decided to start writing here, it was only a few weeks before they released Substack Notes* - a Twitter-like alternative inside the Substack app. Adding to my overwhelm, everyone I subscribed to was joining in on Notes and seemed to be loving it! I felt left out for feeling a bit overwhelmed by this new feature on what had felt like a quiet, pressure-free app. I kept thinking, I’m supposed to engage with people on Instagram with comments, DMs, notes and post content and now I have to engage in several different spots on Substack too? I came over to quiet the noise and overwhelm, not add to it!

Enter paralyzing overwhelm. And my subsequent silence.

This is common with highly sensitives. We process everything deeply, plus we’re often perfectionists. Since I wasn’t really sure how to best engage all these new features and wasn’t sure what to say, I became paralyzed by overwhelm and instead ended up doing nothing at all.

Highly sensitive children are often mislabeled as shy because of this tendency. We take longer to warm up to groups, new people, new ideas, to new ways of doing things. We like to observe before we engage. This is our deep processing at work.

Let me make this abundantly clear: This does not make us broken, weak, or wrong. It makes us beautifully different. This is good, to be different! It’s the highly sensitives who stay back and observe and then come up with novel ways of approaching problems. It’s the highly sensitives who observe where others are struggling and in need of a helping hand. It’s the highly sensitives whose observations can change the world!

If you’re feeling some Feature Fatigue in any aspect of life – give yourself some grace! Take your time, observe, and then engage on your own terms! Whether I fully embrace Substack Notes or ignore them like I ignore a lot of Instagram features – I’ll know that my highly sensitive, deep processing brain will have considered the feature from all angles and will decide what’s best for me!

What’s something that you feel overwhelmed with where you might need to give yourself some grace?

*If you use the Substack app or website, you know what I’m talking about but if you simply subscribe and receive this in your email inbox you are possibly blissfully unaware of these features – in which case, I’m a bit jealous! 😊

Thanks again for being here, Dear Reader! I’m grateful you’re here.

Blessings to you all ~

MM