Sunset... I too am HSP (and if i may translate for those wondering, it is Highly Sensitive Person, which - as most lables, doesn't do justice to the way life is lived; sensitive to sound, touch, feeling, energy, food, and other realms (depending on person). For example, i have the hearing of a canine. So I hear things that are several blocks away and think they are happening in my living room *sigh*).
Yes - I too have been taught that these are "gifts"... and had to learn to not let them take over. For example, one was hearing other realms - spirits - many of them struggling. My seminary dean (very very open and fantastic seminary dean, also HSP, intuitive, and energy reader) had to teach me that I am not a 7-11; not open to whoever at all times of day. That i could chose when and who had access to me. I was getting a lot of distrubances (sort of in the poltergeist range) and really needed help. I have had to learn that I cannot work with that (for lack of a better term) "population" of spirit. It was driving me crazy and toward sui. I had to learn to surround myself in light and only allow beings of the light to be with me - at all times. Not to say that I haven't dabbled in the realms of "ghost whisperer" and helped some cross over. but it is now My Choice - not theirs. Gives me much more peace of mind/spirit/body. Those who know me here well know that I do not need any extra "help" being destructive/sui.
Having worked disaster relief in New Orleans after Hurrican Katrina, one entity "came home" with me, housed in my body. I even know where that entry happened. I was horrified by what i saw and re-traumatized. I was unblocked, ungrounded, totally unprepared to go into an area where there was still such wreckage, devistation, and un-found bodies. That entity stayed with me the remaining time i was there, and when i returned home, that entity was LIVID that people were eating all around us and this person, now deceased, could not. The entitiy wanted to bodily rip the food from my family members' mouths and tear them to shreads (such was the anger and violation of having been ripped from life by the storm surge) - using my body to do so. I had to excuse myself before "I" hurt them. I had to have my seminary dean help me help this person cross over and release me. It was a trying process, but one I couldn't go without. Hope that is not TMI.