To be a highly sensitive person is to be emotionally porous.
You feel things more deeply and experience your environment more intensely than others who are not as sensitive.
For this reason, you must be extra careful to not allow yourself to be overly influenced by your surroundings, whether it be your environment or your relationships.
You need to develop healthy boundaries between yourself and the world around you.
Otherwise, you may find yourself lost in a sea of feelings, opinions, and agendas that are not your own or in your best interest.
As a highly sensitive person, without boundaries, your inner life will constantly be at the mercy of others and they may not even know it.
Healthy boundaries keep you on course.
They help you to know where the dividing line is between you and the world around you.
Your goal should not be to shut the world out, for this would go against your very nature as a highly sensitive person, but to protect your sensitivity so that it strengthens and guides you instead of overwhelming and distracting you.