Discover if you're a highly sensitive person (HSP) and learn how to navigate the challenges and gifts that come with it. In this episode, I explore the signs of being a high sensitive person (HSP), the benefits, and strategies for managing the overwhelm, anxiety, empathy overload, and intuition.
Key Topics:
Understanding high sensitivity: Explore the characteristics of HSPs, including heightened sensory perception, emotional depth, and empathy.
Balancing sensitivity and anxiety: Learn how high sensitivity can contribute to anxiety and develop strategies to manage these feelings.
Harnessing the power of high sensitivity: Discover the positive aspects of being HSP, such as creativity, intuition, and deep connections.
Coping mechanisms for HSPs: Learn practical strategies to manage overwhelm, set boundaries, and reduce stress.
Seeking support: Explore the importance of connecting with other HSPs and finding a therapist who understands your unique needs.
Listen now to love your highly sensitive self more and thrive in a world that often looks down on this valuable trait.
Podcast Transcript:
Alright, on this episode, I'm talking about what it means to be a highly sensitive person, and how having this really incredible ability to feel life can be both an amazing gift and a really horrible trigger for people who are anxious. If you've ever been told that you are too sensitive, you are definitely in the right place. Are you ready? Let's see if this sounds like you. If it does, I just want you to know that 20% of the population falls into this category of being highly sensitive, so you're in really good company. This isn't a small group of people and I definitely fall into this group. Recently, I read that being highly sensitive, might be one of the very few ways that anxiety is actually a genetic trait. And I've had people say to me, "Hey, Megan, I don't know, I was just born this way." Or, "Everybody in my family is anxious. So it's just genetic and I'm gonna be like this forever" And I just want to say, no, no, no, no, no! That is not how it has to be! People in your family can be anxious, they can teach you how to behave, and they might teach you to feel anxious. And yes, there could be a genetic factor, of course, but being highly sensitive is actually a genetic factor so maybe that is more powerful than this genetic disposition that you might have towards some anxiety disorder. You can be taught to be anxious, or you can be highly sensitive, or you could be both.
When you are highly sensitive. Your central nervous system runs deeper than other people's nervous systems so you are more observant of how your body feels in physical, emotional or social situations where there's lots of stimulus. So let's talk about what that means because that's a lot of information right off the bat. If you haven't listened to Episode One, I'm going to ask you to go back. Just hit pause, go back, and listen to that episode where I talked about the caveman that lives in your head. If you've ever seen the movie, The Croods, or if you've never seen the movie, The Croods, this is going to make sense to you. If you haven't, you should go watch it so it does. But in that movie, there's this dad caveman who lives with his family and he's always on guard to keep his family safe from everything that he perceives as dangerous. He has no idea what's really dangerous because he's just a caveman. He's learning and he's constantly throwing his family back into the cave to keep them safely locked up and alive. So there's this cute little saber toothed tiger that is being a sweet little kitty, or there's a fire which ends up being the sun, or he says, "stay away from the cliff!" because he doesn't know what's out there or what's on the other side. He just reacts. Everything is dangerous to him. He has a caveman brain. And you also have a caveman brain. Your brain doesn't know that saber toothed tigers are extinct. It doesn't know what's actually dangerous. So like the caveman in that movie, I want you to pretend that you have a caveman in your head and the caveman in your head doesn't know the difference between what's actually dangerous and what he thinks might be dangerous. His only job is to keep you alive so he freaks out about everything.
If you are highly sensitive, your brain sees more, it hears more, it feels more, it anticipates more, and so on and so on. And you're always on high alert for anything that might look different, or if anything changes, or if any other stimuli is around and your brain is just trying to keep you alive. It keeps you in fight or flight. If you internalize these changes without learning to process through how your body feels, that's when the thoughts can get stuck, and it's thoughts about how you feel, and what it means. So let me explain a little bit more and then start with a question.
Do you know how your body feels when you're anxious, and I mean, very, very clearly, you can feel it in your body and know right away, that's anxiety. I've talked about this a lot. If you don't, I want you to start paying attention to that. Find the spot where you feel anxiety the most in your body. You can put your hand on it. Maybe it feels tight, or hot. Maybe it feels prickly, or fuzzy, or it hurts. Whatever it feels like is fine but I want you to get very, very familiar with that feeling. So whether we're talking about being highly sensitive, or anything else, you have to know how your body feels, in order to start managing and recovering from anxiety. It all starts there. Being highly sensitive, is a biological evolution to keep you safe and your brain is perceiving more to make sure that it can react more. If you buy into that, in theory, you are safe. This just means that the people who are more reactive to changes or anything that overwhelms their senses are, "safer." But that's not actually true, is it? It's just what your brain is telling you. It's that little caveman in your brain saying, "Do you see all of those things that look a little bit off?! They're all dangerous! You are in danger!" And then it throws you back into the cave. It keeps you from doing what you want to do. So this can be anything physical or emotional. Anything that you experience as a human being. That kind of sucks, doesn't it?
So let's talk about how physically stimulating things could make you feel overwhelmed or anxious when you're highly sensitive. And obviously, when we talk about physical, touch one of those things. For me things like itchy tags. (I hate he tags so much!) Crooked socks might bother you. Itchy sweaters, if you feel too hot, or if you feel too cold. Maybe the lights seem like they're too bright, or sounds are too loud. All of those things can make you feel anxious if your brain is trying to figure out what is going on. And to find a cause or to make sense of something. You don't like it, it feels wrong, it's uncomfortable, and you get all worked up. You guys, I seriously had to ask a student to cut a tag out of my shirt while I was teaching because I couldn't handle the itchiness and I couldn't focus. It was driving me crazy. That's part of being sensitive. Other things in your physical environment that might make you overwhelmed ore anxious are clutter and chaos. Clearing the clutter is a really powerful step to calming your environment and calming your body. If there are too many things going on around you, or laying around out of order, you might get over stimulated and feel all of those anxious feelings in your body. If you don't recognize those feelings and what's going on. It's a downward spiral from there. You know that feeling? Yeah, when you know, you know.
So a quick story about changes in lights. One time when I was in high school, I was at Dairy Queen with my friends. We were sitting in this room with lots of windows, I guess you would call it a garden room or a sunroom; something like that. And you know, in the evening when the sky sometimes turns really weird colors, especially either right before or right after there's a storm? Maybe like, it might get kind of neon orange or pink or just... it feels really eerie to me. So I remember sitting in that garden room, and the sky changed colors, and it totally tripped me out! At one point. I remember experiencing depersonalization where I thought none of this is real, or am I really here? Something is wrong! Am I dead? It freaked me out and sent me into a huge anxiety attack because of the color of the sky. It was strange and it was different and my brain was trying to figure out what was going on. This should have been a huge clue to me. But at that point in my life, I didn't know anything about being highly sensitive or about anxiety. I just knew that I felt really scared most of the time. This was something else that made me feel that way and there was no reason for it. But now I understand there really was!
I spent years trying to figure out the source of my anxiety. It's been a really ridiculous process for me, since I can't put my finger on anything other than times I actually felt really anxious. But when I finally figured out that I'm just really highly sensitive, and I take on other people's emotions and fears, or I perceive things really intensely. The more I learn, the more I understand that, that is my why. And if you're like me, and you take everything with tears of happiness, or on the flip side, you SOB over cheesy commercials, I get it! I've got a lot of feelings in here and maybe you do too.
So emotional people, or people who are highly sensitive can really get touched by things like changes in the color of the sky, beauty in nature, maybe finding beauty in art or an act of kindness. They can also be destroyed by negativity or violence, or something that's just horribly sad. You might see a beautiful flower. Or maybe you're driving down the road, and there's a forest with trees over the road. And you're just like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing!" Or you see a beautiful painting and hear the most amazing song. Music is a huge one for a lot of people, even people who aren't so highly sensitive. It takes you back; it makes you time travel, doesn't it? Just like a smell. Maybe it's like that for you. Do you know when you hear a song, and the lyrics either help you come up with some really dramatic story in your head or it takes you back to when you were a little kid? Or maybe it reminds you of someone who's not with you anymore and the next thing you know you're sobbing? Oh, my gosh, let me tell you what, there are certain songs that when they come on, I immediately turn off the radio because I know I'm either going to cry, or they give me a creepy feeling! Here's my best example. That song The Boys of Summer. I think it's Glenn Frey. It's the old version. I know there's a new one, but it's the old version. I remember riding in my car with my parents and my brothers at night. And my grandparents lived way out in the country and that song came on the radio. I always thought it was a creepy song for some reason and it made me anxious. I think it was that tune that melody in it. If you add to that, I remember looking at the night sky, which at that point in time also made me super anxious because it was too big. It was too much for my brain. I saw E.T. in the movie theater and that was a freaking scary movie! I still don't like the movie E.T.; aliens trip me out. I don't like them. So since that time, which feels like it happened more than once, but maybe I just have the same time on replay in my hea,. I still get weird vibes from the Boys of Summer song. It still brings back that same feeling in my body. I don't feel anxious anymore about it and I love to look at the stars now, but at that point in my life, it was a feeling that turned into anxiousness for me. This can happen when you're really sensitive to night skies or songs or anything else.
Another big one is seeing other people cry. When other people are crying and they're grabbing tissues, watch me start. I will cry with people I don't even know. I will cry with people who are happy, people who are sad, people who are hurting... If someone else cries, I'm going to cry. If a dog cries, I will cry. It's just what happens. It's okay. So if you don't handle violence or other people's emotions, well, you might be very highly sensitive. Violent movies are not our jam, are they? It's just too many feelings. People are being hurt and someone's angry and someone's scared, and you're taking it all in.
If you are a deep thinker, and you go round. and around, and around when you are the one who has to make a decision. So for example, if someone asks you to choose where a group of friends is going to go out for dinner, and your first thought is, 'how can I make everyone happy?' Oh, I'm guilty about this one! Maybe you tend to overthink things in order not to offend someone. Or maybe you look at someone's face and you've interpreted what they're thinking simply by meeting them. You might be highly sensitive if you're trying to manage other people's emotions because you feel those emotions yourself. You have empathy and you have compassion. And the world needs so much more of that. But you also has a side of people pleaseing in order to avoid conflict. And that is a mess of a mix, isn't it?
Another way to explain what it could feel like is that you might notice that your senses feel like they are turned up way too far in your body. Highly sensitive people have lower lows, and higher highs, I want you to understand that I'm not talking about depression and mania, that's something entirely different. I'm talking about feelings, not bipolar. So if you think "Oh my gosh, this is the best thing I've ever seen!" And then "Oh, this is the saddest thing I've ever seen!" My mom actually said this once to me when we were on vacation. She said, "Let me guess this is your favorite place you've ever been." And I was like, "Yeah, every place is my favorite place I've ever been!" That's what it feels like all the time. Everything is always your favorite. It's either the very best or the very worst and we're not being dramatic. And it's not often in between because of how we feel and perceive situations, or places, or people. All that sensory input that comes with being someplace new, that's just how our brains and bodies work. Of course this is the best place or the worst place I've ever been. It's based on my senses and I have a lot of them!
So socially, highly sensitive people are incredibly empathetic. I just said that a minute ago. We're compassionate, and we do not like conflict. Helping everyone else all the time to your own detriment is a problem that you just might understand. Maybe you're really easily overwhelmed by other people's bad moods, or crowds. Or if you walk into a party or a meeting, and you feel like everyone's head turns to look at you, and you are instantly reading their faces in anticipation of what you think they are thinking. That could be because you're highly sensitive. We feel all the feels! Not to mention, there isn't a lot of room to move in that room, there's too many lights, there's too much noise, there's a bunch of different smells...perfumes or colognes. Your senses are overloaded, and you feel everybody's energy in the room. This is why a lot of highly sensitive people tend to be a little more introverted. If you are avoiding these places that you want to go to instead of coming up with ways to go and to not feel overwhelmed, you might have moved from simply being highly sensitive towards more of a social anxiety situation. So if you're not going places that you want to go, places like concerts or parties, maybe even church or school, simply because of the thoughts you have about being in a crowd, we need to talk about how you can go because you are missing out on fun! If it sounds fun, but you're too scared to do it or too anxious to do it. Talk to me, I can help you with that.
This next characteristic is a really good one. If you have inappropriate responses when you are anxious. Are you guilty of this? If you laugh at funerals, or intense situations... if you get stressed out and your first thought is, Oh my gosh, and then you'll start giggling; that can happen. If you crack jokes that you shouldn't at inappropriate times. This next one I'm so guilty of...if you word vomit on people. When I get anxious, I talk way too fast and way too much and I don't want to do that! I always know what happened after the fact. I'm getting so much better at it, but it's my anxiety response. If I feel stressed out about a meeting or having to meet new people, or if I'm around a group that I don't know, I feel a lot of feelings and I'm either really happy, or really anxious, or really sad. Whatever the feeling is, I just say too much because I'm feeling all of these feelings at the same time. And that's how it comes out for me. It's like people who do new, nervous laughing when they're sad. Can you relate to this? Because it happens. It's your nervous system. It's okay. We just need to come up with a better response.
If you avoid conflict, and you people, please. If you're doing things that you don't want to do, maybe you always say yes, for example. Maybe your boundaries suck. Or maybe you don't have any boundaries at all! Have you ever felt that if you said "No", someone would be mad at you and you couldn't handle that so you said yes, but with resentment. That could be part of being highly sensitive. We don't want people mad at us. We don't like conflict. But there is a time and a place to say yes and to say no. There's also a time and a place to avoid conflict. You don't need to be a social media troll, but if you're working at job and your coworker is sabotaging your work, or let's say, you haven't been paid. You've been there for a month and you haven't gotten a paycheck yet. I know it's not comfortable. But we perceive things as conflict sometimes when they are simply saying what needs to be said. I get it. We can talk about how you can be proactive and start feeling good about yourself so that you begin to understand that at your job, your employer would probably like to pay you so that you keep coming to work. And like to handle the conflict that you're experiencing with your coworker so you're happy at your job. Sometimes, if you're highly sensitive, and you're feeling anxious, you turn situations into nightmares, or this huge hullabaloo when it's just letting someone know so the problem can be solved.
If you are wondering if this applies to you, if you're starting to say, "Oh yeah, I noticed a lot of these things.", you've got some brand new insight onto what could be amping up your nervous system and causing your brain to search for a reason on why you feel weird or off or stressed. Remember, I said that you need to go back and get familiar with your body if you feel this way. So this would be a great time to pause the podcast and take notes. Remember, go back and get really familiar on how it feels if you're always on guard or you're always running in fight or flight. If you're feeling maybe that highly sensitive is the answer for you. Or if you're always looking for the next thing that might feel weird, dangerous, or wrong - if you avoid situations that other people find fun... or maybe they used to be fun for you too. But now you're so anxious and overwhelmed that you just don't go. You deserve to feel good. You can learn to let go of the thoughts that come with all of these anxious feelings and to start creating a positive and fun thought instead, that actually allows you to have that fun. You're allowed to live and to experience all of the things. So for example, Thanksgiving is coming up. If you're already trying to figure out how to avoid people that you really love or situations that might be fun for you, let's talk about how you can enjoy the holiday. Maybe you think 'they're looking at me'. 'They think that I'm stupid,' 'they think I have too much food on my plate', 'they might say something to me', 'they might think something about me'. That's all up in your head. This is what coaching helps people with. We can get really clear on what the story is that you're telling yourself and start figuring out how that story is making you feel. Then let's just come up with a better story. So that you can really learn to enjoy going out, enjoy hanging out with people you love, doing the things that you want to do, again, without mulling around these thoughts about how you're this giant goober who might trip or fall or faceplant in the cake or whatever your story is. Because when you change the story, when you change the thoughts, you change how you feel. And that completely changes the game and your reality. So if this is you, if you're avoiding things, message me or just click the link at the end in the show notes, and scheduled time for us to talk because I can totally help you with this. You can get over this and really start enjoying all the amazing things about being highly sensitive. Because it really is amazing!
Highly sensitive people have so much gratitude and appreciation for the people, the places the things, the events, the memories in their lives. This is a wonderful part of being highly sensitive. We are incredibly grateful, incredibly appreciative. We love people fiercely. We are passionately devoted. I like to say this is a Scorpio trait, but honestly, it's just a trait. And if I really bought into the Scorpio thing, I would use this as like my shining star part of being a Scorpio. Here's a few other really, really great things that you can get excited about as being a highly sensitive person.
You are very emotionally intelligent and this is something that I wish the rest of the world had. If we could all treat each other with kindness and love and understanding that people are going through things, how amazing would the world be? Here's something else you take every part of life; what you see, what you feel, the bird singing in the morning, how your coffee tastes, how the cup feels in your hand, the way the water might glisten, and what it feels like on your toes, and in between your toes, all of it! Every single thing; you take it and turn it into some incredible feeling and experience. Every single thing - that's powerful. Here's a fun one. We're really smart. Honestly, we're really smart and witty. And we have a really great sense of humor. And it's because we take everything and we have so much sensory input to draw on that we can make some really crazy connections with things that sometimes other people don't get. It helps you remember things, because you have so many experiences to attach to.
Highly sensitive people tend to be really aware of their environment, obviously, right. So you might notice, as soon as the leaves start to change in the fall, or right when the buds are starting to come back the trees in the spring. Maybe you're driving down the road, and you notice that it looks like there's too many trees that are dead in the woods, I've done this. Or there are patches of color in the woods that you can see, "oh, there's a red patch - a yellow patch!: Instead of seeing the entire forest, you see the individuals. You notice that there might be patches of grass that are different colors.
Highly sensitive people are also super creative. They come with amazing stories with lots of great adjectives, because they have lots of senses to pull from. They noticed things so they know what things look like or feel like. But also on the flip side, you might struggle to put words to the pictures because the emotions get in the way. If you're identifying with this, you are likely very creative, and can come up with some fantastic stories. Just make sure that you're writing happy and positive stories instead of nightmarish stories, so that we can work on that anxiety. Okay? Another great thing about you, you are super devoted to your family and friends. You have an incredible appreciation for all of the little things in life. And finally, you are incredibly intuitive. This is something that I've worked on a lot with my 16 year old son, from the time he was about five years old. So this kid can read a room like nobody's business; he's always been able to do it. One time, when he was in kindergarten, he came home and he walked in the front door and I was in my bathroom washing my hands. I remember this. I was pretty grouchy or anxious that day, but I remember being kind of pent up. And this little boy walks in the front door. And he was inside for 30 seconds; I hadn't even seen him yet. And I just hear him yell from the kitchen. "Holy crap, where's the sage?" The kid has feelings like you wouldn't believe. And he wanted to sage the house which... I don't even know how he knew what that was at that point, because I've only done it a couple of times ever and I didn't know that he was paying attention. But I've had so many conversations with him about "Gavin, do you feel this? Or to somebody else feel this?' Are you taking these feelings upon yourself? Or are you feeling them actually, because it's part of your life? If you are empathetic, if you can pull other people's feelings, and feel them as your own, you have to learn to separate them. It has been so beneficial for me to be able to talk with him about this so that he can start to separate "Oh, this is how I feel. This is the feeling of the room, the energy of the room." Does that make sense? So when you can learn to care and be compassionate, and empathetic, you have an incredible emotional intelligence. And you can use that intelligence and your humor to help the world without throwing yourself under the bus at the same time. What an incredible gift to be highly sensitive. It comes down to learning to manage all of these feelings in your body and your perception of the feelings. It means you have to stop people pleasing, you have to start standing up for what's right without being afraid that it's going to come back at you. You have to learn to take on conflict when it's necessary. And to learn to excuse yourself when you're overwhelmed and know that it's okay. You're taking care of yourself. It's okay to cut out early. You have to learn to stand up for what you want. And for crying out loud, you have to sleep a heck of a lot more... because we are tired, aren't we? Bright lights, too many sounds, too many people, all the things going around us... we just require more sleep.
So to do all of this you have to slow down and be intentional. While you're enjoying or taking in everything around you: slow everything down. Because stress and anxiety can make you want to speed up. But when you slow down, you let your body catch up with your mind and your mind to sort out your body. And you lower the energy in your nervous system and you can reset, You have to make things simple and give yourself space to adjust, or to cry, or to rest. or disappear into to the bathroom for five minutes, because that's how you can come back as your best self.
Let's talk quickly about what you can do if you're highly sensitive to start feeling better. Now, first, you have to take a step back. What are you putting up with in your life that is not necessary? Maybe it's saying yes when you know that it's time to start saying no to something on your calendar? Do you have what it takes to start saying, No? Are you confronting a situation or a person who's taking advantage of you? Can you tell them No? Are you hiding your true feelings about something? Are you hiding who you really are? Learning to go out and love who you are, without comparing yourself to other people, or reading their minds is incredibly powerful. So take a step back and think about those things.
Number two, pause when you start to feel anxious, and immediately spend the situation from "This is weird. Something is wrong." To This is different. Something's new." If you change the way you say it, just change your view from a negative feeling to one of newness, or curiosity or excitement. Have you ever noticed that excitement and anxiousness can feel the same way in your body? Pay attention to that. It's just what you're thinking about the situation that makes you go from anxious, nervous to anxious, excited? Can you get curious and excited to see what happens instead of taking everything and making it mean something bad? Again, this requires you to know how your body feels.
Number three, you have to avoid Emotional Vampires. Do you know what Emotional Vampires are? So we know that emotional vampire is someone who comes in and sucks all of the positivity out of you, because they're so full of emotion and so full of 'woe is me'. Since you're empathetic, you're gonna be drained in no time. They are sucking the joy and positivity out of you because you are a compassionate, caring person who will listen, and they are full of doom and gloom and sadness and negativity. You have to avoid these people! You can still be kind, you can still say hello, you can spend a very short amount of time with them, but if they are sucking the life out of you, step back!
Number four, you have to learn to manage stress before and after situations that are stressing you out. And you have to avoid unnecessary stressors, like the news, like events that are not in line with your goals or your values, ecause you're trying to make someone else happy. Or because you "should" do something. Ask yourself, Is this in line with what I want? Is this in line with who I want to be and how I want to feel? And if the answer is no, stop, and make a conscious choice. You have to learn to manage your thoughts because thoughts are what cause you to feel. And when you purposely move a thought to what you want to believe, and what causes a more positive feeling in your body from what you don't want to believe that makes you feel like crap, you are choosing differently. And when you choose differently, especially as a highly sensitive person, you start to notice that your body feels differently and you can react with energy that feels good, instead of energy that causes you to become more anxious.
And finally, number six, you need to reach out and talk with me about how coaching can help. You can do that by going to megandevito.com/workwithme. Or you can click the link in the show notes wherever you're listening to this podcast and just schedule time for us to talk. I want to hear your story. I want to hear where you're stuck. I want to hear what you want instead of what you're experiencing. And I want you to use that creative, compassionate, loving, wonderful brain of yours to create a life you love. I want you to have fun and freedom and more peace and more energy.
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