Ritu Kaushal's Blog, page 2

A Journal for Bright, Creative, Highly Sensitive People.

I love great questions. Sometimes, even more than facts, questions can nudge you in the right direction. And if the question is framed “just so,” it can start a train of associations. 

I especially love journaling questions. 

And I found some great ones recently in psychologist Lori L Cangilla’s lovely guided journal, Wander and Delve, a journal for “bright, creative, highly sensitive people forging their way.”  There is so much good stuff in it! 

Here are three of Lori’s gr...

The Inner Child Doesn’t Have to Look Like a Child.

I wrote recently about getting more & more interested in the “inner child” topic. As I’ve been thinking about it, I realized how, in my night-time dreams, my inner child doesn’t actually often look like my child-self. 

Sometimes, she shows up as a kitten locked up in a bathroom. Sometimes, as a puppy yapping at my heels. And from the time that I started birdwatching, I have had more dreams with birds in them. 

Last summer, I had my first band of little bushtits show up at my bi...

Ta-Da! Our next book club pick is here.

Our next book selection for The Highly Sensitive Creative Book Club is Ilse Sand’s book Highly Sensitive People in an Insensitive World. This book talks perceptively about some common struggles highly sensitive people face. For example: Ilse talks about how, as sensitives, we can have high standards and low self-esteem, all at the same time.  

There’s a lot of interesting stuff in this book, and I am looking forward to facilitating this book club! One of the good things that alway...

A Layered, Textured Life Starts with an Interest.

I started birdwatching last year, out of a growing impulse to connect with something deeper, something more rhythmic. In the space of a little more than a year, I feel like a new layer has been added to my life. 

My world is now full of new sounds and ideas and textures. 

When I pick up a new bird sound with the Merlin app on my phone, I feel a new moment of delight. Yesterday, I heard a mockingbird near our house for the first time. And days when I don’t hear the sounds of bic...

When the Inner Child Comes Knocking.

Sometimes, it happens that I start getting really interested in a topic that had seemed “obvious” before. That’s what happened recently when the term Inner Child started calling to me.  And so, like I usually do, I ordered a bunch of books about it. 

Of course, most of us have heard of our “inner child.” I feel like I’ve sometimes resisted the term. It almost feels like a regression, meaning childish instead of childlike. 

But something about the term has been pulling at me. It...

Reading the book “Sensitive,” the link between emotional & physical sensitivity, and more.

We read Jenn Granneman and Andre Solo’s book Sensitive in the last edition of The Highly Sensitive Creative Book Club. One of the things that stood out to me was when they talked about the close intertwining of emotional and physical sensitivity:   

“In common usage, sensitive can mean a person has big emotions – crying for joy, bursting with warmth, wilting from critique. It can also be physical; you may be sensitive to temperature or fragrance or sound. A growing body of scienti...

On being an intensely feeling, but private person.

I am a deeply feeling person. But I don’t wear my feelings on my sleeve. 

In fact, I think many people who know me casually may not even think of me as emotional. It’s almost like I have an exterior of calmness. And that’s all they can see. 

Inside, the weather could be anything. 

What are some things we want to be happy about

My emotional waters may actually be calm. Or there may be storms swirling inside. 

Depending on the person & the situation, I also come across ...

The Opposite of Happiness.

I have been thinking about happiness lately, and my mind jumped to: What’s the opposite of happiness? 

And I think the opposite of happiness is trying to be someone you are not. 

For example: It took me years to understand that I wasn’t competitive. How strange! When I was younger, I tried to be competitive partly because I grew up in India where there’s so much competition, and partly because I grew up in a family where being competitive was thought of as a good thing. 

So,...

Orion and the Dark and What it Says about Sensitive Creatives.

I was watching the animated movie Orion and the Dark recently. In it, a little boy called Orion who has an active (and often, overactive) imagination faces his fears in an epic journey with someone who he fears the most at first: a creature called Dark.   

In the movie, as Orion spins out into worry, Dark tells him: “Kid, you’re either extremely disturbed or extremely creative.”  

That line really struck home for me. Orion reminded me a bit of me, and how things can reach outsi...

Coming Home to Our Bodies.

Being in our body can feel really hard for many of us. This is especially true for those of us who have experienced any kind of trauma related to it. 

Maybe, it was physical abuse, which now causes us to flee from our bodies and jump into our minds. Or maybe, it was an accident that left us feeling so small and vulnerable that being in our body feels very threatening now. 

These are just two examples of the countless ways in which our connection to our bodies gets shattered. 

...