Ritu Kaushal's Blog, page 21

Do Empaths and HSPs Attract Narcissists?

Do empaths and Highly Sensitive People attract narcissists? From the scores of articles and YouTube videos that address this very topic, it seems that many of us have had experiences with problematic people who might have been narcissistic. We are all also looking for answers for why we got embroiled with them in the first place.

But is this dynamic a given? Do all empaths attract narcissists and boundary-breakers? Or is this just the experience of some empaths and HSPs?

I have been thinking about this for some time now. Recently, I came across this post on fellow empath Jennifer Soldner’s blog that talks about how she thinks it’s not empaths that “attract” narcissists, it’s people with poor personal boundaries who do. Here’s what she says about her statement, which, at first, might sound radical to some empaths.

“I know, I know.  There are a ton of articles that explain all the reasons why empaths and highly sensitive people (HSPs) are magnets for those with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and many of their points make a great deal of sense.  Those who have been subject to narcissistic abuse find great comfort in them, seeing their life spoken by another and finally feeling validated in their experiences.  I love that many empaths and HSPs have come across these articles and used them to empower themselves out of the abusive cycle.

But the flip side is that these articles are only giving a portion of the truth, leading us to believe that by being an empath or HSP that we are destined to attract toxic people for the remainder of our days, which simply isn’t true.  These articles continue to perpetuate the deeply held belief that puts us at the mercy of toxic relationships which is that we have no control.”

Jennifer goes on to talk about people she knows in real life and how being an empath is not the deciding factor for whether a shark-like narcissist will smell blood on you. There are empaths with good boundaries and a strong sense of self who do not attract narcissists, Jennifer tells us. There are also non-empaths with poor boundaries who do end up getting hurt and mistreated by narcissists. Check out Jennifer’s full post on her website. It’s definitely worth a read.

I have to say I mostly agree with Jennifer. This is even though, like other empaths, I have had my fair share of encounters with boundary-breakers and people I suspected were narcissists (there is no way to know for sure). Of course, I do also understand the resonance that the belief that we “attract the wrong people” can have. On one level, it does ring true to our experience when we notice that people who are not as empathic steer clear of narcissistic people, while people like us become the fodder.

We are the ones who often give people a second and third chance, which sometimes ends up with us getting hurt ourselves. So, yes, I think being sensitive to other’s feelings sometimes does help create unhealthy situations. But it’s a double whammy that results from that dangerous cocktail of being sensitive and also not having good boundaries. Maybe, we would have escaped with fewer bruises (even if we had bad boundaries) if we just didn’t feel so much and give so much of the benefit of the doubt to the other person.  So, being sensitive does complicate things.  

But believing that narcissists are “attracted” to us like moths to the flame also keeps us victimized. In the end, it isn’t true. Even if we are empaths, with better boundaries and a stronger sense of self, we can steer clear of problematic people. We are not doomed to keep repeating the same pattern again and again.

I have seen this in my own life. There was a time when I felt like I was beating my head against the proverbial rock again and again. I always found people who were demanding or needy. I was always attracting (or so it felt like to me) people who just needed someone to listen to them while they vented and dumped their feelings on me. I felt myself seething in resentment and feeling as if I could only find friendships that were “one-way streets,” with me being the listener and giver. What was I doing to keep getting entangled with the same kind of person again and again?

But with some hard knocks and deep hurt, there came a time when I started to see, bit by bit, that I wasn’t “attracting” these people. I was the common denominator in all my experiences. The truth was, if any one of us goes out into the world, they will meet all sorts of people. It was just that when I came across these problematic people, I stuck around. I was too open and undiscerning.

I had beliefs about how it was “not good to judge people” and I was unconsciously taking it to the extreme so that I never judged people. So, I was completely undiscerning. I was so used to identifying with “being nice” that I didn’t let myself express the natural anger that rose up when a boundary was crossed. When I did realize I was angry, I didn’t quite know what to do with my anger.

But once I started putting all these different pieces in place, my encounters with narcissistic people and other boundary-breakers went down sharply. No longer was I available to be taken advantage of. No longer was I naive and idealistic. I mostly steered clear of them like a boat that goes around rocks. I saw them for who they were, instead of creating a story in my head about them.

So, I do agree with Jennifer that, in the end, having good boundaries is what keeps narcissists at bay. As empaths, we are not doomed to keep attracting the same pattern again and again. That’s wonderful. That’s a relief! There is nothing intrinsic about me that is pulling unhealthy people towards me.

At the same time, I do understand why having boundaries, in the first place, can feel so very hard. When good boundaries haven’t been modeled for us and when some of us have, in fact, also had our boundaries violated in our lives, just understanding them and building from the ground level up takes a huge amount of effort. We keep on trying our best. But we also keep on running against one unhealthy belief after another that we have to forcefully weed out one by one. Sometimes, our beliefs are so tangled up that it feels like one giant mess.

All this boundary-forming takes a lot of effort, time, and trial and error. It’s an ongoing process. We might do a lot of work, and then come across some blind spot. Then, we need to have compassion for ourselves, that thing that doesn’t always come easily to every one of us.

But if we can just keep going, there’s also the other side of. If we just keep trying, keep learning, we can get better at self-protection just like we do with any other skill we practice enough. So, if you have struggled or are struggling with a narcissist, have compassion for yourself. You don’t think like them. There’s probably also a history for why holding boundaries is so hard for you.

Know that you can learn about better boundaries. You are not doomed to finding the wrong people. You can build better a stronger protective field around you as a Highly Sensitive Person or an empath. No longer do we have to lose something to be of service. Looking for win-win is how we both protect ourselves and channel our gifts to the world.

Why I am not going to complete my reading goals this year.

In January, I decided I was going to read a lot more this year. Not just that, I was going to consciously track how many books I read on Goodreads. I decided on the modest number of 30 even though many other readers have ambitious goals like 200 books. No, I was going to keep a very minimal number and use it to encourage myself to read more. It would also be a way to keep a record of everything I read in the year.

I started enthusiastically enough and even had a couple of some really wonderful hours reading than I have had in a long time. But then, very soon after I started this reading challenge, reading started to feel very laborious. It started to feel like production.

In fact, reading, something I absolutely love, stopped being pleasurable after the first few books I read. More and more, I was thinking about things like how I could read a greater number of books, how I could finish a book faster instead of reading it slowly, and how I “should” read diverse, “worthy” books. Instead of feeling joyful, the whole process started feeling like a burden.

It was then that I thought of how I have never finished a challenge like this. Never. I love to read. I read a lot. I am always reading multiple books at one time. And yet, I have never completed any book challenge I ever started in the past.

I think it’s because it makes a “goal” out of something I normally do for pleasure and love. It makes it mechanical, a thing where you try to tick a box and count progress and get hung up on numbers. From now on, I don’t think I will ever do a reading challenge again. I think it doesn’t matter to me whether I read two books or two hundred books in a year. It’s a false number. I think what matters to me is that I enjoy the process and get engrossed in it. I think what matters is that I feel pulled by it, instead of pushing towards it.

I expect I will find many wonderful books this year, but I am done with counting. For me, the process is the reward, not reaching the goal.

Banned Books Week: Which of your favorite books might be a banned book?

[image error]This week, I came across the BannedBooksWeek hashtag in my twitter feed. From librarians to book publishers to lovers of books, everyone was sharing information about beloved books that were banned once upon a time or books that are under fire right now. A quick google search showed me that Banned Books Week (being held this year from September 23-29) was first launched in 1982 after a sudden increase in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. It advocates for something extremely important: the freedom to read, which is really the freedom to express and communicate ideas and the freedom to think.

What was really interesting for me was how many different kinds of books have been banned at different times. The list included everything from classics like John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath to Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl to beloved children’s books like Charlotte’s Web by E.B.White.     

What really takes the cake are some of the reasons for why the book was banned at that particular time. This 2013 piece by Buzzfeed, for example, talks about how The Wizard of Oz was banned in 1928 by all public libraries in Chicago because of its “ungodly” influence “for depicting women in strong leadership roles.” Now, of course, it’s a classic and Dorothy with her red ruby slippers is one of “the” iconic American fictional characters.

Just looking at these different lists was interesting. Depending on the time, the place, and the people, it seems like anything can be banned. I think that’s a lesson to all of us as sensitive creatives learning to express our voice. Even the simplest expressions and leaps of imagination, like the talking animals in Charlotte’s Web, were threatening to someone because they had a specific worldview and thought the talking characters were somehow an “insult to God.” So, when we try to say something, even if we don’t want to be confrontational or disrespectful, it has the possibility of triggering someone.

But that’s really about them. It’s not about us. As long as we have the right intention, we have the right to express what’s true for us, even if it inadvertently threatens someone. We have the right to express our imagination, which I think is another gift from God. We also have the right to say it as it is, even if it doesn’t always come across as polite because as I am learning, people might “like” you if you are always nice and don’t do anything to threaten them but they will often respect you, in time, if you stand up for who you are and for what you believe.

And even if they don’t respect you or come around, at least, you will respect yourself.

Struggling with figuring out your gift as an HSP or Empath? Amanda Linehan’s novel Bored to Death might offer a clue.

[image error]I first discovered Amanda Linehan, a fellow HSP and INFP writer,  while doing a Google search about INFPs. I remember going through her website and finding one post after another that was deeply inspiring. Amanda has a way of turning things around on their head and she offered a unique perspective that resonated deeply with my INFP self. For example: In this post on her blog, Amanda asked how you would act if you knew you couldn’t succeed.

That’s the opposite of what a lot of self-help gurus advice: What would you do if you thought you knew you couldn’t fail? But especially for creatives, I think Amanda’s approach is wonderfully helpful. What if you are trying to work on a big project, like your first book or a series of paintings? What if you knew you couldn’t succeed straightaway? What if you knew this was just the first of your many attempts, just a first step in a long journey with potentially many books and many exhibitions? That would take the pressure off, wouldn’t it?

This is a great perspective for sensitive creatives, and this is just one example of Amanda’s unique approach. Her website is full of both inspiring writings as well as practical tips and tricks to help INFPs accept their unique, sensitive, creative way of being in the world. Last year, I did an interview with Amanda focusing on her YA novel North. You can check it out here. This time, I want to talk about Amanda’s new novel, Bored to Death – A Vampire Thriller. Just as the title says, the story is about Vampires. The book follows Vic, the main protagonist, as she struggles with her almost-eternal “life” as a Vampire until she comes to a crossroads and finds her world perched precariously. She comes to head to head with an arch nemesis who is trying to rewrite the rules of life and death.

But while this is a Vampire story, which you might or might not be into, it’s also more than that.

Are you struggling with figuring out your gift as an empath?

My heart quickened when I found Amanda talking about things through her characters that are real challenges and problems for sensitives, whether you are an HSP or whether you also think of yourself as an empath. One is the problem we often have as highly sensitive people is identifying our gift. We know that the same sensitivity that often overwhelms us also helps us tune into the nuances of the world. But what do we do with these details we are picking up? What exactly is the gift hidden under all that muck? In Bored to Death,  we find this same struggle. Every Vampire in this universe has a unique gift. In the beginning, Vic, the protagonist thinks her gift is being the “seducer.” She is one of those vampires who can easily attract people to her, especially the men she feeds on.

But as she goes along her path, Vic realizes her actual gift if that she is a “knower.” She knows things, without really knowing how and why. But then comes the task of understanding what this gift really is. Vic finds that being a “knower” doesn’t mean she has everything figured out or that she knows each step on the path. What being a “knower” means is that she needs to listen to her feeling of what’s right and wrong, without needing to know how the whole path looks like, without having a guarantee. So, a “knower” has to have faith. They have to listen to their intuition even when they don’t have any logical, rational reasons to support it as yet.

This felt so much like my own experience as an emotional empath. I often have these “knowings” about people and situations even though I don’t have enough objective data as yet. Earlier in my life, I used to discount them. But with time and experience, I have learned to take these knowings seriously. Just as Vic finds out, these intuitive knowings do not mean that I know exactly how things are going to unfold. It’s more like a sense that tells me to turn right or left in this moment. It basically gives me a strong sense of what my next step should be. In spiritual circles, this feeling of clear sensing (clear knowing) in your body is also called clairsentience. I talk about clairsentience and what being an empath means in this piece on Sensitive Evolution.  

Do you discount the gifts other people might have?

Reading about Vic discover her gift and then struggle as she puzzles it out reminded me of how a gift might be something you have to practice to get better at. You don’t know its entire shape and form. It’s something that is inside you that you have to first understand and then bring forth. It’s not always an obvious thing.

This book is also a great example of how symbols and layers of meaning are a natural part of the ways INFPs often write. Apart from Vic’s character, who I felt strongly interested in, I also enjoyed the other interesting thoughts in this book. For example: While interacting with another vampire, Vic, who has an internal, psychological gift, thinks about how she often discounts vampires with more  “physical” gifts, such as ones with the ability to run fast.

I thought about how this is true in my life too. Because I am not that interested in sports, for example, I discount the gifts people have in this area. It’s not that I discount them per se but in my own head, I don’t consider it such a worthwhile gift. That’s quite biased. If I want people different from me to appreciate what I bring to the table, it’s also up to me to appreciate different kinds of gifts.

Why paying attention to Symbols that come up for you, such as the Raven in this book, matters.

[image error]I also quite enjoyed reading about Raven, the magical Vampire who sets Vic off (without Vic being wholly aware of it)  on the path to find her destiny. It was interesting that Amanda gave this specific name to her character and described her in the way she did. In mythology, the symbol of the Raven is that of the consummate trickster. It’s an archetype full of deception on purpose, just as Raven in Bored to Death sets off Vic on her path without really giving her enough knowledge or a hint about what might happen.

The Trickster archetype is a mysterious and often misunderstood archetype (I am only just beginning to understand it a little.) Tricksters teach that we reach the truth by unmasking all the lies around it. Loki, Hermes, and Coyote are some well-known Tricksters from different mythologies. They pull the wool over our eyes. They cause disruption. But in the process, they also help us discover the truth.

In my own life as well, I have encountered the image of the Raven. During a group meditation towards the end of last year, the picture of the Raven just popped into my head. In the same meditation, I also had the image of an eye pop up. This week, while researching about the Raven before writing this post, I came upon a reference to the Raven’s “third-eye” in mythology, which is associated with the gift of prophecy.

It turns out that these stories and fables are now being mirrored, in some ways, in science! This piece in Nature in Focus talks about a new study published in Science magazine according to which, ” ravens join the small group of creatures who are able to display foresight, process past events to plan for the future and control impulses. That’s science, not fantasy! Like the human brain does, ravens are also able to create and store memories that can guide their decision-making in the future. They don’t just ‘prospect’, or ascertain the likelihood of future events taking place; they are able to “flexibly apply future planning in behaviours not typically seen in the wild.”

What clues might symbols and images hold for you?

This all feels so fascinating. It feels like, in myths, our imagination often chances upon something essential, something that still hasn’t been verified in objective ways, but that’s true. It’s like we are resonating with something deep inside the image. It’s almost as if the images that feel attractive to us hold clues about us and about our own nature.  

Reading Bored to Death also reminded me of how much we, as writers, dip into the archetypal, how it almost comes through our work. It also reminded me of why I find Amanda’s work so interesting. There were several lines about Vic discovering what it meant to be a “knower” that especially jumped out at me. They seemed to awaken me and pull at something inside me.

Like other emotional empaths, sometimes, I can’t quite understand what my “gift” might be. It can feel very challenging, especially when I am buried under too-much-stimulation. But maybe, it’s because I haven’t completely understood the true nature of my purpose as yet or learnt exactly how my gift might works. Amanda’s insights seemed to jolt something inside me and I could, sense that I had understood just a little more. I’ll have to go back, reread and really think about this.

If you are a sensitive creative, INFP or emotional empath, you will find reading Bored to Death interesting in more ways than one. It has layers that take us deeper into our own journeys as HSPs or empaths. It just might provide you with another missing piece for that puzzle that we are all trying to fit together in our own lives.

Are you a highly sensitive writer or other creative? Some practical tools to help you as a Creative Entrepreneur.

[image error]This time, I want to share some practical books and concepts that I have come across lately, and that might help you as an HSP or INFP.  As an INFP and Sensitive Creative, I wrote earlier about wanting this year to be a Year of Depth where I go deeper into things I have already been learning. Another way to do this is by going deeper into things that block me. Like other Highly Sensitive People and INFP creatives, for me, this is perfectionism. The more I’ve started thinking about it, the more it feels like perfectionism is not about high standards, but instead, it’s about holding ourselves to such an impossible standard that we don’t make any progress.

Are you a perfectionistic HSP or INFP sensitive creative?

Stephen Guise talks about this succinctly and with clarity in his book How to be an Imperfectionist. If you are struggling with perfectionism, this is a great book to get. Right off the bat, Stephen dives into talking about how the first thing we need to change is the erroneous notion that tending towards perfectionism is a good thing. It isn’t. “If you don’t manage to reframe perfectionism as a damaging and inferior mindset, the illusion of its superiority will thwart your desired changes.”  I think this is a critical mindset for us to change because like other HSPs, I have sometimes congratulated myself on being a perfectionist.

But perfectionism is about getting stuck somewhere in the first version of things (creative projects, household projects, other work stuff) because you want to get it right the first time. I have done this often, trying to do things perfectly on the first try. So, how is this different from excellence? Excellence would be letting myself do the first draft, and the first try as well as I can and to focus on finishing that. Once it was finished, it would mean caring enough about the quality of work to come back and look at it and fix what’s not working and doing that again and again till I can get things right to the best of my ability right now.

Trying to be excellent means you work more. You do more drafts. You come back and improve things. Being perfectionistic stops you. 

You don’t make the call, write an article, try something new because there’s so much pressure on performing perfectly the first time around.

I would highly recommend How to be an Imperfectionist as a concise book that has clarity of thought, and that makes a compelling case for why perfectionism is not about health, but a tendency towards mental ill health and how to start doing things imperfectly.

Are you an HSP or INFP writer or creative who is disorganized?

Another book I would recommend if you are an INFP or HSP creative or creative entrepreneur is Organizing for Creative People by Sheila Chandra. A lot of organizing books are super-complicated and don’t take into account the rhythms of creative people. This book is a practical, step-by-step book that talks about how to build systems, starting from basic ones that help you structure your everyday household tasks and systematically builds up to how to plan, collaborate and promote yourself. It’s like weaving the thread of structure in all aspects of your life and creative work, so you become better as a creative professional.

Each new chapter in this book builds on the previous one, so you go from simple organizational tasks to more all-encompassing ones. You might find all that Sheila Chandra talks about in this book in other books too, but this, I think, is a great, concise overall compilation of everything you need to do to become organized as a creative.

The more seriously I write, the more it feels like being disorganized is something I can’t afford as a creative professional. Check out this book. You might find it helpful to map out the scope of what you are trying to create.

Are you a highly sensitive writer looking for help with Grammar?

I recently started using Grammarly for copyediting. While it also has a free version (you can use it as a plugin, and it can check things like your emails and content you write), I recently got the Premium version to try it out. I like it. If you are working on a book or write a lot of content, this would be worth it. It helps you get your work to the best possible version you can on your own before you send it to an Editor. It not only points out grammatical mistakes, but it also tells you things to help you improve your writing, for example, when you’ve used the same word over and over again. In case you are doing a nonfiction book, it also has a plagiarism check so you don’t inadvertently copy something. It’s also a teaching tool and can help you improve your grammar and zoom into what mistakes you make again and again.

I hope one or more of these resources help you in your creative, artistic journey as a highly sensitive writer or creator.   

Interview with Lauren Sapala, author of Firefly Magic: Heart Powered Marketing for Highly Sensitive Writers.

[image error]This week, we welcome back San Francisco-based writer Lauren Sapala to the blog, with her new book on heart-powered marketing for highly sensitive writers, Firefly Magic. I had the pleasure of interviewing Lauren a few years ago in this interview in which we discussed her book  The INFJ Writer, which talks about how intuitive writers approach the creative process. That was one of the most insightful interviews I have ever done. When I came to know that Lauren was working on a marketing book for Highly Sensitive Writers, I knew it was something I wanted to read right away. Like other highly sensitive INFP and INFJ writers, I have a lot of resistance to marketing and “selling,” which feels like pushing something onto other people. In this interview, Lauren and I discuss how heart-based marketing is, in fact, the opposite of this “hard-sell” approach and how highly sensitive writers can use it to reach out and share their work with people who need it the most.

Lauren blogs about writing, creativity and personality theory at www.laurensapala.com. Her words have inspired me many a times when I have been in a writing slump. Check her out! 

[image error]Welcome back Lauren! First of all, it’s great to have you here. Second, congrats on your new book! While reading Firefly Magic, I had many moments when I felt completely mirrored back. As I read, I also had lots of ideas popping up and actually felt excited about learning more about marketing! In your foreword, you talk about how Firefly Magic is not a “normal” marketing book in the sense that it does not talk about the nuts and bolts of book marketing, such as how to optimize Facebook ads or launch a killer PR campaign. Instead, it’s a book that gives us powerful “thought tools” to help writers (and I think other artistes) release their resistance to marketing and selling their creations. Can you talk a little about this? Who do you think will benefit from reading Firefly Magic? When was the seed of this book planted? 

The seed of the book was planted when I started to do my own marketing work around The INFJ Writer a couple of years ago. Like most people, I jumped online and browsed around, reading this and that article, in order to figure out what I needed to do to learn how to market a book. What really struck me was the way that I emotionally felt during this process: intimidated, overwhelmed, turned off, anxious, and like there was something wrong with me because I didn’t “get it” and I wasn’t excited about it. Many of the articles I found online had a very aggressive, know-it-all tone to them, like, “THIS is the way you do it, and EVERYONE knows that.” In a word, it felt achievement-oriented, like I needed to have a bunch of concrete goals mapped out for myself and if I didn’t do that then I was just an idiot.

This is actually the way I’ve felt for a lot of my life. I felt this way in school, I felt this way in the corporate world, I felt this way at parties. I’ve always felt like everyone is doing things in a certain way to hit goals and gain status and rack up numbers and push-push-PUSH themselves forward, and I am just not wired to do things that way. I don’t work well with the whole pushing thing. So it’s no surprise that when I began to learn how to market my book I ran into these same obstacles again. But this time, instead of giving up, I started reading every marketing and sales book I could get my hands on, and I started examining my own inner (possibly limiting) beliefs around sales and marketing. I thought, “What if I could create an inner shift in my thoughts and emotions and create my own experience around marketing? An experience that is grounded in integrity, authenticity, and service? Would that feel better to me emotionally and could I move forward in that approach?” Well, as I tried it, I saw that the answer was clearly a huge YES. And that’s when I decided to write a marketing book geared toward people just like me, because I knew a book like this could be helpful to all of us.

Although you say the book is not about specific tips and tricks (and it’s not), it provides a lot of food for thought that highly sensitive writers will find immensely useful. One of the most helpful aspects of Firefly Magic for me was that we get to see how you have made marketing decisions around your own books. When you talk about pricing, for example, you talk about how the first goal for a new writer is to build readership, not make the most money they possibly can. You advocate setting an accessible price, especially for the Kindle version, something like $2.99. I remember hearing an interview with Steven Pressfield where he talked in a similar vein about how he wouldn’t even mind giving a certain number of books away for free. His logic was that the more the word is out about a book, the better it is for the book overall. While I mostly agree with this perspective, while I was reading your book, I also thought about how pricing the book too low or running something like a 99-cent promotion might signal that you value the book lower yourself. Might that not translate as a feeling of low value that translates to the reader? I think a lower price can possibly make someone willing to give something new a chance but they also may not be as invested in it once they get that thing. I know I am playing the devil’s advocate here (and I am at least 70% convinced about low pricing) and there’s no hard and fast rule but what do you think about this? How do you balance these different viewpoints? How much of your own pricing is based on the statistics of how books sell and how much is a feeling of what’s right for you?

Well, this really comes back to something else I talk about in the book: following your own intuition. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to experiment with different things (like price points), check in with how you feel about it, and then adjust your experience accordingly. So, for instance, you might have read my chapter where I talk about how $2.99 really works for me, and so you start out placing your Kindle book at a $2.99 price point, but then in the days and weeks after you notice that every time you see that $2.99 price on your Amazon page you just don’t feel right about it. It doesn’t feel good to you. So, you experiment again and put the price at $5.99. You notice right away that $5.99 feels much better to you. You feel lighter, happier, and more grounded in that price. Those kinds of emotional feelings are signaling that $5.99 is the right price for you and your book. And it doesn’t matter what anyone else says or what they think. That’s really what I wanted to bring across in Firefly Magic more than anything else: that the best thing you can do in your marketing practice is cultivate the ability to listen and follow your own inner signals, regardless of what anyone else says. I firmly believe that no one else knows what is right for you and your book like you do.

One of the most heartening aspects of your work is that you encourage people to follow their own sense of what feels right to them. In Firefly Magic, you talk, for example, about how every writer does not have to have a website. When it comes to social media, you give practical suggestions about how to make social media less overwhelming and how to have boundaries around it. But do you think social media is something you have to do? I know that lots of people focus on building communities through Facebook, for example, and it does feel like if you are not doing something like that, you are not doing “enough.” For me, having a Facebook page for my website feels like too-much-engagement. I feel as if I like to simply be a part of Facebook groups related to HSPs and empaths and contribute as and when I can. But I don’t feel excited about having to do that on a regular basis. What do you think? Would you say that’s a resistance to marketing or simply a style or preference that I should pay attention to? On a related note, do you think writers need to be on every social media tool available or can they engage in just one or two that speaks most to them?

In my experience, the difference between a normal “I-should-get-over-this” resistance to marketing and registering a true intuitive “no, this is not for me” also comes back to emotions. If you think about creating a Facebook page for your website and you begin to feel panicky, frantic, scattered, and like you want to push it away fast or get away as fast as you can, that usually signals emotional resistance. Anytime we go into fight-or-flight (even if it’s only slightly) it almost always means that something is emotionally triggering us. And when you’re in fight-or-flight mode, you can’t think clearly and you can’t give the emotions you’re feeling your full attention. Now, that said, just because you identify a marketing activity that you’re feeling emotional resistance around, that doesn’t mean you need to automatically push yourself into it and “get over it” either. So, for instance, to go back to the Facebook page. Let’s say you sit with the emotions and examine them and you figure out that, yes, the thought of this is triggering you and you’re just plain scared of it. That’s perfectly okay. You don’t HAVE to do anything you don’t want to do. In fact, a lot of the time, if we push ourselves into things before we’re ready, it only increases the resistance over the long term.

The other side of this is registering a deep, intuitive “no, this is not for me.” That deep intuitive no will feel much different from that panicky, scared energy. The deep intuitive “no” will feel much more neutral and grounded. However, I will say too, that it takes a while to learn how to listen to yourself and your own inner signals, so at first you may have to take a lot of time to feel into what a “yes” feels like for you and what a “no” feels like. Our modern-day culture is so focused on materialism, conformity, aggressiveness and violence, that it can be very difficult to step back and start listening to your own inner signals, as opposed to what everyone else says you “should be” doing. But you CAN get the hang of it.

In Firefly Magic, we  get a behind-the-scenes look at what you did and did not do while marketing The INFJ Writer, Beyond the Shadow and Lo (your first novel based on your experience with alcohol addiction) and, of course, Firefly Magic. We learn through your journey and your examples, from your experience setting up special promotions to tweaking keywords and search categories in Amazon. One of the things you talk about is the kind of resistance that might come up when highly sensitive writers spend money on advertising their books. It might feel like “selling out.” You also talk about how advertising and promotion are different. Promotion, for example, might include sending out free copies of your books to influencers and out into the world. How has your own relationship to advertising and promotion change over the course of your three books? I know you do things intuitively, but if a new writer was to start off with a budget and divide it between promotions and advertising, what percentage would you advise spending where?  

This really comes down to what kind of book they are marketing, because every book IS different. As an example, with The INFJ Writer I didn’t have to focus as much on promotion and advertising because the keywords in the title (INFJ Writer) did a lot of the work for me. With my memoir, I gave away A LOT of free books, but I also had to be very choosy with who I gave free books because the book itself appeals to a very specific audience. My best advice would be to start out with a budget that feels good to you, and then keep careful records of what gets results. This is also why it’s a good idea to try one marketing idea at a time, because when you try one thing at a time and give it a little time to work, you can much more easily see what kind of effect it’s having on your sales. If you try five different things at once and then see a spike in your sales, it’s not as easy to figure out what caused the spike.

So, let’s say you pay for a Goodreads giveaway and you get lackluster results: no new reviews, no sales. Mark that down in your records as something that didn’t work well for you so that you’ll know not to spend your money there in the future when marketing similar books. But, then let’s say you write an article or two related to your book for another website and you see an immediate uptick in sales of your book. Then you know that it’s worth it to spend more time in the future writing more articles for that site.

Your marketing budget should be something that is fluid and constantly being adjusted. It should also be something that you’re checking in on regularly and even journaling about, in order to remind yourself of what worked and what didn’t.

Giving freely and being of service is the essence of Firefly Magic and heart-based marketing. You talk about how you practice these values, such as by offering a free “ first session” to every coaching client. You don’t do this as a marketing gimmick but as a way to genuinely connect and give away something of value. The people you talk to may or may not become clients or friends. But the process of connecting, in itself, is enriching. You get to share in people’s lives and stories. But while you emphasize service and giving, you also talk about how walking this relationship-based path means that you will encounter all sorts of people – from kindred spirits to people who think you are being “weak” when you are giving in this free manner. You say, “This is a law of the universe. The more you do anything, the more you will get all the results, desired or undesired.” That’s so true and something I agree with completely. You also talk about how doing heart-based marketing means we have to also set better boundaries. This way of thinking really resonates with me, but while reading, I also thought that one of the reasons I don’t sometimes give this freely is because of the fear of getting entangled with the wrong people. Can you talk a little about how you have clarified your own boundaries as you have written more? How have they changed over the years? Are there some early “tells,” warning signs that highly sensitive writers should pay attention to?  

Honestly, I think one of the hardest things about boundaries for Highly Sensitive People is that we’re constantly so hard on ourselves about not having firm enough boundaries. As an intuitive person, I get tangled up with people all the time, and for many years I judged myself for this. I would always think, “I should have known better. I should have better boundaries. I should have done this, this, or this.” Now, sometimes I do see early-warning signs and I heed them, but other times I don’t. And sometimes, I’m so intrigued by the person that I just don’t care and then I get burned. So, that’s the first thing I want to say, that I do believe sensitive intuitive people just get tangled up with other humans in a way that most other people do not. And there is nothing “wrong” about us because this happens.

However, if you really are interested in early “tells” of a toxic person, they are quite easy to learn, and once you learn them, you’ll usually see them quite easily. Number one is victim energy. The person who complains all the time, always has “bad luck,” always wants to talk about their problems, blames others, etc. A lot of time you can also see toxicity in body language: The person who is always slumped over, never smiles, speaks through gritted teeth, won’t look you in the eye. Then, of course, as we’re talking about boundaries, there is the boundary-violator: The person who invades your personal space, picks up your personal belongings without asking, tries to speak for you, eats food off your plate, etc. Each one of these “types” of people will make you feel a certain way when you’re around them and the way you feel will almost always be negative. You will either pity them, feel a strong dislike for them, or just want them to go away. These are examples of red flags.

Firefly Magic paints a great picture of what heart-based marketing looks like. You talk about how the very same things that makes highly sensitive writers think they won’t be “good marketers” – empathy, non-competitiveness, giving without calculations – are their unique strengths. You talk about how marketing can even be a spiritual practice. After all, it gets to the heart of many of our issues around ourselves and our relationship with others. “Hiring an editor and a cover designer to make your book the best it can be is nurturing a healthy pride in your book. Thinking up catchy tag lines and blurbs for your book is engaging your creative faculties and pushing them to stretch and grow. Doing a book launch and creating different types of thoughtful marketing campaigns is opening yourself up to the world and getting comfortable with vulnerability. Building a following on social media (tweeting at people, liking posts, commenting, sharing) is making yourself available for connection and friendship.” You also talk about how our issues with money and abundance are intimately connected with our resistance to marketing. In fact, you give journaling exercises at the end of each chapter to do a deeper dive into the root causes of why marketing can feel like such a burden to so many writers. Why was it important for you to include these exercises in the book? What one journaling question would you like to share with our readers today?

To me, one of the most important journaling exercises I include is to journal about how your father felt/feels about money and work and how your mother felt/feels about money and work. This is because this exercise had such a profound effect on me, personally. For years and years I was HORRIBLE with money, a total disaster, and I had no idea why. I had the most toxic, dysfunctional, abusive relationship with money imaginable. All that began to change when I started examining the beliefs my parents held about money and work, and how they had imprinted me with those beliefs, and how I was unthinkingly continuing to carry out the actions related to those beliefs. It honestly turned my entire life around.

After I did that inner money work, I started observing how so many people are walking around in the world on autopilot, really. So many of us are just carrying out the things our parents taught us, consciously or unconsciously, and we ceased to question if this is even working for us at all, long ago. One of the best things you can do for yourself as a conscious human being is to begin to unpack that baggage that your parents handed down to you, and begin to question it.

Thank you for the interview Lauren and for your work! I think highly sensitive writers struggling with both the emotional and practical aspects of book marketing will find Firefly Magic very insightful. Is there anything else you might want to tell them or add to this discussion?

The last thing I’d like to add is that it’s okay to make marketing mistakes. So much of the time writers feel isolated and alone, and we tend to judge ourselves so harshly about our writing. It’s very easy to be harsh with ourselves if we try a marketing experiment and it doesn’t work out. But the absolute best thing you can do is to treat yourself with kindness and compassion as you go through your own marketing journey. It’s okay to be scared, it’s okay to feel resistance, it’s okay if you do the wrong thing, or you don’t do something else that you wish you had done later. It’s all about experimenting and having fun with it.

The Awakened Empath: How to convert negative beliefs into healthy affirmations.

[image error]This week, I want to share some ideas from Aletheia Luna and Mateo Sol’s book The Awakened Empath. I have followed Luna & Sol’s blog Lonerwolf for a few years now and find that many of their insights really resonate with me. As in their blog, The Awakened Empath also talks about many of those tricky things that come with being an empath – dealing with narcissists and energy drainers as well as the struggle to give in a way that protects your own self and your own energy. One of the things that I resonated with most both in their book as well as on their blog is when they talked about “the dark night of the soul.” As an empath, I had this experience of the dark night a few years ago. It was a period of feeling that things no longer made sense, that everything was meaningless, that many things I had been taught were false. Through a lot of reading and soul searching and going deeper into my shadow, that dark night ended and a clearer self emerged. Amongst lots of books on the shadow and Jungian psychology, the only blog that I read that talked about this sense of emptiness and meaninglessness at that time was Lonerwolf. 

The Awakened Empath tells us why it’s important to not just do affirmations, but honest affirmations.

Because of this, I understand at least a little of the space and intention that Luna & Sol come from. Whether or not you believe in the more alternative things that they talk about in The Awakened Empath, such as working with the energy of crystals, you will find, especially at certain places, that the book has a clarity of thought that’s hard to find in most places. That’s probably why so many empaths follow their work and their blog.

There were a few different things that especially resonated with me about The Awakened Empath. This week, I want to talk about one of these. One of the simple but powerful practice that Luna & Sol talk about is turning faulty beliefs we may have about giving/being of service into “honest affirmations.” If you are a fan of Louise Hay like me, then you already know what affirmations are. If you don’t, then these are affirmations in a nutshell: An affirmation is a positive statement that can help you affirm something, usually a change that you’re trying to make. Saying the affirmation to yourself is reinforcing a new way of being. For example: If you have a belief that says that you are always exhausted as an empath, an affirmation might be: “I am full of energy and stamina.” Luna & Sol also talk about how it’s important to avoid a negatively phrased affirmation, such as saying, in this case that “I’m not a fatigued person.”

Why affirmations can be such powerful tools of change for empaths and highly sensitive people.

This is kind of Affirmation 101. You make a positive statement. You use it to affirm the thing you are trying to create. This could be something new altogether or like in this case, something new that replaces an unhealthy emotional pattern. In my own life, I have found affirmations very helpful. Saying good words to yourself encourages you. It gives you faith in your own power to choose. Sometimes, it also helps you see the good that you already have. You may notice, for example, that you actually do have energy a lot of the times and are only fatigued in certain situations or with certain people. Another practical reason, I think, that affirmations really work for some of us is because Words of Affirmation might be our primary “love language.”

This is a concept that comes from Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages. In this book, Chapman makes a case for how different people feel loved in different ways. For example: One of  the five love languages is Gifts. But trying to communicate love to someone who appreciates words by giving them gifts might not work as well. They will probably like and enjoy the gift but a gift usually does not make them feel especially loved. This is definitely the case for me. Words are very important to me and encouraging, positive words almost feel healing while negative words physically lower my energy. If you are like me, then doing affirmations is a way to offer the kind words we need to ourselves. It can be a way to take care of our emotional needs, if the people we love are too busy or just don’t understand how much we need these kinds of strokes.

The Five Love Languages is especially focused on couples. Often, one person has a different way of expressing and needing love than the other.  Also, if you are a parent, check out the excellent The Five Love Languages of Children.

So, back to Luna & Sol. In The Awakened Empath, they talk about how affirmations need to be honest.

Honest affirmations are important because affirmations need to be something your heart and soul resonates with.

They can’t be something that brings up resistance because they feel fake and don’t ring true for you. This emphasis on “honest affirmations” takes it a step further than the common understanding of affirmations. Some affirmations that you find in a book may or may not be right for you.  In fact, sometimes, I find unhelpful affirmations, unhelpful for me, that is. For example: These affirmations actually tell me to do things like affirm that I am “open” when what I need as an empath is to learn discernment and be open at times and also have strong boundaries at other times. In the past, I have given up doing affirmations because something (usually one or two statements) will feel off and not right to me even though most of the affirmations are working. In these cases, I have often felt that confusing ambivalence. Sometimes, affirmations really physically lift my energy. Sometimes, I feel a resistance I can’t explain.

Luna & Sol give this example: Suppose you write “I feel overwhelmed by people.” as one of your challenges as an empath and a highly sensitive person.  Even though this statement might be true at times, if you examine this, you might find that that’s not always the case. So, this is not a fact. It’s a belief that you are always overwhelmed by people. This belief has both truthful elements as well as discouraging blanket statement inside it. If you were to change this belief, try to figure out what you want, what sounds good to you.  Maybe, it is, like Luna & Sol say, “I set strong and stable boundaries around others.” Maybe, it’s something like, “I am capable of setting strong and stable boundaries around others.”  The most important thing is that you choose an affirmation that resonates deep inside. Another example that Luna & Sol give is about struggling to set present tense affirmations. So, if saying “I am confident” sounds incorrect to you, then say “I am gaining confidence every day,” they suggest.

Again, you are the one who gets to decide what works for you.

Reading their discussion helped me realize how easy it is for give up something that really, truly works for me just because I don’t realize what my resistance to this practice is telling me. If you have struggled with affirmations as a highly sensitive person or empath, why not try these suggestions and see where they take you?

The Awakened Empath also has a list of the most commonly-held beliefs that empaths often carry.

I think it’s really helpful because when we think in black and white and mistake beliefs for reality, we keep on doing the same thing again and again. As an empath or a highly sensitive person, like me, you might have one or more of the faulty beliefs that Luna & Sol talk about. They need to be examined and then changed either in part or entirely. Some of the faulty beliefs that they mention that resonated with me are:

I should never get angry or hurt.
I should always take care of everyone.
I should always be generous.
People won’t like me if I don’t take care of them.
I am responsible for other people’s healing.

Maybe, you have some of these beliefs, some of these “shoulds” too. How can you convert them into a more nuanced way of thinking? Sometimes, I love to be generous. Sometimes, I am generous. But it’s also okay to be discerning and not be generous if it helps protect my boundaries.

So, what do you think? What beliefs are you treating as facts? Can you write them down, make them conscious and then begin to change them?

What do you do with an idea as a creative Highly Sensitive Person?

[image error]In a little community bookstore called The Pilgrim’s Way, located in a little seaside village, I gathered a stack of children’s books and went through them cover to cover. My heart felt warmed and comforted as I read them. Children’s books can be so beautiful and poignant. They take us back to those times when the world was fresh, newly opened from a wrapper, when we planned all the great adventures we would someday have, when our hearts were still soft, not encrusted, but open, fluttering in a seashell.

That heart still beats inside the covers of these little gems. The best of these books are tales not just for children, but for the child who lives on inside all of us.  This week, I want to share a beautiful children’s book called What do you do with an idea?  It’s a book not just for little kids, but for all of us who have ideas and problems relating to these ideas. If you are a creative highly sensitive person or an INFP sensitive creative, you might end up loving and resonating with this book just as much as I did. 

What do you do with your little fledgling idea as a sensitive creative or INFP?

Written  by Kobi Yamada and illustrated by Mae Besom, What do you do with an idea? was a Gold medal winner at the Independent Publishers Awards and has many other awards and credits to its name such as the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award. In this beautiful tale, we accompany a little child who one day, has a hatchling idea for the first time ever. At first, he does not know what to do with this strange thing that has suddenly appeared. But over time, the child and the idea form a relationship. As they learn about each other, both the child and the idea undergo a change and their journey changes just about everything around them.

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“Where did it come from? Why is it here?”

I wondered, “What do you do with an idea?”

That’s what we often ask ourselves, just like this little child. What do we do with an idea? Remember an idea that came up, when you were maybe very little. It would have appeared strange and different and you wouldn’t know what you were supposed to do with this weird little thing.

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In the book, the child is in the same position. He feels that the idea is strange and fragile but he is not sure what to do with it. So, he just walks away from the idea. He acts as if the idea doesn’t belong to him. (Have you ever acted like an idea didn’t belong to you? What happened if you kept on pretending, like I have done in the past? )

But in this case, the idea is persistent. It doesn’t leave the child alone. It follows him around.

Worried about what other people would think and about how they would react to this strange little thing, the child hides the idea away.

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He does not talk about it. He banishes it. In fact, he tries to “act like everything was the same as it was before my idea showed up.”

But then, something keeps nudging at him. Having hidden it, the child realizes all that the idea is to him. He understands that he is happier when he is around the idea. He misses it. There is something downright magical about what being around the idea does. In fact, the idea has a life all its own and the child realizes what the idea needs:

                                                                    “It wanted food. It wanted to play. 

                                                                     Actually, it wanted a lot of attention.”

Understanding this, he starts caring for the idea. He gives it the food it needs. He plays with it. He gives it attention till it becomes bigger and bigger and still bigger. Now, it doesn’t look strange. Now, they have become friends.

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Finally, mustering up his courage, the child decides to show off his new friend to other people. He is still scared that they will laugh at his idea or think that it is silly. He is still fearful, but he makes the jump.

         “And many of them did. They said it was no good. They said it was too weird.” 

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These people tell him that he is wasting his time. His thoroughly weird idea will never become anything at all. Listening to their words, the child gets disheartened. He almost start believing what they are saying. He almost listens to them and once again starts to walk away from his idea.

Almost, but not quite.

Something has changed because the child has loved his idea so much:

 But then I realized, what do they really know? This is MY idea, I thought. No one knows it like  I do. And it’s okay if it’s different, and weird, and maybe a little crazy.” 

It’s a watershed moment for the child. What do they really know?

After all, these people don’t know his idea like he does. After all, they don’t love his idea, like he does. He decides to take care of this thing that he alone knows.

He goes back to feeding it good food. He works with it. He plays with it some more. He builds a brand new house with an open roof so the idea can look up and see the stars. The idea is free to dream. It’s safe and protected.

With all this love and attention, the idea grows and grows and grows. It starts giving the child things too. For one, it gives him the ability to look at things differently. It shows him how the world looks when you change perspective.

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The idea stretches him, makes him bigger and bigger. The child and his idea now go everywhere together. He can’t imagine life without it. It’s what makes everything come alive. Then one day, something amazing happens, something unexpected. After it has been loved and cared for a long while, after it has grown and become bigger, the day comes when the idea changes right before the child’s eyes. It spreads its wings. It bursts into the sky.

Now, it’s not just a part of the child. Now, it’s a part of everything.

In the last page of the book, there’s the child again. Only this time, he had that same crown on his head that the idea was wearing all this while.

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Finally, the child realizes what is it that you do with an idea. You change the world! 

This beautiful book reminded me of how ideas are such strange and breakable things. They don’t seem to make any sense when they come. They are  little beings that need to be fed. They have their own size and shape even when they are little, their own life.

When they are small, we often don’t know whether they are an owl, an eagle or a hummingbird. We might never have seen those things when they were small. We don’t know how they start their life, how they begin. But if we feed these hatchlings and honor them, they grow in strength. They become who they are.

But we have to do our part. We have to give them a safe space. We have to play with them, work with them and let them look at the stars. We have to feed them so they grow and grow. .

This book is for anyone who has been shamed for having too many of those “weird” ideas. It’s for anyone who is scared by the strangeness of their ideas and doesn’t know what to do with them. It’s for all those amazing, wonderful, half-grown ideas you have shoved back into the cupboard or hidden in some dusty corner.

They might not be your idea of a graceful swan. They might not look as if they are like much at all. But you have to feed them and protect them. You have to nurture their life. They come as fledglings. Only with care will they grow and take flight. It’s all up to you.

What might happen if you give your idea all it needs?  What might happen if you play with your idea, if you work with it?

How might you change it? How might it change you? 

How might it change everything around? 

Are you a Highly Creative HSP or Empath? How to let yourself be more creative.

I[image error]f you are a sensitive creative writer, photographer or painter or simply an HSP who uses creativity to express emotions, you already know how therapeutic creativity can be. For me, creativity is healing in more ways than one. It is cathartic, getting my feelings onto the page or on the canvas. It is a way to fill my heart, to nourish my soul. It is also a way to feel connected to something bigger. But I know that as a  creative INFP and HSP, I can be stopped in my tracks because of self-doubt. Creating something, anything, brings up fear. There are moments of emptiness, of going into the void.  There is all the struggle with yourself that makes creating something harder than it is, in itself. This week, I want to do a reminder post, both for you and me, about how we can let ourselves by more creative. 

One of the best ideas I have ever encountered about creativity is something that comes from writer Ray Bradbury’s work. It might help you on your own journey as a creative INFP or HSP.

Once upon a time, I heard this interview with Ray Bradbury in which he talks about something that felt revolutionary to me. In it, he talked about how thinking is merely a “corrective” in our lives. That’s all thinking is supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be the center of our lives.

That knocked my socks off.

What? Thinking was not supposed to be the center of my life? But I was always thinking and trying to control the outside world by thinking of all possibilities in my head (and then avoiding them.) I was constantly ruminating, something I learned later on is something HSPs are prone to, especially those of us who might have experienced trauma in the past. What was I supposed to do, if not think and try to maneuver my way through life. How was I supposed to live?

This is, in part what Bradbury says and I think it is one of the best interviews on creativity that I have ever heard.

“The worst thing you do when you think is lie — you can make up reasons that are not true for the things that you did, and what you’re trying to do as a creative person is surprise yourself — find out who you really are, and try not to lie, try to tell the truth all the time. And the only way to do this is by being very active and very emotional, and get it out of yourself — making things that you hate and things that you love, you write about these then, intensely. When it’s over, then you can think about it; then you can look, it works or it doesn’t work, something is missing here. And, if something is missing, then you go back and re-emotionalize that part, so it’s all of a piece.

But thinking is to be a corrective in our life — it’s not supposed to be a center of our life. Living is supposed to be the center of our life, being is supposed to be the center — with correctives around, which hold us like the skin holds our blood and our flesh in. But our skin is not a way of life — the way of living is the blood pumping through our veins, the ability to sense and to feel and to know. And the intellect doesn’t help you very much there — you should get on with the business of living.”

What else can I say, but wow! This is something I have both learnt a lot from and something I still struggle with – getting out of my mind and into feeling and being and creating.

You might be blocking yourself as a sensitive INFP or HSP by trying to follow someone else’s process.

If you are an intuitive, highly sensitive writer or other creative, the way you do things is probably different from the linear way you might have learnt in school. As an INFP writer, I have learnt that I need to combine the traditional step-by-step process with my own unique way of doing things. My process is not a straight line. It’s a spiral path. When I write longer pieces, for example, I may have bullet points as a guide but I don’t always stick to them. They are a jumping point. By the end of it, I keep some part of this original outline. I discard the rest. The way I write is also spiral, circling around the topic in tighter and tighter circles, till I get to the heart of it. I was introduced to a very practical way to do this circular dance through fellow HSP and INFJ writer Lauren Sapala’s work. In this interview with Lauren, we discuss how you can approach writing in a similar way to working on mosaic. While this interview is about writing, what Lauren talks about is also true for accepting our own style as highly sensitive and intuitive people.

Also, check out this piece I wrote on an alternative way to set goals, which might suit you better as a sensitive creative. The post discusses fellow HSP and INFP Amanda Linehan’s process of goal-setting, which looks very different from traditional goal-setting. If you like this post, you might also enjoy this interview I did with Amanda. If you are an INFP writer, you might also like this post on how including openness in our writing can help INFPs. 

So, think about this. What is your authentic process? How can you do things your own way? Are you feeling resistant because you are forcing yourself into doing things in a way that works for other people? How can you let yourself “Do you”? How could that help you be more creative? 

Resistance shows up in different ways for creative INFPs and HSPs and different kinds of resistance need different tools.

Resistance kicks in when we are trying to make some substantial change – whether pursuing a creative calling or launching our own business as HSP entrepreneurs. Are we sure? How do we know we are doing the right thing? How do you we know that it’ll be worth it? How do we know this is even what we want? A thousand-headed monster shows up as we step into the arena. Then, there is the deadly: How do we know this is even resistance and not healthy fear? Some of these are valid questions we have to think about. Some of these are just doubts. We need different tools to deal with each of these.

In this post, I talk about when to know that it is, in fact, resistance and not healthy fear.  As an INFP writer, one of the doubts that comes up for me is if I am original enough. Everything has been done before, said before. What’s the point of doing the same thing all over again. In this post, I talk about how I have dealt with this doubt, how I need to keep on reminding myself that authenticity is more important than originality.  This is something we need to keep telling ourselves as highly sensitive and intuitive people, especially when feeling self-critical.

What about those times when we feel stuck in the rut, when creative juices run dry? One easy way to switch into a more creative mindset is by listening to brainwave entrainment music. The great thing about this music is that it will work whether or not you make an effort, unlike meditation which takes practice. In this post, I talk about attending a concert by Steven Halpern, a Grammy-nominated musician considered to be one of the founding fathers of New Age music, which was my first taste of  this music that can alter our brainwaves so that we feel more relaxed and at ease.

Then, there are those other times that we feel resistant but don’t know why. Check out this post to see how the exercise of breaking can egg can help you break through resistance as a sensitive creative. Resistance also shows up once the work is done, when we want to share it with others. In this post, I talk about exploring my own doubts around this and the difference between self-promotion and bragging.

Another way in which we can block ourselves as creative INFPs and HSPs is by frittering away our energy. In this post, I talk about a very interesting idea that comes from Nancy Peacock’s work about how and why we lose our creative energy and how we can birth our creations.

These are just a few of the tools and mindsets that have helped me in my own creative journey as an INFP writer and a highly sensitive person. I hope you found something here to help you in your own creative journey.

What about you? What things work for you? What helps you be more creative?