Ritu Kaushal's Blog, page 4

Sensitive Creatives & the Black Sheep Gospel.

Most of my life I’ve had the experience of feeling like an outsider, looking in. And without doing anything terribly rebellious, I’ve also often felt like the Black Sheep at different times in my life. I know many sensitives feel like I do.

Our stories are different, but our experiences are similar. But often, we can’t quite pinpoint why this labeling happens. 

We may be shy, but end up getting a reputation for being difficult. Or we may be generally accommodating, but then one da...

Sensitive Creatives: Are you getting caught in the label of the Black Sheep?

Most of my life I’ve had the experience of feeling like an outsider, looking in. And without doing anything terribly rebellious, I’ve also often felt like the Black Sheep at different times in my life. I know many sensitives feel like I do.

Our stories are different, but our experiences are similar. But often, we can’t quite pinpoint why this labeling happens. 

We may be shy, but end up getting a reputation for being difficult. Or we may be generally accommodating, but then one da...

On Feeding Birds and Calling Things.

A month or so back, I put out a new birdfeeder with seeds I had decided on after doing a quick Google search. Then, for a week, I waited. And waited. No birds came. 

Maybe I should move the feeder somewhere else, maybe they are not coming because the cat goes by here often, I told my husband. Be patient, he said. Let it be. They will come. 

And because he usually gives me good advice and shows me how simply waiting can be helpful, I let the feeder be. 

A day or two later, I thou...

On Feeding Birds and Calling Things

A month or so back, I put out a new birdfeeder with seeds I had decided on after doing a quick Google search. Then, for a week, I waited. And waited. No birds came. 

Maybe I should move the feeder somewhere else, maybe they are not coming because the cat goes by here often, I told my husband. Be patient, he said. Let it be. They will come. 

And because he usually gives me good advice and shows me how simply waiting can be helpful, I let the feeder be. 

A day or two later, I thou...

Sensitive Creatives: Ask “Is this a risk? Or an experiment?”

Many of us who are highly sensitive also have the trait of high-sensation-seeking, which can feel really paradoxical at times. On the one hand, as sensitives, we are cautious. We don’t like unnecessary risks. We don’t like making mistakes.

And we have a deep-seated need to understand things and not rush into them headfirst. 

Then, on the other hand is our high-sensation-seeking side, which is decidedly a bird of a different feather.

We tend to get bored easily. We love variety...

Why you may feel overwhelmed with information.

Several years ago, I read (or more honestly dipped into) Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows, with its quite alarming subtitle What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. One of the things that Carr talks about in the book is how the way we consume information is changing the very nature of our brains. 

When we mostly read online, our brains get used to clicking links, chasing the next dopamine fix, and not being able to stay in the present moment. We are, as the title suggests, swimming in t...

Sensitives, Ask More Questions!

For sensitives, a lot has been written about our tendency to get entangled with toxic people. A lot has also been written about our tendency to be people-pleasers. 

We feel both our own feelings intensely & are sensitive to other people’s feelings. If we grew up feeling that we were not important, many of us also have a tendency towards codependency. 

So, learning to set boundaries is a huge part of our learning. And one big way in which we can learn to be more discerning is t...

Five ideas that made my year.

2022 was a mixed year for me. There were several highlights but also some personal challenges. As I look back, here are some quotes that highlight things I thought about this year.

“Positivity is not about saying “The house is burning down, but at least it’s keeping my hands warm.” It’s about finding the value, the meaning, the big picture significance in life’s ups and downs. Positivity is one of my top 10 Gallup strengths, and I tried to practice it this year by celebrating holid...

If you are an acorn, you can only become an oak tree.

One of my highlights this year was diving even deeper into Carl Jung’s work. One of Jung’s key concepts is individuation. It is the life-long process of becoming our own unique self, distinct from others.

What’s different and especially beautiful about the idea of individuation is that it is very different from the popular idea of “You can be anything you want to be.”

Although being anything we want to be is a positive idea on one level, it neglects the fact that we can REALLY only...

Feeling flooded by outer voices? Write a personal manifesto.

As sensitives who naturally pay attention to subtleties, being too open to outside voices can have a paralyzing effect on us. Social media, while it can be really helpful sometimes, often gives us fragments of different people’s thought processes. And the news can flood us with information but give us little context. 

In this cacophony of noises, it’s really important to articulate what we actually think & believe. So, when I heard this interview with Charlotte Burgess-Auburn about h...