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July 31 - September 10, 2024
at least to some extent, the stresses will always be there, for we bring our sensitivity with us. What we need is a new way of living with the stressors.
When you retreat, you lose your sense of reality, your adaptability.
Be in tune with your body. It is a great gift you can use, this sensitivity to your body. It can guide you, and your opening to it will make it better.
When standing, raise your head, pull your shoulders back, center your upper body over your torso and feet so that the weight feels most effortlessly balanced. Feel the solid ground through your feet. Bend your knees a little and breathe deeply from your stomach. Feel your body’s strong center.
Perhaps the greatest maturity is our ability to conceive the whole universe as our container, our body as a microcosm of that universe, with no boundaries. That is more or less enlightenment.
when we feel afraid to enter new situations: 1. Just as a parent does not send a toddler into a new situation alone, do not do that to yourself. Take someone else along. 2. Just as a parent begins by talking about the situation with the child, talk to the fearful part of yourself. Focus on what is familiar and safe. 3. Just as a parent keeps the promise that the child can leave if he or she becomes too upset, allow yourself to go home if you need to. 4. Just as a parent is confident the child will be okay after a while, expect the part of yourself that is afraid to be okay after some time to
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Life is short and filled with limits and responsibilities. We each get a piece of the “good” to enjoy, just as we each contribute a piece of that good to the world. But none of us can have it all for ourselves or do it all for others.
Do not overschedule yourself. Allow time to think, to daydream.
Be your own advocate. Support your right to be yourself.
But being sensitive, you may be noticing that people really are watching and judging; people usually do. The nonsensitive are often happily oblivious of it. So your task in life is much harder: to know about those glances, those silent judgments, and still not let them affect you too much. It’s not easy.
I have given you three strong reasons not to call yourself shy anymore. It is inaccurate, negative, and self-fulfilling. And do not let others label you with it, either. Let’s say it is your civic duty to eradicate this social prejudice. Not only is it unfair, but as discussed in chapter 1, it is dangerous because it helps to silence the thoughtful voices of HSPs by reducing their self-confidence.
Carl Jung saw introversion as a basic division among humans, causing the major battles of philosophy and psychology, most of which boil down to conflicts over whether the outer facts or the inner understanding of those facts are more important in comprehending any situation or subject.
To be introverted is simply to turn inward, towards the subject, the self, rather than outward toward the object. Introversion arises from a need and preference to protect the inner, “subjective” aspect of life, to value it more, and in particular not to allow it to be overwhelmed by the “objective” world.
(1) Shyness is not your trait—it is a state anyone can feel. (2) The introverted social style is every bit as valuable as the extraverted one.
Almost all HSPs have an artistic side they enjoy expressing. Or they deeply appreciate some form of art.
HSPs tend to be enormously aware of the suffering of others. Often their intuition gives them a clearer picture of what needs to be done. Thus, many HSPs choose vocations of service. And many “burn out.”
keeping yourself healthy and in your right range of arousal is the first condition for helping others.
Perhaps some of what goes wrong in government and politics is not so much a product of the Left or Right but the lack of enough HSPs making everyone pause to check the consequences. We have abdicated, leaving things to the more impulsive, aggressive sorts, who do happen to thrive on running for political office and then on running everything else.
I am not one to cause a fuss. I like to keep things calm around me. Indeed, you should know I work best when I’m feeling calm, when things around me are quiet. So most people find me especially comfortable to work with, although I myself am just as happy working alone as with a few others. My independence in that regard, my ability to work well alone and on my own, has always been another one of my strengths. . . .
Another frequent problem in a close relationship with a less sensitive partner or friend is your greater need for solitude, just to think and digest the day. The other may feel rejected or simply still want your company. Make clear why you need the break. State when you will be available again and keep that promise.
Overall, sensitivity can greatly enhance intimate communication. You pick up on so much more of the subtle cues, the nuances, the paradoxes and ambivalences, the unconscious processes. You understand that this sort of communication requires patience. You are loyal, conscientious, and appreciative enough of the value of the relationship to be willing to give it the time.
The main problem is, as always, overarousal. In that state we can be extremely insensitive to everything around us, including those we love.
it is still our duty to do whatever we can to communicate in a helpful way or let the other know, ahead of time if possible, wh...
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Reflective listening boils down to hearing the other person, especially his or her feelings. To be sure you heard, you say the feelings back. That’s it. But it’s harder than it sounds.
Another reason for sticking to feelings is that out in the world they are rarely heard. We want them to be honored, at least in our close relationships. And feelings are deeper than ideas and facts in that they often color, control, and confuse the ideas and facts. Once the feelings are clear, the ideas and facts are clearer, too.
Whether you are an extraverted or introverted HSP, your greatest social fulfillment tends to come in close relationships.
HSPs who faced extreme difficulties in childhood and adolescence are going to be at a much greater risk for anxiety, depression, and suicide until they acknowledge their past as well as their trait and begin to heal their own wounds.
cognitive-behavioral, interpersonal, physical, and spiritual.
our brain and therefore our thoughts can also be changed by sleep, exercise, nutrition, environment, and the state of our sexual hormones, to name a few factors we can often control ourselves.
thyroid hormone production. All of these systems are linked together, affecting cortisol and brain neurotransmitters dramatically. One hint that hormones are the problem is the kind of inexplicable mood swing in which you are feeling okay one hour, and the next, everything seems hopeless, worthless. Or similar huge variations in energy or mental clarity.
For HSPs, the toughest task of all may have nothing to do with renouncing the world but involve going out and being immersed in it.
The form of psychotherapy I recommend most to HSPs is Jungian-oriented therapy, or Jungian analysis,
the Jungian approach adds the spiritual dimension by understanding that the unconscious is trying to take us somewhere, to expand our awareness beyond our narrow ego’s consciousness. The messages are coming to us all the time, as dreams, symptoms, and behaviors that our ego considers to be problems. We need only to pay attention.
Jungians do not seek cures but a lifelong engagement in the process of individuation through communication with the inner realms.
a few follow Jung’s quite narrow ideas about gender and sexual preference.
There are countless psychoactive drugs, but two are given most frequently to HSPs. The first type is the fast-acting “antianxiety”
Librium, Valium, and Xanax
“Natural” herbal calming agents have been used since we lived in caves. Chamomile tea is a good example; so are lavender, passion flower, hops, and oat teas.
Antidepressants are the other approach that HSPs may be advised to use to deal with any perceived or real disadvantages of their trait. In a crisis, they definitely prevent suffering and may even save your life.
Antidepressants do not necessarily eliminate all feelings. They can just restore a kind of safety net so that you do not drop as low as before.
Part of the big fuss about Prozac is that it works on just one neurotransmitter, serotonin. Prozac and its relatives—Paxil, Zoloft, etc.—are called “selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors,” or SSRIs. No one knows why this selectivity is such an advantage in treating certain difficulties. But scientists are now trying to get to know serotonin better.
Maybe we do not need SSRIs. Maybe we need respect!
Many of the HSPs I know who have taken Prozac and similar drugs later stopped because the medication was not that much help or because they did not like the stimulant effects.
psychologist Marie-Louise Von Franz, who worked closely with Carl Jung. She writes about what Jungians call the introverted intuitive type, the majority of HSPs.
In Man’s Search for Meaning Frankl (an obvious HSP) describes how he often found himself called upon to inspire his fellow prisoners, how he intuitively understood what they needed and how badly they needed it. He also observed that, under those awful circumstances, prisoners who could gain from others some kind of meaning in their lives survived better psychologically, and therefore physically as well:
The pursuit of wholeness is really a kind of circling closer and closer through different meanings, different voices. One never arrives, yet gets a better and better idea of that which is at the center. But if we really circle, there is little chance for arrogance because we are passing through every sort of experience of ourselves. This is the pursuit of wholeness, not perfection, and wholeness must by definition include the imperfect.
Usually the people who are the most dangerous and in danger, morally speaking, are those who are certain they would never do anything wrong, who are totally self-righteous and have no idea that they have a shadow or what it is like.
The Naskapi are Native Americans scattered across Labrador in small families. Thus, they did not develop collective rituals. Instead, they believed in a Great Friend who enters each person at birth to provide helpful dreams. The more virtuous the person (and virtue includes a respect for dreams), the more help the person will receive from this Friend.
HSPs have these experiences in abundance. We seem especially receptive to them.
TAKING UP THE TASK OF TENDING THE SOUL/SPIRIT REALM I invite you to keep a spiritual journal for just one month, a testimony of all of your thoughts and experiences having to do with the nonmaterial realm. Every day write down your insights, moods, dreams, prayers, and all the little miracles and “strange coincidences.” Your efforts need not be elaborate or eloquent. They simply make you a witness of the sacred—part
