222. Am I too sensitive?
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Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here, back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of your 20s. Have you ever been told that you're too sensitive?

or that you just shouldn't think so much, you're overreacting to something so small, you let the world hurt you, or my all-time favorite, you just take everything so personally.

If you are a highly sensitive person, these statements are definitely something that you've probably encountered and are most likely sick of hearing. Being a highly sensitive person is so much more than what people think it is. There is such a limited idea that if you're sensitive, you must cry all the time, you overreact, you take things too seriously, that you make it difficult for others, and

sensitivity is often synonymous with fragility, being easy to break and feeling like people need to walk on eggshells around you. And these misconceptions treat our sensitivity like a character flaw when in fact being a deeply sensitive, gentle, feeling person simply means that you have a profound and rich inner emotional life that causes you to see, feel, perceive the world differently and with more colour and complexity instead

Everything is just heightened. The beautiful things about the world are magnified, but so is a lot of the pain and the stress and the sadness. Sometimes that can be overwhelming, but I honestly think it's better to feel a lot than nothing at all. And you know, who decided that being overly sensitive is a bad thing in comparison to being insensitive? Or

or completely numb to what you're experiencing. In my mind, there's one of those that is most certainly a better option. So today we are going to discuss what it means to be a highly sensitive person, breaking down some of the myths and the misconceptions that others might have. We're also going to explore what actually makes us sensitive on a genetic level, on a parental level, on a childhood level.

the hidden powers and hidden talents of sensitive people when it comes to intelligence, creativity, empathy, how to help people understand you more as a highly sensitive person and kind of just having an overall conversation around how to make

your sensitivity fit into the world, how to make the world make space for you as a sensitive person and why the world should be doing that, why we need highly sensitive people like you and I to keep the world spinning, to keep people feeling, to bring empathy and intelligence and a certain emotional vividness to situations that

other people might not bring those things. So there is so much in this episode that I think might surprise you. So many studies, research papers, fun facts that will hopefully allow you to know your own self even better as someone who is deeply feeling, as someone who is very in tune with the world and everything going on around them. Because I just feel like highly sensitive people deserve to be seen and

They deserve to feel acknowledged. They are some of the best people in the world. So I want to make some space for them on this podcast and just talk about it with you guys today. So there is so much on the agenda. I'm going to stop babbling. And without further ado, let's get into the psychology of highly sensitive people and kind of answering that question. Am I just too sensitive?

So starting off strong, what are the actual characteristics of a highly sensitive person in comparison to someone who is, I don't know, of regular sensitivity? I don't know if it's regular, let's just say average.

With everything, what makes someone sensitive, what makes something anything really varies. It's probably worth noting that there are two different types of sensitivity. There is reactive or environmental sensitivity and personality or internal sensitivity. We all have times when we're just a little bit on edge and we're a little bit fragile, like when we're tired or when our hormones are fluctuating, when...

Our anxiety is biking because of, you know, a really stressful period in our lives. These are all incredibly taxing experiences and emotional states that are going to put a strain on our limited cognitive and mental resources and

That is why we are so sensitive during those times in particular, because we genuinely just have less energy in the tank to self-regulate and to process our emotions. So that is environmental or reactive sensitivity. The opposite of this is internal personality, longstanding trait sensitivity. This is the kind of hypersensitivity that is

part of who we are, part of our personality. These are the people who we would call highly sensitive persons, HSPs. It literally has an acronym. And this was a term that was coined by the psychologist Elaine Aron in the 90s. And she wrote probably one of the most in-depth books on this titled very appropriately. It's called The Highly Sensitive Person. That is when this experience, this personality trait, this feeling,

phenomena first got a name she was the one who began to really observe it began to draw patterns between people who were all expressing the same reactions and feelings and behaviors and she labeled those people highly sensitive persons

She also went on to develop a questionnaire that can help people like you and I basically confirm or identify themselves as highly sensitive people. And it's called the Highly Sensitive Person Scale. It's free. It's online. It's available to anyone who wants to use it. I'll leave a link in the episode description below.

But essentially, her assessment requires you to simply check some boxes, check the boxes that apply to you based on statements that are said. And at the end, you receive a score. Some of the questions, some of the boxes that you can tick include things like other people's moods affect me deeply. I am easily overwhelmed by strong sensory input, bright lights, strong smells, weird fabrics.

I startle easily. I find it hard and overwhelming to have a lot going on at once. I try hard to avoid making mistakes or forgetting things. I get annoyed when people try to get me to do too many things at once. And then there are also criteria like I am deeply moved by music, movies and art. I have a rich and complex inner life.

When I sense someone is uncomfortable, I tend to know what needs to change in the environment to make them more comfortable, like, you know, like lighting or needing a pillow, that kind of thing. I think it's really important to highlight those elements of what it means to be a highly sensitive person.

Because the misconception is that sensitive people are just too demanding, take things too personally, too highly strong. The truth is, is that they are actually highly attuned to others' needs, often deeply empathetic as well, deeply feeling, because they exist so closely with their emotions. Everything is on the surface for them. And so sadness is not just sadness, it's deep sorrow, right?

Happiness is not just happiness, it's pure ecstasy. Everything exists the highest level for them.

That point about being deeply moved by music, movies, art as well, I find that really, really compelling. I actually saw this video from someone the other day who talked about what it's like to be a highly sensitive person watching the Olympics and how it's just like constant tears because you feel everything that the athletes are feeling, even tears.

through the screen. And this just really highlights how human it really is to be highly sensitive, how connected we feel to things around us that are beautiful, that move us, that make us feel something.

Why is that the case? It's because of an obscure region of the brain known as the VMPFC. Super random, that's all you need to know. The VMPFC, it's the part of the brain that, among other things, adds emotional resonance to our pure sensory data. So, you know, you see a blanket on a couch. If you didn't have your VMPFC, you'd be like, oh, that's just a random blanket.

That's it. You don't really have the same emotional attachment to maybe know that that blanket is, you know, the doona that your grandmother made you for your fifth birthday or, you know, the blanket that you brought to college and.

That part of our brain that sees things, applies meaning to them, applies emotion, history to them. That part of our brain is heightened and more active in people who are highly sensitive. It's why you feel something emotional when you see a flower rather than just feeling

seeing a flower. This also means that people who are highly sensitive, they experience the world with a greater level of emotional saturation, more color essentially, more vividness. And that can also make us more creative. One study from NYU found in, I think it was 2017, that

Higher sensitivity to our environment, highly sensitive people also show higher emotional intelligence, greater emotional sensitivity. And all of that is correlated with higher scores on a creativity test. It all kind of comes together, right? Having that real sense of our emotions, feeling like you can reach out and touch them also means that you can see those emotions in other people.

And it also means that you can take those emotions and funnel them into other activities, funnel them into a beautiful form like making art. And I really want that nuance to come through here. This is not a one dimensional experience only defined by feeling overwhelmed, only defined by crying all the time or needing space, needing distance.

It is a vivid, emotional and sensory state that brings more colour, movement, light, excitement to the world. Sounds like a good thing, but that can also be really, really overwhelming. So highly sensitive people are thought to make up roughly 20% of the general population, which is probably higher than we would expect.

Obviously, with everything, it's a bit of a spectrum. But again, about one in five of us have the kind of brain, have the kind of emotional regulation system that notices just a little bit more about the world around us, that is just a little bit more impacted by others' feelings and also our own.

An interesting fun fact, humans are not the only species that can be classified or defined as highly sensitive. Elephants, for example, dolphins, horses, octopuses, they all show varying degrees of emotional and social sensitivity between them. What's something that those animals all have in common?

They're also very, very smart and they're very highly evolved compared to your average reptile or mammal or marsupial, which goes to show that the more connections in our brain, the more neurons, the more intelligent we are, perhaps the more capacity we have to be intelligent.

Sensitive creatures. That might explain why, according to recent research by the University of Berkeley, highly sensitive people often have higher IQs, not just EQs.

They also are higher in a particular kind of intelligence called sensory intelligence. Basically, we process information more deeply. We find that we reflect longer on our experiences. We notice kind of subtle details. We're more affected by them. We draw links between more of our experiences.

There was a recent article published by Psychology Today. Actually, it was published just last year. It's funny, the magazine is called Psychology Today, but the article within it published last year. Don't know if that needed clarification, but you got it anyways. And this article linked sensitivity to brilliance. You need to be smart to be as reactive or perceptive of your environment as

As your sensitivity makes you. You cannot be a dumb highly sensitive person. That's basically what this article was saying.

It's kind of a consolation prize. Yes, I find it hard to not break down, but at least I might be a genius or I might be a creative prodigy. I would love to hear from you guys. If you are someone who is highly sensitive, do you do something that requires you to use the more creative side of your brain? Or do you do something that is someone perceives as a highly sensitive

emotional career like a therapist like a psychologist like maybe even a primary school teacher a kindergarten teacher I really want to know because I feel like that would be very very interesting to see so we spent a little bit of time in kind of what makes a highly sensitive person the criteria the characteristics how does it happen how do we become this way what actually contributes to this unique way of seeing the world and

It's a couple of things. Let's start with the big one. The big one is our innate temperament. Now, temperament is kind of exists like one step back from personality. Temperament is the nature that we were born with. You and I most likely have had the same temperament since we were just little kids. If you hear a parent say, you know, oh, my child is just so calm and curious or, yeah, my new baby is so fussy and so short tempered.

They're probably not wrong. That kind of personality that a child has contributes to our future personality because it's our temperament. And the temperament of highly sensitive people, there's four different types of temperaments. The one that highly sensitive people most often sit in is the melancholic temperament.

Melancholic people are more reserved, they're more thoughtful, analytical, but also deeply feeling. Sometimes that can be confused with anxiety. People with a melancholic temperament are also highly empathetic.

And we know that being an empath and being highly sensitive often comes hand in hand because as someone with high empathy, you are naturally going to feel subtle changes in people and your environment. You pick up on those invisible cues that others may not. You notice when someone is suddenly going quiet and you absorb the feelings and the emotional states of those around you, which is what makes you so reactive to them.

Because once you've had that intuition that this is how someone's feeling, it can be difficult not to respond, not to want to fix it, not to want to reduce the discomfort, not just for yourself, but for others as well.

This really explains why one of the criteria for being a highly sensitive person is needing more downtime, needing more time to decompress after those big social days, after being around people for so long. Because you're probably freaking exhausted if you've spent all those hours literally just absorbing everything

everybody else's feelings taking on all of that trying to mediate and manage how other people are coping as well as how you're coping on the inside what you're actually feeling like

It's incredibly draining, I think, to be that alert, even if it's not something that you're consciously doing. So temperament is one of the first factors that just contributes to you being an innately sensitive person. Another factor at play, though, is, of course, genetics. So there is a developmental psychologist at Queen Mary University of London, Dr. Michael Pluess, and he is the one who has done a lot of research into this.

It basically is suggested that your genes account for 47% of how sensitive you are, nearly half.

How he found this out, he looked at twins and he looked at twins who basically he was like, OK, if I get two twins here and one of them is highly sensitive, what are the chances that the other one's going to be highly sensitive as well? And the chance was around 50 percent. And so that's how he kind of determined that that was the genetic influence behind this trait, behind this experience.

The rest is environment. We're going to get to that in a second. But the genetic blueprint that we receive from our parents is basically going to determine so much about who we become and who we become as a sensitive individual. It's going to determine our threshold for stimulation. It's going to really help determine our anxiety levels, our attentional systems, our level of alertness, all of which contribute, I guess you can guess it, to hypersensitivity.

There is not just one gene at play here, though. There's not just a single gene. If it's flipped or not, if it's switched or not, that's going to determine whether you emerge as a highly sensitive person. There's actually three genes, the sensitivity gene, the dopamine gene and the emotional vividness gene.

So let's start off with the sensitivity gene first. The sensitivity gene is also known as the serotonin gene and it controls how serotonin is transported in the brain.

Serotonin is what helps balance our mood. People who are highly sensitive often have a gene variant that means they have less serotonin available in their brain. Less serotonin, what does that normally mean? Less mood stabilization, less capacity to regulate your emotional response to what's going on around you and within you.

The second gene is somewhat similar. It's the dopamine gene. A lot of us see dopamine as simply the happy chemical. It's the chemical that keeps us bright and bubbly and cheery. And to an extent, you'd be right. But the reason it makes us so happy is because it makes us feel rewarded by external stimuli. When that gene is mutated or when it varies, it's

It can make it so that we are almost overflowing with dopamine and a bunch of other neurochemicals in response to our environment. Meaning that there's just almost too much. Our brain just can't cope. Everything is a bit unbalanced. And so we don't get the same leveled

sense of reward or reinforcement from things that other people do, like bright lights, like busy environments, like loud pumping music, like intense smells. It just all feels quite messy in our brains. It just feels quite overwhelming because there's just actually too much going on for your brain to really put together.

But it also sometimes feels really beautiful. If you've got this dysregulated dopamine system, yes, it does mean that, you know, things feel overwhelming at times. But it's also why we feel so moved by things that others might not. And moved by things that other people don't appreciate. Like a beautiful view. Like a flower. Like a TV commercial. Finally, we have the emotional vividness gene.

Goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. Most highly sensitive people are keenly aware that they have stronger emotional reactions than others. And they often notice those emotional undercurrents in other people. You pick it all up. You pick up what everybody else is putting down silently, unconsciously, implicitly. If you're highly sensitive, this is not your imagination. You actually have a brighter palette of

of emotional colors, so to speak, because of a variant in a gene that controls how our body's stress response, perception and sensory imaging is processed by our brain. So essentially what that means is that when we're looking at our environment, the highly sensitive person has more, like we said, emotional colors to deal with,

It takes in more information from our environment. It takes in smaller details that overload our brain and can make us feel, again, really, really overwhelmed. So if you're feeling constantly kind of burnt out by the world, constantly like exhausted by it, you kind of have your genetics to blame because there is a 47% chance that they are what contributed to you being a highly sensitive person.

but a crucial factor that really elevates all those prior determinants and which we really have only scratched the surface on is upbringing.

Childhood trauma can create high sensitivity through learning. Learning what we need to do to survive in those early childhood environments and also by activating our melancholic temperament or our genetic predisposition. That kind of early environment that is heightened and intense and rough is

That may have conditioned you to be very, very alert and responsive to other people's emotions and also what's going on around you. Because you had to be. You had to be able to pay attention to navigate that minefield. You had to know what will upset people, what won't. How can I tell if they're angry?

What do I need to look out for? How do I stay on their good side by picking up on clues and small things from them that they are unhappy, that they are angry and getting them back angry?

to that more, you know, neutral state where I'm not going to be hurt, where I'm not going to get the brunt of things. That hyper alertness and anxiety carries on into adulthood and comes out as hypersensitivity when really it probably was a protective mechanism, a defense mechanism at some stage. It doesn't, you know, those childhood experiences don't even need to constitute the kind of trauma that I think we're imagining.

It can even come down to a lack of parental warmth or inconsistency from your caregivers. Warm, supportive, gentle parenting helps children develop healthy emotional regulation.

Sounds super, super simple. But if you have a parent who is going to see that you're upset or see that you're angry and sit with you and talk you through it or acknowledge that emotion, you basically are able to find a place to put that feeling. You're able to find a way to move it from that very instinctual moment where you're reacting and the emotion is very bright and in your face to

and kind of taper it down, find a space for it, you know, really think it through and make that emotion more neutral. Essentially what I'm kind of saying is that you have healthy coping strategies because someone showed you how to do it. Without those coping strategies, people, children struggle to manage their emotions and

And not only does that mean that, yes, our emotions feel more out of our control, but it also means that you're very sensitive to stress, to the stress of not being able to manage your emotions, to criticism over not being able to manage your emotions and unexpected social interactions where you don't really know how to behave. You're kind of stressed that like, what if I'm suddenly angry or upset or something triggers me? What do I do? Because I just actually don't know how to.

So many parents tell their kids to just suck it up or to stop overreacting or to come back when you've calmed down, thinking that it's going to make their kids tougher. But if you are already a sensitive child,

How are you going to learn how to process those feelings by yourself when you are just a child? All that is going to do is make your emotions feel even less manageable and you're going to feel even more fearful about talking about it. You're going to feel so isolated and like you just need to stuff it all down. Otherwise, you'll get yelled at. Otherwise, you'll get criticized. Otherwise, you will be told that you're too sensitive.

We also talk a lot about attachment style in this podcast, of course. Children who don't receive consistent warmth and affection from their parents will also often develop insecure attachment styles. This can also contribute to hypersensitivity because we become very overly anxious about our relationships and not just our romantic relationships, but the relationships we have with our friends when we're casually dating and

With our parents, with our family, because we are hyper alert to, once again, rejection or criticism because we fear abandonment. We fear that someone is disappointed or angry with us. And so we become hyper vigilant to any small sign that that is the case. And that is what kind of trains us.

our hypersensitivity and that hypersensitivity to rejection in particular is is something that we haven't really spoken about in this episode but a lot of people who identify as highly sensitive feel that very intensely they feel that rejection and sensitivity incredibly intensely when they get even the slightest feeling that someone is pulling away

or that a relationship is under threat. That is scary for anyone, but if you're highly sensitive, it's so much all at once. It's so much having to think about someone else's emotions, your emotions, whatever environment you're in, and so it can lead to behaviors that we don't feel so proud of later on. Like,

lashing out completely shutting down as like our brains final defense like line of defense like let's just shut this down so we don't have to deal with this

Pushing someone away even more because at least that's going to take the source of our stress away. Then if you are feeling so on edge, so overwhelmed, sometimes all you want to do is just escape and just not deal with it. And so you push or you run away or you just find a way to avoid.

When we finally had the space and the alone time to really work through our perspective and our reaction, you know, a lot of highly sensitive people do need that time. Sometimes we do feel like the damage is done or that we can't even go back and apologize or confront them again because it's just too much. It's just way too much. And in that way, we also see a cycle of conflict aversion.

Of course, conflict is going to be so hard for you if you're highly sensitive because everything is elevated, magnified, heightened. You're sensing subtle shifts that they don't. You're perceiving their emotions. You're trying to manage your own reactions. It can feel very overwhelming. Because of that sensory overload, sometimes you can say the wrong things. You just want it to end. You can't always process everything that's coming together at once.

It's hard even when we actually do try our hardest, especially when people, the people that we're communicating with just don't get it. Like we're not trying to be difficult. We're not reading too much into what you're saying. We're not trying to get frustrated. We're trying really hard not to cry because we don't want you to dismiss us as just being overly sensitive and

But there is so much buzzing around in our brains. We feel this so deeply. The emotion is so intense. What else are you meant to do? If you find yourself in that pattern with a partner, with a parent, with a friend who just doesn't understand, who thinks that maybe you're using tears as like a guilt mechanism or that you just can't stay calm and it's because you're choosing not to.

please send them this episode because I think once people have more information about how your brain is working and operating differently to them, there is more empathy and understanding and adjustment. They also can kind of hopefully lean in and understand the fact that this isn't a choice.

There is this amazing TED talk called The Gentle Power of Highly Sensitive People. Highly recommend that talk. And in it, the speaker talks about how telling a sensitive person to just tone it down, to not let the world hurt them, to be less sensitive, is like telling a person with blue eyes to make their eyes less blue. No matter how many times you tell them,

chances are you're still going to see those blue eyes staring back at you. And the same goes for sensitivity. It's not something that you can just switch off. And to be honest, I don't even think that it's something that you should switch off. I'm going to go backwards here for a second because there's one more element explanation for this that we need to discuss. It would be so short-sighted to not mention neurodivergence.

So often someone is told that they are just too sensitive when it's actually them masking their autism or their ADHD because the pattern of behaviors are really, really similar and they're often comorbid. So you can have both at once. But what's really frustrating is when people are just seen as too sensitive or too emotional or told that they need to toughen up when their sensitivity is actually a sign of something bigger and larger.

People with ADHD often find it takes less stimulation for them to be overwhelmed. So in that way, they are going to present as highly sensitive. The same goes for people with autism, right? Like sometimes new environments, new situations, even new feelings can just feel like a lot. Or in situations where it's just really hard to tell what people are thinking, you're not picking up on those cues anymore.

It's going to make it seem like you're being really sensitive or reactive. Actually, you just don't really know what's going on. And that's totally okay. Sometimes like human emotion is not like an open and closed book. Whether you have a diagnosable disorder that's comorbid or you are just someone who is highly sensitive.

I think it's all the same. It's still going to be difficult to manage your emotional reactions and you're still going to feel like people have some kind of stigma around high sensitivity. People think that you're weak or that you're fragile or whatever. I'm going to be super honest with you all now. My perspective on this is very anti-shame. Very anti-let's find a cure for all us highly sensitive people. Let's make us normal.

I don't want us to suppress our emotions. I don't want us to try and chameleon or try and blend in with the 80% of people who quote unquote have average sensitivity levels because firstly, it backfires. We feel even more overwhelmed. So not only does it not work, it makes us feel worse. And secondly, I just don't see a reason why you should. I really think that sensitivity is kind of a superpower. Being gentle and emotional and in tune with others is...

Quite gorgeous and quite special to have.

You know, this trait isn't going to change. It's a lifelong thing. Hopefully that's not too hard to hear. But I think the earlier we come to terms with that, the easier life feels, the more freeing. It's like the weight of needing to dim down is lifted because once we acknowledge like this is part of who I am, it's not going away. It's not going to change. It's kind of at that point that you realize how exhausting it's going to be to keep, you know, to keep up the facade for the rest of your life.

And eventually you realize that maybe you just shouldn't. Maybe it's not worth it. Maybe life isn't all about trying to make other people feel comfortable with you. And it's about trying to make your life feel comfortable for yourself. So I want to talk about all of that and more how to really make the world fit your sensitivity rather than the other way around after this short break. Music

For decades, the Mafia had New York City in a stranglehold, with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. But the murder of Carmichael Ante marked the beginning of the end, sparking a chain of events that would ultimately dismantle the most powerful crime organization in American history. It sent the message to them that we can prosecute these people.

Discover how a group of young prosecutors took on the mafia and with the help of law enforcement brought down its most powerful figures. These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government. From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts, this is Law & Order Criminal Justice System. Listen to Law & Order Criminal Justice System on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

♪

Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition?

Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions.

Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is today.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Cheaters and Backstabbers. I'm Shadi Diaz. And I'm Kate Robards. And we are New York City stand-up comedians and best friends. And we love a good cheating and backstabbing story.

So this is a series where our guests reveal their most shocking cheating stories. Join us as we learn how to avoid getting our hearts broken or our backs slashed. Listen to Cheaters and Backstabbers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Highly sensitive people are some of my favorites to be around because they make the people around them see the world more beautifully. They are also incredibly gentle and empathetic. They are creative and they just bring big heart and big love to everything that they do. Like nothing is small for them. Your highly sensitive friend is probably going to be the one who remembers your birthday.

They are probably going to be the one who makes you feel safest, who is going to introduce you to new music, who wants to go on long nature walks with you, who will point out small things that you didn't notice. They are the ones who are going to make you feel comfortable in their space, who is going to give you so much love in a relationship. I just don't understand why we don't want more of that in the world.

Feeling everything so deeply might sometimes feel like a curse, but compared to feeling nothing at all and never being touched by that joy and never feeling deeply human and

Sometimes I do think it's a privilege. Like I have met people who just don't care about anything. They don't have any sense of justice. They don't have any sense of beauty or wonder or excitement. And it's a pretty bland life. That on top of the fact that, you know, the research and the science will tell you your IQ, your EQ, your creative intelligence, your emotional vividness, etc.

your sensory intelligence is probably higher than the average person. I think that keeps us really focused on the strength that comes with being a highly sensitive person, even during the times when we're told that we're too much. Those people who say that, I'm going to be completely honest, they can get over it. They can get over it. Your purpose in life is not to make others comfortable with you. If someone thinks that you are too intense, feels too strongly, if they think that you overreact,

Their opinion is a reflection of the level of empathy that they are prepared to show others, not a reflection of you and what needs to change in your life. I just don't like who made the rules that said that being too sensitive is a bad thing. I heard from this really amazing person when I was researching this episode who said, when someone tells me I'm being too sensitive, I always come back to them and say, well, maybe you're being too insensitive.

Just because my way of seeing the world is more rare doesn't make it worse and it doesn't make it the one that needs fixing. So that rant aside, let's talk about some tips about how to make an insensitive world more suitable for your beautiful sensitive soul.

First off the bat, if you want to get more comfortable with being a highly sensitive person, you really need to honor your sensitivity by learning what in your life makes things easier for you and lighter for you and what makes things feel harder.

Highly sensitive people just need more time than others to process the things that happen in their day, in their environment, in their relationships. So give yourself that time rather than trying to overload yourself to fit in. Notice your limits and put yourself in environments that aren't going to make things more difficult for you.

So for example, if you've got a big call with your boss tomorrow morning, don't schedule an intense catch up with an old friend in the same day. Space things out. Give yourself time to return to that normal, steady, stable state before you throw yourself into the next situation.

I think adjusting to being a highly sensitive person or just adjusting to your acknowledgement and your respect of your identity as a highly sensitive person means appreciating and finally accepting that maybe you can't do everything the way that everyone else does it. It doesn't mean that you can't do it, though. It just means that you have to find a way for it to work with you. Otherwise, it's just going to be really, you know, unenjoyable.

My second piece of advice is to practice the kind of self-care that works for you because it's probably going to look different from the self-care that 80% of the world likes to do. You know, for some people, self-care is socializing. It's treating themselves, going shopping, letting loose. For you, it's probably going to involve slowing down, resting and saying no. You know, no, sorry, I don't want to go to dinner at that crowded restaurant.

No, I don't want your friend. I don't like to join us for dinner. Sorry, I don't want to have this conversation right now. Self-care is as much about adding things to your life as it is about saying no and subtracting things in your life to give yourself adequate downtime to emotionally regulate, to give yourself time to rest and to think. You know what else is like a profoundly sweet, simple but overlooked form of self-care?

Just giving yourself more time to get places, giving yourself more time to organize your day, finish up your work, you know, just five minutes earlier. Even if you feel drawn to keep working, you know that you'll need that five minutes to separate your real life from your work life and to really get back into a stable, steady state. Give yourself the extra 10, 15 minutes to get somewhere.

Even if it means getting there early, because you don't want to be flustered. You don't want to be hot, sticky, overwhelmed. You don't want to hate the texture of your outfit, you know, right when you're meant to be leaving and then feel rushed to change. Give yourself a bit more time. I think the crucial rule when it comes to self-care, the golden rule is make smart choices that will help your future self based on what has hurt or overwhelmed your past self.

I had a friend tell me about a technique she uses that is kind of similar to that idea. And it's called, what she does is she creates relaxing zones in her house and even at her job.

And having been to her home, it is like walking into the most comfortable and homely therapist office that you've ever been in. She's not even a therapist. It's just so calming. It always smells like lemon and honey. There are never any like really big overhead lights on. She has cozy surfaces everywhere you look. She has beautiful things everywhere.

And walking into that environment, it's just like so obvious that she has intentionally made this a safe space for herself and that she has gone out of her way. She's put in the effort before to, you know, provide this gift to every future version of her who needs to walk into her home after a big long day where she's been absorbing everyone else's emotions and everything around her.

And she just wants to calm down and she has given that to herself. And the reason why I really like that she's done this is because when you walk into her house, you just feel like your body, your mind, your soul, whatever it is, is being cleansed. And as a highly sensitive person, it's kind of like walking outside in really, really sticky shoes. And like you pick up so many things. You pick up the gum, you pick up the cigarette butts, you pick up the pigeon poop.

And you take it all home with you and, you know, you pick up the emotions, you pick up the sensory overload, you pick up the exhausting conversations someone was having on the train and the loud lights and whatever it is. And you take that all home with you. And when you get home, you need to clean out the filter. You need to clean off the shoes.

because you are not like everyone else. You are a collector of information. Like that's what your brain has developed to do based on your genetics, based on your childhood, based on whatever has contributed to your high sensitivity. All of that has just made everything much louder for you. So you need a space that allows you to turn it down and to kind of clean off the junk and clean out the junk from your brain.

As a highly sensitive person, I also think it's worth being selective about the people you choose to be around. You are like a sponge. You are perpetually in a state of osmosis with the people around you. You absorb their emotions, their reactions, their fears, their joy. If the people around you, your friends, are super reactive or really unpredictable, dramatic, always really high, high, high or extremely low, guess how you're going to be feeling? The exact same way.

I see so many people try really hard to be friends with people they just simply shouldn't be friends with. Not because those people are toxic or awful or any of those labels. They just shouldn't be friends because their emotional energies don't align. And it ends up going sour because everything they feel, you feel, is

And so it becomes hard not to take things personally or to leave every hangout feeling super drained and like you just don't want to see them again or feeling really on edge and snapping or saying something you don't mean. Now, this piece of advice isn't to say drop all your friends, start from scratch, but really assess who do I leave interactions with feeling calm, serene and seen? Who do I leave interactions with feeling on edge, exhausted, highly strung?

Maybe those people become a once in a while friend rather than an everyday friend. On that note, I want to say one final boundary. Anyone again who says you are too emotional, who says that you take things too personally, that you need to calm down, those people should be never friends. They don't deserve you and it's too bad for them because they don't get to be touched by your gentleness and your kindness

extreme appreciation for beauty and empathy and kindness they don't get the gift of this aspect of you but i honestly think that it is their loss because if they're not willing to accept every single part of you including the part of you that honestly i think is so unique and beautiful

they're just not it they don't deserve to be in your life and you know that you will end up picking up on how they're feeling about you and it's just gonna always keep you in a heightened state if someone says you know you're just so sensitive it's also worthwhile just saying back to them like you know I know it's great I love it I love that I get to feel so much stop trying like you know they're not allowed to make you feel bad if they say you're overreacting literally just be like

So what would an appropriate reaction be? Or I just don't think that you're seeing the situation in the same way. I think you're underreacting. You're allowed to assert yourself just because your sensitivity has been labeled as weakness.

It's not, firstly. But you're allowed to disagree. You're allowed to say, actually, no, I really like this part of me. I actually really like who it makes me. I like that I notice things. I like that I love the world. So I'm going to keep it that way. Thank you for your opinion. Moving on.

I really do hope that this episode has helped you in some way. I hope that it's normalized an emotional experience that you're having or a perspective. I hope that you feel seen. I hope that you feel heard. I hope that you feel held and that you feel loved and

Because I really do love highly sensitive people. They're my favourites. You are my favourite. I just think that they make the world so special. Without them, the world would be so cruel and so ugly. So thank you for doing us all a service by existing. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, send it to a friend. I'm sure that they would love to hear it. Send it to someone who maybe just doesn't get your sensitive brain so that they can learn a little bit more. I'm sure they would appreciate being able to be on your level.

Make sure that you leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening right now, and that you are following along for more episodes coming out soon. Also, if you have an episode suggestion, if you're a highly sensitive person and you want to tell me a little bit more about your experience, maybe for a follow-up episode, for something that I might post on Instagram, please DM me on Instagram at thatpsychologypodcast. I would love to hear from you. And until next time, stay safe, stay kind.

Be gentle to yourself. Be gentle to your sensitive little soul. You deserve it. And we will talk soon.

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