Challenges Of Highly Sensitive People
The Loneliness Problem
If we took a survey of HSPs, how many would say they are lonely? Loneliness is not the same as being alone. Being alone and enjoying it come from our full engagement with life. Loneliness is something else. Loneliness often feels like we have been graded and found wanting. It feels like a suffocating…
Read MoreGiving Up Perfectionism For Greater Joy
A few months back, my husband and I had a little conversation in which we discussed swapping and trying out each other’s interests. Mine is painting. His is building puzzles, of the 3,000 to 5,000 pieces kind. Before he met me, my husband didn’t have any particular interest in art. But in our time together…
Read MoreWhy Self Care Is Hard
Why is self-care so hard? Whenever I see a sleeping cat, I am struck by how unconflicted they are about living each moment, about being here and their deservingness. Receiving simply is not an issue for them. Humans make the whole business of receiving about power. So receiving inevitably comes with some sort of baggage…
Read MoreErased – The Challenge Of The Marginalized
Between extremes of competition, world overpopulation, and ranking systems, people who are marginalized struggle to survive. If you are sensitive, you may feel like one of those people who is largely invisible to the world as if you have been erased. The Experience Of Feeling Erased Being marginalized means a number of different things and…
Read MoreDo Empaths And Sensitive People “Attract” Narcissists?
Do empaths and sensitive people “attract” narcissists? This is something I have been thinking about a lot. As a sensitive person, I have had many encounters with narcissistic people myself, and I know it’s the same for many other sensitives. At some point in our lives, we seem to have one entanglement after another with…
Read MoreAre You Numbing Your Sensitivity?
Are your numbing your sensitivity? I do sometimes. As I stood in line waiting to order my cup of coffee, I reached for my phone in my purse. You know, just in case there were any new updates within the last 5 minutes since the last time I checked it. I didn’t feel the need…
Read MoreSurprise Anxiety Relief For Sensitive People
I love stories. They often take us by the hand and point out something obvious, something we couldn’t see just because we were so close to it. This time, I want to talk about a true story shared by the great psychologist Rollo May. It appears in his book The Courage to Create and talks…
Read MoreThe Othering Of The Highly Sensitive Person
Sensitive people are different. Being different means that they often live in the shadows. I thought about this today when I was reading an article about feminism in Great Britain, written by Anna Ford, a respected British journalist. What struck me about the article was her wonderful description of the devaluation and marginalization of women,…
Read MoreA Sneaky Way Narcissists Discount You
It’s been a few short months since my book The Empath’s Journey was released. It’s a memoir of rediscovering what the words “too sensitive” mean in my own life and is set against the backdrop of the first few years after I relocated from India to the United States. Writing books has always been…
Read MoreAre HSPs The Proverbial Canary In The Coal Mine?
In his book Thrive!, which discusses the gifts and challenges of highly sensitive people, Dr. Tracy M. Cooper talks about his research on the trait of sensory processing sensitivity. What interested me most were the stories and real-life experiences of fellow HSPs. They helped to draw a picture of how HSPs as a population might…
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