I picked up this book because throughout my life I have felt that people find me overly sensitive. It makes me feel like the black sheep, that people don’t get me. I then heard a quick video from Shade that also talked about highly sensitive people. This book gives some insight into highly sensitive people and some ideas to stop emotional overload.
One of the first takeaways for me was that Highly sensitive people don’t say much. They can be thought of as shy or non collaborative. However its because we believe in the power of words, we know what words can do to people and therefore prefer to think carefully about what we want to say before opening our mouths.
We can also become anxious and depressed if we don’t put the work in to understand and communicate our own needs. It will create great suffering for us if those we love cannot or will not understand us. This has been true for me and I find it very frustrating. Over the last 2 years I have worked hard to try to understand what I need. I am such a people pleaser that my needs were buried so far down it was a wonder that anyone had any idea what I wanted because I didn’t either.
One advantage of being an HSP is that we are very good at providing feedback to people and raising potentially controversial new ideas without causing undue stress because we think about what we say and how it will impact others.
We are not afraid of emotions, we realise that they are part of being human. For me it is also a case of you can’t experience or appreciate true happiness if you haven’t experienced sadness and pain. Feeling and emotions do need to be processed otherwise they will linger in your body and mind as stress, tension, and illness. We can all choose how to process our feelings and control our external reactions. Look for the blessing or lesson you can take from the challenge.
And when someone gives you feedback. – turn it into a list of actionable bullet points. Take back the control and remember that they are referring to your work or actions, not you as a person. They are not evaluating you as a person. Remember that if people are raising their concerns with you, they care a great deal about your relationship
When handling arguments, pause first to understand how the other person developed their opinion or arrived at a particular conclusion, and then gently explain why you believe (or know) that this perspective is incorrect.
And if you have a HSP child – ask them to tell you what their feeling is, what it is like in their body. Then ask them what they want to happen next. Having understood what they are feeling and why, you can then explain what will happen next. Remember your goal is to help them feel understood and respected, even if you can’t give them what they want.
I enjoyed this book, I found it insightful and there were a few real nuggets of gold for me in understanding myself and how I could interact with others in a better way.
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