Category: Featured

Actors and High Sensitivity

Actors and High Sensitivity

Julie Christie “I found films to be turbulent and stressful. They have caused me an enormous amount of anxiety, because I do not have a lot of confidence. You are working, intellectually and mentally, and you are having to be with people and socialize all the time. Actors like it, on the whole, but I [...]

Being Highly Sensitive and Creative

Being Highly Sensitive and Creative

“Highly sensitive people are all creative by definition.” Elaine Aron, PhD adds that it is “because we process things so thoroughly and notice so many subtleties and emotional meanings that we can easily put two unusual things together.” Sensory sensitivity also comes into play in many creative endeavors. When Therese Borchard of Beliefnet interviewed me [...]

Highly Sensitive People and Depression

Highly Sensitive People and Depression

Psychologist Susan Meindl writes: Highly sensitive people…have nervous systems and minds which permit more stimulation to enter without automatically and unconsciously shutting it out, and further, that they then cognitively process the stimulation that they receive in more detail than others do. Stimulation comes in on all sensory channels: sights, sounds, smells, vibrations, touch. HSP’s [...]

Jenna Avery on Recharging Your Energy as a Highly Sensitive Person

Jenna Avery on Recharging Your Energy as a Highly Sensitive Person

Jenna Avery writes: As a sensitive soul, good energy-management skills are a must. This means tuning in to yourself on a regular basis and continually reassessing and adjusting what you take on. It’s a real balancing act. And sometimes, despite your best intentions, your energy gets drained and you feel out of balance. The key, [...]

Are you drowning in a sea of sensitivity? It’s time to walk on water

Are you drowning in a sea of sensitivity? It’s time to walk on water

By Ane Axford, MS, LFMT I have often heard an analogy in the psychology field that creative geniuses and those who experience mental disorder are in the same water. The difference is that one is swimming and the other is drowning. Let’s talk about this water. These fluid, intangible, ever-changing emotions. Sensations. All that arises [...]

Cheryl Richardson on protecting our high sensitivity

Cheryl Richardson on protecting our high sensitivity

Author and coach Cheryl Richardson points out, “We all have varying levels of sensitivity. “It’s the fundamental part of us that allows us to be touched by beauty, signs of grace, or intimate moments with others.” She adds that it is also “the mechanism that provides us with an internal warning signal that lets us [...]

Jenna Forrest on empowering sensitivity and relieving anxiety

Jenna Forrest on empowering sensitivity and relieving anxiety

Jenna Forrest is a coach who offers “energy healing, intuitive coaching and spiritual apprenticeships to help sensitives experience inner peace, higher consciousness, and life transformation” and writes in her memoir Help Is On Its Way about growing up with the trait of high sensitivity. In our podcast interview, she talks about empowering and transcending sensitivity. [...]

Counselor Rue Hass on using EFT to help highly sensitive people celebrate their positive qualities

Counselor Rue Hass on using EFT to help highly sensitive people celebrate their positive qualities

Rue Hass, M.A. is a counselor and Intuitive Mentor – and a Highly Sensitive Person. An EFT Master therapist, she uses Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) with a variety of clients, including HSP individuals to “help them see what they and others might view as a ‘flaw’ as a ‘blessing’ or gift.” A blog post on [...]

Ted Zeff on highly sensitive boys and men

Ted Zeff on highly sensitive boys and men

Dr. Ted Zeff summarizes his research on highly sensitive males, based on interviews with thirty highly sensitive men from five countries: The North American (U.S. and Canada) HSMs (highly sensitive males) who reported that they had supportive parents as boys and who played group sports as a boy were “never” or “rarely” teased for being [...]

Being Sensitive and Creative

Being Sensitive and Creative

Are creative people unusually sensitive? Clinical and research reports confirm that is often true – as well as comments by many creative people about their own experience. > Excerpt read by Assoc. Editor Cat Robson: For example, therapist Lisa A. Riley, LMFT comments: Throughout my practice, I have encountered a connection between highly sensitive people [...]

Highly Sensitive People – Do You Understand Yourself?

Highly Sensitive People – Do You Understand Yourself?

Guest Post – By Cliff Harwin, Author of Making Sense of Your High Sensitivity. How very little we know about ourselves…but how much we could know if we took the time to do so. So much of our personal happiness depends on knowing ourselves. We know ourselves better than others do, and yet we don’t [...]

Bryce Dallas Howard and Judith Orloff on psychic ability

Bryce Dallas Howard and Judith Orloff on psychic ability

“It goes beyond the senses, as we know it. It’s our ability to intuit the mystery.” Judith Orloff, MD In the new Clint Eastwood-directed movie “Hereafter,” the character George Lonegan (Matt Damon) seems to be able to communicate with people beyond the grave. Reviewer Roger Ebert notes the movie “believes most psychics are frauds” but [...]

Relationships can be challenging for highly sensitive people

Relationships can be challenging for highly sensitive people

Interactions with others and just being in social situations can be challenging for those of us who are highly sensitive. Although sensitivity is not the same thing, it often goes along with introversion or even shyness. [See my post: Shyness, Introversion, Sensitivity – What’s the Difference?] Actor Scarlett Johansson has commented: “I think I was [...]

Energy Sensitivity

Energy Sensitivity

Energy psychiatrist Judith Orloff, MD explains: “An intuitive empath is someone who not only senses energy but also absorbs it from others and the environment. Their body takes on the angst of the world. It can be very draining. “I’ve been an intuitive empath since childhood which prompted my exploration of this phenomena. I couldn’t [...]

Are you Crazy or Are you a Highly Sensitive Person?

Are you Crazy or Are you a Highly Sensitive Person?

From the BioElectric Shield site: A large number of people who come to us are suffering as highly sensitive people. … This sensitivity can dramatically impact your ability to cope with the ever increasing chaos and energy in the world today. I get on the phone many days and the person on the other end [...]

Jenna Avery on Work for Sensitive Souls

Jenna Avery on Work for Sensitive Souls

Jenna Avery writes: Have people always called you “too sensitive?” Do you try to hide it, pretend it doesn’t exist, or work around it as much as possible? Many Highly Sensitive Souls believe that our sensitivity makes us weak, weird, or different. Actually, being sensitive makes us highly aware, caring, and perceptive. In the workplace, [...]

Are we cry-babies?

Are we cry-babies?

Highly sensitive people can be considered “weak” “soft” “pathetic” and “cry babies”. That comes from the following article, and reminded me of when I was a kid in Boy Scouts. At one of our meetings, some of the other boys got the idea to have some fun by pantsing someone. I was the chosen victim, [...]

Highly sensitive people less influenced by culture

Highly sensitive people less influenced by culture

Stony Brook University Building on previous brain imaging research that revealed cultural influences play a role in neural activation during perception, Arthur Aron, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at Stony Brook University, and colleagues, completed a study that suggests individuals who are highly sensitive have cognitive responses that appear to not be influenced by culture at [...]