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, [...]
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 [...]
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 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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Clinical and research reports confirm creative people are unusually sensitive, and many creative people have commented about their own experience with the trait of high sensitivity. For example, creativity coach Lisa Riley, LMFT comments she has “encountered a connection between highly sensitive people and their own creative impulses. “Creatives often feel and perceive more intensely, dramatically, [...]
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 [...]
“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 [...]
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 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 [...]
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 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, [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
Savant sensitivity The term ‘savant’ may be most often used for people such as Daniel Tammet, who is autistic and can recite more than 22,000 digits of pi from memory. [See my post Savant abilities and learning differences relate to developing multiple talents] In his book Islands of Genius: The Bountiful Mind of the Autistic, [...]
Photorealist painting is one form of creative expression that demands a high degree of technical prowess and attention to detail. The image is Tom’s Diner, 1993, a watercolor by Ralph Goings – from the book Photorealism at the Millennium, by Louis K. Meisel, Linda Chase. A recent CNN article on “sensory processing sensitivity” reports that [...]
Therese Borchard of Beliefnet recently interviewed me – her article [on Beliefnet] is titled 5 Gifts of Being Highly Sensitive and 5 Curses. She also published it for her Huffington Post column with the title 5 Gifts of Being Highly Sensitive – which has over 100 comments. Here are her two questions, and my responses: [...]
By Andrea Runyan While college can be an exciting and fruitful experience, it can also be a challenging time for Highly Sensitive People (HSPs). As the first time when many students are living away from home, college presents many potential challenges for the HSP, such as eating dining hall food; living in a dormitory; having [...]
In her Psychology Today blog post Are Introverts More Creative than Extraverts?, writer, cartoonist and musician Elizabeth Wagele writes about how this key personality dimension relates to creative expression. Here is an excerpt : Are liking solitude and focusing inward creative gifts? My café friends and I, mostly introverts, were discussing where our various kinds [...]
In addition to helping fuel creativity and a richer experience of life, being highly sensitive can make us more vulnerable to emotional overwhelm, anxiety, self-criticism and other issues. Healthy self concept and self esteem can be especially challenging. As John Lennon once put it, “Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other [...]
Jenna Avery is “The Life Coach for Sensitive Souls” – helping individuals recognize and more fully express their gifts as highly sensitive people. In our interview, she talks about some of the challenges we may face in taking care of ourselves and living our purpose, such as being overly self-critical or not setting good self-care [...]
“Creatives often feel and perceive more intensely, dramatically, and with a wildly vivid color palate to draw from, which can only be described as looking at the world through a much larger lens." – Creativity Coach Lisa Riley - from the page: Being Highly Sensitive and Creative.
Shyness and introversion may seem to be the same in some ways, at least on the surface.
They can overlap, and we may have both traits – but they are not the same thing. And they are not the same as the trait of high sensitivity.
Follow the link to my post with more, including a video.Jenna Avery "uses her intuition, deep empathy, and innate practicality to help her visionary, creative clients step fully into their creative ideas, dreams, and ability. Learn about her programs including Self-Study Classes for Sensitive Souls, and the Writer's Circle at JennaAvery.com
Site author: Douglas Eby, M.A./Psychology, is a writer and researcher on the psychology of creative expression and personal growth, especially for high ability adults.
Author of books:
• Developing Multiple Talents
• The Creative Mind: Identity
• Being Highly Sensitive and Creative
For more info, see Résumé.
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