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 was not born with that quality. I am very quiet and would much prefer to talk to a few people rather than a crowd.” //

“I could never really see the point of being high-profile when I loathed it so much. Every now and then, you can go to something like an Oscars ceremony, but nobody is holding a gun to your head. The rules were the same 40 years ago as they are now. You can either choose your spotlight – or you can stay at home.”  [imdb.com]

Jennifer Beals

“I get emotional all the time,” Jennifer Beals [left] once said. “I get emotional every time I make a speech, or talk about other cast members,” she says. “Every now and again, my heart just explodes and expands.”

Laurel Holloman, her castmate on the Showtime series “The L Word,” has seen this firsthand: “If Jennifer is passionate about something, it comes to the surface within seconds. My theory on that is all the best actors have a couple of layers of skin peeled away. There’s a huge emotional life in Jennifer, and it’s kind of beautiful.” [From article The Real Beals, by Jancee Dunn, Lifetime lifetimetv.com, August 2004]

Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman has noted, “You live with a lot of complicated emotions as an actor, and they whirl around you and create havoc at times. And yet, as an actor you’re consciously and unconsciously allowing that to happen… It’s my choice, and I would rather do it this way than live to be 100… Or rather than choosing not to exist within life’s extremities. I’m willing to fly close to the flame.” [Interview mag., Oct 2003]

Brittany Murphy

Brittany Murphy once commented that she thinks she is “a very oversensitive, vulnerable person. You have to be to do this for a living.” [Premiere, November 2000]

Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Johansson has noted that sensitivity can have a dark side: “I think I was born with a great awareness of my surroundings and an awareness of other people. I know when I really connect with somebody… Sometimes that awareness is good, and sometimes I wish I wasn’t so sensitive.

“I’m so happy I’m not walking around life with a cloud over my head, not really knowing which way to look or which way to turn. But then, on the other hand, sometimes you don’t wanna see what’s behind people’s doors.” [Interview mag., July, 2001]

Winona Ryder has commented, “I’ve never been a suicidal person. But there have definitely been times when I’ve thought, I’m too sensitive for this world right now; I just don’t belong here – it’s too fast and I don’t understand it.”

Ellen Muth

Ellen Muth [in the TV series Dead Like Me] has noted her character George/Georgia does care about people, “but she puts on this front like she doesn’t really care about anything and I kind of like that. George’s sensitivity is very hidden, but when it slips out she very quickly makes it so nobody else sees it… George tries to hide her emotions and I tend to do that.”

She adds, “One of the great things about acting is that you are able to release all sorts of things through another character.”
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See more in related post: Actors and Artists As Highly Sensitive People.

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“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 go to shopping malls or crowded places because I’d get overwhelmed by the energy.”

Dr. Orloff also notes, “Creative people are extremely sensitive. Neurologically, they are very finely tuned and open to all kinds of energies from the outside, so it’s important they protect themselves and not be overwhelmed.”

From post Emotional Freedom by Judith Orloff – about her book, in which she details ways to help relieve the effects of sensitivity and “free yourself from negative emotions.”

Here is part of a testimonial letter addressed to Virginia Bonta Brown, M.S., O.T.R., Co-founder and President of BioElectric Shield.

“Upon receiving the shield I read the flyer that came along with it and as it specified that most people do not experience much of a response instantly, so I put it on anyway, not expecting to feel a response and to my surprise I felt it instantly.

“There was an instant calmness that I had not experienced in a long time. I felt protected and felt like I had come home to me. Over the years I have become quite an emotional person, being quite sensitive both to devices and to negative and abusive people…”

Continued in Energy Sensitive, Highly Intuitive Australian Woman Experiences Life Again!

highly sensitive people, highly sensitive and stressed, sensitivity and stress, energy sensitivity, relieving sensitivity, protection for sensitivity

Excerpts from new book “Emotional Freedom” by Judith Orloff, MD

In my book, I emphasize the importance of learning how to stay centered in a stressful, highly emotionally charged world.

Since emotions such as fear, anger, and frustration are energies, you can potentially “catch” them from people without realizing it.

If you tend to be an emotional sponge, it’s vital to know how to avoid taking on an individual’s negative emotions or the free-floating kind in crowds.

Another twist is that chronic anxiety, depression, or stress can turn you into an emotional sponge by wearing down your defenses. Suddenly, you become hyper-attuned to others, especially those with similar pain.

That’s how empathy works; we zero in on hot-button issues that are unresolved in ourselves. From an energetic standpoint, negative emotions can originate from several sources. What you’re feeling may be your own; it may be someone else’s; or it may be a combination.

I’ll explain how to tell the difference and strategically bolster positive emotions so you don’t shoulder negativity that doesn’t belong to you.

This wasn’t something I always knew how to do. Growing up, my girlfriends couldn’t wait to hit the shopping malls and go to parties, the bigger the better–but I didn’t share their excitement.

I always felt overwhelmed, exhausted around large groups of people, though I was clueless why. “What’s the matter with you?” friends would say, shooting me the weirdest looks. All I knew was that crowded places and I just didn’t mix.

I’d go there feeling just fine but leave nervous, depressed, or with some horrible new ache or pain. Unsuspectingly, I was a gigantic sponge, absorbing the emotions of people around me.

With my patients, I’ve also seen how absorbing other people’s emotions can trigger panic attacks, depression, food, sex and drug binges, and a plethora of physical symptoms that defy traditional medical diagnosis.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that more than two million Americans suffer from chronic fatigue. It’s likely that many of them are emotional sponges.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time you’re on emotional overload.

With strategies to cope, you can have quicker retorts to stressful situations, feel safer, and your sensitivities can blossom.

From Dr. Judith Orloff’s new book Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself From Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life.

Also hear podcast interview with Judith Orloff.

Also see More articles by Judith Orloff.

Read more about supplements Dr. Orloff suggests to relieve anxiety at Anxiety Relief Solutions.

Aside from the dramatic mythology, psychiatrist and energy specialist Judith Orloff M.D. says “Energy vampires are people who suck our energy dry. Everyone can benefit from skills on how to cope with them. You can especially benefit if you are an ‘intuitive empath’ who absorbs the pain and negativity of others into your body, and become exhausted by it.

“Our relationships are governed by a give and take of energy. Some people make us more electric or at ease. Yet others suck the life right out of us.”

In her article Protect Yourself from Energy Vampires, Dr. Orloff details a number of examples of these ‘vampires’ that can deeply impact sensitive people – and what to do about them to protect yourself.

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Related Talent Development Resources pages:
High sensitivity resources : articles sites books
psychic ability
relationships
relationships : teen/young adult

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Technorati tags: .. energy medicine .. gifted and talented .. Judith Orloff .. highly sensitive
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high sensitivity personality, highly sensitive books, energy vampires, high sensitivity resources

On the excellent Highly Sensitive People dvd by Jim Hallowes, psychologist Pat Allen, PhD, MFT recalls her mother using the phrase “Still waters run deep” to refer to her – something many of us could relate to. I think my own mother used the phrase, as a subtle form of affirmation of my shyness.

“In school, I had to sit at the back of the room,” Allen notes, about being too sensitive to be too close to others. “While other kids were reading ‘Dick and Jane,’ I was reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica…”

Self-sedated

She talks about the issue of self-medication [which I address in my article Gifted, Talented, Addicted]: “I took up drinking at five. I drank my father’s leftovers. I was sedated from five to thirty five; that was my street medicine. But at thirty five, it was destroying me.

“Coming out of alcohol, I had to go on medication, and I was unable to sleep more than two hours a night on and on and on. But in those hours of staying up and staying up, like I was on cocaine, I was being driven mad. My blood pressure was 250 over 148 for much of my adult life.

Just an old HSP

“Now it’s 110 over 70, and I’m much healthier than I ever was when I was young, and it’s because I know, I have always known, that I was different, that I was gifted, that I was brilliant, that I didn’t fit…”

Now, she notes how this high sensitivity serves her career in helping others: “The ability to be sensitive to another person’s vibrations is how I make a living. They say I’m psychic. I’m not psychic; I’m just an old HSP.”

Highly Sensitive People dvd by Jim Hallowes

Her site: drpatallen.com

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Related Talent Development Resources pages:
Intensity / sensitivity
introversion / shyness
Alcohol and talent: teen / young adult
psychic ability

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Technorati tags: gifted adults gifted and talented introversion highly sensitive
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Dr. Pat Allen, hsp dvd, high sensitivity personality, gifted adults

In her article Growing Up Gifted Is Not Easy, Elaine Aron, PhD recalls searching for the term “sensitivity” in the social science literature, and finding that Linda Silverman [Director of the Gifted Development Center] “is convinced that all gifted children are highly sensitive.”

In our interview, psychiatrist Judith Orloff, MD commented that one form of sensitivity, psychic ability, “goes hand in hand with all exceptional ability.”

But she talks in another interview about the dark side of high energy sensitivity: “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. Only as an adult did I realize that I’m an empath and I was absorbing the energy of crowds. Being compressed in crowds can zap your energy.” [From article : Dr. Judith Orloff and Positive Energy, by Susan Meeker Lowrey.] Dr. Orloff is author of the book Positive Energy.

Her new column [in O, The Oprah Magazine] is about The Sponge People, which Martha Beck calls people who who pick up on the high levels of emotional energy that some people put out. “I’ve seen so many people struggling with the effects of this mysterious phenomenon that I now take it for granted,” said Dr. Beck.

“Not everyone is spongy, but those who are can learn to protect themselves from inadvertently taking in other people’s stress.” She lists in the article a number of strategies to “armor up.”

More help may be found on High sensitivity resources
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