Category Archives: sensitivity is a gift

Sensitive Soul With a Narcissistic Parent? Here’s Hope To Cheer Up That Dread In the Morning Feeling!

By Roxanne on | 11 Comments

Hello Everyone. If you feel like me this morning, you need some cheering up.  So I’m here to tell you that you are so much more than you feel.  Underneath the unworthy feeling and dread of being here on the planet is a soul with an inner child who is actually so full of life and joy.

Maybe you’ve gotten glimpses of your true amazing self recently and started actualizing some of your dreams but now the unworthiness is back and you feel lost.  Know that you are healing. “Big Time Inner Healing” is going on on the planet right now.  No you have not stepped backwards.  If you had a narcissistic parent or a mother who was too steeped in her own pain to give you what you needed, how is that pain ever going to heal if it is always pushed down and ignored?

So it is bubbling up to the surface to say hello and for you to love yourself through it.  You might be saying, I can’t get anything done this week—I am feeling like such a failure.  Look at it from a different perspective. Maybe reality is like this:  You had a great productive run there for a while and now is the perfect time for you to take some self-care time for yourself and look at some old wounds that keep popping up and holding you back. Whatever you are feeling you have good reasons for feeling it!

As a child you may have been neglected, shamed, humiliated, abandoned, betrayed, ganged up on by siblings, or ________ fill in the blank. You did a good job surviving the best that you could. You developed a deep unworthiness and a feeling that you’re not good enough as a tiny child when in fact you were great at most things.  You were deeply disappointed that you were not “seen” and it made no sense.  But now you know. 

You know how gifted you are and were—this is old stuff we are rehashing here—but here is the BIG THING that is happening right now.  You are having trouble actualizing your true self and stepping up into your true voice because the old wounds haven’t completely healed and they are coming up now so you can heal it. Yes, you can heal it! 

I am experiencing this too so let’s do this together.  There are inner child healing visualization exercises that are so powerful that they will shift us into our true selves and at the same time comfort and release a deep wound from childhood that has been frozen and stuck because we have had no patience with it. 

How often have you beaten yourself up for feeling a certain way and numbed yourself out with tasks or work to avoid allowing yourself to feel that way—this is the way that most Americans cope—they grit it out and go to their 9 to 5 jobs and are too busy to feel but they feel good that they got paid and worked and that is their reinforcement to continue to numb out their feelings. 

Then there are those of us creative intuitive feeling types that so struggle with fitting into this expectation—we try and try but the darn feelings keep coming up and getting in the way of us making a good living like other people do. But in actuality, we are the more skilled at attracting abundance then those who are nose to the grindstone—we just fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others who seem to be successful with a steady paycheck.

I am reading the book Creating Money by Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer and it is so good for Empaths, Sensitives, and Creative Artists who are struggling to step into their purpose and fly with their whole heart.  It says to get used to an ebb and flow when you are in a creative business that relies on your trusting your innate gifts of intuition and creativity to make a living. 

There will be times when you are humming along (flow) and then things will slow down and you have some time to look inward and grow some more (ebb).  This is not the way most of society thinks of as the way to success! You may be shamed by people who are making a living without access to their feelings and purpose.  Don’t listen to them.  You are the wiser soul with all the answers inside.  You’ve got this. We can do it together. 

I feel very excited about being a cheerleader for sensitive souls who are overcoming the deepest scars from a childhood lacking any sort of strong foundation to launch from. I can help put the pieces together so you can see that your sensitive soul already had a strong foundation of love and experience to launch from and you chose a really difficult childhood because you are strong enough to break through to be YOU. 

I’m confident that underneath the layers and messages of unworthiness that you absorbed as a tiny child is a gifted creative soul who is a shining light of goodness and compassion here to help the planet with that very compassion that has been used against you. 

It’s so hard to be excited about the day ahead when you wake up with dread and bad feelings about yourself. I have found if this happens to me I can stay stuck in that place if I don’t MAKE myself take some kind of action to access my truth.  For me it is writing in a journal.  I just start writing about how bad I am feeling and I immediately have compassion for myself and realize I am being too hard on myself. 

This is part of my gift and purpose, writing hopeful things (blog posts, songs, poems) to help uplift others similar to myself in a similar plight. I feel so much better writing all this then I did when I woke up this morning.  It has taken me 3 days of feeling down and being guided to rest and take a break (ebb) to finally feel rested enough to just start writing about my frustration in the hopes that it will help others. 

This is the voice of my true self and it feels so good to have broken through (flow) that stuck feeling of unworthiness that my inner child was stuck in.  When you have a narcissistic mother, you must learn self-compassion for the feelings that arise to be healed and take time out to write or do visualization exercises:

Okay here is a powerful exercise for healing the inner child that I mentioned earlier:

Picture yourself as a small child of any age you choose with the feelings that have you feeling down on yourself.

Picture yourself as your now adult self walking along and coming upon your tiny child self who has been abandoned and yelled at and shamed and abused. You are shocked at the beauty of this child, how could anyone ever not see the giftedness of this child that you see? You come to the rescue! 

You see the compassion, sensitivity,  creativity, curiosity, hopefulness, sense of humor, artistic ability, introspective genius, complex thinking, deep feeling capacity, ability to find joy and fun in the smallest of nature’s splendor, and on and on.  You are perplexed at how a child so magnificent could be cast aside and blamed for crying too much or any other small attempt to be loved.  Oh the injustice of it all—it makes no sense because yeah it is pretty crazy.  It’s not right.  And the adult you can do something about it immediately.  You go over to the child and you rescue them into your arms of the truth and the unconditional love that you know they deserve.  You pick them up with a knowing of who they are and all that they came here to be. You hold them tightly in your arms with their head on your shoulder and you tell them, “Everything is going to be alright now. I am here and I see what happened to you and it was wrong.  You deserved so much more and I’m going to hold you and comfort you and take care of you until you feel better.  I’ll be gentle with you and let you cry when you need to so you can learn to trust your feelings again. I’ll be here for you for as long as it takes. I promise because I see the gifts inside of you that are going to blossom with tender loving care.  And I’m going to teach you to be kind to yourself and that it’s okay to make mistakes and that is how we learn. I’m going to teach you to be whole and strong and stand on your own 2 feet because you know how to forgive yourself and be kind and caring to yourself and that you are good enough every minute that you are alive. When you are ill, you need rest and when you are sad you need freedom to grieve. I will take care of you forever.”

So you hold the inner child you and you feel them feeling better and healing those deep layers of unworthiness and not being held and comforted and their needs for autonomy not being met. 

You do this every time you are feeling bad about yourself—-do it every morning if you wake up feeling bad about yourself. Write about this process every time in a journal if it helps solidify the healing you experience.  You may want to write it from the child’s perspective. You may need to write out the grief of the loss of a childhood of not being able to have fun and relax due to these deeply engrained fears of not getting your basic needs met.

I’m reminded of many books that helped support me when I started doing my deepest inner grief work back in 2003 and then I started writing my songs of hope and healing in 2004. (See my recommended books page) And here I am here in 2019 clearing out the last remnants of these deep feelings of unworthiness to speak my voice that came up this morning and prompted me to write this to help others feeling these feelings. 

It just shows to depth of the damage that having a narcissistic parent can do to your sensitive soul. Oh it is so hard to break out of the vicious cycle of self-contempt!  But you can do this!  You are so special and gifted and full of light.  Keep coming back here to my blog if you need more encouragement because I plan to keep it up.

I see you and I am so proud of how you are healing.  I understand the depth of pain that that blanket of unworthiness can cause each morning. I wish you the strength to break through to the truth of the glory of who you really are. I’ll be back again soon to cheer you up again.  (See my channeled angel messages page too for more encouraging and comforting words from the angelic realms)

You’ve got this!  Sending infinite Hugs and Love and Light to your wounded inner child and to YOU,

Roxanne 😇💖✨

Posted in: dread, POSTS, sensitivity is a gift | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Recovery from PTSD from Childhood Trauma–for Highly Sensitive Souls

By Roxanne on | Leave a comment

Hello everyone.  I hope you are able to enjoy the holidays and find some inner peace and joy in just “being wonderful, sensitive YOU!”. For highly sensitive souls, the holidays can be difficult, especially if you are triggered easily due to PTSD from childhood trauma. I relate, however, many big breakthroughs have been happening for myself. I have been wanting to write and connect with you all about all the self discovery and healing I am learning about and how it’s making profound shifts in my own life–I am always listening to my inner guidance and growing.  It’s an amazing process once you get on a roll.  One day while journaling, the following information just poured out of me from my inner guidance and I knew it was meant to share on this blog.  Here it is:

“You can recover from PTSD from childhood trauma.  It’s not easy. It’s step by step. Yes, it really is about putting one foot in front of the other-wading through the feelings and voicing your truth.  When you have PTSD from trauma in childhood it is your root chakra that continually needs help in your life. This is about getting your legs underneath you, standing strong on your own 2 feet, and feeling safe.  It’s about moving forward towards your dreams.  It’s about feeling solid, centered, grounded, and safe for your soul to stay in your body.  When you voice your deep fears and the truth about their origins to a safe person, it validates you to feel safe and be “in” your body—perhaps for the first time.” 

I didn’t know I wasn’t in my body until 2011 and I had memories of terror come up when I was laid up with some health problems. I had to cry and re-experience the terror with a safe person holding my hand as I voiced the truth of what happened to me. Realizing it was from childhood and not in the present is part of the relief—you realize you are not dying or going to die from the emotional pain (which is what a child believes) but just releasing a repressed trauma.  Afterwards, I had a new sensation and a knowing that I was stronger—I proclaimed, “OMG! I feel like I am in my body for the first time!” I never forgot this moment and I was amazed—you realize the profound shifts that emotional healing can evoke.  It propels you to keep feeling more and more of your repressed pain and release it as it comes up. 

After this you begin to understand you are building a foundation (healing your root chakra)—a solid foundation is being laid down brick by brick.  It takes time and patience and deep love for yourself.  You are lovable and you have always been.  You deserve to feel safe and whole and vital.  You can overcome all of your fears and step into your whole true self.  You are on your way!

More helpful guidance for highly sensitive souls on the way in 2019!  Happy New Year to you all!! It’s gonna be a great year!!!

With love and light,

Roxanne 😇✨

Posted in: benefits of crying, finding your voice, Highly Sensitive Survivors, HSP Recovery, inner child grief work, inner guidance, inner strength, PTSD, Recovery, repressed emotions, root chakra healing, sensitivity is a gift, There is Hope!, unbearable emotional pain, Understanding the Highly Sensitive Person, working through the layers of pain | Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

To All Highly Sensitive Souls–You Are Loved

By Roxanne on | Leave a comment

You Are Loved

Lyrics by Roxanne Smith

I once was lost but then I opened up my heart

It took time to see my journey’s sad start

Strength in me came with feelings inside

Courageous purging with joy on the other side

 

Somehow I know that love is all there is

Inside every dark and painful fear is bliss

This I know because I left no stone unturned

I face the pain when the bottom was learned

 

It lays waiting until you let it go

Forgiving those who don’t connect with their soul

The soul has answers and comfort and love

Go within to hear angels from above

 

Chorus:

They surround each and every breathing heart

You are loved every day right from the start.

You are loved, you are loved, you are loved, you are loved

You are loved, you are loved, you are loved, you are loved

 

Repeat from the beginning

 

Add end (slowing)

You are loved, you are loved, you are loved, you are loved

Original Song © 2017 Roxanne Smith

 

Hello Everyone! I am sharing this song to the public for the first time here on this blog. It’s such a personal song I have not performed it yet, waiting for the perfect audience, the right moment. You all, however are the perfect audience for lyrics like these.  Here on this blog I feel comfortable letting it all hang out and feel proud of the healing journey I am on with all it’s ups and downs but always “with joy on the other side”.

I just saw that it has been since April 5 that I have put out a blog post and I apologize for that! Time has been flying by since I decided to start my life coaching business back up. I just completed designing my brand new life coaching website.  I’m happy to report that this blog has gotten over 45 new followers in just the last 2 months even though my recent posts were short and not really up to my standards yet.  So I am getting the message that my blog posts here are important and to make them a priority in my life!

I am very excited about this.  I love talking to you all!  I love giving hope to all of you like-minded souls out there who resonate with my message of hope and healing to become your highest selves! We strive to be our healthiest, kindest, most confident, and helpful to the planet while being complex and highly sensitive souls who often feel we don’t fit in with others. We are overcoming deep-seated negative feelings and beliefs from the past that keep popping up out of the blue just when things are going well.  Phew!  Why are we so hard on ourselves when we already know that extreme self-care makes so much difference in our lives?

Time to pull back again. Get quiet. Go inward. Write out ALL your feelings with self-compassion as if you are writing to your most trusted friend in the world who really GETS you! Be your own container when you can’t find a safe person to vent to.  We all need to vent all the frustration we are feeling about EVERYTHING! I had a surprising amount of anger to release in April. It was all about codependency issues that I thought I had healed long ago.  Surprise!–there was more! Releasing it all (which was not easy) moved me to a new place of strength and independence at the core of me that I didn’t know existed.  And the month of May… well it’s starting out with a virus from some recent airplane travel that has got me layed up and resting to clear it all out.  So all my exciting plans for coaching and more performing are on hold while I rest and clear out this virus and with it lots of emotions too. My intuition tells me I’ve moved to a new level of vibrational success so I need to clear out more …whatever! 😳 I’m not as frustrated as I am fascinated and trusting that whatever happens it will be for a good reason.

Sometimes things are so hard and then we get through it and see the silver lining that was there all along. And that is that We Are Loved.  We are loved from above. We are here for a good reason.  We are highly sensitive souls who are here on the planet at this time because the planet needs our gifts, our light, our true essence. We can relax and just BE and know we are loved.

Just being here is enough.  You don’t have to do anything–just heal and learn to love ourselves.  If we really GET this we can recharge and become strong and then we have more energy to give more light and love to others. But we can’t do it if we don’t love ourselves first. Let the love in that is beaming down for you at all times. Believe it.

And if you can’t believe it at least be OPEN to the possibility. Let down your guard and allow the possibility that your guardian angel/spirit guide/God/ Universe/Highest Self  just might be sending you messages of love and comfort through your intuition.  They just might be sending you guidance on your next steps for the highest good of your soul.  Follow your heart to hear the inner guidance. Hear it? It is saying, You Are Loved! Exactly as you are! You don’t have to change yourself, you only need to love yourself. Let that sink in. Marinate in that truth for a while.  I’m sending all of you so much comfort, caring, and encouragement to see your unique gifts as highly sensitive souls. I’ll be writing more uplifting blog posts soon so stay tuned.

With love and light 💖 ✨,

Roxanne 😇 🎶

Posted in: deep layers of feelings, God is Love, Heaven, higher power, Highly Sensitive Survivors, HSP Recovery, HSPs are too hard on themselves, inner strength, listen to your heart, Love from Above, POSTS, recharge, Recovery, relearn to trust, safe person, sensitivity is a gift, Shine your light, Song Lyrics, songs of hope and healing, suffering, There is Hope!, you are God's child, You Are Loved | Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Welcome To The Blog For Highly Sensitive People, Intuitives, Empaths, and INFJs In Search Of Emotional Support and Guidance

By Roxanne on | 6 Comments

(May 23, 2012–No you are not seeing double–except for parts of the first paragraph I copied this post and turned it into my new static Home page. So if you have already read this post, check out the comments here and then just scroll down to find the other posts. Welcome to my blog and it’s new format.  New posts coming soon!  🙂 )

Hi Everyone.  I am back and feeling great.  Thank you to all for your prayers and well wishes.  I hope you are doing well also.  I learned much while I was away and I have much new knowledge and wisdom to share.  My Coaching is thriving and I feel very blessed.  I love my work–there is no better feeling than helping other highly sensitive souls to feel good about themselves and their lives and to help them to heal their emotional wounds.  In my opinion, my clients are among the kindest, most compassionate, gifted people on the planet!

It is interesting for me to take an objective look at this blog now that I have had a break from it for several months–there is so much content here.  The first post I wrote back in January 2010.  In my last post,  I talked about how I feel I healed my final trauma-wound—an abandonment wound from the time when I was only 1 and 1/2.  I couldn’t remember it of course but the emotional pain had been dormant within me and in my body in the form of an energy blockage.  Both ailments that I suffered from in the last year were in my root chakra–I never knew about the chakras before and I had been kind of resistant to learning about that kind of stuff.  But it kept coming up in my search for answers to how to heal from this last ailment.  It helped me to put it all together when I read that health issues in the root chakra area may have to do with issues of abandonment.  Then it all came clear in the AHA moment I talked about in my last post (see Oct. 2011) and I was able then to process and heal this inner trauma.

Since then I feel different–healthier, physically stronger, and wiser and with so much more clarity and calmness. For the last month, when thinking about what I was going to write for this post I was trying to think of a word to describe this feeling.  Then I saw Jane Fonda speak on Oprah and on Dr. Oz and some other shows and I resonated so much with what she was saying about “wholeness” and I realized that is it!  I feel “Whole”.

I feel I have come full circle into living my life with the vitality of my whole true self.  I feel more centered and grounded with an exhilaration about the wonderful things to come and for all that I have learned from where I have been.  I am so grateful for what feels like a second chance at life without chronic pain.  I have learned how to relax and enjoy my life.  It has been such a rollercoaster of a spiritual journey to come to this place and time where I can say that with confidence and amazement.  In 2004, when I started writing my songs and process through the layers of grief and pain that kept coming up and were holding me back, I never would have dreamed it was possible–the pain seemed endless as I worked through my childhood truth that had previously been long hidden away from me.  There was something inside of me that KNEW that going through the pain was the only way to get to the other side–that finding my true self was only possible by changing the “faulty BELIEFS” about myself that had formed in early childhood.

And now here I sit feeling very much healed with a new-found ability to recharge and comfort myself and find inner peace no matter what life throws at me and know with complete confidence and trust that everything is going to be okay.  I am telling you this because I want all of you to know it is possible for you too.  I feel so strong in spirit now with so much to give to assist other highly sensitive souls to heal from their abuse from a narcissistic, emotionally abusive parent or to heal from childhood wounds from an event or trauma from childhood.

I look at the content on this blog and there is so much self-help information here–I am amazed at how I did it!  I remember it just flowed out of me easily for almost 2 years, ideas coming to me all the time.  I really was just going with the flow in my life at the time–it takes a lot, getting informative posts ready for public view.  I look over this blog and it feels like it is “complete’–I have had people tell me that it is an entire self-help book in itself.  Some people tell me they read 2 posts a week and it helps them so much.  Others tell me they start at the first post and read it like a book.

If you are looking for some emotional support and guidance, there is much content that I have written in the comment sections of each post where I have in the past answered each and every person’s comment.  I am no longer able to do that now that I am Coaching a lot more.  Frequent commenters have been jumping in occasionally to give support to other commenters when I am not able–it is wonderful to see this happening. Thank you to those of you who have reached out to help others in this way.

I will be answering comments just sporadically and occasionally from now on because of my busy Coaching schedule.  But please know, I am here–I am available for Ask the Coach services and for Coaching.  I am reading your comments and I know you are out there–I understand and KNOW first-hand the emotional pain you are experiencing as you try to make sense of the confusion and destruction of the spirit that is left behind by a narcissistic parent or narcissistic family members.  I send my love and message of hope to you all.  I hope this blog will be a safe place that you can come to for comfort, encouragement, compassion, and most of all healing.

UNDERSTANDING THE HIGHLY SENSITIVE PERSON:

In my early forties, I felt empowered when I discovered that I am a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).  I now understand that being an HSP is a gift and for this I am truly grateful.  It means I am highly “intuitive”–not highly “insecure” or “weak” as many people have been wrongly led to believe by our American culture and media.  It also means that I am “Sensory”-sensitive which is not about emotionality–it means I am sensitive to sensory input that causes me to feel overstimulated at times–HSPs take in 5 to 10 times more stimuli in our environments than non-HSPs.  HSPS  are highly creative and often visionaries.  Here are some other things I learned about being an HSP that I would like to share:

1)      MANY HSPS ARE HIGHLY EMPATHIC.  Until you understand the benefits of being an HSP, it can be very difficult to understand why you are so different from those around you and why you yearn to “fit in”.  HSPs feel things more deeply and we can empathize with the feelings of others so completely that we often unwittingly “take on” the negative feelings of those around us.  We can end up feeling “bad” and have no idea why and blame ourselves for it when actually the feelings belong to the person we were just talking to (or sometimes even someone we have just been near).  When we feel bad for no reason, the common reaction for HSPs is to blame ourselves and mentally beat ourselves up.  For example, we say to ourselves, “what is wrong with me;  I should be happy;  everyone else seems happy and carefree so there is something wrong with me that I feel this way;  I must have emotional problems;  I am flawed compared to everyone else”  etc.  When we can recognize that the emotions we are feeling are from others, we can learn to stop this negative self-talk and let go of and release this negative energy that we have absorbed.

2)      HSPS ARE OFTEN TOO HARD ON THEMSELVES.  Becoming aware of how you are treating yourself in your head is becoming aware of your “inner critic”.  Your inner critic is always negative and always wrong about you.  Becoming aware of your inner critic is powerful.  Once you become aware that you are listening to your inner critic you must stop and say to your self, “No, that is not true about me!”  Then replace these thoughts with positive affirmations such as “I love and approve of myself;  I am safe;  I am supported and cared for by the Universe (God);  and I am a highly intuitive soul and I am sensitive for a reason”.  Being able to change the way you treat yourself and talk to yourself will change your life!

3)      HSPS ARE LOVING, COMPASSIONATE SOULS.   When you love and approve of yourself as you deserve to be, you begin to shine the light that is inside your soul.  This light is the gift of the highly sensitive soul:  you innately see the good and the potential in other people;  you look to yourself to improve rather than blaming others or expecting them to change;  you are able to empathize with other people’s feelings with compassion;  you are a trusting and loyal friend;  and a very good listener.  These are wonderful gifts for a person to have for they are rare—and it is usually only the rare and highly sensitive friend that would point this out to you.

4)      HSPS OFTEN NEED TO LEARN HEALTHY BOUNDARIES.  Being the kind and caring soul that you are, if you are not seeing the value of that, your worthiness, you will often attract relationships with the kind of negative energy that your inner critic is reflecting.  Also, people who are less sensitive and not intuitive at all are often drawn to HSPs because we absorb their negative feelings and they feel better around us.  Some of these relationships can really confuse us because these non-HSPs can “act” very kind and generous when they want something from us.  These are actually people we need to avoid because they drain us and are unable to reciprocate the giving nature that we need and deserve in a friendship.  Ending relationships with people who are really takers and manipulators rather than givers is a giant leap towards becoming the person you dream to be.  When you are able to take this final step for yourself and start listening to your inner guidance that is your gift, you are well on your way to a life of emotional vitality and wholeness.

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Here are lists of links to important posts within this blog:

HSPs and Allergies, Food Intolerances, and Stress-Related Illness

Helpful Tips About Healing Childhood Pain

Learned Helplessness in HSPs

High Achieving and Intuitive HSPs Can Overcome Self-Defeating Behaviors

More Helpful Tips For HSPs with N. Parents

Part 2–More Helpful Tips of HSPs with N. Parents

The Misjudgement of Introverts and the True Meaning of Introversion

HSPs and Perfectionism–How to Heal Through Grieving Childhood Pain  

Forgiveness is For Your “Self”

Through Pain You Grow Stronger–Processing Childhood Pain

Mother’s Day Survival Guide

The Process of Inner Child Healing

How My Best Counselor Helped Me

Journaling for HSPs–Over-riding Your Inner Critic

Childhood Pain Comes Up To Heal When Things Are Going Well

Overcoming Self-doubt and Unblocking Creativity

Holiday Survival Tips–For HSPs With N. Parents and My Musical Gift Recovery

Honor Thy Parents Only If They Are Honorable

Stress Relief For HSPs

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As a final note of support, I want to say that as a highly sensitive and intuitive person, you are part of a group of 15 to 20% of the population that is deep, caring, and compassionate with much love to give. Our giving nature is an inspiration to others who are also part of this 15 to 20%.  You do not have to be around anyone who makes you feel bad.  One fifth of the population is over 1 BILLION PEOPLE–and empathetic compassionate people are out there. When you begin to love yourself as you are, stop comparing yourself to others, and protect yourself and your energy from the negative people who diminish you by staying away from them while you are healing, you will start attracting and finding more compassionate people like yourself in your life. Do not settle for superficial relationships–take the road less traveled.  It is the path to love and enlightenment and inner peace.

With love and warmest wishes,

Roxanne

Posted in: "Relax and enjoy your life...", beliefs, Coaching for Empaths, Coaching for HSPs, Coaching for INFJs, Coaching for Intuitives, healthy boundaries, highly empathic, HSP Recovery, HSPs are too hard on themselves, Inner Child Healing, inner critic, Intuitive Types, POSTS, sensitivity is a gift, Sensory-sensitive is not about emotionality, spiritual, Understanding the Highly Sensitive Person, Wholeness | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How Highly Sensitive People Who Are High Achieving and Intuitive Can Overcome Self-Defeating Behaviors

By Roxanne on | 27 Comments

Hi everyone.  Today I want to talk about the special complexity of being both a high achiever and Intuitive, and a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and how this combination of academic giftedness, and a deep thinking facility can lead to avoidance and a numbness in regard to emotions.

What I have come to learn about healing is that it is often so difficult to begin when, as highly intuitive (highly sensitive) children, we have spent most of our lives trying not to be so “sensitive”, and to fit into the rest of society, that, at least in the American Culture that exists today, being sensitive is not the “ideal”.  There exists a pressure to be extraverted, social, superficial, constantly busy, productive and able to produce and work hard no matter what is going on in our lives.  Also the word sensitive is often used synonomously with the word “insecure” and that is not at all what is meant here.  Sensitivity (Intuition) is a gift and it causes you to experience everything in life at a deeper, richer level.  Less sensitive others may outnumber us and put it down but they are just plain wrong!

Because of ridicule of our budding sensitive selves early in life, we have hidden away the part of us that “feels” and have become very good at being successful and “thinking” our way out of problems and “thinking” our way to finding a cure for the emptiness and loneliness we sometimes feel.  So we keep seeking out superficial relationships and experiences, looking for some “one” or  fun experiences that will be the answer to our discontent.

Also we try to fill our time with busy tasks that satisfy our immediate need for validation and often this is through technology, being constantly plugged in to our computers or phones, being news junkies, texting, video games, watching television etc.  All of these tasks seem to keep us going through another empty day of being out of touch with who we really are and help to keep us in a state of numbness that was a state of survival for us as highly sensitive children.

The problems that crop up in our lives are clues to the fact that this superficial state of existence is not really working for us and we need to make a change.  For example, it is often a shock to us when we have relationship problems with others because we, for the most part see nothing wrong with how we are functioning and relating to others. When you have spent your life avoiding painful feelings you begin to believe that you have no real problems at all and everything would just be fine if people would do things your way—the logical way.  It isn’t until others in our lives complain about our emotional unavailability that we even see that there is a problem at all.

Other problems that may crop up from not being in touch with our emotional side are that you may be out of touch or blocked from fully utilizing your creativity and this can lead to a feeling of dissatisfaction with the work that you are doing.  Also, when you are dissatisfied with your work because it is unfulfilling on a deeper emotional level, gradually it saps your energy.

You may also “over-work” to continue numbing out your feelings because you are out of touch with your feelings that tell you a natural time to stop and you are not listening to your body. When you over-work at an unfulfilling job you run on adrenaline a lot from stress.  This causes your body to produce too much cortisol which can mess up the balance of hormones and cause you to have less energy. motivation, and even feel semi-depressed (possible symptoms of Adrenal Fatigue or “burnout”). This can cause you to become overwhelmed with even simple tasks in your life that you just don’t have the motivation or energy to do anymore.

This is worsened when you are highly intuitive (sensitive) in that you are constantly taking in more stimuli than other people who are not intuitive.  You may be comparing yourself constantly to less intuitive (less sensitive) others and you get overwhelmed trying to do what everyone else seems to be able to do.  Intuitives are only 15 to 20% of the population and it will help you so much if you embrace that it is a gift that sets you apart and you are different for a reason. You must make allowances for your need for breaks and time alone to recharge–even extraverts who are highly intuitive (sensitive) need to cut back on their “list of shoulds” because they are taking in more stimuli than extraverted others.  Just realizing you “require” more rest and more time to recharge and regroup when you are in a stressful job can be quite a relief–especially for this group that tends to be harder on themselves anyway and want badly to succeed and be the best at their jobs which are often technology based.

Getting access to your emotional side and out of the left-brained thinking side which you exist in most of the time will help you to feel more satisfaction and joy in your life and at work and have more fulfilling connections with others.

This is not easy but it is so worth the effort because the end result is the connection to the real you—the emotional side of yourself that is the connection to the source of all love and compassion which is a higher power/universal consciousness/or “God”!  Now I know I may have lost some of you just now because your scientific mind refuses to believe in something so intangible and illogical.  However, if you do some research you will find that some of the greatest minds including Albert Einstein believed in a spiritual creative universal consciousness that could be tapped into. This can be achieved by believing in your self and your dreams and requires a certain amount of “emotional self-discovery” and healing of those blocks which keep us from feeling things on a deep level.

When you work through the blocks that keep you from enjoying your life on a deep level you can overcome compulsive behaviors such as perfectionism, over-working, and procrastination as well.  These behaviors often result because you are trying to do too many things and have unrealistic expectations of your highly sensitive self–you may try to “overcome” your sensitivity if you look at it as a weakness or you may try to ignore it–but it is innate in you and it will always be there!

As I said before, it is better to embrace it and surrender to it and see it as the gift that it really is–a higher level of creativity and vision will be available to you at your work if you finally start taking care of your extra needs for sleep, time alone, and down time from the left side of your brain. You will be able to tap into your creative genius as a visionary at work if you do some things that help you tap into the right side of your brain–the creative, emotional, and spiritual side. Operating with access to both sides of your brain is so important for balance in your life and in your health and vitality.  Makes logical sense, right?

My recommendation is Journaling–writing out your feelings, whatever they are, negative or positive, daily in a journal for your eyes only–because it is a scientific fact that writing in order to express your “feelings” opens up neural pathways to the right side of your brain.  It is a channel to the creative side of your life which is the key to a fulfilling connection to your true self and to a source of love we are all capable of experiencing as humans on this planet.

You can do this yourself by following the journaling guidelines in the book, “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron.  It is a course in discovering and recovering your creative self and I highly recommend it–I did these “morning pages” myself as part of my own recovery.  I have written some other posts on how journaling has helped me and I have referred to it as my own inner grief work and the process of “growing a backbone”.  My husband (an INTJ) journals for healing and was amazed at it’s effect and referred to the process as “growing a new heart”.  The outcome of this kind of journaling is as unique for the person as the uniqueness of the person doing the writing.

The truth is you need to be able to love your self in order to give love to others and that is necessary in order to be happy and fulfilled in your life and in your work.  You may be saying, “I love myself already”, but it may be more of a sense of entitlement for things and success and a superficial love for self.  What I am talking about is loving all of you including the parts of yourself that you are cut off from and avoid–the feelings that make you uncomfortable–shame, sadness, despair, loneliness, and anger etc..  These are feelings that we all feel for a reason and the reason needs to be acknowledged along with the feelings so that you can express them and ultimately release them and heal them.  When you allow painful feelings to be expressed at the core of when they occurred and for the reason that they occurred then you are connecting to the truth that you blocked from your memory.  A block such as this is always going to keep you from being able to experience full joy and happiness in your life until you work through it.

Often these blocks were formed in childhood.  If you were a highly sensitive child in an environment where your parents were already overwhelmed with dealing with their own feelings, then you may have shut off your feelings and repressed them in order to “be good” and helpful to your parents.  Sometimes we were so gifted and so intuitive that we were able to shut down our feeling sides without the memory of any real trauma from childhood but just because we constantly told ourselves that our feelings didn’t matter.  We then have a “belief” that we are no more than this false self that we created to survive—when in actuality there is a whole other rich and emotional side to us that is begging for our attention!

Problems that come up in our lives are clues to this other side of our life that needs healing.  Gary Zukav, author of the Seat of the Soul, is a physicist who embraces the spiritual side of his life and believes that the way to feeling wholeness is by excavating our feelings as if we are an archeologist looking for clues and answers to “why”.  The answers are inside of us and often are because of events that occurred in our childhood that keep us stuck at the emotional level that we were at the time the event occurred.

Often, things that happened in childhood were unbearably painful and we had to repress them in order to survive them.  To “repress” is to completely deny them and remove them from our consciousness!  Journaling helps to bring them forth and allow us to discover things about us that are important clues to how to be happy in life!

Remember, the opposite of depression is not happiness but “vitality” which is the ability to express and let flow the full spectrum of emotions—the negative uncomfortable ones as well as positive and easy ones. (Alice Miller–The Drama of the Gifted Child).  I hope this information has been helpful to you.

With love,

Roxanne

 

 

 

 

 

 

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