“Am I crossing the line between healthy downtime and self-isolation?”
How do you tell the difference between healthy downtime and self-isolation? For a highly sensitive person, this is an important question. A highly sensitive (HSP) friend recently asked me, “How can I tell if I’m alone because I really need downtime, or because I’m...
Sensitivity to subtlety: a tenderly subversive HSP gift
While some aspects of our HSP sensory sensitivity can be annoying, inconvenient, or downright unpleasant, our sensitivity to subtlety is a gift—a key element of our unusual capacity for empathy and imagination. On weekday evenings I always keep an eye out for the...
Are you neurotic to grieve losses in advance?
If you grieve losses in advance, you are not alone—or neurotic. Rather, you are experiencing an aspect of your highly sensitive trait. I feel the poignant sadness that arises at this time each year as the weather gets cooler and my dahlias wither away. I've found...
An HSP coping with a crisis
Here are my reflections on what it was like for me as an HSP coping with a crisis that occurred in our family in the past two weeks. Three weeks ago, my dad fell and broke two ribs. He had fallen 20 times in the month before that, but miraculously had not been...
Why your HSP creativity is a double-edged sword
Learning how to manage your HSP creativity is a lifetime project, because your life itself is an ongoing act of creation. If you are a new reader of this newsletter, this might be the first time you’ve heard me wax poetic about dahlias. It won’t be the last, though. I...
How to reverse the anxiety spiral
How can you reverse the anxiety spiral? Understanding the power of the maelstrom can help you find your way back to calmer waters. This updated post was first published on June 18, 2019. I was not cut out to be a deep-sea diver. As a child I was unnerved by the mere...
Practices to help HSPs manage stress—and an announcement
My work is focused on practices to help HSPs manage stress, so I was delighted when my friend and colleague Andy Mort invited me to talk about those practices in some detail for his podcast, The Gentle Rebel. Today I’m excited to share with you my recent guest...
Why you should take the HSP self-test again… and how to do it
Even if you’ve taken it before, I recommend you take the HSP self-test again—in a specific way. As a tool, it’s not merely diagnostic: it is educational. If you are reading this, you are probably a highly sensitive person. How did you find out about the trait? And...
Why am I so hyperaware of my body?
When I was younger, I thought being hyperaware of my body was just an unpleasant part of being alive. Thank goodness I was wrong. I first experienced being hyperaware of my body during my junior year of college. That was a notable year. For the first time ever, I had...
“How often should I do my inner work?”
Have you ever wondered, “How often should I do my inner work?” Some kind of daily check-in and processing is essential for HSPs, but what matters even more is your intent. This year we signed up for a wonderful locally-owned composting service. Every two weeks, they...