Highly Sensitive People Survival Guide

One day workshop

Welcome, aims for the day, introductions and housekeeping

HSP information and quiz

Grounding

Let’s start by making sure you are grounded. Stand up and take a few seconds to pay attention to the spot where your feet meet the ground. Do you feel your socks against the sole of your feet? This is where you are connect to the Earth, a stable grounding point.

Turn down the volume

2) Close your eyes and imagine a volume dial in front of you that goes from 0 to 10. Put a label on this dial that says something like “other people’s emotions”. This dial represents how much you’re picking up from other people right now. What number are you on? Most HSP’s who have not yet learned some shrouding techniques are always on 10.

3) Turn the dial down a few notches. Can you get to 8? DO NOT try to get all the way down to 0. Your mind will refuse to do this. Being HSP is part of who you are. We’re trying to make this more comfortable, not yank it out Instead, look for a feeling of relief.

4) How do you know it’s working? One criterion for success is a feeling of relief. Do you have a little more breathing room? Is your stomach easing up? Do you feel slightly calmer? These seemingly small changes add up over time. The more you practice, the more often you will experience these moments of emotional calm.

If you’ve been living in a very emotionallyloudenvironment for many years, you’re probably used to it by now. But it’s really hard to know exactly how YOU feel when you’re drowning in other people’s emotional signals.

Once you can turn down the volume of what you’re picking up from other people it’s time to focus on yourself again. When your inner space is quieter, you can tune in to what YOU WANT, not what other people want from you. What a relief!

Tune In

1) Close your eyes and imagine avolume dial in front of you that goes from 0 to 10. Put a label on this dial that says something like “My Feelings” or just “Me”. This dial represents how much of your own feeling are available in your awareness. Most people who are HSP are overrun by other people’s stuff and can barely connect with their own emotions.

3) Turn the dial a few notches up. Don’t try to jump all the way to 10. This will likely bring up too many intense feelings that were kept quiet for many years. Be gentle and go up on your volume dial a little bit at a time. Eventually, you will naturally rest on 10.

4) Take a deep breath to reboot your mind. It takes a moment for your brain to realize that things have changed.

5) Try toidentifyhow YOU feel right now. Can you articulate your own emotions and opinions.

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Crowds

Crowds can be very difficult for those who are HSP because of the physical proximity which makes it more likely that we’ll start tuning into them and become overwhelmed by their emotions. If you’re surrounded by hundreds of people, that adds up pretty quickly.

1) Rate how you feel right now, from 1 (very bad) to 10 (very good).

2) Close your eyes and visualize the particles in your body getting more and more spaced out. They are expanding like a gas, so there is more space between each atom in your body.

3) Imagine now that your own magnetic field is expanding too: It is as big as the room…as big as the building you’re in…as big as the city block…How big can you get it….

4) When your energy is too dense (which is a reflex when we’re trying to protect ourselves from a perceived threat), other people’s stuff can get caught in it. But when there is more space between the particles in your body, it’s easy for other people’s stuff to slip past you instead of getting caught in your energy field. They just flow right through you!

5) Rate how you feel again, from 1 (very bad) to 10 (very good). If it’s going up, you’re on the right track! Keep practicing!

Some people who are HSP find this following exercise helpful. When you are walking through the crowd, imagine that you are clearing a path ahead of you, like Moses parting the Red sea. Instead of hitting you, other people’s emotions are deflected to your left and to your right, allowing you to glide through without picking up their emotions.

Relationships

These are the most common problems reported by those who are HSPin their close relationships.

Emotional Enmeshment

Being an HSP can be a huge advantage in the beginning of a relationship because you can quickly connect emotionally with other people. But it can also become uncomfortable when you become so close that you are overwhelmed by their emotions.

One of the major challenges for those who are HSP is that we are constantly feel their stuff. This can lead to a tough situation where our own thoughts and emotions become enmeshed with someone else’s, where we can’t tell them apart.

For example, if they come home grumpy from having a bad day at work, you might also start to feel irritated without really knowing why.

Emotion Intensity

Even if it’s very positive, intense emotions can be overwhelming for those who are HSP. We’re so sensitive that feeling powerful emotions is overloading our senses and we need to pull back, oftentimes both emotionally and physically. Women might even feel an aversion to being touched by a loving husband or feel totally exhausted after holding their baby.

Always make sure you have enough time daily where you are by yourself in a quiet environment. This is the best way to recharge your batteries and calm down your senses.

Emotion Interpretation

It’s very easy for those who are HSP to misinterpret what they perceive from their partner. People often experience complex emotions that they can’t fully explain or understand. One of the most common misinterpretation is that if you can feel it, they can feel it too. But when you read emotional information from others, you typically cannot tell whether these are conscious or unconscious feelings.

Never assume that other people can feel what you feel, even within themselves. It’s always best to ask how they feel instead of assuming that you know.

Boundaries

Those who are HSP are very easily overrun by other people’s emotions from the enmeshment problem described earlier. We’ll give in, be swayed in our opinions or settle for a bad compromise just because it’s what the other person wants. So it’s critical that we learn to keep our emotional space free from external influences.

Here’s some techniques to do this:

Build Your Boundary. Before you start a discussionwith your partner, take a moment to close your eyes and imagine a bubble around you about two or three feet from your body. This is the boundary to your personal space.

StrengthenYour Boundary with physical space:

Don’t sit too close. Leave space between the two of you so you can maintain your personal space. It’s better not to touch them during the discussion.

Don’t face your partner. Instead, sit at an angle.If you’re sitting across a table, aim your knees away from your partner’s body.

Holdyour Boundary. If you start to feel confused or overwhelmed, pause for a moment and getyour bubble of personal space back to its full size.

Work

Upon discovering they are HSP, many people feel the urge to quit their job and work in a setting that will use their caring skills. Before you make that jump, let’s clarify a few things…

Unless you can first understand, protect, control and use your HSP skills to another personas advantage without losing something of yourself, then you are not ready to reach out to others. It’s very different to use your skills just for yourself than having to rely on them to help someone else. It’s important to get trained as you are doing now first. Sadly some training can make you lose touch with those innate skills as they discourage their expression.

You might already be in the right place! Before you quit your job, consider that your skills can be used in pretty much every situation in life. I have seen HSPs in all walks of life including police, probation,education and even in prison inmates.

There might be plenty of opportunity to enhance your skills in your current job, until you’re ready to move on to something else.

Work

Being surrounded by stressed, angry or depressed co-workers can easily send those who are HSP into overload. Especially in settings where you have very little personal space.

In this exercise, you’ll reclaim your own bubble of personal space, even in a cramped setting.

Ensure that you are practicing Turning down the volume and tuning in on a daily basis, until you get the hang of it and can do it automatically.

Think for a moment about having space and feeling safe. What images come to mind? Do you think of the beach? A trip to the lake? Being in a forest? Being alone at home?

Select an object that you will imbue with the emotional feelings that you associate with those emotions. It can be a crystal, a picture of your vacation spot, a stuffed animal, etc.

Hold the selected object in your hands, while you think about having space, freedom and feelingsafe. Visualize your emotions running through the object.

Anchor it in your mind by saying out loud: I am in my space. This is a safe place while holding your object.

Bring the object to work (you can also keep it in your purse or pocket). Several times a day, or when you start to feel tired, angry or depressed, touch this object and say to yourself :I am in my space. This is a safe place. It only takes a few seconds, but it will tell your mind to focus on these calming and centering thoughts.Pay attention to how you feel after this exercise. You’re looking for a sense of relief.

Feeling Safe

It’s quite natural to pay attention to things that might hurt us: it’s a survival reflex.

However, this survival reflex can turn into a state of hyper vigilance where we’re always on the lookout for negative emotions. We start to see them everywhere, and expected them all the time.

Feeling safe is such a powerful state of being for an HSP. But it’s so difficult to achieve when we feel surrounded by a sea of threatening negative emotions.

Developing a sense of safety does not come from controlling the outside circumstances of our lives, but from nurturing positive feelings inside of our own psyche. If we can feel safe even when we sense that someone is angry, we have truly conquered this destructive pattern.

Emotional Freedom Technique

Emotional Freedom Technique can release old negative thought patterns and develop new positive ones.

(video)

Survival

Grounding is a critical skill for those who are HSP. It turns our focus away from other people and back to ourselves. The opposite of grounding is being distracted, which is how we end up overwhelmed by other people’s feelings.

Most grounding techniques involve visualizations and meditations. Those didn’t work for everyone when you first try to be more grounded. Here are some different grounding techniques thatmight work for you:

1) Wash your hands: Washing your hands flushes out energy you might have picked up from other people. It’s a mental trigger to clean up your energy.

2) Eating: This is a delicious way to stay grounded. Pick a snack to bring along soyou can munch on itwhen you start to feel overwhelmed.

3) Grounding Crystal. You can discreetly wear a grounding crystal as a necklace, to keep yourself centered throughout the day.

4) Grounding Mudra: A mudra can beused to quickly alter the flow of your energy, bringing you back to more stable grounds.


Grounding for Children who are HSP

As a HSP, you are more likely to recognize or have HSP children. Keep in mind that many HSP children are born into non HSP families, so the parents might not be interested or ready to hear about this topic.

These are typical behaviors of children who don’t know how to handle their abilities:

  • Gets unusually quiet around crowds but is fine with the immediate family or smaller groups. Your child might be trying to withdrawing from overwhelming emotional situations.
  • Resists going to bed or wakes up often. Your child might still internally activated by the emotional activity of adults.
  • Gets physically or verbally out of control around people but is mellow at home. Your child might be trying to find an outlet to the overwhelming flow of emotional information.

Keep in mind that children can learn how to manage their HSP abilities by watching us handle ours. If you’re HSP but don’t know how to handle it, practice your own HSP skills first!

When your child gets overwhelmed, s/he often just needs a point of reference to stay grounded: You can be that anchor.

1) Calm your own emotions. You can’t be a positive anchor if you’re upset or angry.

2) Tell her quietly: Look at me(point to your eyes) and put your hand on her chest. Make sure you have eye contact

3) Tell her We’re going to take 5 breaths together and count them. Let your child breathe however she wants. You’re just accompanying her, counting out loud with each exhalation.

Breathing quiets down emotional noise, re-centers the mind and helps children feel empowered by having something they can do when they feel uncomfortable. You can include this grounding exercise in your night time routine.

Energy Vampires

Put the vampire in a beautiful bubble filled with a light of your choice.

Wrap yourself in white light and ask for protection

Imagine a mirror between you reflecting their image back – ask for healing for them

Amythest, Obsedian or labrodorite crystals

Wings to wrap around you for protection,.