Do you want to truly invest in your personal growth and become a happier and more balanced person? Start with a personal growth plan!

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

We highly sensitive, empathetic people have some incredible gifts. The ability to assess the emotional and spiritual health of another is of great benefit to others. Particularly if we are knowledgeable about how to help them.

However, with every give we have, there comes a drawback. We understand like no other the effect of toxic feelings and emotions on the human body.

As we inadvertently soak up the energies around us, we become acutely aware of how our own batteries are drained. Consequently, if we don’t have the tools to protect and cushion ourselves against the harshness of life, we will be left empty and useless to others.

Unique Challenges To Empaths And Highly Sensitive People

These are our daily challenges, this is why it is important to commit to our own personal growth and development as we seek to help others.

Moreover, the more we know about our spiritual and emotional gifts and how to incorporate them into our own personal growth plan, the more effective we will be in changing the energy on the earth at this time.

Here are some of the daily hurdles we face:

Others’ Emotions Can Deeply Affect Us

You can be having the best day filled with unexpected blessings from another, a promotion at work, lucky parking spaces when running errands. However, if you get home to find that your partner has suffered losses, then your day is effectively ruined as well.

Moreover, you feel another’s stress and emotions all the way to your bones. Once they have sunk in, they are difficult to cast aside.

You Easily Tire

This tiredness and fatigue can be emotional, spiritual, even physical, as you seek to manage your own emotions and be a buffer for others as well.

Finding time to rest and recharge throughout the day will be an essential part of your personal growth plan and strategy for a healthier life.

Noticing Subtleties

It can be a feeling that you pick up, a subtle expression that for a moment flashes across another face, or even someone’s body posture that you observe.

You pick up on what others are feeling, whether they are saying it or not.

Not only do you notice, you tend to take on in an attempt to resolve issues for others.

You Put Your Own Personal Development Aside For The Greater Good

Perhaps, you have the best intentions for developing a personal growth plan that works for you. Yet, something always seems to come up that pulls you in the direction of resolving issues for others.

Your plan to improve your life gets continually shoved to the back burner in favor of what seems like the greater good, when in reality it is harming you.

Realize that you must focus on yourself and your own personal growth plan strategies in order to truly be of effective service to others. How on earth do you manage that?

How To Create A Personal Growth Plan For Lasting Success

You can embrace your given gifts and still manage to carve out time for your own personal development.

It will take a bit of balancing. However, the following strategies will allow you to craft a personal growth plan that works for you. Also, it will benefit those you seek to serve.

Follow these tips for lasting physical, spiritual, and emotional health:

#1: Create your vision

What would it take for you to feel truly healthy? How would it look? What would your surroundings look like? Who would you surround yourself with? What does recharge time look like for you? What inspires, motivates, and infuses you with energy?

Answering these questions will help you to craft your vision for what a healthy, forward moving life looks like.

Get out that pen and paper, grab a favorite cup of tea or your preferred lavish coffee, and start writing.

Those who have the courage to write their dreams and goals down on paper will inevitably start to see them take shape.

#2: Know Your Strengths And Weaknesses

We all have strengths and weaknesses. The more we know what those are, the better we are able to craft plans to overcome or to fortify our weaknesses.

Moreover, playing upon our strengths to assist in overcoming challenges will leave you with more tools in your belt, more peace in your heart, and improved physical health.

If you need to, make a list of each of these attributes, and make a plan to improve making small changes on a daily basis.

#3: Listen To Your Intuition

When crafting your plan, notice what feels right.

Notice any alarm bells going off in your head or your gut.

Let your intuition guide you as you seek to form something that works for you and your family.

The more you can get in tune with yourself and your needs, the more effectively you can give yourself the care and attention that you need to protect your well being.

As you become more grounded and balanced, you’ll be of more effective service to others using your natural gifts and abilities.

#4: Practice The Fine Art Of Self Care

Not many people understand the need to slough off the energy of the day, or to spend time in quiet solitude and contemplation.

In fact, it’s hard to justify a Reiki session or a massage therapy appointment when you have a family to raise and bills to pay.

However, you will become a better person through the fine art of self care. Moreover, those who watch you will be inspired to love and care for themselves as well.

For example, take that extra nap or pamper yourself with a manicure. Or sit down for an hour with that personal development book you’ve been wanting to read.

Often, it’s the little habits that make the most difference and will have the most worthwhile cumulative effect. 

For instance, waking up, meditating, exercising a little morning, taking a warm shower and turning the tap to cold for the last minute to freshen up, practicing skincare and string floss uses, and taking in a deep breath of fresh air from the world outside can be a great way to start off your morning.

The more you can build yourself up, the more prepared you will be to handle the stresses of life.

Putting time for self-care in your personal growth plan is essential. You will only grow to the extent that you feed and care for your body, mind, and soul.

#5: Relax, Reflect, And Adjust

With any personal growth plan for development, there will be strategies that prove to be effective and others that fail.

Therefore, relax through your failures. Try to reflect on those things that did not serve you. Moreover, commit to making it an ongoing, editable document that you can adjust as you go.

As you grow, you will likely not fit into the same “shoes” that fit you just a few years ago; have some grace and compassion with your process, and look at your personal growth plan as a lifetime journey rather than a one-time destination.

Love Yourself, Love Your Process

No matter who you are or what your current challenges are, making it a priority to craft a personal growth plan is a signal to the universe that you want to design your best life.

Embrace yourself. Love who you are. Work with your unique gifts and burning desires. This way, you will create the life of your dreams. Go for it!

Do You Want To Connect With Other Highly Sensitive People?

Are you highly sensitive and or empathic and do you want to connect with likeminded people? Good news! We created a group especially for highly sensitive people: HiSensitives Community – A personal growth community for highly sensitive people and empaths

Click here to join!

You May Also Enjoy Reading These Articles

• The Best Christmas Gifts For Personal Growth
• Common Errors To Avoid When Undergoing Personal Development
• 11 Effective Planning Hacks For A Stress-free Life
• The Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide For Empaths

The post 5 Tips On How To Create A Solid Personal Growth Plan appeared first on HiSensitives.

Do you want to start journaling but are you not sure where to start? In this blog, we share 7 tips for creating an effective journaling routine.

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

As highly sensitive people (HSP), we know how difficult it can be to get through life while wearing our emotions on our sleeve.

From wrangling an expanding professional career to dealing with the dynamics of social life, these feelings can wear us down.

One of the most effective tools to reduce the fatigue and sensation of being bogged down is expressing our inner-most thoughts in a journal.

Using a sophisticated cross pen can enhance this experience, making the act of journaling feel more intentional and luxurious.

Journaling, when completed on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis, can help us better understand our thoughts, emotions and point of view.

7 Tips For An Effective Journaling Routine

As you may know, living with an HPS trait often makes it difficult to decipher and filter our feelings on any given day.

If this sounds like you, here are some tips for an effective journaling routine that you may find helpful.

1. Date Every Entry

When we begin to write in a diary, the thought of dating each entry sounds burdensome.

For some of us, the idea of dating a paper takes us back into our school years, which causes anxiety to build. However, having an archive of your feelings and ideas as the years progress is an efficient tool for healing and change.

Can you recall a time in your younger life where things were chaotic? Having a journal in those moments, and being able to go back and reflect on them in the present moment, would have given great insight into how you’ve developed over the years.

Whether we realize it or not, a great way to become more in tune with ourselves is by loving and accepting who we are at any given moment in our past.

While your journaling routine may change and shift in the future, always make a habit of dating each entry.

A few years from now, when you go back and reflect on your day, you will be thankful you did.

2. Thought Flow

As individuals with the HSP trait, we know what it’s like to filter our thoughts and change our words to fit the social narrative. In our journal, however, we don’t need to do this.

The next time you write a diary entry, let the thoughts flow naturally onto the paper. Rather than edit and change the phrases in your mind, write them in their pure, raw and unadulterated form.

Society has cold and harsh ways of making people like us conform to societal norms. While it may help us within an academic environment or professional setting, it blunts our ability to process emotions and feelings.

By creating a journaling routine that compliments our organic thought pattern, we become a better version of ourselves.

3. Be Unapologetically You

For highly sensitive people, experiencing emotions can be likened to getting hit by an avalanche of emotional and mental stimulation. For most people, they can brush these instances off and return to their daily lives.

With us, it paralyzes our ability to move forward and maintain a productive schedule. As a coping mechanism to deal with these issues, we’ve developed a mask that we wear to hide from the world.

Try to avoid the mask-wearing when developing your journaling routine. Do not filer or minimize your experience to make others more comfortable; be your true self.

4. Emotional Release

A good journaling routine can be a cathartic tool to release emotions that we’ve locked inside for years.

When society tells us to bottle up our emotions and never show our true nature, journaling encourages us to explore the emotional side of our character.

Do you refrain from discussing your HSP traits with friends, family members or coworkers for fear of ridicule?

If so, a journaling routine will act as a launching pad to explore your inner voice.

After years of suppression and silence, you may be surprised at what occurs when your pen meets the paper!

5. Cultivate Appreciation and Growth

Common issues that many individuals struggle with when they first start their journaling routine are overly-critical thoughts and judgement of their writing.

After reading an entry from the past, cast your criticisms to the side. Explore the thoughts and emotions that were stirring inside as you wrote those words.

Once you begin to paint a picture of yourself at that moment, use the lessons to find inner peace.

Although you may not agree with what you wrote, it was the catalyst for inner-change and growth.

We must learn to appreciate and accept our past if we want to experience positive change in the future.

6. Meditation

Although many people don’t associate meditation with emotional growth, science has long-since known the effects of daily mindfulness practice.

When you sit down in a quiet space to explore your inner stillness, recall back onto the words you wrote in your diary.

Use these words as a meditative anchor that roots you into the present moment, melting away negative thoughts or emotions.

You may be hesitant to try this method, and that’s OK!

Once you open yourself up to the practice of meditation, you will be shocked at how powerful a tool it is.

Meditation before journaling can also be a powerful exercise. Why not try this meditation for self reflection?

7. Don’t Stress Yourself

As we conclude, it’s important to remember not to become overly-stressed or burdened by your journaling routine.

If you’re having an overwhelming day, or you want to relax and watch The Office on Netflix for the 20th time, that’s perfectly fine!

Journaling, in a general sense, is a tool that allows you to process thoughts and emotions that would otherwise confuse or disarm you.

On the days that you feel as though the world is causing you internal conflict, put pen to paper.

Your journaling routine should assist you, not define you.

Is A Journaling Routine Right for You?

If you’re a sensitive person that becomes bombarded with emotional stimuli, a journaling routine will act as a filtering mechanism.

It will give you the power to still the chaos around you and help you develop inner wisdom.

Diaries can provide an unseen world of love and acceptance, where you author a version of reality that meets your standards.

It allows you to see that even though you may struggle with certain aspects of life, you’re not alone.

Try developing a journaling routine and see what hidden truths you discover as your pen crosses the paper!

You May Also Enjoy Reading These Articles

• 6 Powerful Habits To Help You Thrive Daily
• 7 Fun And Relaxing Date Ideas For Highly Sensitive People
• How to Maintain Your Workout Momentum and See Results
• Highly Sensitive Person And Love: How To Thrive In Your Relationship

The post 7 Useful Tips For An Effective Journaling Routine appeared first on HiSensitives.

In the midst of a crisis or tough times it can be challenging to stay positive. In this blog, we share 10 tips how to stay positive during difficult times.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

With the cacophony of bad news readily available in these difficult times and the overwhelming wave of panic resulting from a worldwide pandemic, it’s easy for a highly sensitive person to be overtaken with gloom and despair.

But working to stay positive in difficult times is a worthy endeavor that enhances your mental and physical well-being, as well as your capacity to manage future stressful situations. Positivity and optimism are a crucial part of stress management, and good stress management could potentially lower rates of depression and improve the body’s immune response.

10 Tips To Stay Positive During Difficult Times

Staying positive may sound simple, but where do you begin? The following ideas are some practical ways you can work on staying positive during difficult times.

1. Gratitude Journal

Research at UC Davis demonstrates that having a gratitude practice can help to improve your mood, raise your energy levels, and lower anxiety by reducing the body’s stress.

To do this, just take some time to write out at least three things you are grateful for or that make you smile. This can be a person, an experience, an object, or anything else.

Try to perform this practice daily so that in good times it will be a regular occurrence, and during difficult times it will help to brighten your outlook on life.

2. Don’t Dwell On Negative Thoughts

Your inner critic and worrisome thoughts only serve to bring your mood down and make you feel worse in these already difficult times.

You can teach your mind to shift from negative thoughts and worries to a more positive mindset. This can be achieved in various ways, such as challenging the negative thoughts by asking yourself if the thought is really correct or not. You can also bring up any positive achievements that negate what your mind is telling you.

Finally, if those don’t seem to work, act like you are talking to a friend in the same mindset you’re in and see what you would say to them.

3. Meditate

Studies have shown that even short mindful meditations can facilitate a more positive mood and improve the overall mental health of the individuals participating. This can be doubly helpful during these difficult times of stress and anxiety.

Mindfulness meditations are those in which you bring your awareness to a single point of reference, such as your breath, a word, or a bodily sensation.

This can help train your attention and awareness to stay positive and prevent yourself from falling down a rabbit hole of negative thoughts and being trapped there, which is all too easy during difficult times.

If you’d like to give it a go right away, try this guided meditation:

4. Take Care Of Your Physical Health

While it sounds a bit too easy, taking care of your physical health in difficult times can actually help you stay in a more positive mindset. The basis of eating well, exercising, hydrating, and getting enough sleep are core to your mental health.

Eating well can ensure you are getting the proper nutrients and vitamins that can help boost your mood and mental clarity. While exercising can burn off tension and stress and help stave them off if done regularly.

Hydration may not be thought about often, but even being just a little bit dehydrated can impact your mood, your energy level, and your ability to think clearly.

Finally, getting at least eight hours of high-quality sleep at night can boost your brain function as well as improve your decision-making capabilities.

All of these can easily be thrown to the wayside during difficult times, so it is essential to try to bring your physical health back on track as soon as you can.

5. Get Outside

Sunlight and fresh air are two of the easiest ways to raise your positive vibes during stressful or difficult times.

Taking a walk, sitting outside, or working in your garden are all great ways to get vitamin D and help clear your mind.

The vitamin D you get from the sun hitting your skin can help regulate your mood and decrease any depression you may be feeling.

If you can’t get outside, for one reason or another, opening a window and sitting in a sunny spot for a while can work as well.

6. Focus On The Positive

Dwelling on negative or depressing thoughts are far too easy in the difficult times we live in, but it only serves to lower your mood and make you feel more stressed.

When you notice your thoughts are turning, try to distract yourself with something positive.

Watch an uplifting movie, or listen to music that makes you happy. Pull out that gratitude journal we talked about, reread it, and scribble in some more thoughts on what makes you happy.

You can also write out positive goals of what direction you want your life to go in the year.

7. Cultivate A Positive Support Group

A highly sensitive person can take on a lot of feelings from surrounding people and make them their own, so having friends and loved ones around that are positive-minded can help elevate your thoughts in difficult times.

If you find it hard, especially during a pandemic, to make new friends try connecting to like-minded people in online groups and forums. Why not join our community for highly sensitive people and empaths?

8. Limit Negative News

It is all too easy in these difficult times to lose several hours on social media, scrolling through all the news and updates, and being left in a sour, agitated mood.

While there’s nothing wrong with keeping yourself up to date with the current state of the world, for your own mental health, you should put a limit on how much news you take in on any given day.

A highly sensitive person can become overwhelmed by the news and be thrown into a depressed state by merely scrolling a news site.

Make a point only to check one news site a day and to limit the time on that site to less than an hour total. If you’d like to reduce your time on the phone, this might be an interesting read for you.

9. Take Time For Yourself

Your own personal endeavors can get pushed to the wayside during difficult times due to lack of energy or lack of brain space to concentrate.

Making time to do the things you enjoy can elevate your mood and make you feel more productive.

Whether it’s a creative endeavor like dancing, drawing, or painting, or it’s more self-care centered such as a bath or an at-home spa day, it is essential to give yourself time during the week to do these things.

10. Stay In The Present

If you find yourself thinking of past regrets or worrying about the future, you’re not alone. These ways of thinking are common during difficult time periods and only serve to bring your mood down with thoughts of things you cant change.

When you notice this happening, bring your awareness back to the present and focus on what is going on around you.

It also helps to go through your day slowly so as to mindfully keep yourself and your awareness in the present.

You’ve got this!

This year has been a difficult time for everybody, and staying positive is becoming more and more difficult.

But you don’t have to let the difficult times or the negative thoughts that come from it keep you down.

What are you doing to remain positive during difficult times?

You May Also Enjoy Reading These Articles

• How To Be More Present In The Here And Now As A Highly Sensitive Person
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• Release Stress Within 10 Minutes With This Effective Method
• How To Master Your Emotions When You Are Highly Sensitive
• How To Deal With Stress When You Are A Highly Sensitive Person

The post 10 Practical Tips On How To Stay Positive During Difficult Times appeared first on HiSensitives.

Are you wondering how you can spend less time on your phone? In this blog you can find 5 practical tips to reduce your screen time.

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Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

If you are anything like me, you have a tendency to pick up your phone every few minutes to check if there is anything interesting for you to see. There is nothing bad about using your phone, as it makes many tasks in our daily lives easier. 

However, phone usage becomes a problem when you feel like you can’t live without it anymore, you can’t leave the house without it or when it is influencing your real life social interactions with others.

Does this sound familiar to you? Good! I have written this article for you (and me)! In this article I am diving into the following aspects:

• How phones are taking over our lives without us knowing it.
• Why it is good to spend less time on your phone.
• Why especially highly sensitive people should be aware of their time spent on the phone.
• Activities that you could give a try instead of scrolling through social media.
   

Start Your Journey To Spend Less Time On Your Phone By Watching ‘The Social Dilemma’

If you have Netflix, I recommend you to start your journey towards a life with less phone time by watching the documentary “The Social Dilemma”.

This documentary was a real eye opener for me on how the social media industry has changed in the past couple of years. While the initial goal when inventing social media was to connect people with each other and offer a place where you can find funny cat videos, the tastiest recipes and read the latest news, something has changed recently. 

In the documentary, various experts from the social media industry express their concerns on how the biggest social media apps are currently dealing with the ethics in relation to social media usage. Below, you can see the trailer of the documentary:

A Different Approach While Developing Apps

Some app developers are developing apps with the motive of keeping you on them as long as possible. Because the more time you spend on the app, the more money they make. Moreover, they use knowledge on how the human brain works to develop apps that trigger you to stay on the app longer. And that’s the problem. 

People are starting to get addicted. There’s a reason why you and I feel the need to continuously pick up our phones to check if we’ve been missing anything. Our own psychology is being used against us.

I could write an entire blog article about this, but I recommend you to watch The Social Dilemma to obtain deeper insights on how they do that.

Why Spend Less Time On Your Phone?

With the apps becoming more addicting and our phones becoming more advanced, people obviously start to use their phones many more hours compared to ten years ago.

While the average time spent on your phone per day in the US was 45 minutes in 2011, this number is 5 times higher in 2020 with an average time of 231 minutes per day! Let that sink in for a while.

This increase in time spent on your phone can have serious consequences on your health. Various studies confirmed that there is a link between social media usage and increased risk for issues such as depression, anxiety, feeling lonely, self-harm and even suicidal thoughts.

Highly Sensitive People: Be Conscious About Your Phone Usage!

Especially for highly sensitive people, who are more likely to feel anxious due to the heightened activity in their amygdala – the region in the brain responsible for feeling alert and anxious – this information is important.

If you spend much time on social media and your phone, you are processing a load of information from all different types of sources. Moreover, your brain is filled with input that it needs to process and since you are highly sensitive, you are processing it on a deeper level. 

This means that too much social media usage can actually become overwhelming for you, without you even realizing it, because it wants you to become addicted to it. 

In the worst case, you find yourself becoming more and more addicted and at the same time more and more overwhelmed. Time to break that vicious cycle and take back control over your mental wellbeing!

5 Tips To Spend Less Time On Your Phone

But how? It is incredibly hard to stop using your phone all the time. I know it because I’ve tried it so often. However, I have discovered that some methods work better than others. Below, I am sharing my best tips with you.

1. Do A Social Media Detox

My first tip to spend less time on your phone is to feel the effect of not using social media all the time and how life would be without it.

When I learned to use my phone less, I chose to spend a weekend without checking social media. I still used my phone for apps that stimulate good health, such as my meditation apps and productivity apps. 

However, all apps that were not stimulating my well-being, were put in a folder on my phone that I named ‘Don’t do it!’. This way, everytime I felt the urge to check social media, I was confronted with my intention to not do it that weekend.

I recommend you to try the same. Go an entire weekend without social media and see how it affects your overall well-being to do so.

For me, it was confronting to see how much of my actual presence in the physical world social media stole from me. In fact, I became more mindful by doing this detox. 

Therefore, I hope that you will experience the same shift when trying this activity.

2. Reflect On Your App Usage

After you have gone through your detox, you will probably want to make some changes in the way you use your phone. 

Therefore, I recommend you to go through all the apps on your phone and ask yourself the following questions for each app:

1. Why did I install this app in the first place?
2. How do I usually feel before using this app?
3. In what moments do I feel the need to open this app?
4. What feelings am I experiencing after using this app?
5. How does this app contribute to my life?
6. How much time am I spending on this app daily?

Most likely, you will notice that some apps truly contribute to your life and are important for your wellbeing, while others actually are impacting you negatively.

Awareness about your app usage is crucial in order to successfully spend less time on your phone in the future.
 

3. Do A Phone Cleanup

Now that you are aware of the apps that give and take your energy, it is time to do a real phone cleanup.

Are there apps that do not contribute anything positive to your life? Delete them. You don’t need them. The apps that partially contribute to your life can be cleaned up within the app itself. 

For example, I realized that I truly dig Instagram, but that I followed too many accounts that simply did not feel good to me anymore. Therefore, I unfollowed all those accounts, so that I only follow people and companies that truly contribute to my wellbeing. 

Try to see if you can improve your user experience of different apps by undertaking some changes within their settings and your preferences.

Moreover, I recommend you to give the apps that truly contribute to your life a more prominent spot on the home screen of your phone. Place apps that feel addicting somewhere you don’t immediately see them when unlocking your phone screen.

4. Restrict Push Notifications

Another powerful way to spend less time on your phone, is to restrict your push notifications. Obviously, app developers create these notifications to stimulate you to use their app. 

However, it is wise to consider which apps you want to give this power over your attention. For example, I have turned off push notifications for all my social media apps, because they do not contribute to my health and productivity.

Apps that do stimulate me to feel better about myself and to think good thoughts, are allowed to pop up on my phone. Anything else is silenced.I challenge you to think about which apps you want to allow to send you notifications. You can easily restrict this by going to the settings of your phone.

5. Monitor And Restrict Screen Time

Finally, I found it super useful to monitor and restrict my screen time. 

When you have an iphone, you can easily see the amount of time you spend on your phone in your settings.

Also, you can restrict your screen time by allowing certain apps to only be available within a specific time slot. On my phone, all social media apps are restricted between 9.15 PM and 8 AM on week days and later on the weekends.

Android users can also download apps that help them to monitor and restrict screen time in the play store.

I found this feature to be incredibly powerful, because it reminds me of my intentions every night and breaks the addiction. Therefore, if you want to spend less time on your phone, I highly recommend you to use this feature.

Activities To Do Instead Of Spending Time On Your Phone

Once you have found ways to spend less time on your phone, you will realize that you have tons of extra free time. 

You may wonder what to do with this extra time, so here is a short list to inspire you:

• Go for a walk in nature;
• Start a creative art project;
• Bake or cook a new recipe;
• Go to the movies;
• Spend time with friends;
• Journaling;
• Meditation;
• Join a Yoga class.

If you’d like to read more suggestions on activities, here is a blog with 111 self care activities that you can try.

Time To Spend Less Time On Your Phone!

Now that you’ve received all these tips, you are hopefully ready to spend less time on your phone.

I am curious: which tips are you going to give a try? Do you have any other suggestions for the readers (and me)? Feel free to share them in the comments!

You May Also Enjoy Reading These Articles

• 10 Personal Growth Apps For The Ambitious Empath
• 5 Free Apps That Help You To Improve Your Health
• Feeling Overwhelmed? Do A Social Media Detox!

The post How To Spend Less Time On Your Phone In 5 Steps appeared first on HiSensitives.

I reviewed the book “The Highly Sensitive Parent: Be Brilliant in Your Role, Even When the World Overwhelms You”, even though I am not a parent.

(Disclosure: This is a professional book review and HiSensitives gets compensated for it by the publisher of the book. We only share links to products that we stand for and share our honest opinion on products with our followers.)

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

As a woman approaching my thirties, I am frequently getting asked when my fiancé and I will have children. They are asking the wrong question. The right question is ‘if’ we will have children.

Both my fiancé and I are HSP’s and to be honest, the thought of becoming parents amazes and terrifies us at the same time. Sure, there are tons of wonderful moments to cherish. It would be amazing to see this little mini version of the two of us running around.

However, we are well aware of the impact the decision to have children will have on our lives. We know that once you become a parent, everything will change. The days where you were able to sleep through the whole night will be long gone.

Becoming A Parent Is A Major Decision

Once you choose to become a parent, you become a parent for life. It is a huge choice. The biggest choice you will ever make in your life. And this choice does not only have an impact on you, but also on this new little person you put into this world. After all you want to be a good parent and raise a decent human being. 

Therefore, I was thrilled, when I saw that Elaine N. Aron had brought out a new book. This time specifically for highly sensitive parents: “The Highly Sensitive Parent: Be Brilliant in Your Role, Even When the World Overwhelms You.” 

Perhaps this book could help us in this major decision. In this blog I am sharing my thoughts on this book with you.

(Ps. In the picture above you see me holding the Dutch version of the book. In the image below you can see the book cover of the English version.)

About “The Highly Sensitive Parent: Be Brilliant In Your Role, Even When The World Overwhelms You”

Author Elaine N. Aron wrote this book for the highly sensitive parent. It is not a book about how to parent your child, but a book that helps you to discover how you as a highly sensitive person can fulfill your role as a parent optimally. 

While highly sensitive people are exceptionally attuned to their children’s needs, they also experience a different kind of stress compared to non-HSP parents. Worrying deeply about their child’s well-being, strong emotions and overwhelm are some of the common challenges highly sensitive parents experience. 

In this book, the author explains these different challenges a highly sensitive parent may encounter during parenthood and how to tackle them.

The Structure Of The Book: A Short Overview

In her book, Elaine N. Aron first offers a self-examination to identify the level of sensitivity. This is very useful if you haven’t taken the self test earlier and want to determine how sensitive you actually are. 

Also, she explains how highly sensitive parents differ from non-HSP parents. This explanation is backed up with interesting findings from scientific studies. I had to share a fact or two from this chapter with my friends and family. The insights were so surprising to me!

In the second chapter, the author brilliantly catches your attention by starting with the perhaps biggest challenge for highly sensitive parents: overstimulation. Here, she explains the common sources of overstimulation for a highly sensitive parent. Also, she offers practical tips on how to deal with this. One of the main solutions for this issue, ‘asking for help’, is discussed thoroughly in chapter 3.

Chapter 4 dives into the highly sensitive parents’ depth of processing and decision making processes. It provides the reader with concrete tips on how to make decision-making as a highly sensitive parent easier.

In the following chapter the author discusses how highly sensitive parents can enjoy and regulate their greater emotional responsiveness through the different phases of their child’s life. Also here, practical tips are provided.

Chapter 6 discusses the intensification of social contacts once you become a parent. It elaborates on the different social contacts you create once you have children. Also, it dives into how to interact with all of these types of connections when you are highly sensitive.

The last two chapters of the book touch upon highly sensitive parents and their partners. Here, common issues that may arise during parenthood are discussed as well as tools on how to fix them.

My opinion on ‘“The Highly Sensitive Parent: Be Brilliant in Your Role, Even When the World Overwhelms You”

There was not one thing I did not love about this book. Throughout the whole book, Elaine N. Aron shows that she is a typical HSP with an eye for detail: everything has been thought of!

It is comforting for me to read that our worries about parenthood and its challenges do not come out of the blue. They are valid concerns. However, this book gave me hope that we can be brilliant parents with the right tools in our tool kit and enough help from our surroundings.

What I especially enjoyed with regards to this book is that it considers parenthood through all the different phases of a child’s life. Every parent can read this book and receive useful advice from it.

Another aspect that I found useful while reading Elain N. Arons’ book from my perspective of a highly sensitive non-parent, is that it also offers relationship advice – for both couples and those who are divorced. One of our biggest concerns with regards to having children is that our relationship will be put to the test. These last chapters provided us with insights on how to take care of each other once you become parents.

Also the chapter on social connections when you have children and how to deal with them is a very interesting chapter to read. I am currently planning a wedding. Boy, you can’t imagine how many times others have told me what our wedding day should look like.

Reading this chapter made me realize that once you have children, people will continuously express their opinion about how you should raise your child to you, even if you did not ask for it. However, the author provided excellent tips on how to cope with these types of situations.

Would I Recommend Reading The Book?

Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to both highly sensitive parents and those highly sensitive people still doubting whether they can handle parenthood. 

For us, it offered the comfort we needed to make our decision. I know that I now have a little pocket guide on my bookshelf which I can reach for in the future when I become a mom. 

If you’d like to read the book yourself, you can purchase it here.

You May Also Enjoy Reading These Articles

• Is My Extroverted Kid A Highly Sensitive Child
• Highly Sensitive People Share Their Opinion About Raising Children

The post Book Review: The Highly Sensitive Parent: Be Brilliant In Your Role, Even When The World Overwhelms You appeared first on HiSensitives.

Are you a highly sensitive person and do you want to feel less overwhelmed? In this blog, I share 10 life changers that help me to overcome overwhelm.

Hey there, lovely readers! We want to be completely transparent with you. Some of the links in this blog are affiliate links, which means if you click on them and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. 😊

We only recommend products and services we genuinely believe in and have personally used or researched. Your support through these links helps us keep bringing you valuable content, so thank you for being amazing!

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

As a highly sensitive person, I know too well how it feels when you’re overwhelmed. It is stressful, your heart beats faster and you are feeling more anxious.

In the past, I have been struggling a lot with feeling overwhelmed.

Work pressure, overstimulation of my senses and social obligations had a tendency to drain me to the max. In fact, I did not know how to properly cope with them and the overwhelm was taking over my life and limiting me in reaching my utmost potential.

The 10 Life Changers That Help Me To Feel Less Overwhelmed

I can imagine that you experience it just as frustrating as I did back then. However, I have learned in recent years to embrace my sensitivity and come across certain life changers that help me to feel less overwhelmed in general. In this blog, I am sharing them with you.

Without any further chit-chat, let’s dive in and discover them.

1. Journal Regularly

The first life changer I am going to share with you, is to start journaling regularly. I know, i know; you read about this everywhere.

However, people aren’t hyping up journaling without a reason! They do it, because it works!

Journaling is a wonderful way to empty your mind of thoughts. In fact, you could describe it as decluttering your mind. Just like you clean your kitchen everyday, you should do the same with your mind.

Especially for highly sensitive people, who have a tendency to overthink, journaling kan be a powerful practice.

Ever since I’ve started journaling, I have felt more clear in my mind. Whenever I skip journaling for a couple of weeks, I immediately recognize it in my mental and physical health.

Therefore, I highly recommend you to give it a try yourself. Go and buy an awesome journal and jot down everything that comes to your mind.

2. Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the art of being present in the here and now. Through mindfulness you become more aware of what sensations you are experiencing in your body in the present moment.

As highly sensitive people tend to think much about the past and the future, mindfulness is a wonderful practice to bring them back to the here and now.

Whenever I feel that I am going deeper and deeper in my thought process and literally lose connection with the present moment, I practice mindfulness.

The wonderful benefit of mindfulness is that you can practice it everywhere. You can practice it while commuting, while eating, while sitting on the couch or while being in a busy environment.

Simply by observing everything around you and tuning into it, you become more present in the current moment. 

If you’d like to give it a go, here is a nice mindfulness practice to get started:

3. Surround Yourself With the Right People

I can’t stress this one enough: Please make sure that you are surrounded by people who are good for you. Surrounding myself with people who are kind, loving and caring has helped me to feel less overwhelmed in daily life.

As highly sensitive people often also are extremely empathic, they are exceptionally talented at sensing other people’s vibes. This enables them to be a good friend who often has great advice to offer.

This is a gift which many people around them appreciate. However, you as an HSP need to make sure to only share this gift with people who do not benefit from it whenever they need it.

While there is nothing bad in supporting a friend who is going through a tough time, it is important to carefully look at who would do the same for you. There are plenty of people out there who are the first in line when it comes to taking, but leave as soon as you require some of their attention and love. 

Therefore, make sure to find your people. People where energy flows freely and there is a balance between giving and taking.

4. Heal Old Wounds

Another way to feel less overwhelmed, is to heal your wounds from the past.

Oftentimes, wounds from our past and even the wounds from our forefathers are rooted deeply in our system. Those wounds will continue to challenge you, if you do not heal them properly.

Therefore, consider healing old wounds, even though it is a painful process. In the long run, healing your wounds from the past will free you from pain. In addition, you will have new freedom to fill this space with joy.

There are hundreds of methods to heal your old wounds, but I can highly recommend you to work with a professional. Oftentimes, they help you to get to the core of the issue much quicker than if you would go through the process on your own.

5. Follow Your Purpose

Studies show that highly sensitive people long for purpose in life. Therefore, following a career path that does not align with their purpose will drain a highly sensitive person to the max.

Back in 2018, when I started pursuing my dream to become an entrepreneur I wasn’t aware of how negatively NOT following my purpose impacted me. 

When I was working for someone else, my immune system collapsed continuously and I had a flu or cold every 6 weeks. Additionally I could not figure out how to feel less overwhelmed.

First when I became an entrepreneur and followed my dreams, my health started to improve and now I feel more balanced and aligned than ever before.

Therefore, if you have the opportunity and the privilege to do so, I can highly recommend you to discover and follow your purpose. 

6. Embrace Spirituality

My number 1 life changer to help me feel less overwhelmed was to embrace spirituality. 

Spirituality comes in many forms. Whether you believe in God, Buddha, Allah or the Universe: spirituality offers the support so many of us need.

For me, embracing my spirituality and finding my belief helped me to feel supported in times when I needed it. Whenever I feel overwhelmed, turning to spirituality helps me to calm my mind and body quickly.

The art of spirituality is to find a spiritual path that works for you. For example, my search for spiritual guidance has led me past God, Buddha and even not believing in anything at all, until I felt a deep connection with the Universe.

Ever since I discovered that spiritual niche and learned more about it, I feel more supported in life and worry less. 

Therefore, I challenge you to open your heart towards spirituality and to find a belief that comforts you whenever you need it.

7. Create A Happy Place In Your Home

One of the recent changes I’ve made in my life to feel less overwhelmed, is to create a happy place in my home.

Ideally, you want your entire home to be a happy place, but with pets, kids and a partner living under the same roof this isn’t always possible. Accordingly, it is wise to find a space in your home which is yours and yours alone.

My partner Riny and I both have a space in our home which we have claimed for ourselves. He has a “mancave” on the top floor of our house, while I have transformed our guest room to my daily meditation paradise.

Whenever I want to feel less overwhelmed, I retreat to my happy place. In fact, spending only 10 minutes in my happy place can help me to feel like a whole new person.

Hence, I highly recommend you to find a place in your home which you can make your own and where you can retreat to whenever you are feeling overwhelmed. 

8. Create Healthy Habits

Another way to feel less overwhelmed in your daily life, is to create healthy habits. 

For years, I have been unconscious about what I eat, how often I exercise and how often I spend time on improving my mental health. The result of this behaviour was that I felt incredibly fragile both mentally and physically. In fact, I felt on the verge of a burnout.

Once I started to take my physical and mental health more seriously, I recognized positive changes in all areas of my life. Here are a couple of things that changed after I actively started improving my health:

• Better immune system.
• Attracting more people into my life who are good for me.
• Doing better financially.
• I dare to take more risks.
• More self-confidence.
• Less overwhelm.

What I did? I implemented good health habits into my daily routine. For instance, I became more conscious of nutrition and its effects on our bodies. Also, I try to do at least one self care activity a day which is good for mental health (gratitude exercises, journaling, meditation etc.).

If you don’t know where to start because you are feeling so overwhelmed, I recommend you to try this practical exercise:

9. Look For Joy

I remember when I was a little girl and upset, my mom always told me to look for joy. Back then I wasn’t aware that she actually was teaching me gratitude.

For me, gratitude has been one of the most powerful tools to feel less overwhelmed. Oftentimes, when we’re feeling overwhelmed, we tend to look at everything that is NOT going well. Hence, the overwhelm.

By looking at the things that are going well, you stop this negative thought pattern before it drains you. That does not mean that you never deal with your problems. You simply just don’t allow them to take over your entire day and only let them express themselves when you are intending to do something about them.

Gratitude connects you to the present moment and can be done anywhere, anytime. Ideally, you write down your gratitude on a piece of paper or in an gratitude app. This way, you see everything you are grateful for on paper.

If you’d like to start a gratitude practice, we highly recommend the gratitude journal ‘The 5-Minute Gratitude Journal: Give Thanks, Practice Positivity, Find Joy’.

10. Use Affirmations

My final life changer to feel less overwhelmed, is to use affirmations on a daily basis.

Affirmations are statements that help you to redirect your brain from a thought pattern. For example, a common negative thought pattern is “I am afraid that I will run out of money”.

By creating an affirmation such as “Money flows freely to me”, you step out of that fear mindset and start looking for opportunities. You live from an energy of positivity.

Repeat your positive affirmations to yourself on a daily basis, even when you are not feeling overwhelmed. This has helped me greatly to feel less overwhelmed in general.

Maintain Your Mental And Physical Health

All of the abovementioned methods have helped me greatly to feel less overwhelmed as a highly sensitive person. I hope that you will give some of them a try. However, note that they will only be truly effective if you implement them into your daily routine.

Your mental health functions the same way your physical health is functioning. When you eat lots of fast food, you gain weight and will feel less energetic.

The same goes for your mental health. When you allow all negative thoughts and experience to run on auto-pilot, without taking care of your mind through effective methods such as those mentioned above, you will feel more overwhelmed. Start with a method or two and implement them in your daily life. Once they are part of your daily routine, you can consider adding new habits to your life.

Which of the above mentioned methods did you find the most intriguing?

You May Also Enjoy Reading These Articles

• The Ultimate Guide To Heal From Narcissistic Abuse As An Empath
• HSP And Out Of Energy? Recharge With These Five Tips
• 6 Powerful Habits To Help You Thrive Daily

The post 10 Life Changers That Help Me As An HSP To Feel Less Overwhelmed appeared first on HiSensitives.

Are you an empathic person and wondering what type of self care suits your personality type? In this blog, we share the best self care tips for empaths!

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

Hey there, lovely readers! We want to be completely transparent with you. Some of the links in this blog are affiliate links, which means if you click on them and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. 😊

We only recommend products and services we genuinely believe in and have personally used or researched. Your support through these links helps us keep bringing you valuable content, so thank you for being amazing!

Are you always there for the people around you?

Do people come to you when they need advice or a listening ear?

Is it common for you to put others before yourself and would you label yourself as a people-pleaser?

You might be an empath. Empaths have a heightened amount of mirror neurons in their brain. Subsequently, this enables them to emphasize on a deep level with everything going on around them. While this is a wonderful gift many people appreciate, it is important to not forget showering yourself with love. If so, you may risk running low on energy and feeling drained and exhausted.

Self Care For Empaths Based On The 6 Types Of Empaths

In this blog, I’ve created an overview of the most powerful self care activities for empaths. I have divided the self care activities based on the 6 types of empaths.

If you don’t know what type you are, feel free to read this article to find out which type reasonates the most with your personality.

1. Self Care Activities For Emotional Empaths

Emotional empaths are deeply connected to the emotions of other people. In fact, they may feel the emotions of the other person as if they were their own.

This is an incredibly powerful skill to possess and can help you greatly in interactions with others. On the other hand, this ability may cause you to ‘take home’ their energy with you. In addition, you may struggle to distinguish between the other person’s emotions and your own.

For the purpose of protecting your own energy field and (re)connecting with your own emotions, you may want to give these self care activities a try:

EFT Tapping (Emotional Freedom Technique)

EFT tapping is a method to calm your central nervous system. By tapping on specific meridian points on your body, you are able to reduce the anxiety linked to specific events or people in your life.

Actually, this is a super helpful method for emotional empaths who have dealt with conflict, judgement or other tough situations with other people and aren’t sure if the emotions they are feeling are their own or from the other person. 

In the video below, you can find an explanation of how EFT tapping works:

Clear Negative Energies

Another powerful way for emotional empaths to practice self care, is to clear out negative energies they may carry around with them. 

There are multiple ways to achieve this. For example, you could go and see a healer who can help you to clear those negative energies. However, there are also powerful meditations to achieve clearing negative energies from others.

I myself am a huge fan of this guided meditation, which will shift your energy within 20 minutes:

Journaling

Another powerful self care method for emotional empaths is to journal at the end of the day. Through journaling, you process your day, thoughts and emotions and get them out of your system.

Some interesting journal prompts for your daily journaling session are:

• How did I feel today?
• Who did I encounter today?
• How were these people feeling? What vibes did I get from them?
• How did I feel before and after meeting them?
• What emotions are my own?
• What emotions are from others and am I willing to return to their owner?

2. Physical Empath? Try These Self Care Activities!

Physical empaths feel other people’s pain as if it was their own. Similarly to emotional empaths, they may struggle with protecting their energy field from other people. As a result, they may experience being around other people as draining and exhausting. 

Because physical empaths are incredibly sensitive towards the pains of the people around them, it is important for them to take care of themselves by setting healthy boundaries, letting go of old pains and protecting their own energy field. 

Providing that you are a physical empath, you may want to consider these self care activities. However, I recommend you to only give these methods a try if you have already seen a doctor for your pains and there are no explanations for why you are feeling the way you feel.

Remove Energy Cords

In order to truly feel freed from other people’s energies and pains, I recommend you to try removing energy cords.

This is a powerful visualization/body scan, where you envision how you are removing connections that don’t serve you anymore. Moreover, you are returning people’s baggage to them, as they are not yours to hold.

I read about this ceremony for the first time when reading this book on self care for empaths (affiliate link).

Here is an interesting video that guides you through this process:

Healing

If the method above didn’t work for you as well as you hoped it would, you may want to consider hiring a professional who is specialized in energies and healing. 

Recently, I had a healing performed on me in the form of a hypnosis/trance. It was a truly wonderful experience which set me free from anxiety and pain I had been feeling my entire life with regards to certain events.

Therefore, if nothing else works and doctors can’t find anything disturbing in your test results, you may want to consider healing to get rid of old pains and heal old wounds.

Take A Healing Bath

Another powerful self care activity for physical empaths is to take a healing bath. Adding certain ingredients to your bath can have wonderful effects on your mental and physical health. Why not give some of these ingredients a try:

• Colloidal oatmeal: Good for soothing dry, itchy skin.
• Lavender oil: Adding a few drops of lavender oil(affiliate link) to your bath can reduce anxiety, decrease premenstrual emotional symptoms and heal your skin.
• Epsom salt bath (affiliate link): Restores a healthy balance of the minerals magnesium and sulfates in your body.
• Seaweed detox bath: Stimulates your circulation, balances your pH-value, removes toxic waste and moisturizes your skin.
• Ginger bath: Provides headache relief, eases menstrual cramps, relieves gas and bloating and reduces cold and flu symptoms.

3. Self Care Activities For Geomantic Empaths

Many empaths are sensitive in relation to specific places. These empaths are called geomantic empaths.

Geomantic empaths have a tendency to feel closely connected towards certain places and the energies they hold. In fact, they may feel an instant rush of happiness, start to recharge their energy and experience a sense of inner peace when visiting places they feel a positive connection with.

However, this also works the other way around: If they visit places that give them a sense of unsafety or that makes them feel bad, they may feel drained within seconds.

Therefore, geomantic empaths may want to consider the following self care activities:

Protect Your Energy

Because you as a geomantic empath are sensitive towards the energies of certain places you visit, it is important for you to protect your energy before leaving the house. 

There are whole rituals that you can perform to seal your aura and protect your energy, but you could also try this simple visualization:

1. Sit down in calm and peaceful position.
2. Close your eyes and take deep breaths in and out until you are relaxed.
3. Visualize a white light entering through your crown chakra at the top of your head.
4. Envision this white light wandering through your body, protecting every inch of it.
5. Now visualize how the white light streams out of your body and creates a protective globe around you, protecting your aura.
6. Visualize that only love and positive energies can enter your aura.
7. Sit with this feeling for a while and then resume your daily activities.

Whenever you feel that your energy field is weakening, ask for protection from the white light.

Take Crystals With You

While there are no studies supporting that crystals actually do have ‘magic powers’, they are powerful reminders that you are protected at all times. Therefore, consider buying crystals with protective characteristics to bring along with you wherever you go.

Simply feeling the crystal in your hand or your pocket will remind you that you are protected and make it harder for negative energies to enter your aura.

Some crystals that are perceived to have protective powers are:

• Clear quartz: Keeps negativity away and attracts positivity.
• Black tourmaline: Good for grounding and clearing spaces of negativity.
• Black obsidian: Helps you to feel calm and positive.
• Smokey quartz: Protects your aura from negative energies.

Cleanse And Protect Your Home

Being protected while on the go is very important, but feeling protected and safe in your own home is crucial! After all, you don’t want negative energies to settle in your sacred space. Therefore, consider clearing the energy in your house.

You could hire a professional to clear the energy in your home and ask him or her for tips on how to maintain a high vibe-frequency. 

In addition, consider working with powerful visualizations and using crystals in your home.

Here are useful tips to clear the energy in your home:

4. Earth Empath Self Care Activities

Earth empaths are empaths who feel a deep connection towards earth and all its natural powers. Actually, earth empaths may feel energized by natural energies such as the moon, sun or waterfalls.

On the other hand, this sensitivity may cause them to suddenly feel unwell too. This often is the case when an earth quake hits, the weather suddenly shifts or there is a natural catastrophe going on in the worlds. Earth empaths often are able to sense those shifts before they are happening.

In order to truly thrive as an earth empath, you may want to indulge yourself in these self care practices:

Neutralize Water Veins

One of the best investments I have made for myself and my home, is to hire a water vein professional. Perhaps you are like me: I didn’t know that water veins even existed and what their effects on our bodies are. 

A water vein is basically water flowing deep down in the ground. You could describe them as small underground rivers. Studies have shown that there is a correlation between water veins under your house and illnesses. Therefore, especially for earth empaths, it is important to neutralize water veins if they are present under your home.

By hiring a professional to locate eventual water veins, you can afterwards take concrete steps to neutralize them.

Follow The Moon Phases

As an earth empath, you most likely are attuned with the moon phases, without maybe even being aware of it. I remember when I first became aware of the moon phases and how it impacts my body and mood, I was amazed!

Depending on the moon phase, your body will react. On full moons, for example, you might feel more energized and have troubles with sleeping. New moons often unconsciously lead to new beginnings and the need for something new.

If you learn to appreciate the moon and align with its energies, you will definitely increase the power of your self care rituals and overall daily life. Therefore, I challenge you to dig deeper into the moon phases and their powers. Try to schedule self care activities that align with the power of the moon.

Spend Time In Nature

This one is a no-brainer for earth empaths! If you are attached to nature and earth, it is wise to regularly retreat into nature to recharge.

If you live in the city, try to bring nature into your home by purchasing plants. Also, try to regularly plan trips into nature around the city you live in.

Simply by being in nature and taking in all its healing powers, you will take care of yourself in a grounded way that aligns with your core power.

5. Intuitive Empath? Give These Self Care Practices A Try!

Similarly to emotional empaths, intuitive empaths are able to sense the feelings of others exceptionally well. However, the difference between an emotional and an intuitive empath is that an intuitive empath has mastered the skill to protect their own energy. They are able to tune into other people’s vibes and return their energy back to them before leaving.

Because of their ability to tune into others, yet not becoming emotionally involved by taking home their emotions, an intuitive empath is very talented at seeing things from a broader perspective. They can sense when something is off.

However, intuitive empaths may sometimes struggle to distinguish between what is intuition and what is a feeling passing by. As a result, intuitive empaths should focus on connecting with their intuition in different, unique ways. Here are some ways to achieve that:

Intuitive Art

One of the methods that I found incredibly powerful to align with my intuition, is intuitive art. Oftentimes, our rational side of the brain wants to take over and tell us that we are no artists and that we shouldn’t even bother trying. 

However, if you turn off that side of your brain for a second, go to your local art store, buy whatever feels right, go home and start creating art, you will notice something amazing. Once you let go of the need to control, your intuition will take over. 

When practicing intuitive art, try to listen to your first gut feeling. If you feel that you should use red in a painting, do it! Then, if your rational side of the brain wants to take over and tell you that you can’t match red with green, neglect it and go for green if your gut tells you so! 

Try to let your hands do the work and get out of your mind for a second. Listen to what your intuition is telling you.

By starting to listen to our intuition in this excercise, you strengthen it for more tough situations such as conflicts, relationship drama or work situations.

Dream Journaling

Another powerful method to attune with your intuition, is to start dream journaling. Oftentimes, our dreams are telling us what we don’t want to acknowledge when we are awake.

Whenever you have a dream, write it down. Try to write down every tiny detail you remember. Then, use a dream interpretation site like this one and start interpreting your dreams.

When you have interpreted your dreams, tune into your intuition. Do you feel that this interpretation is correct? Can you relate to it even though you can’t fully explain it? That’s your intuition speaking!

Meditate

Finally, you can choose to take care of yourself and connect with your intuition through meditation. Meditation is a mindful activity that takes you back to the here and now. You could see it as a present moment where you let everything else around you just be for a while while you are mindfully observing your body and thoughts.

In order to connect with your intuition through meditation, I highly recommend you to start with some guided meditations first. They guide you through the process and help you to avoid drifting off from the purpose of the meditation. Once you become more trained in meditating, you can try meditating without guidance.

If you’d like to connect with your intuition through meditation, try this guided meditation:

6. Self Care Activities For Animal Empaths

Animal empaths feel a deep connection with animals. In fact, they may even be able to sense what mental state the animal is in or if the animal is suffering from pain.

Because of this hidden talent, animal empaths are great at training animals and animals naturally gravitate towards them.

In order to fully connect to this empathic side of yours and feel fulfilled, you may want to consider these self care activities:

Pets

If you don’t have a pet yet, consider adopting one! The best self care for an animal empath is to have animals around them 24/7. Therefore, try to discover the opportunity for opening your home for a pet that fits your lifestyle and which you can take care of properly.

Being able to spend time with your pet, playing with it, feeding it and taking care of it will fulfill your need for connection with animals on a daily basis.

Pet Sitting

If you don’t have the opportunity to adopt a pet right now, consider pet sitting other people’s pets. This way, you get to spend time with animals on a regular basis, while still having the freedom of a pet-free life.

There are different websites that enable you to create a profile as a pet sitter. For example, you could consider registering at Trustedhousesitter or Rover.

What Self Care Activity For Empaths Are You Going To Try?

Now that you’ve read this article, I am curious: What type of empath are you? Which self care activities would you like to try out? Feel free to share it in the comments!

You May Also Enjoy Reading These Articles

• The 6 Types Of Empaths: Which One Are You?
• How To Master Your Emotions When You Are Highly Sensitive
• Magical New Moon Rituals For Empaths and Manifestation

The post The Ultimate Self-Care Guide For The 6 Empath Types appeared first on HiSensitives.

Are you struggling with silencing your inner critic? In this blog, I share 5 powerful methods on how to tackle that inner bully once and for all!

Hey there, lovely readers! We want to be completely transparent with you. Some of the links in this blog are affiliate links, which means if you click on them and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. 😊

We only recommend products and services we genuinely believe in and have personally used or researched. Your support through these links helps us keep bringing you valuable content, so thank you for being amazing!

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Are you constantly bashing yourself? Do you always talk badly about yourself, both to other people as well as in your mind?

You might be dealing with a strongly present inner critic. It can be truly exhausting to deal with this issue. In fact, I myself am dealing with this too.

For years I’ve been telling myself that I am not good enough, that I am worthless, that I am less deserving of good things than others.

Now that I am 28 years, I have decided that enough is enough. Time to tackle that inner critic once and for all! Therefore, I started researching ways to manage to silence that nagging voice inside me.

In my search of methods that are effective for silencing your inner critic and reduce overthinking, I have found some super helpful tips that I’d like to share with you in this blog.

However, before we dive into the methods for silencing your inner critic, let’s have a look at what an inner critic actually is.

What Is An Inner Critic?

The inner critic is the voice in your mind that has taken the role of the evaluator.

It evaluates every single step you take, everything you say, how you act around others, how you divide your day and it is in fact truly obsessed with you.

This voice isn’t going to sugarcoat its opinion. It is going to launch it at you, not caring about how it is going to make you feel.

Many of us might experience this as frustrating and want to get rid of our inner critic once and for all. However, it is important to notice why the inner critic is there in first place.

Why Do We Have An Inner Critic?

Good news: the inner critic is there for a reason, believe it or not!

Actually, our inner critic is trying to protect us from shame and pain by preparing us for what others may tell us. 

In fact, your inner critic helps you at a young age, when your parents tell you how to dress in order to fit in, when your church provides you with guidelines on how to act properly in society or when you are being called out on your behavior. It remembers all that criticism and tries to help you to improve yourself according to the standards you have learned. Moreover, it wants you to feel accepted and loved by others.

Therefore, the inner critic can be useful and the original thought behind it is logical. Your inner critic helps you to feel accepted and liked by others.

When Should You Consider Silencing Your Inner Critic?

While the initial thought behind the inner critic function is good, there is a downside to it. It does not always know when to stop. The inner critic may not be aware when enough is enough.

In fact, the inner critic may start to take over the thoughts in your mind and desperately try to control your every move.

Once you feel that your inner critic is underminding you and limiting you from living your best life, it is a sign. That is when you know it is time to start silencing your inner critic. 

Not silencing it 100%, but giving it a less prominent position in your mindspace. Remember, the function of the inner critic is still useful to protect you from pain and shame.

5 Powerful Methods For Silencing Your Inner Critic

Now that you are aware of the inner critic and its function, it is time to truly start tackling it.

Below, I have listed 5 methods that I have found in my search for tips on silencing your inner critic.

1. Monitor Your Thought Patterns

Before you start silencing your inner critic, it is important to know what your inner critic actually is telling you throughout the day. After all, you can’t silence your inner critic when you don’t really know when it is present.

Therefore, the first step in order to learn silencing your inner critic, is to monitor your thought patterns.

For example, you may consider trying this exercise, which I did a year ago with my life coach. It is an effective method to monitor your thought patterns.

Awareness is the first step towards change and the same goes for your inner critic. Therefore, try to become aware of your inner critic and what it is telling you.

2. Listen To Your Inner Critic

One of the most powerful methods I discovered, is to consciously allow your inner critic to talk to you every now and then. Usually, we tend to try to push away negative thought patterns, because they are unpleasant.

However, if you choose to give your inner critic 2-3 minutes to express themselves, while you write down everything they are telling you, you will notice something funny:

Your inner critic usually always tells you the same old story. It doesn’t really have new input for you. In fact, it just seems to shout the same thing over and over again throughout the day. Most likely, you will recognize many of the thoughts from method 1.

Once you have let your inner critic talk to you and written down everything it told you, you can visualize thanking them for their input and that you’ll consider it. Just like you would do when a friend would tell your their concerns about something. After your ‘talk’ wave them goodbye.

That’s when its time to (re-)evaluate the thougths on paper, with the help from your positive voices. Take each thought and evaluate it from a positive angle. 

• Is it true?
• Is it new or repetitive?
• What is the function of this thought?
• Where does this thought origin from?
• How will I respond to this thought in the future?

3. Give Your Inner Critic A Persona

If your inner critic won’t stop ‘bullying’ you with the same old thought patterns, you might consider this method. One of the most powerful methods I have discovered on silencing your inner critic, is to give your inner critic a persona.

At first, it will feel weird and you will feel a bit crazy doing it. I know I did. However, it has helped me greatly to do this exercise, which is why I am sharing it with you.

For example, my persona is a strict and dominant business man in his suit, who is sitting at a meeting table and not giving room for anyone else to talk. I imagine him as this obnoxious know-it-all who just makes random claims without supporting them with evidence. I call him my inner bully.

Whenever my inner bully is acting up and taking over the meeting I literally call him out mentally. I tell him that his input is not supported by evidence and that other members of the team also should have a say in this. That is when I am giving room to the other, more positive thoughts in my mind (while ‘the inner bully is sitting in the back of the meeting room for his timeout).

It sounds really strange, but I promise you that this visualization of your thought patterns is incredibly powerful! Therefore, I am challenging you to label all your inner voices (both positive and negative) with a persona and to call them out if needed.

4. Practice Affirmations

Just like you nurture your body by eating healthy, exercising and sleeping enough, it is important to feed your mind with positive thoughts.

One of the most powerful ways I have found to tackle my inner bully, is to repeat affirmations every day. I have created personal affirmation statements that build me up and that often are going against what my inner bully is shouting.

These affirmations pop up on my phone with the app ‘Affirm it‘. However, you can also write down your affirmations on a post it and put it on your mirror. Or you could tell it to yourself whenever you brush your hair or take off your make-up. 

The most important thing is to truly get into the energy of your positive affirmation statement. Believe that it is true and you will feel a shift in your energy. 

However, please remember that practicing affirmations is something that should be implemented as an habit, in order to truly work well for you.

*Please note, that I am a big fan of positive psychology, because I have already healed the core of my challenges through therapy with a professional. If you are struggling with dark thoughts and trauma, I highly recommend you to first heal those traumas, before moving on to positive psychology.

5. Reflect On Your Achievements

The final method that I’d like to share with you on silencing your inner critic, is to reflect on your achievements.

We often tend to be incredibly happy and grateful about a certain achievement one day, while forgetting about it a couple of weeks later and moving on. However, when something bad happens in our life, we seem to remember it so much longer.

Therefore, I have a journal where I write down 3 daily successes and achievements every day. Whenever my inner critic is dominating my mind and nothing else seems to work, I grab my journal and read through the different achievements.

This method is incredibly powerful to remind the inner critic that you have been successful, despite their predictions and influence. 

Are You Dealing With A Strong Inner Critic?

Now that you’ve read more about the inner critic, what its function is and methods on silencing your inner critic, I am curious to hear from you:

Do you struggle with a strongly present inner critic? What have you tried so far to reduce your inner critic?

You May Also Enjoy Reading These Articles

• How To Tackle Your Inner Critic With ‘The Work’
• How To Silence Overthinking When You Are A Highly Sensitive Person
• How To Find Inner Peace As A Highly Sensitive Person
• Release Anger And Resentment Within 10 Minutes with this Meditation

The post Silencing Your Inner Critic With These 5 Powerful Methods appeared first on HiSensitives.

Are you often being called too sensitive or too soft? In this blog, we talk about the 60 signs that you are a highly sensitive person.

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Estimated reading time: 29 minutes

I am so excited to share this blog with you! HSP coach Tiara from HSPeace coaching and I have combined our strengths to put together this extensive list of signs that you are a highly sensitive person. Based on our own insights from working with and for HSP’s and input from scientific studies we have created this massive list.

If you are anything like me, you have felt like an outsider or different from others for most part of your life. For a long time, you couldn’t make sense of it and perhaps you still can’t. Therefore, I hope that after reading this blog you will be able to understand why you are feeling the way you feel. Perhaps you will discover that you are highly sensitive. Find out by browsing through this extensive list of signs that you are a highly sensitive person.

The 60 Signs That You Are A Highly Sensitive Person

Below, you can find the 60 signs that you might be a highly sensitive person. In the table below, you can directly navigate to the sections that intrigue you.

1. Overthinking

Because of their depth of processing external stimuli, highly sensitive people have a tendency to overthink a lot. Therefore, at times it might feel like you can’t turn off your thoughts. 

Moreover, you might struggle to fall asleep in the evening because your thoughts won’t shut off. 

Oftentimes, highly sensitive people also lay awake in the middle of the night because of their thoughts. These can be thoughts about the past day, thoughts about the future or even thoughts where you obsess about tiny details from the far past.

Hence, overthinking is one of the common sights that you are a highly sensitive person. If you are struggling with a loud and busy mind, you may want to read the book ‘Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts‘.

2. Often Tired

One of the consequences of deep processing and overthinking everything, is that you might feel tired and exhausted all the time. 

Even after 8 full hours of sleep you might wake up and wonder what is wrong with you. Actually, I do this all the time.

Because you process everything so very deeply, you also need more time to rest during the night and throughout the day. This can be challenging for many highly sensitive people in this fast-paced society.

3. Easily Stressed

One of the signs that you are a highly sensitive person is that you tend to feel easily stressed.

As mentioned, highly sensitive people need more rest compared to less sensitive people. Accordingly, packed schedules and many tasks on the to do-list tend to stress out the highly sensitive person easily.

In addition, highly sensitive people are known to be conflict-avoiding and they care deeply about the expectations of others. As a consequence, they hate letting others down and when they sense that this is the case, this can cause great stress within them.

Finally, because of their ability to pick up the tiniest changes in their environment, this can cause great stress when their senses are stimulated in a non-pleasing way. For instance, think about sudden changes in noise levels or brighter lights.

Struggling with stress? The book ‘The Self Care Prescription: Powerful Solutions to Manage Stress, Reduce Anxiety & Increase Wellbeing’ may help you to cope with stress and increase your overall wellbeing as a highly sensitive person.

4. Not Functioning Well When Being Observed

Highly sensitive people are some of the most productive and capable employees you can find. 

While they are performing amazingly when working in a HSP-friendly, calm environment – preferably on their own-, they might function poorly when being observed.

Being observed causes them to feel stressed by the expectations of the others and as you may know, one of the worst fears of an HSP is to let others down. 

Accordingly, this fear for disappointing others causes highly sensitive people to actually perform worse while being observed.

5. Emotional Intensity

Do you sometimes feel that you experience certain emotions more deeply than others? This is one of the signs that you are a highly sensitive person.

In fact, studies show that highly sensitive people are known to process emotions more deeply. Accordingly, they feel emotions more intensely.

This can be a true gift in good times and feel like a curse in bad times. Therefore, it is incredibly important for highly sensitive people to manage emotional regulation.

For example, you might consider to try EFT tapping (emotional freedom therapy). Here is an interesting video upon EFT tapping:

6. Feeling Out Of Place

Because highly sensitive people experience the world differently compared to less sensitive people, they might feel out of place many times.

Society is mostly fast and busy, as less sensitive people seem to have less problems with that pace. However, highly sensitive people might feel out of place and the desire to slow down more often.

Consequently, this different need can cause them to feel different and like ‘the weird kid’. Know that it is completely normal to be highly sensitive and that there is nothing wrong with wanting to live a slower lifestyle.

7. Self-Conscious

Highly sensitive people have a tendency to overthink everything around them – including themselves and their own actions. Hence, the common highly sensitive person is rather self-conscious.

Because of their strong sense of self-consciousness, highly sensitive people often look at ways to improve themselves and grow on a personal level. Also, they tend to reflect in-depth about how they come across to other people.

Therefore, that is why I started HiSensitives together with my fiancé Riny; to support highly sensitive people’s need for personal growth.

8. Extremely Empathic

Highly sensitive people have a heightened amount of mirror neurons in their brain. Mirror neurons enable people to emphasize and feel the pain of others more deeply. 

Accordingly, highly sensitive people often are extremely empathic. As a result, they care deeply about everyone and everything around them and feel other people’s emotions as if they were their own.

If you’d like to learn more about empathy, here’s an interesting video for you:

9. Fear Of Rejection

Due to their extremely empathic nature, highly sensitive people might experience a strong fear of being rejected by others. Especially highly sensitive introverts, who often are labelled as shy, might experience this fear strongly. 

This fear can show itself in the strangest ways: for example by being afraid to raise your hand and speak up – even if you know you have the right answer.

Another way this fear of rejection can show itself is when you are afraid to share your opinion with someone you disagree with, out of fear of being rejected by them.

If you are struggling with a strong fear of rejection, this book may be an inspiring read for you: ‘Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection’

10. Fear Of Failure

Another common fear amongst highly sensitive people is the fear of failure. Because they have a tendency to care so very deeply about everything they take on, the fear of it failing can truly eat us up.

In worst cases, the fear of failure within a highly sensitive person is so strong, that they don’t even dare to take on new projects or give their new dream a chance. To elaborate, the idea that it might fail horrifies a highly sensitive person.

11. Feeling Misunderstood By Others

Do you have a tendency to feel misunderstood by others? Either in relation to how you perceive your environment or how you feel about certain situations? This is one of the common signs that you are a highly sensitive person. 

One thing I recognize often in the HSP community is that before highly sensitive people understand that they are highly sensitive, they feel like ‘the weird kid’. For example, they might feel like they are the only ones in the world experiencing things intensely or different.

However, once you know for sure that you are part of the HSP club, the feeling of being misunderstood will decrease. Finally you will find your people who get it. Who are the same. It will feel like a true relief to you. I know I felt that way.

12. Disliking Loud Noises

Studies show that highly sensitive people process sensory stimulation more intensely. Hence, their senses are heightened and they are more easily overwhelmed by sensory input.

For instance, one type of sensory input that can feel overwhelming to highly sensitive people, are loud noises. Or even worse: loud, unexpected noises. 

Highly sensitive people struggle to function when they are in a noisy environment. Therefore, noise cancelling earbuds (affiliate link) are a highly sensitive person’s best friend.

13. Preferring Dim Lighting

Another result of being easily overwhelmed by sensory input, is that many highly sensitive people prefer dim lighting.

Because it is less overwhelming to their senses, dim lighting is a pleasant and cozy light source to the typical HSP.

14. Loving Art And Music

One of the signs that you are a highly sensitive person, is that you truly appreciate art and music. 

Consequently, you could just sit and listen to (calm) music for hours and feel the words and sounds in every fibre of your body.

The same goes for art; due to their deep sensory processing, beautiful art can trigger wonderful emotions within a highly sensitive person.

15. Loving Animals

A positive side effect of being highly empathic, is that highly sensitive people often love animals. 

Moreover, they can emphasize with their pure, innocent nature and often find comfort in their pets. Comfort, which they sometimes struggle to find within other people.

16. Loving Nature

Similar to being around animals, highly sensitive people seem to truly thrive when being in nature. For instance, a walk in the forest, on the beach or in the mountains can do wonders for their physical and mental health.

Why? Perhaps because the external stimuli from nature is more pleasant to them. No loud car sounds, construction sites and crowds of people. Paradise!

17. Deeply Caring

The empathic nature of a highly sensitive person often results in them caring deeply about everyone and everything around them.

Because of their caring personality, they sometimes struggle to realize that not everyone around them cares as deeply about things as they do. Hence, this can result in frustration and disappointment.

18. Perfectionistic

Highly sensitive people are known to have an incredible eye for detail. Because of that, they tend to be rather perfectionistic. 

Their perfectionism can be a strength in relation to their work, as it causes them to deliver projects of high quality. However, it can also slow them down and sometimes even result in unrealistic expectations towards themselves and never being satisfied with the outcome.

Here’s an incredible podcast upon the topic perfectionism.

19. Strong Inner Critic

Due to their overthinking tendencies, highly sensitive people often struggle with a strong inner critic. In addition, their challenges regarding dealing with criticism, causes their inner critic to remember every tiny bit of criticism they’ve ever received.

As a result, many highly sensitive people often are their own worst critic and almost bully themselves over the tiniest mistakes in their lives. If you struggle with a strong inner critic, this video might be interesting for you:

20. Wanting A Higher Purpose In Life (In Career)

Have you ever found yourself dreading to go to work, because you don’t see the point in doing that job? Most likely, that job was not meaningful enough to you. 

Studies have shown that highly sensitive people can’t just have a job to make money. Hence, their career must be meaningful and support their higher purpose in life.

21. Enjoying Small Things In Life Nobody Else Seems To Notice

One of the other signs that you are a highly sensitive person, is that you enjoy the small things in life which nobody else around you seems to take notice of.

Because highly sensitive people process and notice every tiny detail around them, they are able to notice these seemingly small and simple things.

Have you ever found yourself appreciating the smell of the rain, a light breeze on your skin or the sound of the wind whispering through the trees, while the person you were with was looking at you like you were crazy? Welcome to the world of a highly sensitive person.

Do you want to embrace the small things in life even more? This ’52 Week Guide To Cultivate An Attitude Of Gratitude’ may help you with that!

22. Thinking How The World Operates Right Now Is Too Fast, Competitive, And Multi-task Driven

One of the most common thoughts we notice in our community for highly sensitive people and empaths, is that they are struggling with the pace of (Western) society. For instance, they find it too fast, too focused on competition and struggle with the ideal of working on multiple tasks at the same time.

To demonstrate, ask a highly sensitive person about their dream life and they will most likely talk about a calm home (in nature), with a job that is stress-free and can be performed at their own pace.

23. Often Feeling Guilty

Feeling guilty about things that you say or do is one of the signs that you are a highly sensitive person. Most likely, this origins from the overthinking tendencies of the typical highly sensitive person.

Small discussions or signs that another person is displeased with a certain behavior might be overanalyzed by a highly sensitive person and hence result in feelings of guilt. 

Oftentimes, when you check in with the other person and tell them about your guilt, you will realize that there was no reason to feel guilty about anything in the first place.

If you have been struggling with feelings of guilt your entire life, the book ‘Let Go of the Guilt’ may be a good read for you.

24. Feeling ‘High Maintenance’

Because there are certain things that can result in overwhelm and overstimulation within a highly sensitive person, they might avoid specific situations.

Things that less sensitive people don’t seem to struggle with at all, might feel like a big deal to a highly sensitive person. For instance, think about the yearly weekend getaway with your husband’s entire family. All these people under one roof without a space to find silence, might be incredibly overstimulating for a highly sensitive person. 

Not being able to deal with these types of situations ‘normally’, can cause a highly sensitive person to feel high maintenance. 

However, know that being overwhelmed by certain situations is completely normal when you are highly sensitive and that there is no reason to be ashamed of it.

25. Hearing Phrases Such As “You Are Too Sensitive”

If you are highly sensitive, you most likely have heard one of the following phrases sooner or later in your life:

• “You are so needy”
• “You are too emotional”
• “Just get over it” 
• “Let it go”
• “You are taking things too personal”
• “You are too sensitive”

Do these sound familiar to you? If they do, chances are likely that they were said to you by less sensitive people and that you in fact are highly sensitive. 

Oftentimes, when highly sensitive people don’t know about their trait, they struggle to set healthy boundaries for themselves. Moreover, they push themselves to a level of emotional exhaustion and might occasionally experience ‘emotional overload’. It is often in those situations, when people feel justified to make one of those statements towards an HSP.

While it is not okay at all to be criticised like this, know that you will hear these types of statements less, once you find out how to set healthy boundaries for yourself and learn how to thrive as a highly sensitive person.

26. Very Creative

While no studies currently prove that highly sensitive people are more creative than less sensitive people, their depth of processing external input might result in creative output. However, this is only the case if the highly sensitive person has enough confidence to do so. 

So if you find that you are very creative, this might be a sign that you are highly sensitive. Therefore, once you join a couple of communities for highly sensitive people, you will realize that being creative is a common shared interest among HSP’s.

For instance, if you want to embrace your creativity as a highly sensitive person, the creativity journal ‘Creative Thinking Journal: fun, creative challenges designed to increase your creativity‘ may be what you are looking for!

27. Eye For Detail

Highly sensitive people are known to pay attention to detail. Therefore, they will notice the tiniest, most subtle changes in their environment or in the behavior of a person. 

Oftentimes, they see things which others tend to pass by without noticing.

28. Trying Hard To Be A Good Friend

One of the common signs that you are a highly sensitive person, is that you are trying hard to be a good friend. Oftentimes, you tend to remember the things that others seem to forget. 

When your friend is feeling down, you are doing everything to comfort them in a way that makes them happy. Due to your empathic nature, this comes naturally to you.

29. Worrying About What Others Think Of You

Because you are a highly sensitive empath who feels emotions of others rather easily, you preferably want to be liked by everyone. Therefore you care deeply about what others think of you.

Oftentimes, you might overthink the signals you receive from others and start worrying about whether you did something to upset them or to like you less. If you recognize this behaviour within yourself, this might be an interesting video for you:

30. Feeling Better After Time Alone In Your Own “Sacred” Space

Another sign that you are a highly sensitive person is that you feel like a new person after recharging in your ‘sacred’ space. This could be a cozy living room, your bathroom or your bedroom, depending on where you can relax the most.

This is not only the case for highly sensitive introverts, who prefer downtime alone. Also highly sensitive extroverts need to retreat to their own space to recharge their energy.

31. Preferring Your Own Bed And Home

One of the signs that you are a highly sensitive person, is that you prefer your home above anything else. Why? Because you have (hopefully) adapted your home to your needs. 

Dim lighting, cozy furniture, silent rooms and pleasant smells are one of the main reasons why you prefer your home above a fancy hotel room or staying at a friends house. In addition, a bed that fits your sleeping needs makes you prefer to sleep at home.

Even if you are a high sensation seeker and HSP, nothing beats coming home to your own four walls to recharge after a fun experience.

32. Feeling Better When You Are In Control Of Your Environment

Highly sensitive people might prefer to know what is going to happen around them, as they are easily startled by surprising sounds, lights or experiences. Therefore, they tend to prefer being in an environment which they know well. 

Of course a highly sensitive person is able to adapt to new situations too, but these will most likely overwhelm them greatly due to all the new external input. Hence, they might feel the need to recharge after such an experience.

33. Preferring Your Own Mode Of Transportation Instead Of Public Transport

Another subtle sign that you might be a highly sensitive person, is that you prefer your own transport above public transport. The reason is simple: public transport craves more of your energy.

All the people, the sounds and the smells can feel quite overwhelming to a highly sensitive person. External stimuli, which can be avoided by commuting on your own.

34. Easily Overwhelmed

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were easily overwhelmed? Chances are likely that this situation involved unpredictable, loud sounds, bright lights or too many people around you. 

This is a lot to take in for a highly sensitive person. Due to their depth of processing, the high amount of external stimulation can cause an HSP to feel overwhelmed more easily. 

Accordingly, highly sensitive people might not be the biggest fans of large crowds and events, simply because it overwhelms them to the max.

If overwhelm is a common struggle for you, you may want to discover the book ‘The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You’.

35. Relationships Can Be Intense And Challenging

Highly sensitive people and relationships can be a challenge if the partner, friend or relative does not understand what being a highly sensitive person means. Also, somebody close who does not acknowledge the trait can feel challenging for a highly sensitive person. How?

However, when your partner, friend or relative isn’t aware of the trait or does not want to acknowledge it, you constantly find yourself in situations that overwhelm you and they won’t understand why. 

Accordingly, it is important to talk with them about your sensitivity and your needs and to set healthy boundaries in relationships. This can be an intense progress, as you might face resistance from them. However, be patient and try to show them scientific data to back up what you are trying to tell them. Perhaps you could show them this video:

36. Very Uncomfortable With Violence And Obscenity On Television

One of the common signs that you are a highly sensitive person is that you can’t stand violence and obscenity on television and in movies. For instance, seeing such scenes might even cause you to feel nauseous or to have bad nightmares. 

Accordingly, you might prefer to avoid these types of media.

37. Mood Is Affected Easily

Because of their heightened amount of mirror neurons, empathy and depth of processing, the mood of a highly sensitive person is easily affected by external input. 

Their mood can change due to the mood of others around them, scenes from the news, watching a specific movie, listening to certain music and the list goes on. While this is wonderful with regards to positive energy, it can feel like a true curse when encountering negative input. 

Therefore, it is important for highly sensitive people to spend time to properly ground their energy and stand with both feet steady on the ground. This can for example be achieved by protecting your energy. In this blog, we talk about it with regards to toxic people.

And if you are looking for a great way to manage your mood, this book may be a good place to start: ‘The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life’

38. In Extreme Cases: Using Drugs Or Alcohol To Numb Emotions

A highly sensitive person who is not aware of their trait and/or is not able to set healthy boundaries for themselves might feel continuous exhaustion and emotional overload. In extreme cases, some might even find temporary relief in alcohol or drugs. However, this is not the perfect solution, as it affects your physical and mental health deeply. 

If you recognize this behavior within yourself, know that there are other ways to learn how to tackle your daily challenges as a highly sensitive person. After all, you do not want to become addicted to alcohol and/or drugs.

For example, you might want to consider seeing an HSP coach. HSP coach Tiara might be able to help you with your struggles and on Dr. Elaine Aron’s website you can find an extensive overview of other HSP experts across the world. Also on our website, you can discover reputable personal growth experts to help you with your challenges.

39. Crying Easily

One of the common signs that you are a highly sensitive person, is that you seem to cry more easily compared to less sensitive people.

As you process external input more deeply both bodily and emotionally, an emotional overload might express itself in a good crying session. When you learn how to ground yourself more properly and set healthy boundaries, you will most likely notice that you will cry less in the future.

40. Anxiety

Because highly sensitive people have heightened activity in the part of their brain responsible for fear – the amygdala -, they also might experience more anxiety compared to less sensitive people. Hence, they come across as more careful and sometimes even nervous to other people. 

Experiencing anxiety might be one of the biggest frustrations of being a highly sensitive person. Anxiety in combination with overthinking can greatly affect one’s feeling of happiness. Accordingly, it might be wise to spend time on learning more about your brain and its patterns and how you can prevent certain destructive thought patterns effectively.

If you struggle with anxiety often, this technique might be interesting for you to try out:

41. Being Told That You Are ‘Too Soft’ And Need To Grow A ‘Thicker Skin’

Has someone ever told you that you are being ‘too soft’ and that you need to grow a ‘thicker skin’? That you need to toughen up? 

These are common things that highly sensitive people hear from their parents, relatives or even their partner. They may mean well when they say those things, but for highly sensitive people this can come across as incredibly hurtful.

Their sensitive nature is something that deserves to be seen and that is needed in the world. Hiding away their trait would mean hiding away who they truly are. 

Therefore, please don’t take these comments too serious and embrace your sensitive side.

42. Strong Intuition And Gut Feeling

Highly sensitive people tend to have a strong intuition, because they notice tiny details that others may not. In addition, their depth of processing this input enables them to connect the dots easily. 

A highly sensitive person can oftentimes sense when someone is struggling, even when that person isn’t saying a word about it. 

Do you want to learn how to understand your intuition better? In the book ‘Radical Intuition: A Revolutionary Guide to Using Your Inner Power‘ you will find useful tips.

43. Few Deep Connections With Others

Another typical sign that you are a highly sensitive person is that you may have few truly deep connections with people around you. Due to your depth of processing certain input, you might find it hard to find people who are able to ‘reach that depth’ with you.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you talked enthusiastically about for example the endless possibilities of the Universe and spirituality, and your conversation partner looked at you with empty eyes, wondering how on earth you could think about those things?

This is quite common for highly sensitive people and might even cause them to feel alone. Know that there are many other people out there who experience it just the same way you do. You can connect with them through HSP communities like this one.

44. People-pleaser

Due to their empathic character, highly sensitive people often are people-pleasers. Since they feel the mood of others and don’t want to disrupt their mood by displeasing them, they often go out of their way to please them.

While pleasing others can be a wonderful characteristic, it is important to make sure that you are not being used by the other person. Ensure to set healthy boundaries in relationships and to know when enough is enough.

If people-pleasing is something you struggle with occasionally, this book may be life changing for you: ‘Not Nice: Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, & Feeling Guilty… And Start Speaking Up, Saying No, Asking Boldly, And Unapologetically Being Yourself’

45. Feeling Energies

Have you ever found yourself walking into a room and feeling that something was ‘off’ with it? Seconds later, you found out that the people in that room just had a conflict. 

Being able to feel energies in a room or amongst people can be related to your heightened amount of mirror neurons. Because you notice subtle changes in the behaviour if others, feeling these energy shifts comes natural to you.

46. Sensitive To Caffeine

Another typical sign that you are a highly sensitive person, is that you are sensitive to caffeine. This is not strange, as caffeine acts as a stimulant to the central nervous system of our brains.

A study shows that there was a significant increase in amygdala activity when caffeine was combined with a threatening situation. 

Actually, highly sensitive people already happen to have a higher amount of amygdala activity. Therefore, adding caffeine to that surely can’t be good. This explains why many highly sensitive people react strongly when consuming caffeine.

47. Easily Getting Distracted During A Conversation

While you love having deep conversations with others, you might often find yourself distracted during those conversations. Usually, this occurs when there is too much external stimuli going on around you.

Loud noises, crowds of people and strong smells might distract you from your conversation. Therefore, it might be wise to look for calm places when you intend to have a deep conversation with someone (without being distracted all the time).

48. Getting Scared Easily

One of the typical signs that you are a highly sensitive person, is that you easily get scared. Because your amygdala – the part of the brain responsible for fear and the fight-, flight- and freeze reaction – already is more active, being scared by someone pushes it over the top.

49. Performing Worse Under Time Pressure

Highly sensitive people prefer slow living and focusing on one task at a time. Because they are perfectionists and pay close attention to detail, they become very stressed when they don’t have the time to practice those skills.

This in combination with their fear of failure results in great stress within them, which again might limit them in performing as well as usually.

50. Becoming ‘Hangry’ Very Easily

Have you ever found yourself binge eating after a rough day? Do you get ‘hangry’ easily on those days? According to this article, highly sensitive people often experience binge eating and weight gaining. This occurs due to their body’s reaction to negative influences from the environment they find themselves in.

By adding a layer of fat to our body, our body attempts to shield itself as protection against negative circumstances and energies. Hence, the eating. 

Therefore, make sure to eat nutritional food that is good for you if you feel hangry. However, the best solution is to find other ways to protect yourself from negative influences by setting healthy boundaries, taking a step back or avoiding negative influences that don’t serve you or your life.

51. Struggling To Deal With Change

Another common sign that you are a highly sensitive person, is that you struggle to deal with changes. Changes often have a major influence on our daily rhythms and the tendency to bring us out of balance.

As highly sensitive people do their best to remain balanced in a rather fast paced world, that is not suited well towards the needs of an HSP, change can be truly frustrating. However, while you’re trying to prepare yourself the best you can for change, unforeseen situations still happen to occur. 

I remember when we moved to our new, beautiful home and it took me 4 (!) months to truly get used to this change. Although we had planned the move for quite a while and made sure to not stress too much, it still was an incredibly stressful event.

If change is one of your biggest struggles, you may want to have a look at this book: ‘Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age’

52. You Were Labeled As Sensitive Or Shy As A Kid

Highly sensitive people were often labeled as shy or ‘too sensitive’ when they were children. Oftentimes, this shyness simply was a coping mechanism for the highly sensitive child, who most likely was overwhelmed and overstimulated. 

Because many people and especially the older generations weren’t aware of the HSP trait, these were common labels to refer to. Nowadays, the HSP trait is recognized more easily in children and more and more people are learning about the trait. 

53. Struggling To Stay Concentrated

Highly sensitive people might have difficulties to stay concentrated and focused while working. For example, when there are unexpected noises or smells in their environment, chances are likely that they will be distracted by it.

These distractions might annoy them so much that their head feels ‘cluttered’ by it and they might feel a spontaneous need to get rid of the disturbance. First when it is cleared, they can continue to focus.

Are you having serious concentration issues? This book may offer some useful insights: ’10-Minute Focus: 25 Habits for Mastering Your Concentration and Eliminating Distractions’

54. Feeling Like You Don’t Fit In The “9 to 5”-Rhythm Of Society

The standard society truly isn’t made for highly sensitive people. Moreover, the idea to work for 8 hours straight with almost no rest, while preferably performing as many tasks as possible at the same time before a certain deadline, was certainly not created by a highly sensitive person.

Highly sensitive people tend to prefer working hours stretched out throughout the day, so they have enough time to rest in between working sessions and recharge their energy. Thankfully, big companies are acknowledging the benefits of this working structure more and more.

55. You Are Very Sensitive To Pain

Questionnaires have shown that highly sensitive people are more affected by pain than less sensitive people.

Due to them processing external stimuli more intensely, it is logical that also internal stimuli such as pain can affect a highly sensitive person deeply.

56. Worrying about the future and the past

If you find yourself worrying much about the future and the past, this might be one of the signs that you are a highly sensitive person. 

Because you might tend towards overthinking things and processing them deeply, it is logical that worrying about the future and the past are part of it as well.

For the ‘worriers’ amongst you, here’s an interesting video:

57. People Easily Open Up To You

Have you ever found yourself walking in public and suddenly being approached by strangers telling you their entire life story? Actually, this is a common experience for highly sensitive empaths.

People sense the sensitive and empathic nature of an HSP and know that they most likely will be able to receive the support that they need. Hence, this is one of the typical signs that you are a highly sensitive person.

58. Feeling When People Aren’t Telling The Truth Or Hiding Something

Because of the heightened amount of mirror neurons, highly sensitive people are able to read the emotions of others exceptionally well. Hence, they also often have the skill to feel when somebody is lying or hiding something.

They notice the subtle changes in body language and tone of voice, which others might seem to look past.

59. Smelling Things Others Can’t Smell

As a result of their heightened processing of external stimuli, highly sensitive people are more sensitive towards smell. Accordingly, they might notice the tiniest changes in the smell of their surroundings.

While this is a wonderful gift when for example smelling pleasant smells like flower fragrances, this can be truly frustrating. Especially when someone in your surroundings has an unpleasant perfume which others don’t seem to be bothered by.

60. Getting Overwhelmed By Doing Too Many Things At Once

Finally, one of the signs that you are a highly sensitive person is that you easily get overwhelmed when doing too many things at once. 

Because you prefer to pay attention to detail and perhaps even are perfectionistic, doing too many tasks at the same time disables you from practicing those skills. Hence, it can become a rather overwhelming experience to multitask.

Am I Highly Sensitive?

If you would like to confirm that you are a highly sensitive person after reading this article, you can take the official self test here. 

I hope that you found this extensive list of signs that you are a highly sensitive person useful and that you’ll share it with your friends, family and partner.

Do you think that you are highly sensitive after reading this article? Feel free to share your opinion in the comments below!

And if you want to deep dive into the HSP trait, I highly recommend you to start with the book ‘The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You’. It is a great, informative book based on scientific research, that introduces you to the concept of being a highly sensitive person and provides you with valuable tips on how to thrive.

You May Also Enjoy Reading These Articles

• Am I Highly Sensitive? The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To HSP!
• 5 Tips On How To Create A Solid Personal Growth Plan
• 20 Signs That Indicate That You’re An Empath
• Reconnecting with My Past: The Power of Inner Child Healing
• How The Law Of Attraction Influenced My Career

The post 60 Signs That You Are A Highly Sensitive Person appeared first on HiSensitives.

Self-care is most effective when you know your self-care love language. In this article, I explain the different types of self-care love languages.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

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Self care and self-love are widely used terms when it comes to your mental and physical well-being.

Thousands of resources talk about the importance of taking care of yourself and providing yourself with love. However, I was surprised to see that self care love languages actually are a thing.

I found this knowledge so interesting and eye-opening, that I just had to share it with you in this blog!

In this article, you’ll find out more about self care and learn what love languages are. 

Also, you’ll read why it is important to discover your self care love language and how you can discover them.

Ready? Let’s dive straight in!

What Is Self Care?

Self care is an activity that you do for yourself to take care of your mental, physical and emotional well-being.

In fact, self care is super simple; set some time apart to do something that you truly love and that gives your energy. After the self care activity, you should feel recharged and more relaxed. 

Sounds easy, right? Yet, so many of us tend to forget to take well care of ourselves through self care and self-love.

I, for example, always seemed to struggle with an unstoppable feeling of guilt whenever I rest or practice self care. Also, I used to feel selfish whenever I spent time on myself.

Society motivates us to be our most productive, most money-making and most hardworking self. Therefore, it isn’t strange that I’ve struggled for so long with this feeling of guilt whenever I took a moment for myself! 

The Benefits Of Self Care

In recent years, I’ve learned to see self care as the most productive thing I could do for myself and my life. If you suffer from the same feelings I did, I highly recommend you to shift your perception of self care as well.

Why? Because self care results in these wonderful (health) benefits; your mood increases, your anxiety reduces and it helps you to maintain a good relationship with yourself and others. In addition, self care improves immunity and increases positive thinking.

Once you benefit from these positive side effects of self care, your overall life will improve and you will feel more happy with everything you take on. Therefore, self care is crucial in order to live your happiest, most fulfilled life.

However, self care itself is a rather broad term and I can imagine that you don’t know where to start. That is when the self care love language comes in handy. Before we dive into that topic, let me explain what the love languages are.

What Are Love Languages?

The term love language was first introduced by the famous author Dr. Gary Chapman in his book The 5 Love Languages (affiliate link).

Love languages explain how we feel loved and appreciated by others and Dr. Gary Chapman stated that there are five of them: Words of Affirmations, Acts of Services, Physical Touch, Quality Time and Receiving Gifts.

Oftentimes, many of us can relate to more than one love language, but usually there is one that truly makes us feel loved. 

So how do love languages work? Let me give you an example:

Imagine a Russian man and an American woman falling in love with each other. Both don’t speak each other’s languages so communication is quite a challenge.

The Russian tells his American partner that he loves her. However, the American woman does not understand Russian, so she will not acknowledge the fact that he just told her ‘I love you’. The Russian, however, feels like he expressed his love perfectly fine.

Once both start to learn each other’s language, they will be able to express their love for each other in both languages and understand what the other is saying. Only then, both will feel loved and happy with each other.
 

The same goes for love languages. If your love language is ‘word of affirmations’ and your partner’s language is ‘acts of services’, your partner will only feel truly loved once you start to speak his or her love language by doing acts of services for him or her. ‘Words of affirmations’ won’t do in this case.

In his book, Dr. Gary Chapman dives in detail into the dynamics of the love languages and how they work in a relationship. 

Why You Should Discover Your Self Care Love Language

While the theory of the five love languages works perfectly for relationships, it also can be applied when loving and taking care of yourself.

In his book about the five love languages (affiliate link), Dr. Gary Chapman talks about a so-called love tank.

In theory, the love tank needs to be filled up with love from your partner in order to be able to give love. Your love tank is refilled by receiving love from your partner in the way you understand it the most; your love language.

If you don’t refill your partner’s love tank every now and then, the relationship is most likely doomed to fail, as a relationship without love won’t work in the long term.

So if we translate this theory towards self-love and self care, we could call the love tank a ‘self-love tank’. 

If you let your self-love tank run empty, you don’t have enough to live your best life and to give love to others. 

When I didn’t refill my self-love tank due to my guilt related to self care, I soon experienced symptoms comparable to a burnout. It was terrible and I realized that I did not take well enough care of myself in a way that is good for me.

If you want to avoid this empty feeling, it is important for you to refill your self-love tank regularly. You could perceive it as recharging your battery.

In order to refill your self-love tank, you should practice self care activities that align with your self care love language. For this, it is important to know what your self care love language is.

Self Care Love Languages

While there is no book yet that dives in detail into the theory of self care love languages, the theory from Dr. Gary Chapman’s can easily be translated towards self care.

Most of us naturally give love in a way that we would like to receive it. Therefore, it is logical that your self care love language entails activities that make you feel loved, safe and happy, just like your standard love language does. 

Let’s have a look at how the five love languages can be translated into self care love languages:

Words Of Affirmations

This love language is all about receiving affirmation, verbal acknowledgement of affection and encouragement from others.

However, when you translate words of affirmations towards self care love languages, you can think of it as being your biggest cheerleader! 

We have incredible power over our minds and by providing ourselves with powerful (words of) affirmations, we can fill up our love tank. If this is your (self care) love language, these activities might fit your self care needs:

• Give yourself a pep talk in front of the mirror
• Write down positive affirmations and repeat them to yourself every day
• Identify your inner critic
• Journaling
• Gratitude
• Make a scrapbook where you add compliments that you are receiving throughout the day
• Take personality tests
• Make a vision board
• Read personal development books
• Write yourself a love letter
• Make a list of all your achievements
• Make a list of your best qualities

Physical Touch

The love language physical touch in relationships involves being touched through hugs, kisses, massages and so on. 

If this is your love language, it might seem impossible to do this as a self care activity, but think twice!

Physical touch is all about making your body feel good by focusing on the physical aspect of it. Here are some ideas to try out when your self care love language is physical touch:

• Yoga
• Massages (Either from a professional or with a massage chair)
• Spa days
• Swimming (the water on your skin can be sooo soothing)
• Buy a weighted blanket
• Take a bath
• Spoil your skin and hair with a mask
• Dancing
• Cuddle with your pet (if you have one)
• Walk barefoot on the grass or on a soft carpet

Quality Time

In relationships, the love language quality time is about the time the two of you truly spend together. No cellphones, no tv on in the background, no distractions. Just the two of you and a good conversation or activity that you both enjoy.

When you translate quality time towards self care love languages, you might say that it is about spending time alone with yourself while doing things that you truly love.

Here are some suggestions for those of you, who have quality time as a self care love language:

• Meditation
• Relax in the garden (or on the couch)
• Be creative (f.e. Knit, art, draw)
• Do a moon ritual
• Visit a city you’ve never been to
• Take a walk in nature
• Read a book
• Plan a retreat doing all the things you love
• Listen to music
• Book a weekend getaway for yourself

Acts Of Service

Acts of services involve doing things for others. You feel the most loved when others are doing something for you that you need.

This could be anything from washing your laundry, taking out the trash or walking the dog.

If this is your self care love language, know that there are tons of acts of services that you can do to fill up your self-love tank:

• Organize your home by doing a declutter challenge
• Cook yourself a meal you’ve always wanted to try
• Do some gardening
• Make yourself a nice cup of tea (or coffee, if you can handle the caffeine)
• Bake a cake
• Paint your home in new colours
• Do some meal prepping for the week
• Make a clear planning for the week ahead
• Start your day with a good breakfast

Gifts

The final love language, gifts, is about spoiling your partner with things they have been wanting or that they need.

When it comes to self care, this love language is all about treating yourself by buying things and/or experiences that increase your happiness and well-being.

Here are some ideas for those of you whose primary self care love language is receiving gifts:

• Go on a shopping spree to update your closet
• Treat yourself to go on that vacation you’ve been dreaming about forever
• Buy yourself comfortable clothes to wear at home
• Invest in your personal and professional growth
• Order dinner instead of cooking it yourself
• Treat yourself to meaningful items that have been on your wishlist for years
• Improve your sleep by investing in a good mattress and bedding

How Do I Find Out What My Self Care Love Language Is?

While there is no official test on self care love languages yet, a good alternative might be to take the love languages test on this website. 

By understanding what your love language is in a relationship, you will learn how you truly feel loved by someone else. 

Once you translate that love language into some of the self care activities mentioned above, you might notice that you feel more energized and happy very soon. Why? Because you fill up your self-love tank!

Now that you have learned more about the self care love languages, I am curious: What is your self care love language? Please share it in the comments!

You May Also Enjoy Reading These Articles

• Highly Sensitive Person And Love: How To Thrive In Your Relationship
• The Ultimate Self-Care Guide For The 6 Empath Types
• How To Show Your Highly Sensitive Partner You Love Them

The post Do You Know Your Self Care Love Language? appeared first on HiSensitives.