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Inner Dialogues

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The Softest Light, by chaps1

More than a year ago I wrote an article on writing out conversations between myself and the wiser part of me – “Conversations Between Me and U.” The tool of having dialogues with myself has been so useful, and in such surprising ways, that I want to tell you how it’s evolved.

While exploring Lora Sasiela’s Financially Smitten website, I found her “Money Dialogue Exercise” (which she adapted from Olivia Mellan’s Money Harmony). Sasiela suggests:

“Start by imagining that your Money is a person with whom you are having a relationship. Imagine having a conversation with your Money about how the relationship is going.”

I tried it and discovered that My Money has the voice of a swank benevolent dictator with a B.S. meter fine-tuned at the atomic level. After only one extremely intense, handwritten dialogue with My Money, everything – and I really mean everything – shifted for me. Since then: growth spurts on multiple fronts, including financial.

Next, I started the Unravelling e-course offered by Susannah Conway and, one day, while checking out the books she recommends on her website, I found The New Diary, by Tristine Rainer (a pal of Anaïs Nin’s). How have I never come across this book before? It was published in 1978 and is chock-full of journaling ideas that shift the Earth on its axis.

One of the “Seven Special Techniques” Rainer covers is dialogue. Does your leg hurt? Write out a conversation with it and find out what’s going on. Have you been wondering where your sexuality has gone? Find out, simply by daring to invite it into a dialogue. Converse with friends and family members in your journal, or chat with your garden or with your aching heart. My most recent conversation was between me and My Gifts, and produced a wonderful shocker of a result. The possibilities are endless.

Rather than promoting an unhealthy splitting of internal aspects of ourselves, Rainier says these dialogues divide the self in order to “bring it together again in greater harmony.” And that’s been exactly my experience. The more I experiment with this technique, the more sharply and quickly my world comes into focus (with lights flashing to clearly mark my now-obvious path forward) and the more I feel both like myself and wise beyond myself.

Related reading: Hidden Lives Revealed, Revise the Story

Flickr photo: The Softest Light, by chaps1

Filed in Books, Creativity, Curiosity | Comments (5)

Cranium Sanctum

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Daydreaming, by Kr. B.

What do you allow and what do you suppress in the privacy of your own mind? Does the habit of limiting and restricting input – light, sound, chaos, profusions, and multiplicities – extend to keeping your own thoughts at bay?

We are unobserved inside our own minds.

What if, in the pure privacy of your mind, you allowed yourself to be a god – brave, bold, benevolent, and endless? There’s room for everything in there. In here. Within.

We can go far, we can safely edge our toes out over the lip of too far, and yet never leave our cranial homeland. We can…

  1. Redress wrongs
  2. Explore parallel universes
  3. Live out other lifetimes
  4. Take what-ifs to the nth degree
  5. Tempt Fate
  6. Try on different personalities
  7. Wildly mutate time and reality
  8. Follow detours
  9. Grow old or young
  10. Glimpse the outermost edges
  11. Unshackle and unharness
  12. Flex the rust from timidity
  13. Emerge victorious after all
  14. Probe mysteries and depths
  15. Become smaller or larger
  16. Enchant people
  17. Rewrite history
  18. Evoke strong feelings
  19. Move cities from A to B
  20. Predict the future
  21. Resurrect the dead
  22. Fall in love a thousand times a day
  23. End wars

Where does your mind end? What point have you stopped travelling beyond in your mind? Your imagination, the holy infinity in your head, can show you everything missing in your outer life, in multi-sensory detail, with amendments, revisions, special effects, instant replays, and timeless certainty.

What roams free in the timeless anti-history of your unexplored mind? Find out. Follow the arrowhead at the end of the minute hand, out past the edge of the clock.

Related reading: Keyholes

Flickr photo: Daydreaming, by Kr. B.

Filed in Creativity | Comments (3)

Growth Spurt Management

Monday, March 29, 2010

Brussel sprout seedlings, by Librarianguish

I’m going through a growth spurt. It’s messy and unpleasant. I wobble without cease. My foundation keeps shifting.

Not that I’m knocking growth spurts. No, indeed. A hefty growth spurt, one that knocks the pins out from underneath to make way for a stronger platform to jump from, often does the heavy lifting required to get from here to the next level.

The nature of a growth spurt is that it’s a blip, a bell curve, a temporary push. We tolerate the upheaval to get to the down slope and the richer pastures beyond.

What’s needed are tools for getting through intact. Mini cease-and-desist moments inserted into the swirling maelstrom offer breathing room and calm, even if only briefly. Plus, they seem to add up, reducing the overall hyperventilation level to more sustainable doggy panting.

The core Growth Spurt Management tactic I use is an elbow-room list, a catalogue of things that make me disengage temporarily, even if only momentarily. I craft the list with brutal honesty, only listing things that really work for me, such as:

  1. Listen to monumentally cheesy English-lyric Latin dance songs (no, I won’t tell you who) on my MP3 player (audio privacy, in this case, is utterly crucial; the last thing I need during a growth spurt is to be made fun of).
  2. Talk to my mother, who’s a fathomless source of unconditional love. She really gets me.
  3. Meditate, however I can, even if I feel like I’m only trying, and even if only for seconds at a time.
  4. Write in my journal. Write as many pages as possible – there’s no such thing as too much, unless my writing hand flops over in fatigued surrender, which has been known to happen.
  5. Indulge in stories – novels, DVD movies – that take me far away.
  6. Watch the British TV series Sharpe, for a role model of courage, integrity, and growing through tough spots rather than trying to avoid them.
  7. Walk alone in nature, particularly along deserted country lanes where no one will notice if I stump along like Frankenstein and drool.
  8. Take photos of whatever the heck I want, even if I don’t remotely understand why I’m doing it.
  9. Lie on the bed with the door closed and focus on breathing through my heart.
  10. Write and post the articles I most need to read.

During frighteningly intense growth spurt phases, I carry my list around in a pocket during the day and hold it in my fist as I fall asleep at night.

Related reading: Pep Talk | Keel Over, Successfully Sensitive | Richard Sharpe

Flickr photo: Brussel sprout seedlings, by Librarianguish

Filed in Miscellany | Comments (8)

June HSP Gathering

Friday, March 26, 2010

Drumbeg Provincial Park, by Grace Kerina

One of the earliest articles I wrote on Highly Sensitive Power was about HSP Gatherings. It’s now almost two years later and I’ll be attending one in a few months, right here on the little island in British Columbia where I live.

Jacquelyn Strickland, the mastermind behind the HSP Retreat Gatherings, hosted a Gathering here on Gabriola Island a few years ago, which I didn’t attend, but wanted to. Though I didn’t move to Gabriola Island to save on lodging costs during the Gathering, I’m definitely now in the right place at the right time. I’m enjoying helping Jacquelyn pull the details together, including plans for a hike I’ll lead through and around Drumbeg Provincial Park, which is just along the shore from the little bay I live on.

People come from all over to attend HSP Gatherings — they’re not only for whoever’s in the area. June in the Southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia is a prime vacation destination. Perhaps I’ll see you here then.

For more information, visit the June HSP Gathering info page on Jacquelyn’s website. Please let me or Jacquelyn know if you have any questions.

Photo taken from Drumbeg Provincial Park, Gabriola Island, BC, by Grace Kerina

Related reading: The Power of Community, HSP Gatherings

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Working with a Sensitive Professional

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Good Friends, by Juliana Coutinho

What’s it like to work with a highly sensitive professional? My own experiences have been marvellous and life-changing. The flurry of activity Jenna Avery and I are in the thick of as we bring The Sensitive Professionals Network further into the public eye offer a good example.

When Jenna and I work together, I relax into the process in a way that’s unique and that I often experience when I collaborate and work with other HSPs. The quality and depth of our collaboration continually please and amaze me. Here are some of the specific and positive qualities I’ve noticed as we’ve worked together:

  • We listen to each other. No issue is too odd or too small or too hot to delve into. And when we’ve delved, the project and our relationship are better.
  • We solicit each other’s opinions. We genuinely want to know what the other person thinks and we value our perspectives, even when they’re different, which they often are.
  • We bend as needed. There’s blessedly little ego in the collaboration. We each have the ability and willingness to move aside and let the project be the star.
  • When we disagree, no one has to win. We set the topic aside and gather more information. Or we wait. Or one of us simply lets go. There’s no winner and no loser. Only forward motion.
  • We have lots and lots to say to each other. Any scheduled phone conversation can go into overtime, and often does, simply because there’s so much to share. The tangents are multitudinous and must be kept in check. It’s a great feeling to know there’s an infinity of richness to tap into when we get together.
  • We learn from each other. Although we’re the same in some very foundational ways – through our shared high sensitivity – we’re very different in other ways and we’re both open to learning and teaching. I’m getting a great education through this collaboration.

Try it for yourself. Browse the directory listings on The Sensitive Professionals Network (SPN) website or consider listing yourself as available for connecting to other HSPs. We’ll soon start accepting new directory listings– we’ll announce it on the SPN website. In the meantime, if you haven’t already, you can receive our gift of the Success Checklist for Sensitive Professionals by taking our survey (the survey will close this Thursday, March 25, at 7 Eastern Time).

Related reading: Highly Sensitive Havens, Narrative Medicine

Flickr photo: Good Friends, by Juliana Coutinho

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