Douglas Eby, of the intergalactic-sized website Talent Development Resources, interviewed Dr. Ted Zeff, author of The Highly Sensitive Person’s Survival Guide, on the topic of how people can benefit from being highly sensitive. (Click on the little blue circle under the stars to start the audio on www.spokenword.org or access it from Douglas Eby’s website.)

Dr. Zeff covers a variety of fascinating topics within the overall topic. Although I already know a lot of what was covered in the discussion, it also showed me all-new facets and lots to think about.

If you’re in a space where the benefits of being sensitive are hard to find. Are you feeling lost in a big crowd of family members? Or overwhelmed by the demands — self-imposed or otherwise — of the holiday season? Are you feeling lonely or on hold? Dr. Ted may have some soothing wisdom, just for you.

Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing during this time, I send you strength and joy. Stand tall.

Related reading: Beating the Family Holiday Blues, Gems | Movies | Unusual Love Stories

Flickr photo: Two Seasons, Bill Heine

Grace to be interviewed live online
this Tuesday by Adela Rubio

Do you feel tossed about lately by our society’s intense rate of change? Do you long to find calm footing in a sea of chaos?

We live in a time of dynamic transformation. Find the opportunity inherent in this time by plugging into a navigation panel that provides stability even as you zoom.

By using the power of portable tools, we can consciously engage change and move forward into new growth with more ease.

Adela Rubio, founder and queen of Self Care Mastery, has invited me to participate in a one-hour live interview as part of her Self Care Mastery Interview series:

• This Tuesday, August 25th, at 1 pm Eastern Time / 11 am Pacific Time
• Register for the Navigate Like a Nomad interview
• You’ll be able to ask questions during parts of the interview
• The live call is free and the replay will be available for 24 hours

I’d love to be with you on the call. Thanks for forwarding this page to anyone you think would be interested. Let me know if you have any questions.

Flickr photo: Cocoon, by The Wandering Angel

After Sam felt the loss of not having recorded her grandmother’s life story, she became curious about the life stories of the people around her. In 2001, her fascination became a business. Since then, the capable Echo Memoirs team has ushered more than 200 stunningly beautiful hard-cover memoirs through the process of creation for their clients. They have a cry rate of 100% upon delivery of their books.

In 2005, Samantha was named one of the Top 40 under 40, an award given out by Business in Vancouver magazine to British Columbia’s top business achievers under the age of 40.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In what way are you most successfully sensitive?

I have always felt like a conduit for people’s energy. If the energy around me is positive, I am boosted by it; if it is negative, I am weighed down by it. Since I have the good fortune as a business owner of being able to select the people that I want around me at work, I have made a conscious effort to pick positive people. The result for me is that when I come to work, I am inspired and motivated by my colleagues. And my business is impacted in a very real way — our clients love working with our team so they refer new clients. I have never paid for a lick of advertising and my business doubled its revenues five years in a row. In my personal life, the formula is easy: attract positive people, add me, blend thoroughly, enjoy.

What or who has inspired you to embrace your sensitivity?

Perhaps it’s having been an only child, but my pattern has always been to remove myself from situations in order to reflect upon them. Simply put, I need to be alone to really think. Or more specifically, I need to be away from familiar places and people. In my early twenties, I travelled a lot: Europe, India, Central America. I drove 45 minutes to Chilliwack once and camped in an RV park for the weekend in the back of my mom’s Toyota hatchback – all to get some much-needed perspective. This string of solo wandering fortified me with the strength to let old, unhealthy relationships fade away and recruit juicy, positive people into my life. Somehow, being away from it all clarified what and who in my life was sinking me and what and who I needed around me to let me float.

What are your eternal fascinations?

What it means to be truly hungry for honesty, in myself and others. Living life between the highlights. The enormous capacity for miscommunication. Where creativity comes from.

What quest currently captivates you?

I read recently about a writer who was asked if he meditates. He answered: “I have a profound relationship with meditation; I think about doing it all the time.” I can relate to this. I am captivated by the adventure of going inward and yet I find myself deftly avoiding it at every turn. I just turned 34 and am determined this year to dig down there and dance, once and for all.

What is your favourite kind of help to give?

The spontaneous kind that activates my brain to think big.

Photo from the Echo Memoirs website.

Related reading: Interview | Paulina Bustamante, Sensitivity, Curiosity, and Leadership

Cliff Harwin has been busy. Marvelously for us, the activities he’s piled on top of his full-time work as the owner of a pest control company focus on empowering highly sensitive people (HSPs). Cliff’s kindness, generosity, and quiet humbleness weave all through his website, The Highly Sensitive Person, where you’ll find his free email newsletter, Thoughts for the Thoughtful, plus resources, articles, and books (his own and others’), all offered to inspire and inform HSPs.

I would imagine that working in the pest control industry would be difficult for a highly sensitive person for a variety of reasons, such as being around pesticides and killing insects and rodents. Is it? If so, how do you manage?

I’ve been in the pest control industry for over thirty years. I first became involved with the industry when I started working in my father’s business. I eventually started my own company and have been self-employed for twenty-nine years. I didn’t have a great desire to start my own business, but I realized that it was the best way for me to “survive” and sustain myself. I didn’t know that I was an HSP at the time, but my instincts told me I needed to be in a situation where I could control my work environment at my own pace. I would strongly suggest to your readers that they might be happier and more productive in their own business or in a position where they have a lot of independence.

My pest control work involves taking care of insect and rodent problems in homes and businesses. I truly feel that I’m in a helping profession. We HSPs are very helpful people! I help people by protecting them from the diseases that some insects and rodents can cause and also by protecting their properties from damage. The first thing I do is make recommendations for preventing pest problems, such as making repairs or checking for infested food products. I don’t indiscriminately use pesticides or rodenticides. I’m certified by the State of New Jersey and only use products that are approved by The Environmental Protection Agency. I see myself as an environmentalist.

My work provides me with opportunities to solve problems and meet different people, and it allows me to be in different places. I definitely need a variety of challenges in my life. I’m also better able to cope with my social anxiety because of my various work experiences (I want to emphasize that social anxiety is not necessarily an inherited HSP character trait).

If you could retire today, what would you love to do?

While working full-time, I’m already in the process of working on my next career. I don’t ever want to “retire.” I want to be involved in something that I really enjoy. That “something” is helping highly sensitive people recognize and be proud of their inherited character traits. I’m doing this through the book I have written about my personal experience of being a HSP, my monthly newsletter, Thoughts for the Thoughtful, and by organizing The Highly Sensitive Person Friendship Circle to help HSPs connect. Your readers can get more information about these activities on my website, The Highly Sensitive Person.

What message of encouragement do you have for highly sensitive people?

I believe that being highly sensitive is a gift. I never thought of it as a character flaw. I started to make progress when I learned more about myself and understood why I act and react the way I do. When you know who you are and what you need, you can confidently live your most productive life. Set boundaries so others won’t hurt or take advantage of you, and have specific goals that you have a “burning desire” to accomplish. Plunge forward! You can always make adjustments. You will be pleasantly surprised by what a great life you can have. It’s really great to be an HSP!

What are your favorite books?

I have many favorite books. I read mostly self-help ones. These are the books that have most influenced my life:

The Highly Sensitive Person, by Dr. Elaine Aron – I read Dr. Aron’s book about four years ago. I felt the “floodgates” open up and understood myself better than I ever had before. I learned to work with my highly sensitive qualities, rather than working against them.

How to Win Friends & Influence People, by Dale Carnegie – This book gave me very useful tools for getting along with others. It opened up a completely new world to me. I started to seek out other books and information that were informative, inspirational, and motivating.

Making a Living Without a Job, by Barbara Winter – This book gave me an expanded view of the joys of self-employment and working at something that I truly love.

Teamworks!, by Barbara Sher – This book emphasizes the importance of working with like-minded people to accomplish your dreams. I couldn’t have finished my book without my team. I’m in the process of working with other HSPs to help them accomplish their dreams and desires.

Making Sense of Your High Sensitivity, by Cliff Harwin – Yes, this is the book that I wrote! I mention it because when I feel down and discouraged, I touch it, look at it, and read it. It reminds me of an accomplishment that I never thought was possible.

Photo from Cliff’s website.

Related reading: Interview | Carrie McCarthy, Interview | Paulina Bustamante

Tell me about the combination of acting and being highly sensitive.

An image that came to me about being an actor is that all of my nerve endings have to be right on my skin, opening up. I’m learning how to do that, how to open my nerves and bring them to the surface. This is important because nuances are important in acting – people often feel more than one emotion at a time. When I’m acting I need to have as much variety of emotion available to me as possible, and increased sensitivity helps me with that. Right now the process of acting in this way is new enough that there are only so many emotions I’m comfortable bringing up. The way I develop my skills in this area is by acting with my scene partner. I have to express myself and also be able to receive and respond – all with as much nuance and emotional variety as I can bring to the process. For instance, rather than acting just angry, I can slice up the anger into variations on anger, adding other emotions to the mix. I can split the emotions I’m expressing up into finer and finer layers. Hopefully, then, when someone sees my performance, they won’t see a whitewash of anger, but something much more nuanced than that.

Being in the classroom has shown me how I can apply my high sensitivity, how I can make it work for me. It’s given me more control and helped me to be out in the world – buffeted in a line-up at the store, for example – and not be as covered in raw nerves. Being an HSP [highly sensitive person] out in the world can still feel difficult, but in acting class (and on film sets, hopefully), all the depth and tone and sound that comes to me as part of having a sensitive body is in the perfect context. I’m able to turn up my high sensitivity during a performance. Let’s say my acting partner even just breathes on me. If I let myself be affected and vulnerable and sensitive, that informs and influences my performance, adding another layer of nuance to the moment.

Actors have different ways of accessing a scene, of getting into the place that will, for them, result in honest and true acting. You can see the difference. You can tell when an actor is grounded in truth or not. I’m still learning how to enter into a scene, and by constantly allowing my body to be sensitive, letting all of my senses be open, I get a lot more toeholds for getting into a scene with honesty. For me, the more I can sense, the more toeholds I have. I’m learning how to just be nudged into that space, how to be so receptive and responsive to my instrument – my body – that my entry into a scene is subtle, not using up too much of my energy. Then I have more energy for the scene itself.

Something I’m starting to tackle now is endurance – how to maintain and develop the ability to be consistent with my energy over time. It requires a lot of energy to be in a scene, to be in a play for two hours, and being an HSP means I need to be informed and ready to handle my sensitivities in a performance context. Since acting is my work, that’s really important. Being reminded that acting takes energy, even for non-HSPs, helps me accept the challenge of learning endurance.

Is there anything else you want to say about acting?

I love acting. It brings me joy. It’s how I really learn to be human, and it makes me appreciate humanity more. Acting works everything out. It’s physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental and it challenges me on all of those levels simultaneously. It’s extraordinary. I highly recommend it for everybody. I love it that for ten hours a week I’m in a room with people and all we’re doing is talking about emotions, reviewing circumstances in which we feel emotions, exploring historical contexts for characters, and learning how to express ourselves. All of that sharing about all of those things is the best jumping-off place for me for gaining a holistic education. When I need to know about a character I need to know so much about them that – through that learning process – I learn about myself. I’m constantly being made aware of what I know and what I don’t know, and going to the edge of what I know. In the classroom, I witness that happening for other people, too. I always leave class feeling in awe of what other people do there. And all it requires is a space, people who are willing and open, and, in my case, an unbelievably empathetic, encouraging, and brilliant teacher – Nancy Sivak, at the Lyric School of Acting here in Vancouver.

What message of encouragement would you like to give to other highly sensitive people?

If you do sign up for an acting class, it will be challenging, but my experience has been that the best instructors and the best actors are people who are supportive and encouraging. If you sign up for a class and the teacher is not supportive and encouraging, or is harsh, I would encourage you to sign up for another class instead. Also, taking an acting class doesn’t need to be about the final performance. For me, so far, even though I’m training to be a professional actor, what I learn by focusing on the process of acting is worth it all, is worth all I put into it and worth every penny of the cost of the classes. It would sadden me to know that someone decided not to pursue acting because they thought they weren’t good at it. If , for you, there’s something happening inside, then don’t let it go.

What are three of your most favourite books of any kind?

The Lord of the Rings series, by J.R.R. Tolkien – if you read it, I advise putting it down the second you get tired. Don’t even push on to the end of the paragraph – otherwise, it feels like a slog. The story is strong enough to wait for you.

A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster – preferably read it in one sitting on a rainy day.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen – I opened up this book on a rainy day and read it in one sitting, even though I hadn’t expected to.

Photo by Goga.

In her search for both beauty and meaning in her interior design work, Carrie developed a process called Style Statement to help her know her clients better, and to help her clients know themselves better. Then she met Danielle LaPorte, who loved the Style Statement concept and had a background in media and communications, and Carrie & Danielle, Inc. was born. Their mission is to help people tune in to their authentic selves. Now, years later, there’s a Carrie & Danielle Website that’s packed with resources and supportive suggestions, and they’ve written and designed a beautiful book called Style Statement: Live by Your Own Design. [Update in May 2009: Carrie can now be found at her Style Statement website.]

“A Style Statement integrates the various aspects of your being in an effective balance. It consists of two words: the first word is your fundamental nature, 80% of who you are. The second word is your creative edge, your distinction, the 20% of yourself that makes all the difference.”

~ Carrie McCarthy and Danielle LaPorte, Style Statement

Carrie’s Style Statement is Refined Treasure. Danielle’s is Sacred Dramatic. Their book is filled with more examples and with the how-to for finding one’s own Style Statement. Carrie homed in on mine a few years back: Timeless Connection.

You have a very public persona for a highly sensitive person (HSP). How does your high sensitivity affect you regarding being in the limelight?

Being an HSP is about being responsive to the environment and to emotions. When I’m in the public eye, I’m intuitive about what’s going on. When I’m giving a presentation, I connect with the energy in the room and am aware of what’s happening and of wanting to be of service to the group through my awareness. I can pivot easily in such situations, shifting the focus as needed, because I’m so responsive. I’m responsible, response-able.

Being an HSP and being response-able is both a gift and a challenge. Really, it’s all about overstimulation and how we respond to it. Overwhelming situations, like too much noise, feel like pressure on my brain, and I want to do something to stop it. When I’m overstimulated I tend to need to retreat and hibernate, but that’s not always possible.

I think HSPs can succumb to the response-able aspect of being an HSP to the point where we over-respond to other people and over-respond to being highly sensitive. For example, I had a meeting today in a café and the music was so loud I asked them to turn it down. They refused, and I said, “Okay,” and let it go, because the restaurant is not all about me.

How to you deal with being overwhelmed when you go to New York City for business events and meetings, for instance?

There are some stimulations I love. I love to be stimulated by beauty, for example, so New York City is great for me because I find so much beauty there. But if I’m in a situation that’s all about doing business and connecting, I need more frequent rest and I need time alone. I make sure I get lots and lots of sleep. I request solitude by saying, ” I’m going to pass,” and, “I need some time to myself.” I’m comfortable saying what I need, and the people close to me are used to me being that way.

Your husband, Cameron, is not highly sensitive. How do you manage your different levels of sensitivity in your relationship?

Cameron is the opposite of me. He loves to have music on all the time. He’s very social. He’s a connector with the world and with people. One way we deal with our differences is that, in addition to our apartment, we own property on an island where Cameron goes while I stay home alone. And I’m very clear on a day-to-day basis about what I need. I request times for us to talk and to be together. I set up connecting dates with Cameron, times for us to simply be with each other. Another way in which we’re different is that he likes to call me at least five times a day. I answer when I want to talk, but otherwise I let it ring. Basically, we have agreements, and it works.

One of the reasons Cameron admires me is that I’m very independent. He’s very supportive of my independence. He goes to dinner parties or events without me, and that’s okay with us both. I like my time alone and I also love spending time with him. Neither of us is needy.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

There’s a lot for me to learn about being sensitive emotionally. I still sometimes find that aspect of being an HSP difficult. Emotional sensitivity is about being aware, but not owning the information coming in. It’s about selectively accepting input. The challenge for me is that intuitively I know when someone is uncomfortable and not living true to themselves, and I feel their pain and displacement. I sense people’s discomfort, even if they don’t notice it or don’t care. I feel it in my body, and sometimes it’s hard for me to be around that person. I would like to respect such feelings about other people but not feel chained to them – to be able to be strong in seeing my knowing as a blessing.

What message of encouragement would you like to give to other highly sensitive people?

It’s important to be aware, to create boundaries for yourself, and to be flexible, because it’s not all about you. We live in a world of community. Identifying your specific sensitivities helps. Knowing my specific sensitivities helps me create situations that work for me. For example, I know that a lot of my overstimulation has to do with visuals. I know I need light and windows. I need to see soft colour palettes. Also, I need fresh air and time in nature. I’m sensitive to smells and to others’ emotions. Knowing what triggers my sensitivities helps me be in community more successfully.

What are three of your most favourite books of any kind?

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. This is a breathtaking book. I just read it for the first time this summer.

On Becoming a Leader, by Warren Bennis

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, by Albertus Seba

“The only thing wrong with being sensitive is trying to pretend that you are not.”

~ Jenna Avery

Jenna Avery is a “Life Coach for Sensitive Souls.” Once upon a time, when her life was not going well, she took her high sensitivity in hand and went on a journey of discovery. What she learned along the way to her current successful life has become her Embrace Your Essential Self Home Study Program for highly sensitive people (HSPs). The program progresses through three phases, and a new Phase I is beginning quite soon, on September 19th.

On the web page for Avery’s Home Study Program she shares the story of her journey. I’ve been receiving her e-zine, The Art of Sensitive Living, and had thought of interviewing her, wanting to add her wisdom to Highly Sensitive Power’s collection of interviews with people I consider HSP role models, but now I don’t need to: her powerful story is already there to read.

Whether you decide to participate in Jenna Avery’s Home Study Program for HSPs or not, I hope you’ll check out her website and visit her program’s web page to read her inspiring and empowering story.

Nan is my mother. She’s also highly sensitive, but she raised me in a time before the term or trait of high sensitivity had been popularized. We had a conversation about my childhood – what it was like to be highly sensitive with each other in the days before the current knowledge and tools about highly sensitive people (HSPs) were readily available.

GRACE

What was it like having a baby with a head the size of a watermelon? I mean, what was it like having a highly sensitive child?

NAN

I didn’t think of you as highly sensitive. The term I would have used back then would have been “independent.” I used to joke about the fact that you were born screaming. After I knew more about you, I figured you’d been complaining about your lack of control over the induced labour because you’d have prefered to have chosen the date of your birth for yourself.

The next thing that really made me aware of what I called your “independence” was the ongoing ordeal with socks, which started when you were about two. We had to put them on and take them off about four or five times every time you got dressed because the bump at the toe always bugged you and I had to keep readjusting them until it didn’t bug you.

GRACE

What if you’d said, “Never mind. Let’s go.”?

NAN

You’d yell and refuse to have your shoes put on. No negotiation. No make-do. It had to be your way or nothing.

And then there was the day of the dress. I was getting you ready to go to pre-school when you were four. I had one dress washed and ironed and in the closet, but you absolutely refused to wear it. I didn’t know why. While you were at school that day I washed and ironed all the dresses you owned, and from then on you could choose for yourself every day.

GRACE

Does knowing now about high sensitivity alter your view of early incidents like that?

NAN

Yes. It’s interesting to try and adjust those memories, basing the causes more on high sensitivity than thinking of it only as stubbornness and independence. You always had such strong opinions about what you liked and didn’t like (and you still do).

I remember telling my own mother once (and I don’t remember how old you were at the time) that you were so independent but that I couldn’t imagine where you’d gotten it from. She looked at me, rolled her eyes, and said, “You don’t know?” Looking back, I think I must have been the only highly sensitive person in my whole large family. I can see how the strong needs and the hyper-awareness of highly sensitive children, like you and I both were, get interpreted as being so unique as to be weird.

GRACE

As challenging as it must have been sometimes, you handled things pretty well. Whatever you thought at the time was the cause of my “independence,” my memory is that you did things that helped me.

NAN

Well, I couldn’t think of what else to do. I didn’t know how to find socks that didn’t have bumps, so I kept on rearranging them until you were satisfied. It was probably a very good thing that you were stubborn since things like bumps in your socks mattered so much to you.

There were other things that stood out about you which I now think were part of your high sensitivity, like your creativity. I was always delighted about that.

GRACE

You were always quite creative yourself [as an aside, Nan graduated at the top of her class in May from a two-year production weaving course - at the age of 73]. I completely loved all the art classes you found for me, through public parks or wherever. They can’t have cost much because we didn’t have much money, but you found a way and those experiences provided me with so much pure bliss. I totally loved them. Thank you for that.

And thanks for the library experiences, too. My memory is that every time we moved to a new town [which was often] one of the first things you’d do was take me and David [my brother] to the library to get us all library cards. And there were never any limits about the library. We were never, ever told we couldn’t check something out, and you never put limits on how much we could check out. I remember leaving libraries all across the southern United States with stacks of books up to my chin, giddy with the bounty.

Also, you’d often offer interesting, creative suggestions whenever I’d tell you I was bored. You’d say things like, “Go read the dictionary,” or, “Write a poem in your mind – that’s what I do.” [Mom's graduation project from the production weaving course involved weaving her poetry.]

NAN

Thank you, Sweetie. But you’re forgetting the teenage years, when I cowered in my room.

GRACE

Right. But remember that I didn’t know what was going on then either. I only knew that so many things felt so wrong, and it all made me feel very angry. I had no idea how to get a grip on things, on myself.

NAN

I know. Neither did I. And I wasn’t in the most healthy of places then either. Most of the time it was dreadful, but along the way I figured out that things were easier when I didn’t try to argue with you. It was easier to simply let you do what you wanted to do.

For instance, when you were in high school I used to wake you up in the mornings, but you’d be so upset with me that I decided I wasn’t going to do it anymore and bought an alarm clock for you. It was a simple solution, but it made my mornings much more enjoyable! Now, knowing about HSPs, I suspect you desperately needed sleep to stay grounded or balanced, and when you hadn’t gotten enough you woke up cranky.

Another interesting thing was that you’d sometimes announce in the morning on a school day that you needed to go back to bed. At some point I realized that if I made you go to school on one of those days, you’d get sick, but if I let you stay home and rest, you’d be ready to go back to school the next day. You seemed to know when your body needed to rest, and you didn’t abuse the option to stay home.

GRACE

Seriously, I can’t thank you enough for those things. They really made a difference.

NAN

Well, if I’d known then about high sensitivity and if I’d had any resources about it to call upon, it would have been easier to know how to be your mom.

Although maybe there were some things I was doing right … I just thought of something else. Do you remember when we lived in Hawaii, in that duplex? You and David had found a tree branch that you really liked. You asked me for help with making it stand up, and I gave you a jar you could put rocks in so it would be heavy enough to support the branch. You put it on the stoop between the two doors of the duplex and had a great time decorating it. I was inside the house, but I could hear you through the screen door. At some point our new neighbour came out of the other side of the duplex. She must have seen your branch then because she said in a scornful voice, “What in the world is this?” I knew you well enough to picture you pulling yourself up to your full second-grade height and looking the woman right in the eye as I heard you say very clearly and firmly, “My mother says it’s interesting.”

GRACE

What a great thing it was to grow up with a champion (well, with two champions, since Dad was no slouch in that department, either). Now that you know about the trait of high sensitivity, what advice would you give to yourself back then and to other parents who are raising HSP kids now?

NAN

The biggest and most important advice would be to listen to your HSP children. If, as a parent, you know about high sensitivity, you definitely have a big advantage because you know to listen when an HSP child says they’re too hot or too cold or whatever. You know that the child is probably not just being irritating. If you’re not highly sensitive yourselves, you ought to read all you can about the trait so you can better understand it. But the primary thing is to trust your highly sensitive children when they tell you about themselves.

GRACE

Is there anything you’d like to add?

NAN

I sometimes still feel like a kid myself when I’m surrounded by adults and I’m having an HSP need that I’m having trouble getting met. It’s frustrating to tell people that the light is too bright for me so I need to turn it off, or that I need the background music to be turned off so I can hear what people are saying, and to get a response that clearly shows they don’t believe it should be a problem. They may go along with the adjustment I need if they like me well enough, but I’m amazed I need to say the same things every single time. It’s frustrating.

So, I’m glad to have this conversation with you, Grace, to add my one voice, however soft, to the growing awareness about highly sensitive people, in the hopes that more education will continue to result in more tolerance and understanding for us all.

GRACE

Thanks, Mom. I love you.

NAN

You’re welcome, Sweetie. I love you, too.

Nan shares three of her favourite books:

The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems, by Billy Collins. His poems are simple, accessible, and moving.

Findus and Pettson children’s books, by Sven Nordqvist, like Pancakes for Findus. I love the illustrations, with all the secret and strange things to be found in them, and the relationship between the old man, Pettson, and the feisty cat, Findus, makes me happy.

Bad Cat: 244 Not-So-Pretty Kitties And Cats Gone Bad, by Jim Edgar. This book’s ability to make me laugh is off the charts.

When did you discover that you are a highly sensitive person (HSP)?

I’ve known ever since I can remember. As a child, I always felt things deeply and would cry when watching AT&T or Hallmark commercials and the TV show Lassie. I remember being sensitive to noise and found it hard to sleep if it was noisy. One defining moment was when my third grade teacher wrote on my report card something to the effect of me being “too serious at such a young age” and “sensitive.” Ironically, I believe my third-grade teacher was also highly sensitive!

What is the most wonderful thing for you about being highly sensitive?

It’s made me sensitive to the feelings of others and empathetic and compassionate. I can really feel what someone else is feeling. I also feel a deep appreciation for the little things that others might not notice – various food flavours and nuances in music, for example.

Does being an HSP help you in your work? If so, how?

Yes, in my work as a Life Coach and Intercultural Trainer I think being highly sensitive helps me intuit more easily what the client’s situation is and what they need.

What words of encouragement would you most like to give other HSPs?

Every trait has positives and negatives. The gift in being highly sensitive is that you can notice, appreciate, and feel more. I would suggest honouring your high sensitivity with self-care based on what you know about yourself and what you need. At the same time, it’s important to venture out of your comfort zone by putting yourself in situations that may not be your preference, but from which you can learn and grow. Don’t use your high sensitivity as an excuse to not try new things. And find work where this trait is an asset.

What are three books that you consider favourites, that you really love?

That’s a challenging question, as I love so many!

• Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires, by Esther and Jerry Hicks
• Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 1), by Neale Donald Walsch
• Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, by Elizabeth Gilbert

When did you discover that you are highly sensitive and what was that process like for you? How did you make the discovery?

I discovered that I had the trait around the year 2000. A friend of mine, who’s also highly sensitive, gave me Elaine Aron’s book The Highly Sensitive Personbecause she thought I was probably highly sensitive, too. She was right. I read the book and recognized myself, some other people I knew, and some of my clients. It was an enlightening discovery, like pieces in a puzzle finally fitting together. It’s been exciting, positive, and incredibly helpful.

Who are the people who have been the most supportive and accepting of you and your HSP traits?

Friends who are also HSPs have been supportive, but so have friends who are not HSPs but are empathetic types. I have a cousin who’s a teacher. She’s an HSP who knew about the trait before I did. She’s always been very supportive, encouraging me to design seminars to educate teachers about the trait. And there was a continuing education programmer, years ago, to whom I mentioned the trait of high sensitivity. She identified with it and suggested I submit a proposal to teach a seminar on the topic. I did, and that’s how I got started teaching seminars for HSPs.

Have you had any highly sensitive role models? If so, who and why?

The one that comes to mind is Elaine Aron, whom I admire greatly. Her books, her research, her newsletters – there’s enough there that gives me what I want from a role model: someone who’s gone before, who’s done research, who’s written and been published on the topic, who’s already out there as an HSP, who’s given talks about it, and who knows the strengths and weaknesses of the trait and the strategies that help adult and children HSPs thrive.

Would you say that you make a living using your highly sensitive traits? If so, how does being highly sensitive help you do it?

Yes, I definitely make a living using my HSP traits. When I’m doing one-to-one counselling, my acute awareness, empathy, and pattern recognition abilities make me an attuned and highly functioning helper. Being an HSP helps me choose and custom-design the strategies I use to help my clients reach their goals. HSPs excel at perceiving what others need and adapting to provide it. Ethics are very important to HSPs and vital in the field of counselling – so it’s second nature to me to put the best interests of my clients first.

I also use my HSP traits when I’m teaching or facilitating groups. I’m acutely aware of what’s going on in a group and can figure out what to do that will help the group be comfortable and that will provide the learning they wanted in a way that suits them.

When I was a medical researcher I used my pattern recognition abilities to help me with statistical analysis, which was a moderate fit for an HSP. I still use those pattern recognition skills when I read and evaluate published research to keep up with changes in my current profession as a counsellor.

Over the years, I’ve learned to use my HSP skills when making decisions about developing my career. HSPs are usually cautious, intuitive, and fact-based decision makers who are able to see trends, see how things connect to form a bigger picture, forecast the future, self-lead, take smart risks, and lead others. I think having those qualities helps me in my career in many ways.

What challenges have you faced in the process of developing your career? How have you managed to work through those challenges?

Three challenges in particular come to mind. The first one was that I chose a poorly fitting first career – nursing. It’s a fine career for those that fit it, but I didn’t, for many reasons. I chose nursing before I’d heard about the trait of high sensitivity, before I knew myself well, and when there were few female role models in other careers. Also, I talked to an advisor instead of a career counsellor before making the decision to be a nurse. I wish I had known then that nursing is about hands-on task helping, and not really about process helping, at which I excel. Another sign that nursing was a poor fit for me was that I couldn’t identify with the other nurses. I had nothing in common with them. The environment itself, with its trauma and disturbing smells, sights, and sounds, was not right for an HSP. And health care is based on a hierarchical model, which is not usually compatible with the HSP nature. Although nursing didn’t work out for me, I learned how to better choose a career by what I didn’t do: know myself; find role models and a good career counsellor; and use facts, informational interviews, and job shadowing as the basis for decision-making, not just feelings.

The second challenge I’ve had is a typical one for HSPs: being misunderstood by others, as well as by myself. Other people were constantly attributing my intentions incorrectly, misinterpreting my quietness, hesitation, and inner analyzing process. They often would not listen to my ideas or perceptions about people, and did not believe I was smart enough to do statistical analysis and other abstract processes. I was actually a gifted child, put in the “smart kid class” in grade eight. Sometimes I believed people’s misinterpretations of me and labelled myself negatively when I really shouldn’t have. Since those times, I’ve learned how to trust my intuition and my intellect, through getting second opinions from people I trust, and collecting other confirming data. I’ve also learned how to accept and validate myself, especially my HSP traits, and I spend more time with other HSPs, with whom I feel understood and have a sense of belonging. Also, when appropriate, I find ways to explain or demonstrate the strengths of this trait to non-HSPs.

The third challenge for me in my career was public speaking, which tends to be a real challenge for HSPs. I had an early beginning with meeting this challenge, though. My father is a teacher, and when I was growing up he was always teaching me things. The content of what he taught me didn’t stick because the topics were about concrete things I don’t have an aptitude for, like fixing cars and building boats, but I absorbed the process of how one teaches. In high school, I tutored another student and loved it. I had an instinct that I might be good at teaching if I could just overcome the overwhelm of being in front of people who are all looking at me and listening to me. Since I knew public speaking was my weakness, I set out to work on getting better at it. I did that by deliberately choosing opportunities to practice speaking in front of people in groups, even though I was terrified. I managed the fear by keeping my sight on my goal, by focusing on learning and improving, and by seeing it all as a surmountable challenge – conquerable through exposure. I can do this, I would say to myself, I just have to practice. I did improve and that kept me going. It helped, too, that early on I got a lot of positive feedback when I spoke to groups. In all three of my careers – nursing, medical research, and counselling – I always got positive feedback from people when I gave presentations. That helped me persist. That was the reward – having the positive feedback. In fact, I think many HSPs can learn how to speak in front of a group, even if they don’t believe they can or are very anxious. It’s a learning process that comes with great rewards.

What issue related to being highly sensitive would you most like to have help with?

I’d love to have help with empowering more HSPs. Empowered HSPs can help everyone by designing a better society. We need to design better towns and villages; ways of mastering technology; systems regarding health care, education, food, and the environment; and ways of making a living, communicating, partnering, parenting, and leading. Sometimes HSPs are like the canaries in the coal mines that miners used as an early warning system. Elaine Aron writes about studies of highly sensitive animals that provide early warnings to other animals, that notice danger and dysfunction before the others, which can save the group as a whole. Often, HSPs have the creative, long-term problem-solving abilities and wise, big-picture view needed in a situation. And often we are uncomfortable about offering our expertise, about stepping into a leadership role that would give us the power to make decisions, influence systems, and redesign things that aren’t working. (Just read the book Collapse, by Jared Diamond, and you’ll see what things are not working and haven’t worked for many cultures.) Once we HSPs have honed our leadership skills and found our confidence in leadership roles, we can offer the wise advisor style of leading that Aron describes as a necessary balance to the warrior king ways of non-HSPs. Those two styles of leadership working together enable cultures to thrive in the long term. In my seminars I teach leadership skills to HSPs, and I provide counselling and coaching to HSPs to help empower them. I consider that just a start. I would love to reach and empower even more HSPs, and I welcome greater media exposure, business contacts, and advice that will enable me to do so.

I’d also love to have help with having a nice environment in which to live. If someone can make Vancouver smaller and quieter again, or build an HSP-friendly village or town within it, let me know. An HSP village would be great. I imagine it as being very quiet, but with lots of interesting activity. There are quaint homes and stores, and there’s a university. The village is beautiful, close to water, has lots and lots of green space and many trees, and there are cycling paths and woods, and comfortable benches to sit on. You can walk to everything, yet it’s still got everything that’s needed. There are community and cultural centres, and several plazas where no cars are allowed. Homes are affordable and attractive, and each has its own space for growing vegetables or flowers, as the residents wish. There are places that sell really good chocolate, really good books, and beautiful cards, and places that provide peace and privacy and rejuvenation. There are interesting and satisfying places to work and to play. Alternative and preventive health care facilities and good schools are plentiful. Technology and traffic are reduced. There’s enough parking and it’s free. The cafés have inner courtyards. There’s no intrusive noise or music allowed anywhere. There are no televisions in public places. If there’s music in any public place, like a restaurant, it’s very soft and soothing and in the background so you don’t have to strain to have a conversation above it. There’s a lot of personal space at every level of society, lots of physical distance in all the physical places inside, with tables in restaurants not being so close that elbows bump. And, of course, everyone is respectful, good manners being something HSPs highly value.

What aspects of being highly sensitive bring you the most joy?

I want to say my deep appreciation for the arts, but there’s more to it than that. Subtleties attract me, like the interesting timbre of someone’s speaking voice or laugh, the sound of a bike riding fast over wooden boards, the sparkling sunlight path on water, the sweet fragrance of scotch broom in April, beautiful décor or architecture, gardens, woods, paintings, music, the rhythm and sound of the waves near Tofino, the beauty of certain words strung together adeptly, certain colours that look just right, or even the just-right temperature I feel as I walk or sit for a while. I also appreciate the deeper, meaningful conversations we HSPs tend to fall into, and I enjoy humour that’s subtly amusing and clever. I love not being overstimulated or understimulated. I feel the most joy in those rare moments when what I’m noticing with my five senses and my brain is in the “just-right” zone.

What words of encouragement would you most like to give other HSPs?

We have so many natural strengths to offer. Let’s support each other and work together to create what we need, including acceptance – being treasured and valued by the culture at large.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I would suggest to HSPs to find other HSPs to spend time with, for so many reasons. Being with other HSPs brings validation and a sense of belonging. You can be yourself and feel more relaxed. You can feel heard and understood. It helps you to be even more aware of your strengths and the different ways you can use them. With other HSPs, it’s easy and rewarding to brainstorm, to tap into and create synergy, that bigger something that comes into play when individuals create together.

Also, I want to say that the way I became a highly functioning HSP was by confronting, not avoiding difficult things, and by finding more ways of using my strengths. And that’s what I wish for other HSPs, too.

What are three books that you consider favourites, that you really love?

• The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama, for the author’s rare leadership qualities.
• The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy, for the author’s ability to weave threads of narrative and for the book’s haunting beauty, for taking me into another world.
• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond, which I found validating, thought-provoking, disturbing, and enlightening.

Photo from Pam Catapia