Creative Mind Audio

Probably all of us experience challenges at times in our personal, family, business and other relationships.

Psychologist Matt Zakreski points out "No one is good in ALL social situations, or in all aspects of a particular social situation."

Being a highly sensitive person can add more challenges to healthy relationships, as therapist and author Julie Bjelland, LMFT explains in this excerpt from a longer HSP Podcast episode.

And, of course, many of her perspectives about healthy friendships and other relationships can apply even if you are not among the 20-30% of us who are highly sensitive.

Notes for the episode from her site include:

"Highly sensitive people (HSPs) may encounter specific challenges when making friends due to their unique traits and sensitivities. Learn some reasons why HSPs might find it more challenging to make friends.

"HSPs can make friends by leveraging their unique traits and sensitivities. Learn some specific tips to help build meaningful friendships.

"Remember that making friends is not about changing who you are but finding individuals who appreciate you for your authentic self.

"It's perfectly okay to be selective about the people you allow into your life, as quality friendships can significantly impact your well-being as an HSP."

Listen to the full Episode 176: 10 Reasons Highly Sensitive People Feel Challenged Making Friends by Julie Bjelland, LMFT in the HSP Podcast section of her site, where you will also find her books, free webinars, courses, Sensitive Empowerment Community and other resources.

~~~

Over the years, I have posted a number of articles about relationships. It is an area I have felt challenged in most of my life. Here are some of those related articles:

Matt Zakreski, PsyD is a clinical psychologist who helps neurodiverse clients. His quotes are from my post Expert Guidance For Navigating Relationships as a 2e Person.

The image for this podcast episode is from article How do trauma and attachment wounds affect our relationships?

Image is also used for another podcast episode of mine: "How attachment styles and trauma impact our relationships - with Dr Diane Poole Heller" - included in article How attachment styles and trauma impact our lives and relationships.

In that article, Dr Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH notes “Trauma results in this belief that we are different, that we’re not enough, that there’s something about us that pushes people away or that we’re too much for other people.

“And so if they were to truly know us – all parts of us – then they would leave us, then they would kick us out, then they would reject us, abandon us.

"And those feelings of being abandoned and being different are so painful that our system responds in a self-protective way…”

Learn about her 21-Day Journey to Calm Aliveness Course.

More related articles:

How Can Highly Sensitive People enjoy healthier relationships and deal with toxic people?

Elaine N. Aron, PhD is one of the leading writers and researchers on the personality trait of high sensitivity (sensory processing sensitivity) and how it affects us as highly sensitive people or HSPs.

She said in an interview about her book The Highly Sensitive Person In Love that people with more sensitive and excitable constitutions and personalities “need help with intimacy.”

She explains: “Maybe we are afraid, have been hurt, and can’t forget it.

“Or we have trouble being known and appreciated for who we really are. Or we have trouble in relationships because of our different needs, so that we always feel ‘too much’ or ‘overly sensitive.’”

She also says highly sensitive people are “more likely to find sex to be mysterious and powerful, to be turned on by subtle rather than explicit sexual cues, to be easily distracted or physically hurt during sex, and to find it difficult to go right back to normal life afterwards.”

~~~

Relationships can be a challenge for exceptional people

True peer relationships may be rare and demanding, perhaps especially for people who are exceptionally talented, creative, intense, sensitive, gifted. For some people, high sensitivity to others may demand protective isolation from hurtful relationships, even family members.

~~~

This excerpt is from a much longer interview podcast for Meditation Studio, about perspectives in his book Creativity, Spirituality, and Making a Buck.The description for the full episode notes David Nichtern is "a senior Buddhist teacher who has been practicing and teaching meditation for over 40 years."He is also a highly regarded, award winning composer, producer and guitarist, as well as the founder of two record companies. David has recorded and played with Stevie Wonder, Jerry Garcia, Paul Simon and many others..."David’s grasp of spirituality, mindfulness, music and entrepreneurship make him a unique animal, so to speak. The underlying principle of his book is that it’s possible to move toward balance, prosperity, happiness, and basic sanity in our lives as human beings."Also, find interview and articles with Nichtern on sites including wisdomexperience.org, dharmamoon.com and davidnichtern.com.Hear full podcast episodes, including this interview, with a free 30-day registration for Meditation Studio by Muse.About the podcast: "Hosts Patricia Karpas and Ariel Garten interview authors, experts and thought-leaders in areas related to mindfulness, brain health practices, leadership, life and so much more! You’ll hear from psychologists, neuroscientists, nutritionists, storytellers, buddhists, MDs, Sleep experts etc."It’s a wide collection of interviews with thoughtful, provocative, inspirational and sometimes funny guests who share their true and heartfelt experiences."~~~Learn more about Muse in my Creative Mind article How Muse EEG tech enhances meditation to support focus, productivity, emotional health. ~~~

Related podcast episode:

She comments, “my actors will say to me, ‘Emily, I need my stress…this is where my art comes from.’ But here’s the news – stress is not helping you in the performance department.“As a matter of fact, stress makes you stupid.”She adds, Meditation is "a tool to help de-excite your nervous system & get rid of stress, which is going to help you perform at the top of your game...I found meditation during my 10-year career on Broadway.”

~~~~

Support the show

View selected episodes and articles with more resources: The Creative Mind Audio Podcast page on the main site.

Imi Lo is a consultant, psychotherapist, author on mental health, an art therapist, and trainer to therapists and coaches.This is an excerpt from her interview with Nicole A. Tetreault, PhD, a neuroscientist, psychologist and researcher specializing in the fields of neurodiversity, giftedness, and the brain differences associated with these conditions.See the full podcast interview on Imi Lo's site Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: Neurodivergent traits, giftedness, sensory sensitivities, sharing our personal experiences - Dr. Nicole A. Tetreault and Imi Lo.Note - the transcript excerpt below, and the image (AI-generated in DALL-E) is from that page.Books:Insight Into a Bright Mind: A Neuroscientist's Personal Stories of Unique Thinking by Nicole A. Tetreault.Emotional Sensitivity and Intensity: How to Manage Intense Emotions as a Highly Sensitive Person by Imi Lo.The Gift of Intensity: How to Win at Life and Love as a Highly Sensitive and Emotionally Intense Person by Imi Lo.Understanding Twice-Exceptional Learners: Connecting Research to Practice by C. Matthew Fugate, Wendy Behrens, Cecelia Boswell.Website: nicoletetreault.com. 

~~~~

Related:

See more of my Substack posts in these categories:

gifted/high ability adults

highly sensitive person

neurodivergent

~~~

Support the show

View selected episodes and articles with more resources: The Creative Mind Audio Podcast page on the main site.

~~~

TRANSCRIPT:Imi Lo: Thank you for being here. You have one of the most thorough books on giftedness that I’ve ever seen. I love that you touch on … I mean there are not a lot of book out out there for gifted adults anyway, but they don’t usually touch on things in such a thorough and whole-body way. We’ll get into it later, but it actually covers things that I’m personally a geek on, things like microbiota, holistic health. We can get into all of that later, but thank you for being here.Nicole: Thank you so much for having me and the work that you do.Imi Lo: I have your hard copy in the other room. I might grab it later. But in any case, let’s begin. How would you define neurodiversity? I know people have all sorts of debates about the terms and what it should and shouldn’t include. What are some of your thoughts on that?Nicole: Well, neurodiversity is a wide umbrella of basically individuals that have unique brain wiring and unique behaviors, and also unique ways of processing and experiencing in the world. And so, when I think about neurodiversity, it really encompasses usually about one in five people, which is people that are on the autism spectrum, attention hyperactivity giftedness is the way that C. Matthew Fugate likes to talk about it. I would also include giftedness in that as well, people with sensory processing and also alternative forms of speech and communication, so people on the autism spectrum as well.When you think about that … And then in my book, I also added in mental health considerations as well because there’s often co-occurrences that happen where people with anxiety and depression actually are going to be communicating and responding to the world differently as well.Imi Lo: One in five? That statistic shocks me. It shocks me a bit. I guess I thought it would be less. Although I mean, Elaine Aron, if you include the highly sensitive people as a part of being neurodivergent there’s one in five. Yeah. I guess because people who are usually feel like they’re such a minority.Nicole: Well, I think that there’s different degrees. A lot of people who are gifted tend to have hypersensitivity intensities, and as well when you think about people who are on the autism spectrum or have ADHD as well, there are going to be sensory sensitivities that come along with that. And so, there’s going to be different ways that they process the world in a heightened way.Imi Lo: I mean your book explores the experiences of people with different neurological differences. I think that’s what makes it so unique, because people don’t usually go that deep into the neurological stuff. So you’ve touched on things like ADHD, autism, and even synesthesia. I can never pronounce it right.So I’m interested … I should probably ask that as a first question, but I know you also identify yourself as neurodivergent. Can you tell us a bit more about your own story, how you’ve come to this, and what labels, let’s say, would you categorize yourself as?Nicole: Yeah, that’s a great question. So for me, I was really late to my identification. Actually I didn’t include dyslexia and dysgraphia in the umbrella I was talking about earlier.Imi Lo: What is dysgraphia?Nicole: Dysgraphia is people who have challenge with writing, or production of writing. So it may not just be a motor function, but it could be a processing function in their brain where getting words onto paper becomes challenging. So similar to somebody who has trouble speaking. And so, there could be varying degrees.Dyslexia is really … It’s a wide range that involves differences in reading and comprehension and letter decoding. And so, for me, I wasn’t identified being dyslexic until I was in college. I took an organic chemistry class. I wanted to be an organic chemist actually and design medications because my mother had Parkinson’s disease. I was tutoring people, I knew the stuff, and I got to this exam. By the time we got to the end of the exam, I didn’t finish the last problem.I got my exam back. I was devastated. I think I got a 53. I went to the professor and I’m like, “What’s happened? I knew all this information. I couldn’t finish the exam.” He said, “Oh, no big deal. The class average. I think, was a 50.” He’s like, “So you passed.” I said, “No, but something’s wrong.”So then I went to the student services at UC Davis and they recommended that I get tested. Then I was tested and I had … Which was not known to me at the time. I had some areas in the 99th percentile. Then I also had discrepancies of being in the 40th percentile for visual processing. And so, they only told me that I was dyslexic. I didn’t know I was gifted at the time. But I had overcompensated my whole life.And so, finally I was able to have notes, where I had recordings, and I had alternative forms of … I had a Spelling Ace with me at the time. We didn’t really … Because a lot of the exams were still handwritten. And so, I learned a little bit about the accommodations.When I was applying to graduate school, that was one of my stories within a story was, well, there’s this discrepancy you see in my grades earlier on because I was not identified in getting the appropriate accommodations and services.Imi Lo: Was it lonely? I mean did you have anyone in your life who also shared a similar experience, or were you the first one, really?Nicole: I felt really isolated. I think that aside from that, when I start to break it out even more … I had always been a kid that I wore uniforms at school and the tags would irritate me. Somebody who would be-Imi Lo: Yes. Oh my god, I understand that.Nicole: Yeah. Right? I would be in the classroom and somebody would be banging their pencil. It would be very distracting. So I had a lot of these sensitivities that I didn’t really know or understand, and no one ever talked about them.And so, yeah, I mean for me it was really lonely at times. When I studied, what made me actually a science communicator was my dyslexia, because I read everything and then I actually rewrote it in terms that I could understand by my brain, and then I was able to communicate it. That’s just how it transpired to create a profession for me in a lot of ways. So it’s a superpower, at the same time there was a lot of struggle along the way, too.Imi Lo: Wow.Nicole: You were saying you could resonate with tags and sensitivity of-Imi Lo: Not just that. I really all my life had misophonia, food sensitivities, allergies, migraines, you name it, all the things you covered in your book. I guess I put that … I mean thank you for asking. So I am personally very into t…

Journalist Robert Whitaker, author of books including Mad in America, interviews Sarah Fay about her mental health experiences and her memoir.This is a brief excerpt from the much longer conversation podcast. My title comes from a comment by Sarah Fay: "I have to admit that I was so attached to my diagnosis, I had defined myself by it."Source podcast:The Impact the DSM Has Had On All of Us: An interview with Sarah Fay and Allan Horwitz By Robert Whitaker, Mad in America, April 6, 2022Sarah Fay, PhD is an author of essays and articles published in the New York Times, the Atlantic and numerous other national publications.

Her related memoir is Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses. Links below.In her newsletter, Fay summarized: "Simply put, Pathological is both a memoir and a work of investigative journalism that...explores the ways we pathologize human experiences and emotions."She quotes a review:"Over thirty years, doctors diagnosed Sarah Fay with six different mental illnesses—anorexia, major depressive disorder (MDD), anxiety disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and bipolar disorder."Pathological is the gripping story of what it was like to live with those diagnoses, and the crippling impact each had on her life. It is also a rigorous investigation into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—psychiatry’s “bible,” the manual from which all mental illness diagnoses come."Yet as Fay found out, some of our most prominent psychiatrists have been trying to warn us that the DSM is fiction sold to the public as fact."In Pathological, former advisory editor at The Paris Review and award-winning writer Fay calls for a new conversation about mental health diagnosis, one based on rigorous transparency."With exquisite detail and a precise presentation of fact, she digs up her own life at the root to finally ask, Is a diagnosis a lifeline or a self-fulfilling prophecy?"Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses [Amzon] [Bookshop]

Her Substack site & book Cured: The Memoir: curedthememoir

~~~

Also see her video interview “Creativity, Mental Health, and Recovery” at the Anxiety Super Conference Sept 28-30 (2024). Register free

~~~

See related posts below.

Transcript for this podcast excerpt - copied from page for the source podcast: The Impact the DSM Has Had On All of Us: An interview with Sarah Fay and Allan Horwitz By Robert Whitaker.

Whitaker: So instead of being understood that you have these things going on in your life that can be very problematic for a child, you were told the problem was within you. And it seems that you began adopting behaviors to prove to yourself that you had anorexia.

Fay: No, no, it wasn’t that I was faking. It was absolutely in keeping with what I was experiencing in my body, with a stomachache and not wanting to eat. And it was very much in keeping with the weight I was losing. I mean, my weight was dangerously low, but it really became extreme once I started being an anorexic and thinking of myself that way.

And because I was so young, that’s when you are figuring out your identity, that’s when you are trying on different identities. That’s what worries me and one of the reasons I wrote the book.

I teach at Northwestern and I see it in my students all the time, that they are identifying so strongly with the diagnoses they’ve been given, and it’s at that time when you’re just trying things on and you’re so vulnerable.

Whitaker: This goes back to what Allan said. When I was growing up in the 1960s, you just didn’t have people being presented with this possible identity. There were bullies, goof offs, screw ups, that sort of thing, but you weren’t presented with the opportunity to become a mental patient at age 12. But you are now introduced into an identity that’s going to carry forward with you for decades.

Fay: Exactly, and I think it’s really important to note that my primary care physician gave me the diagnosis. We often talk about psychiatrists, but five of my six diagnoses came from primary care physicians whom I saw for about 15 minutes once a year. If you have a man in a white coat with a stethoscope giving you a diagnosis, why would you ever question its scientific validity, its medical soundness or its reliability?

Whitaker: As this happens, what are you saying to yourself? First, you have anorexia, but now you have depression. Are you saying that the depression was undiagnosed before?

Fay: This is the late 90s. Diagnoses were not talked about in the public discourse the way they are now. When I was receiving these diagnoses, they were pretty new to me. I didn’t have people I could talk to about it, but what had happened was with the anorexia diagnosis, I already saw life through a lens of diagnosis.

When there’s a problem, you look for the solution and the solution is a diagnosis, right? When I was told that I had major depressive disorder, I was grieving very seriously. It just happened to be for my cat of 16 years, but it was very difficult for me, and I grieved for about two years and was over-exercising.

I was crying all the time and experiencing what this one doctor saw as signs and symptoms of major depressive disorder, but because I already saw life through the lens of diagnosis, I accepted the major depression diagnosis more readily.

Whitaker: Allan talked about how a diagnosis begets treatment. As you look back on your exposure to different drugs, can you see in any way how the drug treatment itself began to stir a different you, and perhaps even helped push you into these different diagnostic categories?

Fay: What is interesting about that is at the time I was first diagnosed, they weren’t giving anorexics medication. I never received a medication until I was in my late 30s. I had already received all these diagnoses, but I was the kind of person who wouldn’t take aspirin. I was just very anti-medication. I was scared of what it was going to do to me, and I think what else is important is I tried everything.

Often people with mental illness, and I am someone with a mental illness or who had one, depending on how we think about it, are shamed by relying too easily on a drug. I really did everything I could. I meditated, I practiced yoga for 20 years. I tried everything, Chinese herbs, I did DBT, CBT, ACT, I mean, all these things that were supposed to help.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is an alternative to psychotropic drugs, but it also reified my diagnosis. It still said I was treating my diagnosis, but I will say that as soon as I was on the medication path, it went very fast.

I had been given Valium when I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, but later, once I was given an antidepressant and then I started getting other diagnoses, I was put on ADHD medication, then taken off that, then the mood stabilizers came in, then lithium, then antipsychotics.

And I think, to your point, the really important thing was I stopped questioning the drugs too, because if you’re not questioning the diagnosis, you’re not going to question the treatment that much, because why would you?

I thought we were getting to the bottom of it, I thought we were just getting to the answer. I had akathisia—I had horrible side effects from antipsychotics, which is where you just feel like you’re crawling out of your skin and you can’t stop moving. It was awful and yet I still wanted to stay on the medication, because I thought, oh, it’s got to get better, and that this is the answer.

Whitaker: You’ve talked about how this lens of diagnosis really shaped your life. How did you change your thinking? And what was that like to change your thinking, when you started saying that maybe these diagnoses aren’t valid?

Fay: I was at this point in my 40s and I was in crisis. I had been suicidal on and off for about a year. I had been diagnosed at that point with bipolar I, and I had a falling out with my psychiatrist who was also my therapist, and the fa…

"Improv games cultivate openness and playfulness, relaxation and self-care."Julie Skolnick, M.A., J.D. is Founder of With Understanding Comes Calm, with programs including the Let’s Talk 2e! Conference and The Haystack, a community for 2e Adults.2E or twice exceptional people are gifted as well as experiencing learning differences or neurodivergent qualities such as dyslexia, ADHD, or autism.

Gordon Smith is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor, Coach, and Improv Instructor. His practice focuses on neurodivergent adolescents, adults, and families.His site Gifted and Growing notes Improv can be defined “as the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted: created spontaneously by the performers.”Learn about Online Improv for Gifted Adults (also online improv classes for 2E+ Teens, and for Families). "The class offers a six-week experience in which we come together (on zoom) with 2e+ peers to explore, experiment, and play. "Through Improv games and exercises we cultivate openness & playfulness, relaxation & self-care, emotional intelligence & empathy, and creative storytelling & expression."

source video:

~~~~

Transcript

Julie Skolnick 0:00

I'm so glad that you're here listening. Because this is a rare opportunity, I have to sit down with my good friend and colleague, Gordon Smith, who is from gifted and growing, which is a service where he really the center of his practice is to do counseling and therapy for gifted adolescents, adults and families.

And you know, you can't just go to anybody, for your stuff, gifted and 2E people. So how great it is to know about Gordon that he specializes in our people. But the other cool thing and actually what I want to talk to Gordon about today is his really cool improv groups that he runs for adults gifted adults and teams. So again, how niche can you get?

Julie Skolnick 0:55

By Oh, my goodness. So we've known each other a while and I've even had Gordon attend groups of mine and do stuff with parents and adults. I want to know, Gordon, why, why improv? Why is improv particularly? Why does it lend itself to the gifted folks? Why should gifted folks do improv? Talk to me.

Gordon Smith 1:21

So like you said, I've been doing counseling and therapy with folks for years, and people come to me with really big challenges that they're facing from day to day, and we do all that therapeutic work. And the best part of this whole improv complements a therapy.

And what it does is it provides an entirely different experience for people to kind of arrive at some of the same places, that when people come to improv in a group of other gifted and 2E adults, first of all, they're feeling mirrored, and met and can get that like felt sense of being in a group together. And that sense of safety that comes with that, though, that we just don't have a lot of practice with that in the world.

Gordon Smith 2:04

And then the whole practice of improv is a reverend, really practicing spontaneity, and practicing trusting yourself and trusting other people to have your back. And to be able to do this in a in a in an environment, you know, is supportive.

And that is really just about playing laughter. It kind of takes the other it doesn't have that same sort of therapy vibe that we're going to be talking about some big heavy things, what we're going to do is practice living in the non heavy places, and to be in those spaces where we get to practice trusting ourselves and other people.

And we get to do so from that plays a play. And so especially for gifted folks who go through the world, feeling misunderstood and feeling not meant to be able to come together and have this space to practice this is so helpful, because then we get to carry it out into the world and begin to practice some of these improv ideas, ways of being out in the world, and you begin to see your relationships change, and anxiety levels drop and perfectionism gets shoved out the window.

And a greater like, tolerance or even acceptance or even invitation to uncertainty. Knowing that this is going to be okay.

Julie Skolnick 3:22

I love safety, trust, play, laughter - I love all those words. And you know what? It's so funny because I'm always saying to people, like people, people, we are point oh, 1% of the population.

But guess what? You're 100% of the people I see all day long. So how fun to have a place where you know, you're gonna be with your people. And like you said, that's just that in and of itself is unique and incredible. And I also think Gordon totally think about this.

Julie Skolnick 3:57

The mission with understanding comms comm is to bring out the best and resell competence. My theory in life is self confidence man is where it's at. And it's what's etched away at bit by bit for our 2E youth starting very, very early, all the way up.

We don't outgrow it, we might start to understand it. But once you can feel okay in your skin. You know, I think I posted today in response to somebody on Facebook, I wrote something like you know, guess what? When you leave the room, you're still with yourself. So you're the person you have to get along with.

Gordon Smith 4:34

Yeah. And so often when we're working with people around gaining that self competence, the first step is around courage, right? It's like doing the thing that's scary. And when we come into these improv spaces, it doesn't require as much courage because it's just not as scary. The stakes are low. We're actually playing. There are no mistakes you can count on whatever someone whatever you say that someone's going to say yes to it, and then they're going to add to it

Gordon Smith 5:00

So whatever you bring is going to be built upon. So you get that you get to train your brain to that place of like, stepping forward toward experience in people rather than being on your heels expecting this understanding.

Julie Skolnick 5:13

I love it. "Yes, and" not "Yes, but."

Gordon Smith 5:16

That's right.

Julie Skolnick 5:22

Okay, so, um, so many questions. Okay, so how did you get started in this? I mean, obviously, you know, you and I talked a little bit before we jumped on and, you know, the, the center of your practice is really therapy. But so like, what happened?

Gordon Smith 5:37

Yeah, so COVID, hit lockdown hit and move my whole practice online. And I was looking for ways to build online, build intimacy, and, and trust more effectively in online spaces. And I was just researching around this and ways to do this.

And so I attended all these experimental groups who were doing all kinds of crazy things in March and April of 2020, and stumbled into Second City's online improv class, and took it and realize immediately that this this was it that somehow this group of people who had never met, were being so goofy and open with each other within five minutes of meeting, like goofier, and more open than they might be with their families or with their friends.

And I realized that this culture that was being set up through improv, and the ability to facilitate way, really allowed for this instantaneous experience of Oh, this feels okay, I'm okay, we're all in this together.

Gordon Smith 6:42

I did their improper therapists group. And then I joined the improv therapy group, and then I was on the board. And then I was an instructor. And so I've just been moving through this for for over two years now. And I guess this cash is coming up on free. And really just like learning how to facilitate that space. And for me, what it means is, I get to just like, show up and hang out and play with some of the most complex, interesting people in the world.

Julie Skolnick 7:12

So you have your PhD in improv, cool. Okay, well, I want to talk to you forever. And then I want to play with you. So here's what I want to ask you. Can you tell everybody how they can find out about you? What do you offer? What should they be looking for? Where do they go to learn about you a…

Why are we more vulnerable to anxiety as a highly sensitive person? Sensitivity expert Julie Bjelland explains, “Anxiety or high stress is actually pretty common for highly sensitive people.

“Much of it has to do with an overloaded sensitive nervous system.”

 “When the nervous system doesn’t get time to turn off, even away from someone’s energy in the room, this nervous system ‘engine’ gets overwhelmed…

“It’s common for highly sensitive people to have a busy mind and have a hard time turning it off to relax.”

This audio is a brief clip from a free Masterclass by Julie Bjelland: High Sensitivity and Anxiety.

Or learn more in article How Highly Sensitive People can deal with anxiety – a free Masterclass
...

View selected episodes and articles with more resources: The Creative Mind Audio Podcast page on the main site.

"When I made that choice to write the book, I wanted it on my terms as opposed to somebody else's."

Author Ulcca Joshi Hansen adds,

"That felt like a really important moment for me as an author because it was saying, you know, my gift, my voice, my ideas are important, and I need to trust them enough to put them out in the world in the ways that I think are right."

In this excerpt from their much longer podcast episode, Transformational Author mentor Christine Kloser talks with author Ulcca Joshi Hansen - a "mother, educator, researcher and advocate working to change the way we think about and do education.

"She believes each young person deserves the chance to discover their unique potential, and to explore what that means for how they contribute to the world.

“An internationally-recognized expert on educational transformation at the level of instruction, assessment, organizational design and policy systems, Ulcca has a BA in philosophy from Drew University, a PhD from the University of Oxford, and a JD from Harvard Law School."

Her book: The Future of Smart: How Our Education System Needs to Change to Help All Young People Thrive by Ulcca Joshi Hansen.

Hear the full episode "091: Ulcca Joshi Hansen – How to Succeed on Your Author Journey" in the Podcast section of the Get Your Book Done site by Christine Kloser.

~~~~

This audio is part of a conversation between Julie Bjelland, LMFT, and host Bevin Niemann at the 2022 Empaths, Sensitives & Intuitives Summit.

From notes by Julie Bjelland for the original webinar:

"I'll discuss the three steps to conscious wellness for Highly Sensitive People and Empaths. Learn about high sensitivity, understand brain differences making you more susceptible to anxiety, and how to regulate your sensitive nervous system.

"Live consciously, guided by your body cues and intuition, doing what's right for you, and self-care the HSP way."

Julie Bjelland, LMFT, is a psychotherapist specializing in high sensitivity, host of The HSP Podcast and the Sensitive Empowerment Community, author of books, online courses, articles, and free webinars.

To listen to the original, full length Shift Network audio, see Episode 160: Lower Anxiety, Improve Wellness and Discover Your Sensitive Gifts of The HSP Podcast.

Follow link to Julie Bjelland's Sensitive Empowerment site to find many more of her articles, books, courses, Sensitive Community and other resources.

Related Creative Mind Audio episode: How Can Highly Sensitive People Manage Anxiety?

[The image above for this episode is "Silence the Sun - Faceless" by Mario S. Nevado on his Facebook page.] 

View selected episodes and articles with more resources: The Creative Mind Audio Podcast page on the main site.

Author and executive coach Melody Wilding, LMSW "help sensitive high-achievers overcome the emotional challenges of success in the workplace."

She comments in a post that the traits of highly sensitive people “are often seen as weaknesses, but they may actually be your biggest professional strengths.

“A Sensitive Striver is a high-achiever who is also more sensitive to their emotions, the world, and the behavior of those around them.”

This audio is a brief excerpt from her 2023 Trauma Super Conference presentation "Navigating high sensitivity in the workplace."

See more details in article How our high sensitivity may be our biggest professional strength.

~~~~

View selected episodes and articles with more resources: The Creative Mind Audio Podcast page on the main site.

As psychotherapist Stephen A. Diamond Ph.D notes, "We were all once children, and still have that child dwelling within us. But most adults are quite unaware of this.

“And this lack of conscious relatedness to our own inner child is precisely where so many behavioral, emotional and relationship difficulties stem from."

From his Psychology Today post Essential Secrets of Psychotherapy: The Inner Child.

This audio is a brief excerpt from an episode of The HSP Podcast hosted by high sensitivity therapist and author Julie Bjelland.

From the original Show Notes:

Julie Aird has seen firsthand how powerful and profound Inner Child Work can be for personal growth and transformation through her own experiences as well as her clients.

Julie is excited to share with you a specific inner child practice that she has found to be one of the most powerful tools used in her 30+ years of personal and spiritual work.

Working with the inner child is one of the tools Julie uses to help us nurture and release parts of us that are stuck in our past so that we can be totally present in our adult lives. It’s like learning to re-parent our inner child so we are free to move forward.

Julie Aird is an inspirational speaker, ICF-credentialed coach, spiritual director, and the Founder of Julie Aird Life Coaching. You can learn more about Julie and her work by visiting: https://julieaird.com.

Please Note: This inner child practice is one of the tools Julie Aird uses for personal growth and transformation within her capacity as a certified coach. It is not intended to diagnose or treat any illness or medical condition.

Julie Bjelland, LMFT, is an HSP psychotherapist specializing in high sensitivity, the author of The Empowered Highly Sensitive Person, and founder of the Sensitive Empowerment Community. Her HSP Podcast ranks among the top 5% of the most shared and followed podcasts worldwide.

~~~

Listen to the full episode 172 Inner Child Healing-A Powerful Tool for Growing Self-Love with Julie Aird in The HSP Podcast section of Julie Bjelland's Sensitive Empowerment site, where you can find many more of her articles, books, courses, Sensitive Community and other resources.

~~~~