341: Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs) And Eating Disorders

Chris Sandel: Hey! If you want access to the transcript and the show notes and the links talked about as part of this episode, you can head to www.seven-health.com/341.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist and a coach and an eating disorder expert, and I help people to fully recover.

Before I get on with today’s episode, I just want to make an announcement that I’m currently taking on new clients. If you would like to fully recover, no matter how long your eating disorder has been going on, I would love to help. I work with people where the eating disorder started a couple of years ago, I work with people where it’s been going on for multiple decades. I truly believe that everyone can reach a place of full recovery, and it’s not about it may happen; it’s, if you do the things, it will actually happen. And this is what I work on with people.

So if this is what you would like, I would love to be able to support you with this. Send an email to info@seven-health.com and put ‘coaching’ in the subject line, and then I can send over the details.

So, on with today’s show. If you are someone who’s ever wondered why the lights in a supermarket felt too bright, or in a classroom where there’s very fluorescent lights, why a friend’s offhand comment can echo in your head for hours or even days, why you hear the tension in someone’s voice even when they haven’t really said anything, you may be Highly Sensitive.

This is what this week’s episode is about. I’m looking at Highly Sensitive Persons, or HSPs, and the overlap between this and eating disorders. Over five years ago, I did an episode with Barbara Allen talking about HSPs; it was Episode 190 of the show, so you can go check it out. But this is a topic that just comes up again and again. It’s something I talk about with clients all the time because I just see such a big overlap between HSPs and eating disorders.

So this is what I want to cover as part of this, because I think for a lot of people, when they make this discovery, there can be a mix of relief in terms of “Oh man, this finally makes sense; I understand why I’m being like this now, but I also understand those things that were happening when I was a young kid, that actually makes sense to me.”

There can also be a lot of grief connected to this. Grief in that “I felt like I was being misunderstood; why didn’t someone tell me about this? I thought when I was going to recover, all of these things were going to go away and now that’s not going to be the case.” So I understand that there can be this real mix of emotions with finding out about HSPs, discovering that actually, that matches up for you.

But I think the overwhelming sense for people when they discover it is this “Oh, it finally makes sense to me. It finally explains things about why I am the way that I am and why I’ve been the way that I have been in certain situations.”

00:03:15

What is a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)?

Let’s just start with, what is an HSP? I think the person who has done the most research about this is an American clinical research psychologist and author, Elaine Aron. She began researching this back in 1991, so has been at this for a very long time. She has a book called The Highly Sensitive Person, and there’s been many documentaries that she’s made since then looking at this for men as well as for HSPs more generally. So if you go to her website – and I’ll put that in the show notes – you can see that there’s lots of information that she’s put out.

One of the things that she shares is this framework for understanding HSPs. The acronym for it is DOES. The ‘D’ stands for Depth of processing. This is that you don’t just seem to see something; you really feel it, and feel it in your bones and turn it over in your mind, and it has this ripple effect on everything. Really, your brain just processes information and reflects it more deeply. Maybe one way of thinking about this is for all of us, the amount that we actually become aware of compared to what is out there in the world is this tiny fraction. Our brain filters out so much information so that it just gives us what it thinks of as the most relevant pieces of information.

But for someone who is an HSP, it feels like there is a lot more information that then makes it through that someone has to then process, and that’s a lot to deal with. This is for all of the senses. It’s sight, it’s sound, it’s touch, it’s smell, it’s taste. So this is something that is one of the characteristics of being HSPs, this real depth of processing.

The next letter, the ‘O’, stands for Overstimulation. A busy day will leave you not just tired, but really wired or wrung out and can put your body as if it’s on really high alert. This means that there’s this higher need for downtime or a higher need for things that are low-stimulation or support the nervous system, because someone’s tolerance for being at a busy party or being in a room where there’s lots of bright lights or where there’s loud music – going to a café or a restaurant where it’s really noisy, the sound is bouncing off everywhere, that can be so much for someone to deal with whereas their friend next to them just isn’t noticing all these things. It just doesn’t have the same impact on their nervous system.

The next letter is the ‘E’, and this is Emotional reactivity & empathy. You pick up on others’ joy, on others’ pain, on others’ frustration, and this can be even when that other person is not even recognising it. So you’re able to notice all of these different things. And again, if we look at your ability to process with all of your senses, you’re hearing this because of the subtle shifts in someone’s tone in terms of how they’re speaking, or you’re noticing it because of this subtle change in their facial expression.

You’re able to notice all of these things, which is an absolute gift because you are able to then be highly in tune with other people and to be able to help people in this regard, but it is also exhausting because it’s not something you can just turn off. So you’re picking up on all of these different things and then, again, you’re having to be able to process that. If there are other things going on in that environment, that can be really overstimulating.

So this is a wonderful thing, and when I think about the clients I work with who have this, they are normally the most caring, compassionate, empathetic people, which is, as I said, a gift – and that can then take its toll if we’re not getting the right amount of downtime and the things that can help the nervous system to be able to recharge.

And then the final letter, the ‘S’, is Sensitivity to subtleties. You notice the flicker in someone’s eye, the change in their tone, the slightly different way that food has come out, it’s slightly saltier than usual. Again, this is something that can be a real superpower in having this. As I’m talking about this, I’m thinking about someone who is really into wine or someone who is working in the perfume industry or someone who is very good in terms of being able to taste things. There are some real strengths with this. But again, this isn’t something that you get to turn off.

So those are the four letters as part of that acronym to really understand what it means to be a HSP.

If we look at this at the population level, it’s about 15% to 30% of the population that is affected with this. And when I say affected with this, this is a genetic thing. This is how someone is born, this is how someone is wired. You don’t become a HSP because of circumstances or life events; this is how someone is born.

It happens in men just as much as it happens in women, although it could be harder to spot in men because of the environments that we grow up in. If someone grows up in an environment where they have to be manly, they’re not meant to show their emotions, this could be one of those things where someone masks this, where someone pretends that this isn’t their thing. Whereas for women in certain environments, it’s much more okay to be able to show these things, to be more emotional, to cry more, to have this more depth of feeling. But it’s not something that’s just a female thing. This is something that happens in the sexes in roughly the same amount.

It’s also not something that’s just a human characteristic. They’ve done research and they’ve found it in 100 different species. It’s likely that it’s in many more species; there just hasn’t been the research done on it. So this happens not just in humans but across the board. And again, there’s reasons for this. There’s strengths and weaknesses to this. If we’re thinking about a tribe of humans, it’s really useful to have some of these people as part of that tribe because of the gifts they’re going to be able to bestow on the tribe by having these real specific talents, to be able to notice these subtleties.

When I think about the clients that I work with – I said a moment ago that it happens in 15% to 30% of the population, but if I think about the clients that I work with, it’s probably 70% or 80% of the people. When we look into this, they discover that they’re HSP, if they hadn’t already known it.

00:10:32

Why is there an overlap between HSPs + eating disorders?

So why is there this overlap, then, between being a HSP and developing eating disorders? Let me go through some of the reasons. This is not going to be an exhaustive list, but these are some of the reasons why there is that overlap.

One is, as I talked about earlier, to have this experience, it can be very overstimulating. It can be very overwhelming. And especially if someone is a young kid or is a teenager, where they don’t have a huge amount of control. So “I still have to go to school, I still have to sit in that classroom, I still have to have those bright lights, I still have to go off and play in that sport or go to band” or whatever it may be. “I don’t have a huge amount of control in my life because of the way that this world is set up.” So when so much of life feels too loud and too overwhelming, someone can then discover that “When I exercise a lot or when I restrict my food or when I do these eating disorder behaviours, I get a sense of calm. I get a sense of quiet. I get this way of being able to put a mute button on everything.”

And that then becomes really addictive, for lack of a better word, because “Wow, I’ve found something, finally, that allows me to do this.” And especially in the beginning, this doesn’t feel like there’s a downside. This can just feel like “I finally found a solution of how to manage this.” Later on, someone can start to notice that there’s a downside and that this possibly isn’t the best way to deal with it, but in the beginning, especially for someone who is younger, who doesn’t have any other ways of coping, it makes a lot of sense.

The next one is that emotions are just too big to hold, so there is this real depth of feeling emotions, both in terms of things being joyous and wonderful and happy, but also at the other end of the spectrum. And that can be a lot to deal with. It can also be a lot to deal with if you’re living in an environment where there are not parents that are able to support that and able to hold that. If you’re being told, “Stop crying, stop being so dramatic”, then you’re trying to look for a solution of “How do I dampen this down? How do I not feel things in such a big way, because I’m being told that this is not the right thing to do.”

So in that environment, if someone discovers that restricting or binging or overexercising is a way for them to dial down that emotional intensity, then this is why this becomes the habit or the pattern of behaviour.

The next one is this hyperawareness of other people. As I said, you’re picking up on all these different subtle cues that everyone is giving off, and again, if you’re in a particular environment where you’re needing to act a certain way, “we shouldn’t be doing this” and “you have to be doing that”, you can get into this very people-pleasing way of being, this real shrinking yourself, this fear of being too much, and that is connected to “I’m just noticing all of the things that people are putting out.” That comment that your friend doesn’t think about 10 minutes later, you’re still thinking about it two weeks later or 10 years later or “I’m now 50 and I’m telling you about this thing that happened when I was 12.” You are constantly aware of the thoughts and the opinions and the behaviours of other people.

In a similar vein, you’re noticing every change. You’re noticing all these different subtle changes, and this can be changes in your body. I think this is particularly why puberty can be such a time when eating disorders start because there can be this noticing of these changes in appearance or in weight and how much of an impact that has on someone.

What I’ve actually discovered is, yes, obviously there can be a connection to the aesthetics of this and “I don’t want my body to look a particular way”, but what is really interesting when I think about the clients I work with – one, so much of this is then about sensations, the physical sensations of this, like “I’m noticing the sensations within my body and how things change or how clothes are touching that” and that then becomes a really big thing. There’s this running joke with people with HSP that they always have to cut the labels off of their T-shirts, and this was going on well before they developed an eating disorder. There would be two T-shirts they could wear out of a whole closet of stuff because everything else just felt too scratchy or itchy or too tight or didn’t fit the right way.

So there’s already this real sensitivity to how clothes can fit on the body, and then you add in going through puberty or changes in the body and that just adds this whole new layer. If I then find this way of being able to turn down those sensations, then that becomes very appealing.

The other piece connected to these changes in the body is also connected to the hyperawareness of other people. If I’m noticing my body change and then one person makes a comment, I just become so aware of that. Or “I’m noticing that I’m becoming more womanly and that makes me feel uncomfortable because of the environment and the world we’re in, and I’m noticing that people are looking at me, so this is my way of being able to deal with this.”

So there are lots of reasons why there can be this much higher overlap between HSPs and eating disorders. The thing I want to really stress is that this isn’t about a weakness. This is about a survival strategy that someone builds and discovered when they didn’t know of any other tools.

I do really think that often, when we talk about eating disorders, the general stereotype is this is about vanity and this is about aesthetics, and yes, there can be some of that with HSPs, but so often, the drive for weight loss or changing of one’s body came after the fact. The initial reason for doing this wasn’t actually about that. It was about because of emotions, it was about this depth of processing, it was about all of those other things. And if there was weight loss as being this driver, again, it was connected to that hyperawareness of other people or the uncomfortableness in terms of the sensations of the body changing.

A lot of the fears around weight gain, the fears around the changing body, they come later on because of the eating disorder. And again, I’m making some generalisations here; it can happen in lots of different ways, but that is definitely one of the things that I’ve discovered with this. So much of this is a lot more to do with the feelings and the bigness – ‘bigness’ isn’t a word, but the size of emotions and the size of sensations and feelings and all of that that someone is dealing with.

00:18:10

Why is it important to recognise if you’re a HSP?

Why do I then think it’s really important for someone to understand this? When I’m working with someone, if it feels like this is something that could be going on for them, could be part of their trait, why I want to recommend it to people.

One, I think it can help in terms of self-compassion. It can help in terms of self-compassion because there’s this realisation that “I’m not overreacting. Actually, this is how my nervous system is designed, this is how my nervous system does its job. When I get into this low-energy state, while in the beginning it was really helpful in terms of toning things down, in other situations it makes things even worse and it makes me even more hyperaware and hypervigilant and all of those things.”

So helping someone to realise, “Actually, I’m not ‘overreacting’; this is how my nervous system is built” and being able to see there are obviously downsides connected to this, but there are lots of gifts and upsides connected to this.

The next piece is looking at boundaries, and actually, when you’re a HSP, because of the likelihood that you’re going to be overstimulated, because of the likelihood that I’m going to get into people-pleasing tendencies, for lots of different reasons, I need to be really good at setting boundaries. And it’s okay for me to leave a party early. It’s okay for me to say no. It’s okay for me to choose things that are supportive for my nervous system.

Again, because of the people-pleasing tendencies, this can feel even more difficult to do because it feels like “I’m letting people down, what are they going to be thinking?”, all of those kind of things. But it’s actually really, really important. These boundaries are a protection for someone, and if this is not happening, it makes things even more difficult.

If, for example, I leave a party early and I come home and I’m able to then do some journalling, I’m able to do some practices that help my nervous system versus I stay at that party, I’m there until the end, I come home and I’m just so wired, I can’t sleep – from my perspective, having that difficult conversation or that difficult moment of saying, “Hey, I need to go now” is worth the trade-off. It can feel very difficult in that moment to be able to do it, but if I then look at the ramifications for the rest of that day, for the next day, for the rest of that week, it becomes so important to be able to set those boundaries.

The next piece connected to this is how important rest is, and that rest really is medicine. I know this then flies in the face of what the eating disorder is telling someone and the habits that someone has maybe kept up because of the eating disorder, but it is so important.

I think rest is important for everyone, in recovery – for everyone who is a human being on this planet, but it’s really important in recovery, and it’s especially important if you’re a HSP, because you just need more downtime than the average person to be able to recharge, for you to be able to process everything that has gone on. This is not laziness, this is not lacking willpower. This is how you truly take care of yourself.

The next piece I think is important is that really understanding that making changes just to food or making changes just to exercise is not going to get you there in terms of recovery. Again, I think this is true for everyone in recovery. Yes, the food and exercise piece is really important; it’s especially important in the beginning because of the energy debt that accrues when someone gets into an eating disorder and how much has been driven by being in that low-energy state, but it’s really important to then be learning other ways of coping and other ways of restructuring one’s life to then be able to support themselves.

Because even with someone who doesn’t have an eating disorder, there’s often a point in their life where they discover “I’m a HSP, and so many things I’ve been dealing with in a negative sense of feeling burnt out, feeling overwhelmed, all of these things are because the way that my life is structured doesn’t match up to how my nervous system is wired.” So really understanding the importance of these coping skills and structuring one’s life in a way to support this.

This could be through setting boundaries, as I talked about. This could be needing more rest than the average person. And rest can be sleeping, rest can be downtime when I’m awake, rest can be different activities, but they’re still restful activities or they’re activities that actually help you to recharge.

00:23:19

Common traps for HSPs in recovery

Some of the common traps that I then see for HSPs in recovery – and these are often the opposite of what I’ve just talked about there, when people are not doing the things that are in alignment with their body and their nervous system and what is actually right.

The first one that I think of is pushing through the overstimulation because you ‘should’ be able to handle it. Coming back to that party example, “No, I’m not going to go home early. I should be able to be here until the very end. This shouldn’t affect me in that same way.” This can be challenging because I think there is this fine line between “When I need to challenge myself, where do I need to push myself” versus “Where is this overstimulation, where is this leading to overwhelm and this is actually counterproductive?”

There isn’t an exact right answer with this. A lot of it when I’m working with people is we’re feeling our way out. I talk so often about running the experiment. We’re running the experiment and seeing what we notice. And obviously, with an eating disorder, the eating disorder is about avoidance and it’s wanting you to avoid certain things, so that then also comes into the mix of “What’s really true here? Is this about avoidance? Is this actually overstimulating? What’s the right way of dealing with it?” And that’s what we figure out as we work together.

But I think there is something that really needs to be taken into consideration, because it’s very easy to feel like “If I’m doing recovery, this is how I become a ‘normal’ person, and I should do all of these different things.” And the reality is, actually, for how you’re wired, we need to figure out a different way for what actually supports you.

I think because of that, there can be this real interpreting of overwhelm as being this failure in recovery. For example, “I went to this party, I didn’t go home early, it wiped me then for the next three days”, and the conclusion that someone comes to is “I’m doing recovery wrong. I’m a failure in recovery.” From my perspective, that’s not true. This is a learning experience, and it’s figuring out, what is the right amount?

And this is going to change. As you get more along in your recovery, you’re no longer in that lower energy state, your capacity can increase. There is this band that you’re going to be in, and that band can increase as you get further along in recovery. But there is always going to be this upper limit with this, and your upper limit may be a lot lower than someone else’s upper limit because of this.

But really being able to, as I talked about earlier, that compassionate piece – bringing compassion in here, and if I do find that I become overwhelmed, not to be chalking it up to I’m a failure in recovery, but more this is a learning experience, and what can I discover from this?

I think what can then happen if someone’s not bringing in that learning and not bringing in that compassion here is there can then be a turning back to eating disorder behaviours as a way to tend to the nervous system. Again, “I went to that party, I got overwhelmed. I’m feeling not great the next day”; instead of doing the things that truly do support the nervous system and can then help you move forward, it’s this feeling of “I just need to go back to the eating disorder behaviours. Those are the things that are tried and tested and I know what’s going to happen, so I’m going to just go back to them.”

I think this is the reason why it’s really important to be seeing this as running experiments and understanding the overstimulation piece so that someone’s not constantly ping-ponging between this. “I’m pushing really hard in terms of my recovery to the point that I’m burning out or feeling overstimulated, and then I wildly swing back to ‘I just need to do the eating disorder behaviours because this isn’t working for me’.”

The other piece connected to this is comparing your pace to other people in recovery without factoring in this sensitivity. With HSPs, sometimes recovery can be slower. The thing I always say with this is, we don’t need to make recovery slower than it needs to be; this isn’t to say that now we need to do it in this tiny, gradual way. I’m very much an advocate of making big changes and making changes that are going to be meaningful and are going to lead to an upside in terms of the changes in someone’s physiology, the changes in their nervous systems, cataloguing of things being a threat or things being safe.

So I do want people to be pushing forward with recovery, and recognising that if someone’s a HSP, that we may need to do things in a different order or we may need to do things more slowly because of that. If you’re then looking at other people and thinking, “Hey, but they were able to do this in this amount of time”, there’s probably not the sensitivity in that person that there is for you.

And look, there can be a multitude of different factors that also come into this. You can have a HSP who’s also had a huge amount of trauma that has gone on throughout their life that is going to make it even more difficult in terms of the depth of processing and all the different picking up of things and someone having this much higher threat alert going on. But really understanding that your pace is going to be your pace, and we just need to figure out what’s best for you.

An example of this could be body image. I know body image comes up a lot for people in recovery, and there could be this feeling of “My body image distress is just so much higher, it’s going on so much longer than other people as part of recovery.” Again, as I talked about earlier on, a lot of this body image distress isn’t just about the aesthetic of how something looks and it’s taking time for my mind to adjust to that; there’s all the physical sensations connected to this and how it feels within my body to have this change, how it feels in terms of the clothes sitting on my body. This can then take longer to normalise or to change than someone who is not Highly Sensitive.

I think it’s really important to be able to remember this. And look, no matter who I’m working with, my advice is we need to stop comparing your recovery to other people because everyone’s is going to be different, and the oly thing you have control over is your recovery, so let’s put our focus there. But it’s a good reminder to recognise, “If I’m Highly Sensitive, it’s likely that this is going to take longer” because we have to factor in the overwhelm piece, we have to factor in you having more downtime, etc.

00:30:38

Practical things to help you in recovery as a HSP

If I’m then looking at a few practical things that could happen – again, it’s not an exhaustive list, but if you’re listening to this and you know that you’re a HSP and you’re thinking, “What could then help me as part of my recovery?”, there’s a few things that I would suggest. And this is in addition to the usual you need to eat more food, you need to take time off exercise, you need to do all the usual things as part of recovery.

One of the things would be really doing these daily check-ins with yourself. You could do this multiple times a day, just really checking in and noticing, “Where am I? What’s going on in terms of my nervous system?” I talk a lot about polyvagal and the polyvagal ladder, so “Where am I on the polyvagal ladder and what’s going on because of that? What’s too much right now? What would soothe me right now?” Being, in a sense, self-compassionate by my actions, so checking in and really understanding what I need.

And the answer to that isn’t “I’m going to do an eating disorder behaviour”; it’s more “What do I need to be able to take care of myself and soothe myself?” where this is about recovery.

Connected to this is making changes to your environment. It could be that in your environment, you have a soft blanket. It could be that you dim the lighting or get different kinds of light bulbs. It could be that you put on particular types of music. It could be that you step outside and get some fresh air. There can be these tiny resets that you do throughout the day. So “Every hour, I’m going to take five minutes to do something, to check in, and then if I need to I’m going to do something.”

When I think about the environment and safety cues that we get from our environment – this was something that came up in my conversation with Justin Senseri, who talks a lot about polyvagal theory. I’ll put that episode in the show notes. He talks about the difference between passive and active safety cues.

If we’re thinking about the environment and passive safety cues, this is, how do I set up my office or my bedroom or an area that I want to have be safe so that every time I walk in, those things are already there? I have the plants that are already there, I have the blanket on the floor that I can feel my feet in, I have certain candles or certain smells that are there. I have these different cues. Maybe there’s some photos of myself or there’s memorabilia from this thing. I want to be able to walk into this environment and these things are already there, letting me know that these things are safe.

And it’s not that you instantly think this. With the nervous system, it’s called neuroception. The nervous system is picking up on these things before it even gets to your conscious brain, and it’s then sending that signal to your body of “this is safe.” So setting up this passive environment so that that is always there.

And then the active piece is, when I’m noticing that I’m feeling more activated or I’m feeling more challenged or things are coming up, what are the things I can do in that moment? Maybe at that point I’m putting on a particular playlist or at that point I’m lighting this candle or at that point I’m lying down on that rug that is really nice. Having these different things that are either passive or active, and with the active ones, that are very easily within reach.

The next piece is co-regulation. Co-regulation means that your nervous system is being regulated by someone else. And that someone else can be a person – who are the safe people within your life? – and it can also be through a pet or through animals. Dog, cat, horse, whatever it may be. One of the things that I’ve noticed with many of my HSP clients is how much their pets help them. When they’re struggling, this is when I’m sitting down and I’ve got the cat on my lap that I’m giving a stroke or I’m lying down on the floor and I’m being with the dog in that environment.

It doesn’t even have to be I wait till I’m struggling. It can be I notice that I get a real benefit to my nervous system when I’m with the animal, so that just becomes baked into my day to day because that then helps my nervous system.

It can be with people. The person in some senses doesn’t even have to be there with you. You can do a call on the phone, because again, you can hear someone’s tone of voice and that can be soothing to you. It’s not that every person is going to be like this, but it’s finding the people who can do that, and if you don’t have the people, we can use pets or we can use pets and people with this.

The next piece is using movement as being a grounding thing. I’m going to be really conscious of how I talk about this because movement can be a really big problem for lots of people in recovery or with eating disorders. And actually, we’re trying to create more stillness. There’s been too much exercise for way too long, and what is most important is rest and having that time off of exercise.

But even if that is true, we can still use some movement as part of this. It could be walking barefoot in the grass, and it’s not that you then have to walk for an eternity; it’s like, “I went out into the garden and I walked barefoot in the grass and then I sat down.” It could be some slow stretching. Really gentle yoga or gentle stretching or getting back into my body. It could be swaying or it could be rocking and just moving back and forth as you’re sitting in the chair or you’re having a conversation with someone or you’re stroking the pet. So using that gentle, subtle movement to support the nervous system. Being in a hammock is probably a good example of that.

The goal with this very gentle movement is not to burn calories. It’s to help you come back into your body or to help you feel safer with your body or just to change the focus of what’s going on by having this subtle movement and the impact that that then has on the nervous system.

The final thing that I want to mention is having boundaries around media. We live in not a great time, if I’m being perfectly honest about everything going on in the world, whether we’re talking about this from a global warming perspective or we’re talking about this in terms of wars that are going on, politics. It’s not a great time to be human in terms of the media and what we see on the news and our social media feeds, etc., on a daily basis.

This obviously affects all of us, but if someone is a HSP, it’s affecting them on a much deeper level. So if you’re constantly reading those sad headlines or those intense social media posts or even you’re just much more susceptible to all of the ‘clean eating’ posts or influencers on Instagram and the posts that they put out, it’s just recognising that “I am much more susceptible to being triggered or impacted by seeing different things, and I need to give myself a break from that, create space.”

And I know there can be this feeling of “I want to know what’s going on in the world. It’s not fair that I get to check out from these things. I should know what’s happening in Gaza or what’s happening with this thing in Sudan” or whatever it may be. But the reality is that when you do that, where does that lead you? Does that actually help you to be the kind of person that you want to be, to have the quality of life that you want to have, to be able to recover?

I’m not saying that you can’t ever go into these things, but just being able to, in the same way as I talked about with the party thing, “The reality may be that if I go to a party, I can only be there for a certain amount of time and then I need to leave.” And the same thing could be with this: “I need to work out what is the right amount of this where me being on the news or me being on social media doesn’t completely derail me and lead to me being not in a good spot.” So really being able to have some media boundaries with this stuff.

00:39:44

Being Highly Sensitive is a gift

That is really what I wanted to go through with this topic. I’m in so many ways just scratching the surface on this, but I wanted to be able to share this in terms of I think that there are many, many people who are HSP and they don’t even know that’s what’s going on, and there’s such a high overlap between this and eating disorders. I do think understanding it makes a real difference.

I really want to just say that your sensitivity is not something to fix. It’s something that you need to work with. It’s why you can notice the beauty that others miss. It’s why you can feel love so deeply. It’s why you have this profound capacity for compassion and empathy. But like every strength, you need care and protection to be able to support that.

So being able to really see that “this is a gift when I’m able to do the things to support me” – and I would like to actually invite you over the next week to notice, “When is this sensitivity a gift? When is it actually helpful for me?” I think what can happen is it can feel like “This is too big, all too much, this is a curse, I wish this wasn’t how I was.” And I totally understand how it can feel like that in moments or can feel like that constantly, and I want to say it is a gift. I want you to be able to notice that.

The final thing I’ll say is full recovery is possible for you and for everyone. Even if you are Highly Sensitive, full recovery is still possible. The way to get there is to do it while honouring the unique way that your body and your mind move through this world and the way that you perceive this world and experience this world. There’s nothing about this that prevents you from reaching a place of full recovery. And as I said, 70% to 80% of the people I work with are Highly Sensitive. It doesn’t stop anything.

Okay, that is it. As I mentioned at the top, I’m currently taking on new clients. If you want to reach a place of full recovery, if you’ve listened to this and recognise, “Maybe I’m a HSP”, I will put a link in the show notes – on Elaine Aron’s website, there’s a test that you can take. It’s an online test that takes like five minutes to do, so you can do it and see, “Does this feel like it matches up with me?” If so, you have a little bit of answers there. It’s obviously not definitive, but it can give you a bit of a sense.

But yeah, if you are Highly Sensitive, if you’re not Highly Sensitive, if you want to reach a place of full recovery, I would love to help you get there. Send an email to info@seven-health.com and put ‘coaching’ in the subject line and I can send over the details.

That is it for this week’s episode. I’ll be back next week – I think next week will actually be a rebroadcast episode because I have some friends coming up and I’m having some time off. But we will be back very soon with a new episode. Until then, take care, and I will see you soon!

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