Kate: Welcome back to the Selfworthy HSP Summit. I'm Kate Lynch, and I'm really looking forward to another deep dive into the beliefs that may be keeping us small as highly sensitive people.
Which is why I'm so excited to talk with GG Rene Hill, who is an author, creative coach, and workshop facilitator whose work bridges wellness and creativity, centering writing as a tool for healing and storytelling.
Her mission is to help people enrich their lives and communities through the transformative power of the written word. She's the author of Story Work: Field Notes on Self-Discovery and Reclaiming Your Narrative. GG helps people slow down, tune in, and reclaim the stories they live by.
She lives in Maryland with her family. Thank you so much for being here, GG.
GG: Oh, thank you, Kate. I'm so happy to be here.
Kate: Was there a moment in your life when you realized you were living inside a story about yourself that no longer fit?
GG: Yes, there were multiple times in my life that has occurred, but what comes immediately to mind, particularly in the context of this summit, is when I intuitively was drawn to trying to understand why I felt always overwhelmed, always like I was having a different experience than everyone else around me.
I was being told for so much of my life that I was too sensitive. Even though I was very identified with that and believed I was too sensitive, there was this little voice that was like, "There's something else going on here. There's something you're missing."
The first thing that really opened my eyes was reading Quiet by Susan Cain, and that introduced me to a deeper understanding of what it means to be an introvert. That led me to Dr. Elaine Aron, Highly Sensitive People, and that really opened my eyes to understanding myself on a deeper level.
I had lived a lot of life thinking something's wrong with me. And it was a relief in a way because I come from a background, in my family, of mental illness. My mother had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. So I always had this secret fear that I would either develop schizophrenia or some other mental illness. And I thought that some of the issues I was having were related to that. And the fear didn't completely go away, but it gave me another pathway to explore.
So at that time in my life, I just felt that I needed to understand myself better. I needed to quiet the external noise of the world and tune inward, and just try to get to know myself from the foundation that there's nothing wrong with me. That's where my journey really started.
Kate: Hmm.
What are some of the most common stories that highly sensitive people internalize about themselves, and where do those stories begin?
GG: We start to internalize that our experience of the world is wrong that our gifts are burdens. That we feel too much.
For many of us, it can start when we're children, maybe things we heard from family members or teachers, or from television, films, dominant societal narratives.
Maybe our culture plays into that as well. As a Black woman, I definitely was raised with this trope of, we have to be strong and we have to be unbreakable. And if you're not, the world's gonna eat you up.
I developed a sense that maybe I am too fragile for the world because I always felt like I was feeling too much.
I was absorbing energies around me and just didn't have any language for it or an understanding of how to support myself. So we pick it up along the way, and especially when we're children, we assign meaning and coping mechanisms to these things that we're being told, and we don't realize we're doing it.
We're just doing it to survive. So many of us live for years in survival mode trying to hide those things that we think are weird or won't be accepted, and that begins to weigh on us over time.
Kate: That's really relatable.
How do those internal stories then start to shape the way highly sensitive people abandon themselves?
GG: For me, it was relationships and work. For example, I worked in corporate America, and everyone else seemed so adapted to the rat race environment, and I always felt completely overwhelmed. I needed to hide it 'cause I didn't want it to seem like I couldn't hack it. I wanted to be perceived as someone who was valuable and could handle the pressure, but inside I was a mess. I was just always feeling like this lifestyle doesn't seem to really fit who I am.
I had been molded by my parents, who were both blue collar. "You're going to college and you're gonna work in an office somewhere." And I never questioned that. It seemed like an environment that I would thrive in because I knew how to play the part.
I was practiced at that. I liked the way it felt when people were like, "Oh, you work for that company." All of my fulfillment or meaning was coming from this external validation.
We find ourselves in situations where we're performing and people pleasing, and inside we're just not fulfilled.
We're not asking for help because we're not acknowledging it.
Same thing can show up in relationships. We feel like we have to outperform and attune to everyone else and make sure everyone is comfortable so we can feel comfortable. And we burn out doing that.
If I at the time was aware of my needs, that I need rest, I need time to myself, I need time in nature, and all of these things that I discovered later, that just felt like, that's being selfish.
Kate: So you end up going down the list until you're off the list.
GG: Exactly.
Until I started to understand, and I did get help from therapy. Before I was resourced, it was the internal self-talk. It was the internal abuse. Not eating well, not getting the exercise that I needed. Instead of turning towards self-care, I turned towards self-punishment and self-criticism.
That can be like a ripple effect where you start to have more challenges. Ultimately, we just need to honor who we are instead of rejecting it.
Kate: Yeah. Almost like a snowball effect of criticism.
GG: Exactly.
Kate: You talk about reclaiming your story, and I was wondering what that actually looks like when the old story's been running your life for so many years.
GG: Yeah. It happened through soul-searching, quieting the external noise, which for me looked like therapy. Journaling and writing was my channel. That was my main source for getting back in tune with myself and finding language for what I had been experiencing, externalizing it. And through that, giving myself space to ask myself, what do I need? What do I value?
What can I do that no one else can do, and why am I not valuing that? What story is running my life?
And at the time, the story that was running my life was that there's something wrong with me, and I have to change who I am to be successful, to fit in. Finally acknowledging that, and seeing myself say that, I was like, no, I don't actually believe that.
But this is the story that's been underlying everything. Seeing those words written down, I said, "This story underlying everything is disempowering me."
And it's making me a stranger to myself.
Who am I really? What does a life look like where I honor these qualities about myself? And what does a life look like where I look at all of these situations instead of saying, this is evidence that there's something wrong with me, what if I look at evidence as life is trying to teach me something?
If this job doesn't fit or this relationship doesn't value you as you are, that's just data. Where might you be valued?
Kate: I'm curious what Happened to that part of you that was like chasing external validation and was criticizing yourself so hard when you started discovering that some of those things weren't true.
GG: Part of myself panicked at first, because my identity, and even some of my relationships, were attached to that version of me who believed those things. Before I even started to change on the outside, there was a dissonance there. Because actually showing up differently is scary. I know it's gonna affect relationships.
I know it's gonna force me to make some different decisions and change some behaviors.
So there was just that disconnect of like how do I do that?
I had to start listening to my body. My body had been trying to talk to me for years, and I had just been so dissociated like when my stomach would clench up or my heart would beat fast or my jaw would clench, I would just ignore that.
I had to start listening to that. Getting into my body and allowing myself to feel that discomfort of speaking up for myself differently, setting new boundaries, aligning with this new story that said, "I am enough. I am whole as I am. It's safe to speak my truth. And if I speak my truth and people leave or situations change, then I will be okay."
That will be a natural filtering system for me to find what is aligned for me. I understood that mentally, but it took longer to actually embody that and to get my nervous system to adjust to the discomfort of it all, and the grief of it all.
That version of me with those old stories, those parts are still there trying to protect me at times. But I don't spiral as far. I realize, we're safe now. We can navigate this.
It takes some time, and it's something we'll probably always work at.
One thing I talk about in the book Story Work is turning our sensitivities, all the qualities that come with that, into strengths.
So often we're just focusing on the challenges. We forget about all of the strengths that it gives us.
Being sensitive has given me a unique gift for the work I do in writing and coaching. I can manage the challenges now because I know how to take care of myself and I'm resourced, and I have the courage to assert those strengths.
We can't forget all of the ways that it makes our life really special as well.
Kate: Absolutely.
What becomes possible for a highly sensitive person when they stop organizing their life around an old survival story?
GG: Life opens up.
You recognize all the opportunity that there is for someone with the unique gifts that you have and how needed it is.
There was a scary leap of faith.
From my experience, life before embracing my sensitivity was very uncomfortable, and it was fearful and draining.
Becoming aware of my sensitive strengths was uncomfortable as well, but that discomfort had meaning and purpose. What becomes possible is, we can learn how to assign meaning to our experience in a way that energizes us and gives us life and purpose as opposed to assigning a meaning that weighs us down.
Ultimately, that's what I mean when I say it just opens up opportunities to find the path that's true to who you really are.
Isn't that what we all want? To be able to be ourselves whole and integrated?
Kate: Yeah.
The willingness, like you were saying, to, experience discomfort when there's meaning attached to it.
I just wanna reinforce that 'cause- that's really important. There's a big difference between discomfort that has no meaning or that feels dangerous, like breaking your leg. Versus getting surgery for your broken leg. We know the difference.
GG: So important.
Kate: GG, is there a writing prompt that you could offer listeners right now that will help them, and me, notice the story we're living inside and begin to tell a truer one?
GG: Yes.
Think about an area of your life where you are noticing an unwanted pattern of any sort, an unwanted dynamic, and ask yourself,
"What are the beliefs and stories I am telling myself, or assumptions that I'm making, that are underlying this pattern?"
Any limiting belief that could be fueling that unwanted pattern or dynamic.
And then ask yourself, "what else could be true? What other meaning could I assign to this? What is life trying to teach me through this?
If this limiting belief wasn't there, what could be true? How could I change this story so that it empowers me instead of disempowers me?"
Three steps.
Recognize the limiting beliefs.
What could the story be without those limiting beliefs?
How could you be free of that limitation?
Sometimes just planting the seed is that first step, and taking some notes, and then you step away. And as you're going through your day and your life, your subconscious gives you new ideas to add to that.
Kate: Inside the Selfworthy Support Pass we will be offering journal pages that are fillable or printable, so that you can follow along with these prompts.
GG: I love that.
Kate: GG, thank you so much. This has been fantastic. Do you have a free gift that you'd like to offer attendees?
GG: Yes. I would invite listeners to visit my Substack, which is thelayers.substack.com. I share story work exercises, self-discovery and reflection questions.
Kate: And the link's right here below. Thank you, GG.
GG: Thank you, Kate.
