Dr. Genevieve: Welcome. I'm Dr. Genevieve, I'm a clinical psychologist and a conscious parenting coach. And for the last twenty years, I've been working with highly sensitive people and parents raising highly sensitive children. When I speak with highly sensitive people, there's a sentence I hear again and again, "I've spent my whole life feeling different and trying to fit in."
And I think this is so true for so many of us as HSPs. We've spent so many years trying to fit in. We've made ourselves smaller, we've suppressed our voices, monitored what we say, managed other people's feelings. We've often been the peacekeeper or the listener, and we've held back what we really feel in order to not offend anyone.
Now, at first, this looks like a strength, because HSPs, we read a room, we just have this natural ability to sense what others need. We're adaptable, very good listeners, very conscientious. HSPs always do a job very well. So they're people that other people like to have around. You like to have an HSP on your team.
But for HSPs, these abilities often begin in childhood. So highly sensitive children are very deep feelers, very deeply perceptive. I call them the tuning forks because the highly sensitive children are the ones who are constantly picking up on the emotional atmosphere in a room. They notice subtleties, they notice small details.
They notice what's said and also what's not said. And often those qualities of the highly sensitive child can feel very threatening to someone who has unresolved trauma or who's very disconnected from themselves. So a highly sensitive child's abilities of depth, their intuition, their light, often unconsciously stirs up in others what they haven't faced yet in themselves.
And I often see this in my work. It's the HSPs who become blamed, scapegoated, or criticized, or made to feel like they're the ones who are too much. So when a highly sensitive child's feelings are dismissed, they feel misunderstood, they're criticized, or when parents or adults around them are just really threatened by their light, as children, we learn something very important.
We learn which parts of us are safe to show and which parts of us are not safe to show. And we learn over time gradually to dim our light. And we begin to adapt, so we monitor what we say. We push down all those deep, intense feelings. We push down the anger. We push down the tears. Perhaps we hide our opinions.
We don't say what we really feel.
We maybe manage other people's feelings because we're so tuned in to how others are feeling, we don't want them to feel upset with us or we don't want to feel conflict. Often HSPs are very hyper-aware of how they're perceived by others or if they're being judged.
Often as HSPs, we're told we're too much, we're too sensitive, that we make too much of things. So we apologize, and we take the blame for things which are actually not our fault. And when we're not accepted for who we truly are, when we're not really truly seen, we adapt and fit into the roles that others expect us to be in.
And over time, this becomes automatic, and we don't even realize we're doing it anymore. So perhaps we become the people pleaser or the peacekeeper or the responsible one or the witty one. And these masks, these strategies are so intelligent. They're what helped us to survive, to keep safe, and to fit in.
But they take a real toll because we become tired, we get into constant hypervigilance. Perhaps we overthink. We carry a lot of tension in our bodies. We feel fragmented, and we can't be fully ourselves. We doubt ourselves. And what happens over time as HSPs is that we just lose touch with our intuition and our inner voice.
And what I see is some of the greatest parts of being the HSP become suppressed and pushed down. You know those quirky, weird, zany, wonderful parts of us, because often those are the parts that were seen as weird and weren't accepted. So we push those parts of us down, and those are really the gifts of the HSP.
And over time, we're dimming our light. We shut those parts of ourselves down.
I mean, I can look back at my own life and times when I overrode those flashes of intuition, where I've stayed longer in friendships, relationships, or workplaces that weren't healthy, and I convinced myself that things were okay when they really weren't.
So the work that I do with HSPs and what I feel is the journey that we all need to go on is to come home to ourselves. And what does this actually mean? Well, I think it means reclaiming the parts of ourselves that we've hidden. Starting to trust our feelings again. To trust our gut intuition and reconnect with our authentic self.
It's about learning to live not from a place of fear or survival, but from a place where we feel safe enough to let the world see the real you. For HSPs, there's a process of really reconnecting because we have this deep wisdom, but to really trust that wisdom and allow ourselves to be seen and heard and felt without shame.
And it's not just shedding layers, it's remembering and reconnecting with who we've always been.
Because one of the misunderstood things about us as HSPs, is we're very aware of energy. We feel things deeply. We sense what's happening beneath the surface. And when we can really begin to trust our sensitivity, trust the energies that we're picking up on, rather than seeing it as a problem, this is what becomes the guide back to ourselves. So coming home to ourselves is getting to know yourself more deeply, to really get to know your inner world, to know what triggers you, what your needs are, what your boundaries are, what your shadow side is, what matters to you, and what really lights you up.
Because as we start to go on this journey, something really starts to shift. We begin to live more from our heart and less from the head, from overthinking. We stop over-adapting and masking, and we come out of this place of hypervigilance. We also then begin to find relationships where we don't have to put on the roles, we don't have to put on masks anymore, where we can really be ourselves.
And I can think back to my twenties when I had this really big awakening where I was questioning all the roles I'd been playing and the achievements that have brought me so much validation. And I remember thinking that all these achievements and all these qualifications would make me feel happy.
And there was a point where I realized I hadn't brought the fulfillment or deep sense of purpose that I thought it would. Over time, I really started to realize it wasn't the outer world that needed to change. It wasn't things on the external.
It was really this inner relationship that I had with myself.
And I remember when I was seeking help and healing, I was going to different communities, different groups, and it was in these spaces that I really did some deep, deep work. And I still continue to go to these spaces and do this work, but where I was really able to cry for the first time and- be vulnerable in front of others, because until that point, I'd held everything in and suppressed so much of my intense emotion.
And what I discovered was that when I allowed myself to be really, truly seen, the right people, or let's say the people that could meet me and feel me there, were really able to meet me. And then I got what I really longed for. By being more vulnerable, by being more myself when I felt safe, I received more connection from others, not less.
And that's what we all long for. We all just long to feel deeply connected with ourselves and deeply connected with others.
I see coming home to yourself as an HSP as a lifelong journey. This is ongoing. There's no quick fixes. It's about returning to our bodies and also returning to something deeper within ourselves.
For me, on my own journey, it began after burnout and grief and loss and just feeling completely disconnected and off my path. Noticing a very racing, quick mind, lots of anxiety, as well as being numb at the same time. And it was when I began to turn towards myself and notice and observe what was there, to really notice the grief that was there in me, the tension, the anger, the fear, the parts of me that had been pushed down, and gradually allowing myself to feel more of those layers.
It's when we start to feel more of ourselves, that we can begin to reconnect with ourselves. We can begin to trust what feels like a yes in our body and what feels like a no. We learn, as HSPs, to start to really discern what feels truthful to us and what doesn't.
We learn to put the boundaries in and really let go of this need that we have, it's a very natural survival mechanism, to be liked by everyone, but it is one of the things that keeps us stuck. And we realize that other people's opinions are always filtered through their own lens of reality, they're not a measure of your worth.
In the past, like many HSPs, I would take things very personally, and I carried responsibility for many people's emotions. I felt like I had to manage other people. I think because I could pick up on so much information and data and energy, that I would take their feelings on almost as my own.
But now, I think, and this is the process, I've learned to pause, to really tune in and come back to myself. And for HSPs, this is the process of coming home. It's moving from this place of self-doubt into self-trust. It's learning what it feels like to really feel safe in our bodies again, feel at home in the body.
It's about slowing down and really finding ways to move out of our heads, our busy minds, and into our hearts, and knowing that we were worthy. We were always worthy, just as we are. So what really helps us to come home? There's a few important things that I support HSPs with in navigating coming home.
The first, very important point is to not judge the ways that we adapted in the past. We can be very hard on ourselves as HSPs, and we can come to ourselves with a lot of judgment, and, "Why did I make that choice? Why did I act like that?" And those parts of us that did adapt, that did learn to mask, that did people please, that did overthink, they were intelligent.
They were extremely protective. They kept us safe. And we all want to belong to the tribe. It's a primal need, so that we feel part of the group. We keep safe. We keep out of danger. It's very smart to fit in. And as HSPs, particularly when we're young or as teenagers, we already feel different somehow and feel different deep down.
So we become incredibly aware of not wanting to be the different outcast. But really, it's about learning not to judge ourselves, but to recognize that we can meet those parts of ourselves, the parts that adapted with compassion. And it's just about awareness. When we have awareness, we can begin to update the system.
We can realize we don't need to go into people-pleasing anymore. We don't need to, be that person who just doesn't say no, who says yes to everything. We can learn to update for the current day. And secondly, one thing that I find with many HSPs that I work with is that unexpectedly, they can also often experience a lot of grief.
And I think as we start to look at our journey, and we look at the ways that we lost ourselves along the way in our lives, when we look at the ways that we-- the many ways that we tried to fit in, the ways it has held us back, we can start to experience grief and a real sense of loss. We can also feel grief for the relationships and the friendships that now we're starting to wake up no longer feel aligned for us, and when we realize we don't have much in common with those people anymore.
Because one of the things that happens as we start to become more authentic, is that some relationships actually change, and it can be a very painful process. But in the pain, it does create space for something deeper and more nourishing to happen. It means that we can be more open and available to relationships where we can really feel that deeper sense of intimacy.
None of this coming home to ourselves as HSPs is about quick fixes or tools. We don't need to fix ourselves. There was nothing ever wrong with us. It was actually so much about the society that we've grown up with, which has stigmatized so many of the incredible qualities of being highly sensitive, such as our deep feeling, our perceptiveness, our interest in deeper issues like philosophy, psychology, spirituality.
But this is a lifelong journey, a lifelong deepening, and it's about becoming more intimate with yourself. It's about becoming more intimate with your inner world, your body, and your truth. And for many HSPs, we feel drawn to deeper things. We have a real longing for meaning and purpose and connection. So coming home to ourselves is also about reconnecting with what is my deeper sense of purpose?
Like, why am I here?
Also, we really need to feel safe to do this work. If we're in environments that feel unsafe for our nervous systems, our nervous system will always choose protection over authenticity and being ourselves. So at a certain point, I think we start to realize we don't just need more analysis or more insight.
What we actually need are different spaces. We need community, and we need to build what I call the healing architecture. Spaces where people come together and where we can create a collective field where we feel safe enough to drop the masks and feel safe enough to be real. Because as HSPs, we have been isolated and lonely, many of us, for a long, long time.
And much of what I'm seeing more and more in my work is that healing isn't just a one-to-one individual process. Healing really needs to be collective, because some of the deepest transformations that I've experienced, and many other HSPs have experienced, happens in community, in connection. It happens in being witnessed, where no one fixes you or comes to rescue you or gives you advice.
It comes in the moment when people just meet us with pure presence and with kindness and no judgment. Because as HSPs, we feel this, and we are intuitively guided towards these kinds of communities, because when we feel this feeling, something in us starts to shift. Something in us starts to feel safer, and we start to trust again, and the parts of us that were hidden can begin to return.
So if you've spent your life as an HSP trying to fit in, adapting, performing, I want to leave you with this message: Fitting in has asked you to change who you are, but belonging begins the moment that you come home to yourself. And when we as HSPs can honor our voices, when we can honor our feelings and put in our boundaries, we stop abandoning ourselves, and then we discover the relationships and the communities where we don't have to shrink ourselves anymore to be accepted.
