Kate: Welcome back to the Selfworthy HSP Summit. I'm Kate Lynch, your host, and we're here with Leah Tarleton.
Leah is a registered dietician, holistic health coach, and founder of The Nourished Sensitive. Her work supports highly sensitive and neurodivergent people in creating lives that feel nourishing, sustainable, and aligned with who they truly are.
Through nutrition, embodiment, creativity, and compassionate self-care, she helps sensitive people reconnect with themselves and thrive. Welcome, Leah.
Leah: Thanks so much for having me.
Kate: So, as a dietician, health coach, your expertise, what have you noticed about the relationship highly sensitive people have with nourishment and self-care?
Leah: There are some HSPs or neurodivergent people who have a really nourishing, healthy, balanced relationship with food. They are consistent with their eating, they keep their energy levels stable.
They eat in a very intuitive kind of way and they're connected to their body and their needs.
Then there are some sensitive people who struggle in that area for various reasons. They might have a history of trauma. They might be neurodivergent. Maybe they're late diagnosed, so they are still learning themselves. Maybe they've lived most of their life in a kind of nervous system state where they're disconnected from their own needs. They're used to putting other people first. How that plays out in their relationship with food is not really feeling connected to themselves, not knowing what to eat or when to eat or how much to eat. Not having an intuitive sense of it.
Maybe they skip meals. Maybe they eat in a kind of chaotic way, and that really affects them. Not eating in a consistent way is gonna affect highly sensitive people more than your average person because of how sensitive we are to shifts in our blood sugar and our hormone levels.
That also plays out in self-care. If you're used to putting other people's needs first and you're not really attuned to yourself, you might notice that it feels like you're always giving, you're always depleting. Nutrition is one way that we fill our own cups.
It's one way that we regulate our nervous systems. But if we're used to giving more than we take, then that's gonna reflect in our relationship with food as well.
And then on the neurodivergent side of things, a lot of autistic people, ADHDers, have very specific challenges with food.
They might be food averse. They might have sensitivities. So food can become like a battleground where they don't really get much joy from it, and it doesn't nourish them.
When our relationship with food is that way and we're not able to consistently nourish ourselves, that can affect all aspects of health, going beyond food.
Kate: You mentioned that nourishment is something that's much deeper than food. What are some of the things highly sensitive people are truly really hungry for?
Leah: I think A lot of the challenges that we face in our relationship with food are tied to deeper issues. Food is often the doorway for a lot of people into working with the underlying challenges that are leading to patterns like emotional eating or stress eating or skipping meals. I often tell my patients and clients that food is, like a mirror for our relationship with ourselves. Because food is essential, right?
We have to eat in order to live. We have to eat in order to sustain our energy levels, in order to provide the nutrients that our bodies need to thrive.
When we're tending to our inner landscape or when we're not tending to our inner landscape, doing our emotional work, setting healthy boundaries, empowering ourselves, stepping into our agency, growing spiritually, all the different elements, when we're undernourished in those areas, it will show up in our relationship with food.
But it's rare that food itself is the problem, and that's something that, after I've had a number of sessions with my clients, they always say that. They're like, "Leah helped me see that food was never the issue. It was just the symptom or the outward expression of the malnourishment that's going on on a deeper level."
All of these elements are interconnected. They're synergistic. When we're caring for our inner landscape as sensitive people, we have to think about how we're nourishing our mind, how we're nourishing our body, and how we're nourishing our spirit.
And if any one of those elements is out of balance or undernourished, we're not tending to it, then we can see that in all the other areas and also in our relationship with food. It's very layered and it's very dynamic, just like an ecosystem is. For anyone out there who loves gardening, if your soil composition isn't right, or there's not enough sunlight, or you've put a plant in the wrong place, or there's an infestation of something, any one little shift in the ecosystem can have an impact on the whole. That's gonna vary from one ecosystem to another.
That's what I emphasize when we talk about the elements of nourishment and going beyond food, is all these things need to work together in harmony.
It doesn't have to be perfect. There's no possible way we can be perfectly balanced. But if we're being aware and intentional in each of these categories, and we're practicing presence and mindfulness and compassion with ourselves, then we can come to a place where we feel a sense of balance within our own lives. And if we do get out of balance, we can find our way back home more easily.
Kate: These nine elements of nourishment, which of those do sensitive people tend to neglect the most?
Leah: I reflected on what are the elements that we need to be fully nourished and thrive as sensitive people.
To answer your question, which of those elements is the most important for sensitive people, we do have similarities in how we present in our personality traits.
I've designed the framework to meet the needs of the individual sensitive person.
I speak about sensitivity across the spectrum because I include people who are autistic and neurodivergent in the spectrum of sensitivity. If you're an HSP but you're not neurodivergent, you're somewhere on that sensitivity spectrum.
If a person comes to me and we're exploring the nine elements together, I'm gonna sit with them, and I'm gonna get to know them as a whole person, meeting them where they're at, understanding their story, and together we're gonna figure out what are the elements that are undernourished for you, right?
So some people are thriving. They're well-nourished in their relationship with food. Or maybe they've done a lot of inner work in therapy, and they have a lot of tools for emotional health. But maybe they are struggling a bit with self-empowerment. They know themselves. They take good care of themselves, but they still struggle with boundaries. They still go into a fawn response. They don't always have access to their anger. So we might work on that area first.
But I suppose the common elements where most sensitive people might start, emotional health is probably a big one.
Because a lot of sensitive people, we've spent a lifetime repressing our depth of feeling or trying to be less emotional, less sensitive. So that's an area where we often start, is just helping them see that their emotions are part of who they are, and their depth of feeling is something that they can leverage as a strength.
And how do we work with our emotions? How do we work with our empathy? I have various tools and I help them explore that. Holistic nutrition is probably the big one from the body category, because food is so central to how we feel in our bodies. Physical fitness and digestive health are important too. So many sensitive people have digestive issues, myself included, chronically.
The digestive system is very dynamic and very sensitive to environment both internal and external, so it's a very essential element physically for highly sensitive people.
But if there's no specific concern in that area, I almost always start with food.
In the spirit category, a lot of highly sensitive people need to work on embodiment, which is essentially just being in your body, being present to your nervous system. if you tend to dissociate or you tend to end up in a sort of codependent dynamic where you dismiss your own needs, you have to work on getting back into your body and staying grounded and centered there.
So those would be the top three, for a sensitive person starting out, would be emotional health, nutrition, and embodiment.
Kate: Yeah. Makes a ton of sense. Embodiment being my specialty, that idea of coming home. When you've been away for a really long time and you come home, it might smell a little weird. It might feel a little weird. You come back in and there's dust on everything. So it might take a little while to feel comfortable back in your body if it's been a while since you were home.
Emotional health leads into my next question. So many of us feel guilty as soon as we slow down or start taking care of our own needs. Why do we wait until we're completely depleted?
Leah: Yeah. I can't say that I have the perfect answer or understanding of why, but guilt is an emotion that says,
"I have done something bad."
If we commit a crime, we're judged as guilty. It begs the question, where did we learn that taking care of our own needs is a crime?
That's a conditioned response. I don't think we're born feeling that way, right? If you think of a baby, especially a sensitive baby, they're very attuned to their needs, and they will make it very clear that they need something, and they don't feel guilty about it.
Kate: Absolutely.
Leah: Their system is wired to assert what they need.
There are many delicate reasons why a human might become disconnected. For many sensitive people, living in the world as a sensitive person can be traumatic. Because society often doesn't care about the needs of deep-feeling people.
But let's say you had a great childhood. Your parents really took good care of you and met all of your needs. You're still gonna learn from work, from your peers who maybe are less sensitive, that being needy is an inconvenience. It threatens our safety and our belonging. So for sensitive people across the spectrum, if you're noticing guilt coming up for attending to your needs, spend some time maybe in therapy or with a trusted friend or in your journal thinking about,
"Where did I learn that?
How did this get programmed into me, 'cause I know I wasn't born this way?"
Then you're challenging that thought. Am I really bad because I have this need? Have I committed an actual crime? Who's the judge?
The good news is, you can unlearn it.
But first you kinda have to be aware and not let that conditioned response drive your decision-making.
Kate: Yeah. I'm just nodding along. For me, that's what this whole summit is about. Uncovering those beliefs. Embodying that new understanding. Then finding belonging, new patterns, new habits, and sense that we're not alone as we move forward with this new understanding.
Leah: That's the big piece. It's one thing to embark on this kind of work on your own or in therapy, but a big reason I wanted to create a community around this is because we need to know that other people are walking that same path, and that we're doing this together.
In some of our circles that we have at TNS, we have this culture of, "Hey, I'm not gonna make it to circle tonight. I'm tired." And we just love them and support them in making that decision. We often praise people for making that decision. That's the point, right?
And then we have some folks who will come. They're open and honest and authentic, and they're like, "Hey, I'm low energy tonight. I'm just gonna listen." And then they leave feeling nourished because they showed up and they got what they really needed, that connection and understanding from other people.
Kate: Yeah, like-minded community is so magical in that way, isn't it?
Leah: Yeah, definitely.
Kate: What does sustainable self-care look like for highly sensitive people when they're too exhausted to add anything to their to-do list?
Leah: What I teach is, presence is the work.
When you're depleted, you don't need to be doing more, right? It's not about, "Okay, I'm burnt out. I need to get on a five-point self-care routine to rehabilitate myself." That's probably only gonna dysregulate you more, and you may even feel more guilty because you won't be able to stay consistent with it.
If you're already in the hole, we have to start smaller. Being more present to yourself, which can be hard if you're already in burnout. One thing that I do when I'm in a burnout state, when I'm really tired, I'm feeling depleted, is I intentionally slow down in every aspect of my life.
In fact, I was doing it earlier today. The weather is cold and rainy. It's really getting me down. I was feeling anxious, and I was like,
"You know what? I'm just gonna intentionally slow down,"
and I've been moving like a turtle all day. The simple act of slowing down teaches the nervous system that you're safe.
I signed off from work today, I went and I took a bath. That brought my nervous system down so that I could actually move a little slower, and I was focusing on my breath.
I made myself a little blanket nest on the couch. I texted a friend, "Hey, I'm feeling kinda lonely. Do you have time for a call?" And she called me while she was driving. It's little things like that. Micro self-care moments.
But that requires you to be present.
Once you're in burnout, you kinda have to do that. The goal is to not get to that place. Regulating your nervous system regularly and being attuned and aware of yourself, but that's a longer journey for many people.
It is important to stay present, and enjoy the downtime instead of laying on the couch and feeling bad. There's that conditioned guilt again. Where did we learn that laying down and resting is bad, or it's a crime?
The community care piece is very important as well, because sometimes we're so deep into it that we really do need another nervous system to give us a hug, or talk to us and help us realize that we're not alone.
And, if you're really in that difficult place, connecting with something greater than yourself. That could be God. That could be nature. It could be your community.
But you often need that kind of rootedness to be able to pull yourself up out of a state of survival or depletion, to realize that you're truly not alone, that something is with you in this. That's especially important when you can't access your own self-compassion, to be able to imagine that something or someone out there loves you.
Kate: It's like that compassionate guide. They have your back.
For someone who is so used to taking care of everyone else that they don't even know what they need themselves anymore, where do they begin?
Leah: You first have to work with the identity that's become built up around being a helper or a caretaker. Going into those belief systems, where did I learn to attach my worth to helping?
How do I break those patterns? How do I work with my nervous system to be able to stay with myself when other people are placing demands on me or not respecting my needs or my boundaries? There's a lot of deep work, layered work involved in that.
Building up self-worth. 'Cause it's really hard to address your needs if you don't feel deserving.
Kate: Mic drop.
Leah: You may not even think to even ask the question, what do I need, because you're used to putting yourself last and you wired your brain to feel that you can't trust yourself to put your own needs first.
So there's some identity work there. And then there's just the habit of stopping throughout the day, what do I need right now? Noticing I'm anxious, like I was telling earlier. What do I need? What has helped me in the past when I'm experiencing this? Regular meals to keep me grounded. Soaking in water, calling a friend, making a blanket nest. Those are all the things that I've learned over time from consistently pausing and asking myself, what do I need? You build up a little toolkit. In the garden metaphor, I refer to this as the tool shed.
You need to have others around you who are sharing in that work and who can mirror you and can co-regulate with you so that you don't feel so alone and it doesn't tire you out.
Kate: Speaking of tools, do you have a free tool that you are offering to the Selfworthy HSP Summit community?
Leah: Yeah. If you're looking for a good place to start, I would start with my holistic guide to thriving. There's a needs assessment in there where you can think about where you might be under-nourishing yourself in each element, and you can get that guide by subscribing to the Nourished Sensitive Magazine on Substack.
You're always welcome to reach out to me on all my various channels.
Kate: Wonderful, Leah. Thank you so much. This has been a great conversation.
Leah: Yeah. Thanks for inviting me, Kate. Appreciate it.
