Excerpt from Bill Allen’s Confessions of a Highly Sensitive Man, Chapter 3: Being Different Growing Up Quiet and Alone I was a shy child and introverted. One of my earliest recollections was around the age of four. My parents had switched churches, and I can clearly remember the first Sunday we attended the new church. […]
HSPs and Relationships
Does this work for me?
Guest blog, “Does this work for me?” written by Tom Falkenstein, psychotherapist and author reflects on the publication of his book “The Highly Sensitive Man” On a rainy evening in London in Spring 2015, I decided to write a book about highly sensitive men. Although only a little over five years ago now, it feels […]
Sheltering in Place for HSPs who are Parents or Part of a Couple
“Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on outside.” -Joan Chittister I know there is now a great deal of advice out there for managing during this time, but I thought I would add some especially for […]
Big Picture Living During a Time of Global Crisis
Lately, I have been speaking about one way to reduce anxiety (a normal feeling for HSPs): Look at the big picture. I advise it now more than ever: Maintain the big picture. How? Ask yourself, what are your real risks? (Don’t minimize, but don’t catastrophize either.) What will things be like a year from now? Even two […]
The Ethics of Self-Care
When my son (a writer for TV) read over the script for Sensitive and in Love, he said it surprised him that it emphasized the need for downtime. It seemed so self-centered. He thought HSPs were more into helping others. They are, I assured him, and I adjusted the script accordingly. But it brings up […]
A Gift to Add Sparkle to the Gifts You Already Have
I have a gift for you. I found it while reading and listening to Ken Wilber, a brilliant philosopher-psychologist-spiritual-teacher guy who has developed something called “integral psychology,” a theory that summarizes years of research by others on human development. I like a lot of it—not all of course. But central to integral theory is that […]
Graceful Boundaries – Part I
While working on the movie Sensitive and in Love, I was looking at the book Highly Sensitive People in Love and noticed I never discussed boundaries directly, although the subject was there often. Many people now are writing about HSPs and boundaries, so I think I will chime in, first with the basics, then something […]
Introversion, Extroversion and the Highly Sensitive Person
Guest Blog By: Jacquelyn Strickland, LPC According to the documentary Sensitive: The Untold Story, there are 1.4 billion highly sensitive people (HSPs) in the world (15-20% of the population). As Elaine Aron’s research has shown, 30% of that 15-20% of the HSP population are sensitive extroverts – or approximately 420 million HSPs. Unfortunately, due in great part […]
Why now the film on HSPs and relationships?
Quite spontaneously, Diana and Will Harper (the producer and director of Sensitive: the Untold Story) and Art (my research collaborator and husband) and I were sitting around a table, continuing to plan for what we had been assuming would be the next film on the highly sensitive child, when we began to express private concerns […]
What Happens When You Make a Herd of Highly Sensitive Horses and People?
I did not want to write about the HSP and Horses Workshops until I experienced a few of them. Now there have been three. The first two were one-day workshops, and the last one, in June, was two days, which we decided worked better for HSPs. At the bottom are some eloquent words from the […]