TUNED IN MODULE 7

Transcript

Welcome to module seven, the highly sensitive parent. I know that a lot of you here who have highly sensitive kiddos know and have already identified yourself as a highly sensitive person. And generally, if you are a highly sensitive person, you know it.

Like you figured out by now that you perceive a lot, you sense the subtle, you are very empathetic. Sometimes you don't know it. And I do run into a lot of adults that come to my practice who are really stuck in patterns of depression and anxiety and making themselves wrong.

And what's needed is for them to fully know and honor their sensitivities, create the boundaries that are needed for those sensitivities to be nourished and to be their superpower. And then some of those symptoms really decrease.

If you know you're not a highly sensitive person, and part of the reason that you're taking this course is so that you can get information on what your child's experience might be like, this module will still be helpful because it's just another layer of understanding of the highly sensitive person.

You also might be a non -highly sensitive person with a spouse, partner, co -parent, mother, father, sister, cousin, any of it that is highly sensitive. And this module will give you insight on what it's like to know an adult who is highly sensitive.

So just take the information however it will be helpful. And I think that you'll be offered some really good nuggets of information in this one. So we'll start with a review of the highly sensitive person.

We talked about the highly sensitive person as it relates to knowing your highly sensitive child at the beginning of the course. But now I want to apply some of these concepts to adults, if this is you.

We'll talk about the... particular importance of understanding how to set boundaries around and recover from overstimulation. As a highly sensitive person, I'll give an intro to boundaries and why they are especially important if you're a highly sensitive parent, knowing that next module is all about loving boundaries.

And then just a few closing reminders on important things to be considering if you're a highly sensitive person. So this one, in my opinion, is pretty easy to take in. It's not too complicated. It's not too much.

And so enjoy the content that you're about to be offered. Okay. So do you remember that when we were talking about the highly sensitive child, There was an acronym from Dr. Elaine Aaron, who was just such a big pioneer in the field of studying highly sensitive people.

And if I didn't mention this before, it's not that she was the first to study it. She actually found a century of research on this personality type, but what she found was that it was mislabeled. The people that were being studied with this personality trait were being labeled as shy, as introverted, as like awkward, or like almost like disordered in their being.

And she realized it's not a disorder. This is just like a set of traits that means one is highly sensitive. So a lot of the takeaways that she offers and the advice that she offers isn't just based off her own extensive research on the highly sensitive person.

It's based off taking all of those studies done on all of those people that seem different than others, but labeling that unique personality type as the highly sensitive person. So as I was saying, do you remember that there was an acronym does, D -O -E -S, that represents parts of the highly sensitive person and they'll be posted here for you to review.

I'm gonna go through each part of the acronym and this time I will apply it to what it means to be a highly sensitive parent. So D stands for depth of processing. This means that you reflect on information more deeply than others.

The positives of being a highly sensitive parent, and I'm just gonna relate this to being a highly sensitive parent of a highly sensitive child because if you're taking this course, you have a highly sensitive child, are that you can meet your kiddo in the depth and oh my gosh, that's so nourishing for them.

I've had experiences of working with highly sensitive kids as a therapist that have a family full of non -sensitive parents. And they actually have to learn that it's... safe to be in their truth of wanting to be in the depth, in connection of depth, because they're living in a family environment where it's just not safe to go there because their parents don't have access to that.

So if you have this part of you and your child is wanting that depth and wanting to know, why do people die? Why this, why that? Picking up on all the things. And it's just such a great place to build a positive relationship with your child.

Note, if you're not highly sensitive, there are ways to like open up to access this depth with your child. But sort of the places to be aware of, like where there might be some pitfalls, is that sometimes, and I'm guilty of this myself as a highly sensitive parent, you just wanna go too deep all the time.

Your kiddo's like, can we just play? Can we just hang out? And you're like, let's unpack this. Let's process this. Let's get to the bottom of this. So as I review these, it's just about being aware around your parts and how sometimes you have choice to scale it back.

One of my teachers was just sharing with me that, you know, a lot of life happens on the surface. A lot of amazing conversations and delicious food and everyday interactions. We're spending a lot of our time on the surface.

And we have to also choose the surface to be experiencing a well rounded human life. So we want to show our kids that we can have the depth and we can dance on the surface to overstimulation such a big one.

So everything about life can feel more overwhelming to the highly sensitive person. I know that we've talked about each of these, but this is not only to be applied to highly sensitive parents, but it's also a review so you can really have these concepts land.

So with the overstimulation, we can be so aware of things, we're perceiving so much a situation that might feel like no big deal and just fun for your average person can become pretty triggering and overstimulating for the highly sensitive person.

So if you are a highly sensitive parent, which means you are living with children, you will become overstimulated a lot, because children are a lot like they they're working on things that most of the times they're prefrontal cortex aren't online.

And so it is just so important to honor this part of you to understand that you need more boundaries, you need to take more breaks, you need to be very regularly and actively engaging your internal muscles that help you ground and stay connected.

And there's also an element of just bringing some acceptance to the fact that as a highly sensitive person, you will also be in the experience of overstimulation and you can handle it and it's okay and it's not forever because your kiddos will become more regulated in time.

As I mentioned, I'm going to go into much more detail around overstimulation here soon because that's how important it is. So in the DAS acronym, E stands for empathy and emotional responsiveness and both relate to each other.

So most highly sensitive people are very empathetic, meaning they're picking up on how other people are feeling. They have intuition around how other people are feeling and then they can respond in their emotions just really easily.

It's the part of you that if someone else is experiencing deep grief and sadness and tells you about it, you might just really feel it. And it's such an important and beautiful part of being highly sensitive, but at the same time, we have to learn how to have boundaries so that we don't just take on everything all the time.

And you may even be asking yourself when a feeling's coming up, like, is this entirely mine or is this just someone else's feeling that I picked up on that I can let go? As a therapist, I use this muscle a lot.

I connect with people in their emotional experience all day. And I have a practice of really like unhooking from the emotions I was just in contact with at the end of the day, but really in a way, just in a like ritual meditative way saying, thank you for the experience of being with these parts, like so much love and gratitude and respect for all the clients that I worked with.

And I'm actually going to leave some of the parts that came up here that aren't mine here in my office so that I can go home to my family and be with them. And so if you have any kind of work that involves working with other people, which most work does, you'll want to always be clearing out what's not yours so that you can stay in your own energetic field of experience.

And then S stands for sensing the subtle and the environment. So you'll be at a birthday party. And whereas some non -sensitive parents are just hanging out and talking, you are sensing everything. You're aware of the person that works at the venue or the space that you're in, what they're feeling and thinking, you're aware of this sound and that sound and this smell and that sound.

And you're sensing so much. And I really believe that we can have more power and control than we think over what we're sensing. Just like in the containment technique that I shared in the last module, you might literally practice like turning down the volume of certain senses so that you can stay in the experience of where you are.

I was just having dinner with a friend a couple of nights ago and It was a shared table. It was a taco restaurant with a shared table. And I was sitting on a bench and there was one other woman on the bench and she was really animated in her way of being.

And the bench kept on moving underneath me and this group next to us happened to be talking really loud. And what's so great about the place that I am in my life that I so appreciate is that I'm in a place of really honoring my sensitivities and not fearing being too much and communicating them.

So I was able to stay for my friend across from me. I'm hearing what you're saying, but there's also a lot of stimuli coming into me. I'm like feeling this girl down the row shaking me and I'm having a really hard time just being here.

Like, okay, I'm gonna tune it in. I'm gonna be here with you. And I was able to actively engage a different muscle of tuning that down. And in the end, my amazing friend suggested we could switch sheets and we would see how that would feel.

And it actually worked a lot better, but I still had to tune down. the noise over there, but it's just about bringing consciousness to it. So it's like, your one child is really wanting your attention.

Your other child is really loudly jumping up and down over there. Like, can you practice a little bit of a barrier between what's happening there and what's happening here between you and this child and putting on some, you know what I mean, like the horses that have the things here.

I'll think of it later, but you're really just like focusing in on one point and you can, you can start to channel your sensitivities towards where you want them to go. It's a practice. And that's why the grounding meditation for today was all about activating the senses because the more that you're leaning towards the senses, you can also choose which ones you tune out and which ones you tune in.

So the super power of the highly sensitive parent is that you can hold space for such in such a deep way for your child's process. Like you can really step out of your own ego and step out of your own story of what you need and want and think, and just be a loving witness to what your child is going through and deeply resonate with what's happening for them.

When you are able to open up to that kind of support for your child, it is one of the most beautiful experiences I've gotten to experience and also witness with the parent and child relationships that I support.

I'm actually going to send, I'm going to share the intention for this module the same way that I did in the last because I think it's relevant. My intention for this module is that parents feel validated in their experience as a highly sensitive parent and grant themselves permission to take care of their unique needs as well as understanding their highly sensitive co -parent with greater compassion and presence.

So you're validated in this experience and you know that in order to have this super power, you also have to take care of your unique needs that make you so special. So just a few more points I want to offer in this first segment of the lecture.

Dr. Elaine Aaron talks about how high sensitivity is an ancient survival strategy. So it's a trait that's been passed down as like a really positive trait that's a unique trait. And it's been a really effective way for certain groups of the whole species to survive.

It's found in many other species and many different animals, but it's always the minority because it's an expensive biological trait. So the way she puts it is it's more like a Porsche or a jaguar than a rugged Chevy.

So it is really nice. It works really well. It's, you know, look towards with awe. but it's really expensive to maintain. So if you have a highly sensitive nervous system, just like if you had that unique trait in a really nice car, it takes more time and resources to maintain than your average rugged truck.

And it's not to say that non highly sensitive people are rugged trucks, it's just to say, they don't have that same genetic makeup that studied makeup in the brain and the being that has their nervous system really finely tuned.

And so they don't need the same type of maintenance. And what I mean by maintenance is you need just like special care, special awareness, body work, therapy, like there's so time on your own the same way you would put a really, really nice Porsche into a nice garage that's taken care of and well -maintained and it wouldn't do as well on the street in the winter.

We're needing to give our nervous systems more to be maintained and it's not a sense of being high maintenance, it's just a sense of giving your system what it needs. Another way this was explained by Dr.

Elaine Aaron that really helped me understand it more is this example of considering deers. So let's say there's different patches of grass in the forest and some are more nutritious than others. Imagine that you have deer A and deer A just walks through nature and passes by each patch and like really notices because they're sensing the subtle like this patch is really good, this patch will work well for my family,

this patch isn't as like well -maintained and nutritious as this other patch and so they're really sensing and they're picking out, it's taking a lot of brain power. which patch is gonna be best for their family.

Deer B goes by and doesn't really pay attention. They just graze a little bit in all the grass. So Deer A, the first one, if you haven't already noticed, highly sensitive, has inherited a better strategy for their children to notice the best possible patch of grass.

And Deer B doesn't have that same advantage. The trade from Deer A is going to be passed down to another generation because it worked really well for them. However, if Deer A and Deer B had the same amount of susceptibility, it wouldn't be a genetic advantage and then it wouldn't be passed down.

So I'm going into some Darwin survival of the fittest stuff here. Hopefully it lands okay, but the point is that it's a really adaptive and positive. trait to have this high sensitivity and then it ends up getting passed down genetically, but it's different.

It's different than other beings of the same species or otherwise there wouldn't be that advantage because everyone would be at the good patch of grass and it would no longer be an advantage because everyone would be eating that patch.

Okay, so the way you can look at it is in human terms is because we're not grazing patches of grass. I hope, um, is that if I'm highly sensitive and I perceive or I have an intuition that like this back traffic road, this back road is going to be less traffic to get my kids to school.

And because I'm so perceptive and I sense the subtle, I'm, I always remember and I'm aware of all the different roads, um, as well as having the intuition of what might be best. I'm going to get my kids to school on the background and skip traffic.

Whereas your average non -sensitive person might just not be aware on like all of the back roads. They're not using as much brain power to sense it all. Um, and, and what makes it a secret route is that only some people are sensing it.

Okay, I'll leave it at that. Um, but, but with that said, I'm just going to link it back to that idea of differential susceptibility. So it's that we're, um, sensitive people respond more to everything, both positive and negative.

So we're just sensing more, we're taking it in more and we're going to be impacted more by most things. So we can really use it to our advantage. But with that said, also be aware as a highly sensitive person, if you're in environments that are feeling really negative to your system, like there's a particular group of parents you hang out with and you perceive a lot of, um, harshness or judgment,

you're going to respond with a lot more, um, discomfort than your average person that can just let it roll off your back. So you're wanting to both use the differential susceptibility as your superpower, but also to really honor your sensitivities and sometimes you'll need to set more boundaries.

So I want to loop back to overstimulation. So as a highly sensitive parent, or if your partner or co -parent is a highly sensitive parent, you'll want to support them in this. We must take proper care to cope with overstimulation because there's research, as I was just mentioning, that links to highly sensitive parents reacting more adversely to stimuli like chaos, mess, noise, clutter, crowdedness,

whereas some parents might just feel like that's annoying, I wish it was quieter. You're having a really adverse reaction, so you'll need to take extra special care to notice when you're starting to get dysregulated, come back to center.

getting more help, like releasing some of the judgment we have around getting help with babysitting and cleaning. And, um, yeah, I know this is a loaded topic because sometimes it relates to your relationship with money and budgeting and where you put your energy, but I'm telling you now I've seen it happen in multiple families that I've supported as a parent coach when highly sensitive parents start to outsource some of the things that they were feeling like they should just do because they should do it all,

like babysitting and cleaning. The reward is greater than that money spent because what you're saving is your sense of wellness and your health. And you're actually then able to bring in more, um, resource and money from the places that actually light up your nervous system.

I could share more on that in a whole nother course around money, psychology, and, and energetics. Um, some other, some other things to be considering as you prepare to cope with overstimulation and to prevent overstimulation, the highly sensitive person does not do very well with multitasking because if you're engaged in multiple tasks and you're perceiving the subtle and the depth and all of those tasks,

it's literally too much to cope with. So you'll want to focus on one thing at a time. And when you're with your kids, try to just focus on your kids. So whatever you can do to create scheduling and structure so that even if it's just, um, little blocks of time to get things done when you're not being with your child, you might not even need as much time as the average person.

It's like, you have to block out 10 minutes to reply to your emails and pay the bills right after you drop your kids at school. You'll want to just have those times blocked and have, um, containment and intention around when you're spending what energy where so that you're not trying to do those million things and responding to emails while you're with your child.

It doesn't work. that feeling overwhelmed and your child gets frustrated that you're trying to do too many things at once because they can feel you getting overstimulated and then they become dysregulated too.

So it's really not worth it. And I know that there's times that it's unavoidable. Like you have to make dinner, you have to get ready for the next day, but you want to just be staying grounded and creating boundaries around those times.

Like this is where the special one -on -one time comes in. You can go back to earlier modules and review that if you need, like your child will know. Right now is the time for me to play on my own or watch TV or do this.

Mommy is cooking dinner and taking care of that. And then I'll get to play with her later. If your child knows there's going to be a time that they can play with you soon and the structure around that, then they'll probably release into more regulation and connection with yourself while you're accomplishing whatever you need to accomplish.

And then you have less of a chance of getting overstimulated by your child having a big reaction. I also just want to underline and validate that one of the reasons you might be here is because with these high sensitivities and being so prone to overstimulation, it's likely that when your child is having the really big feelings that a highly sensitive child has, it just feels like a lot, like it feels like so much on your heart.

So you want to validate yourself in those moments. Like this is really hard. I'm doing a really good job. This is difficult for me to be with. And I'm doing a good job staying connected to myself, even if I feel overstimulated.

This is where planning ahead is so helpful, like planning out your week, creating your scheduling, knowing when you're going to do what so that you're not distracted by also having the task of thinking about what's going to get done where.

And it's important to honor that you will need a lot of breaks from contact. You will be overwhelmed and overstimulated if you're constantly in contact with your child, especially when they're in the four or five, six, seven, eight range.

And so there's a way that you can set that boundary and explain that to your child without shaming them or making them feel wrong and actually empowering them to know them, their selves warm. So you may start to talk about, I'm learning that sometimes it just feels like too much.

Sometimes my body starts to get overwhelmed and nervous when I've been with you and like in contact with you all day. And so I'm going to take little breaks. I can't remember the name of the book right now, but there's an amazing yoga book.

This was way back when I was doing my yoga teacher training and the author is a mom and she talks about how like every day when it would reach the time before dinner, even when her kids were small, everyone in the house knew that like mommy would go into her closet.

She would literally go into her big closet, lay down on the floor with her something behind her head. So her ventral vagus nerve was turned on. and engage in a relaxation meditation for 15 minutes to just unwind from her day and then be available for the dinner and evening routine.

And her family learned that they actually wanted her to do that because she was a highly sensitive person. And so she needs that time to decompress and unwind, just like we were talking about your kids need to.

So there's a major practice here in releasing shoulds. Like I should just be able to have three play dates for my kids each weekend. I should just be able to do a million things at once. I should be able to help my child with their homework and cook dinner and do this because the other moms are doing it or dads.

You'll want to release those shoulds and start to feel empowered in what's right and true for you. And that's something that only you know your limits of as you really tune in. Some parents really need to give.

themselves permission to have their own space to unwind at night. So whereas the tendency might be to put the kids to bed and then connect with your partner, there may be a boundary of like, I actually need 30 to 45 minutes to just take a bath and be on my own.

And then we'll have to schedule or consider a different time to connect. But I want to empower you to honor your own needs here. And yeah, so I'll leave that section there. I've mentioned Dr. Elaine Aaron many times her book, The Highly Sensitive Parent was an absolute game changer for me.

And a lot of parents that I work with really love that one. So I I suggest reading that if you're having some aha moments right now, anyone a little bit more. But now I'm going to just talk a little bit about boundaries.

I've already mentioned them. And then we'll get into the closing remarks. So boundaries. Boundaries are the distance from which I can love me and you at the same time. There it's like there's a line between where we're merged and I can't feel myself anymore.

Where we're too far apart. And I just like don't even feel myself in connection with you. I'm, for example, talking about me and my child or me and my husband. And we want to find a sweet spot where it works for me and it works for you.

And we can be here together and enjoy each other without pushing each other's buttons. A lot of times we swing too far in either direction, like we either become a mesh and we merge and our child's just like all over us all the time, not just physically, but kind of just like in our emotional space.

And then sometimes we go the opposite and it's like, I just can't right now. I just need to cook dinner and not be available. And that leaves our child feeling pretty disregulated because they need and want to feel you, if you can more regularly figure out which boundary is appropriate, like maybe the boundary you're checking in with yourself first, because the first step is knowing what your boundary is,

you will, um, be asking yourself, what can I handle tonight? You know, maybe it's a little bit over my comfort zone, but like, what can I handle? Okay. I feel like I can handle staying really actively engaged with my child.

For 25 minutes. So I'm going to play with them a little now. I'm going to let them know I'm cooking dinner and I'm going to have a boundary with myself around that time of not answering emails and doing a million things, I'm just going to cook dinner and be present and unwind.

And then I'll go back to my child for 10 minutes and I'm going to, and another boundary that I have with myself is to try to stay present throughout the evening. It seems like a lot, but when you. when you master this process of knowing your own boundaries, knowing what boundaries you need to set with your child, for you to stay regulated and grounded and really be honoring your sensitivities because you're knowing your limits in that moment.

You'll be able to set boundaries with your kids in a way that they will receive much more effectively because they're clear inside of you. There will be a lot more on boundaries next module, which is titles, loving boundaries.

But the only other thing I want to say here is just like really, really paying attention to the boundaries that you're creating with yourself that you need to stay regulated as a sensitive person. So I know that I need time off my screens to unwind.

It can be reading, it can be music, it can be connection, but I need time off screen. And I also need to know that I'm going to go to bed by a certain time so that I get enough sleep in order to really relax and to sleep.

And so it is a constant practice to honor those needs and honor the internal boundaries I'm setting to do what I need to do to unwind and get to bed in a way that works for me. But the first step is just identifying what those boundaries are, what you really need to feel regulated and not too overstimulated.

Okay, and then the last piece here and then we'll close up is the value of a meditation or spiritual practice for a highly sensitive person. In Elaine Aaron's work on the highly sensitive child, she talks a lot about one...

like really important grounding, just like grounding tool for the highly sensitive person is transcendental meditation. It's the meditation of kind of like rising above this human experience. And we've done some of this in this course, if you've noticed, like looking at the bigger timeline of you, the inner child meditation, where you're kind of like rising beyond this very moment and going to a place in nature.

It's tapping into an experience that transcends this human nervous system experience. It can be incredibly grounding. For me, it's a non -negotiable. I engage in my own version of a spiritual practice every morning, which for me is just tuning into soul.

We all have a different relationship with this, but I tried to feel Sophie's soul, which goes so far beyond this very moment. Everyone has a different relationship with this. I'm in no way pushing you should believe in soul or spiritual practice or religion in any way, or you should believe in God or not.

That is not the point here, but it's finding your way to rise above this very mundane human experience. For some people, it's going into nature, it's going for walks outside, it's yoga, it's connecting with the body, it's kickboxing, it's running.

Whatever allows you to transcend this moment can be one of the most supportive tools for the highly sensitive person, and that's according to a lot of research. The unmet needs that I shared in the last module are especially important for the highly sensitive person when you're feeling a moment of trigger, dysregulation, asking yourself, what is it that I really need right now that I'm not getting?

Where can I get that? I'll give you an example. I was having a difficult time sleeping last night because I have a lot of exciting things happening. I'm recording this course. I'm starting a doctorate program, lots of family changes and excitement is happening.

As I watched myself starting to go into dysregulation and frustration that I couldn't sleep, and instead I was able to direct my energy towards, well, first of all, why is this emotion here? Why is the frustration here?

Well, it's here because I think there's a boundary that I need to set or a request that I need to make. When I tuned in, this is all related to my little girl that was feeling dysregulated. I realized I haven't been getting enough physical contact as I need.

For me, that's a really important need. I'm not just talking about sexual intimate connection. I just just like rounding physical touch is an important need for many of us. And so I was able to think about what are my options, I could let my husband know, like, I need a little more grounding touch tomorrow, I could book a massage, I could do a combination of it all.

But there was something my system was saying, I really need to stay on my most grounded, regulated self and be able to produce and take care of my ability to make some requests and some changes to make sure that I had those needs met.

In closing, um, you'll want to pay special attention to some of the negative cognitions that you can be offering yourself as a highly sensitive person, because just like the highly sensitive child, the highly sensitive parent can be really hard on themselves.

Their child might be having an outburst and they might be thinking What have I done wrong? I'm a bad parent. Clearly my child can't regulate themselves. This must be my fault. And you're going to get stuck in negative feedback loops, which then your system's getting dysregulated because it's essentially getting attacked.

You're feeling off center. You're not supporting your child. And then once again, you're feeling like a bad parent. So we're needing to make a shift out of that trauma loop and instead more move towards wellness by making a shift in our own being.

So yes, we can get more dysregulated and get more stuck in negative thought loops as a highly sensitive parents, but we also have access to that depth that can help us, um, In addition with the sensing, the subtle become more aware of when we're in the wrong loop, deepen into a different process.

So instead of getting in the loop, I just just described you might, um, You might pause while your child's having an outburst and say, okay. My child is triggered. How can I stay present so that I can best support them?

None of this is about me and what I'm doing. It's just, I'm just here. I'm going to pause. I'm going to walk away for a moment. So I can recenter. I'm going to take breaths. I'm going to just approach them and be with them and be patient and let them know they're not alone in whatever they're experiencing, even if they're trying to project it on me, I can handle that.

Um, and then once my child's in a calmer brain space, because I've given them the opportunity to co -regulate with me, we'll talk about, um, what's happening and, and how I might be able to help or we'll engage in some problem solving.

Or maybe all my child needed in that moment was some co -regulation to come back to center and then we can just let it go and move on. So that's it for this module. We reviewed the does acronym to honor the parts of your high sensitivities.

We talked about a special the paying attention to how to reduce and cope with overstimulation. We talked about, um, boundaries, why they're important, the importance of a transcendental practice. If you feel you have access to it, and then overall just feeling empowered to shift out of trauma loops and into wellness for yourself, for your kids, for your parent, child relationship, for the family,

for the lineage, and just know that the work that you are doing is amazing. Thank you for being here, a few modules left, and in my opinion, it gets juicier and juicier from here. There's some really good stuff coming up.

Take care. Bye.