Sensitive to nurture too.

I haven’t written about the HSP trait for a while now. It’s underneath and woven through everything I write, because it’s underneath and woven through everything I am, but I haven’t specifically referred to it for some time. To the depth of processing, the tendency to overstimulation and overwhelm, the emotional reactivity and the sensory sensitivity that I, along with 15-20% of the population, experience as part of this trait. (More here https://hsperson.com)

It’s on my mind and in my words here today because it is the reason for some of the challenges and struggles I’ve written about recently. Turns out this post is a part 3 of a series I didn’t know I was writing until now. I’ve been writing about a moment of overwhelm I’ve been in and under and trying to move through. Writing about what I’m experiencing is part of my process, it’s part of how I take care of myself as a HSP. I notice what I’m feeling and experiencing, I acknowledge it and I explore, through writing, what is coming up for me through the feelings and experiences.

I often end up deep in whatever I’m experiencing pretty quickly. It comes with the territory, it’s the deep processing and sensory sensitivity. We feel things big and we tend to delve deep into what we feel, trying to understand and make sense of it. It can be tough, it can be frightening at times, especially when we have experienced the overwhelm that can result, over and over and over. Sometimes trying to avoid the overwhelm gets in the way of the processing we need to do to come out the other side. Sometimes it traps us like quicksand and it happens so fast. The quicksand is what I have been feeling and writing about recently.

Today I’m being reminded that that is only one side of the story, one part of the experience of being a HSP. That our sensitivity to an environment that overwhelms and damages us is also a sensitivity to an environment that is safe and nurturing. That the overwhelm can be turned around just as quick as it sucks us in and we can feel the feeling of thriving just as big and just as deeply as we feel the depletion, if we know what works for and supports us. As HSP’s we respond quickly and intensely to good as well as to bad. My cup can empty quickly in the wrong environment and it can also fill up really quickly in the right one. I just need to pull free of the quicksand for long enough to come back to myself and ask- what do I need to minimise and what do I need to focus on right now to shift the environment I’m in, in order to shift the way I feel?

I write here, on this page, about my experience of being a HS parent of a HS child. It’s complex, we each have needs that are different and the space between us, where my sensitivities overlap with his, has often made it challenging for me to support him with his needs. That is until I was aware of how the trait shows up in me, in him and in the space between us. How it impacts us and the resources that work for us and allow us to work and live with it in order to thrive.

I write about all of this to express and process for myself and I share for those of you who might be HS yourself and find parenting challenging, those of you who might have HS children and want to understand their experience of the world better and those of you who hit the double whammy jackpot like me.

The one on one support I offer through Little Wildflowers isn’t about my experience though and its not about teaching you what I do. It’s about creating a space where you are able to find your version of it. The support allows you to explore your needs and challenges, your child’s needs and challenges and the space between where they may overlap and they may create conflict. The support allows you to explore how you might process and move through overwhelm quickly when it comes knocking, it also allows you to gather tools and practice ways that might work for you and your child to stay clear of it for longer periods of time.

Because the moments of overwhelm don’t stop coming. For HSP’s living in this world, that doesn’t acknowledge or understand our needs, nor our reason for being the way we are, the bumps keep showing up and they keep threatening to swallow us up. When we know what works for us though, when we know how to take care of ourselves as HSP’s we start to notice it early, we know what to do and we can accept and move through the overwhelm back into spaces of ease where we can thrive.