Many highly sensitive people struggle to understand and accept this part of themselves. They tend to undervalue the positive aspects of this sensitivity and instead keep wishing to be less emotional, less reactive, less hurt.  Learning to understand and embrace your highly sensitive self is the key to emotional freedom.  When we befriend this part of who we are, we can feel so much better about ourselves, our relationships, and our world. 

Understanding the Highly Sensitive Person  

We must first understand the common qualities of the highly sensitive person.  We often assume that everyone thinks or feels the way we do.  So it’s important to understand that all of these qualities run on a continuum.  Each person experiences sensitivities in different ways and to different degrees. In fact, you may find these traits vary within you on different days or when under different stress levels.  

Sensitive to Oneself: 

• Highly aware to physical changes in the body such as muscle tension, poor sleep, stomach upset, or headaches. 
• Difficulty letting go of negative thoughts or feelings. 
• Being easily moved by beauty and joy as well as ugliness and hurt. 
• Tendency to be your own worst critic, ruminating on your personal flaws or perceived failures. 
• Passionate feelings about events in the world that seem wrong, unjust, or simply annoying. 

Sensitive to Others: 

• Attempting to read others’ emotions, anticipate their needs, and feeling responsible to manage these. 
• Worries about what others are thinking about you and tendency to take things personally, even when not intended this way. 
• Negatively compares self to others. 
• Tendency to feel judged, rejected, criticized, or offended by others. 
• Tries to hide emotions for fear of being vulnerable or seen as “too sensitive.” 

Sensitive to the Environment: 

• Feels uncomfortable with loud noises, bright lights, pungent smells, or strong flavors. 
• Irritated and distracted by physical sensations such as too hot, too cold, tight clothing, or scratchy fabrics. 
• Overwhelmed in large crowds or when a lot is happening simultaneously. 
• Need for downtime to get grounded, relax, and reset. 
• Highly upset when watching the news or disturbing tv shows and movies. 
• Startles easily to loud noises or being surprised. 

Embracing the Highly Sensitive Person 

In order to begin embracing the highly sensitive qualities in ourselves, we must recognize all the positive aspects this brings.  Highly sensitive people have wonderful traits that create an enriching life, improve the lives of others, and benefit the world.  Learning to appreciate these strengths is the first step to befriending our sensitivities. 

Benefits of the Highly Sensitive Person: 

• Ability to feel deeply and experience the full range of emotions more intensely, including joy.  
• Great capacity for empathy and compassion which allows others to feel safe and understood.   
• Highly responsive caregivers who excel in roles that involve nurturing others.
• Generous givers who often volunteer and work passionately for social causes.   
• Ability to pick up knowledge and skills more intuitively, utilizing those attuned senses.   
• Awareness to details and subtleties that others may miss.   
• Excel at tasks that require accuracy, speed, and noticing minor differences.   
• Ability to focus and process ideas and material deeply, synthesizing information and allowing opportunities for creative problem solving.   
• Highly conscientious and considerate of others.   
• Capacity for creativity and artistic expressions. 

Building Emotional Tolerance: 

Once you’ve begun celebrating your strengths, you can then learn to ride the waves of emotions without fear of drowning.  This means building emotional tolerance.  We must learn to recognize our experiences and practice sitting with these sensations without judging them.  Feelings do not need to be given a valence of either “good” or “bad.”  All feelings are normal and important.  Our sensitivity helps us gather information and understand the world. 

When we allow ourselves to curiously notice our feelings, we can more thoughtfully process and safely express them. We no longer need to immediately dismiss, numb, or avoid them.  We no longer need to brace ourselves and try to resist the sensations or make them go away.  We also don’t need to immediately explode and vent our feelings all over those closest to us.

First, notice what you’re feeling and give it a name.  “I’m feeling hurt.”  “I’m worried.”  “I’m getting overwhelmed.”  Next, allow yourself to notice how this emotion presents in your body.  Tune into how your body may tense up with a feeling.  Then shift your focus to acceptance.  Remind yourself that this feeling may have a message for you.  Let yourself honor your own experience.  You can tolerate this feeling without needing to react immediately or getting overcome by it. 

You might imagine riding a wave of feeling in a way that is more relaxed, accepting.  You don’t need to enjoy this feeling, you only need to allow space for it.  Every feeling does not require a reaction.  Accepting and owning the feeling is meaningful work.  And often the feeling passes more quickly when we stop resisting it and simply accept it as part of who we are.  Feelings change. Each emotion is temporary.

Challenging Unhelpful Thoughts:   

Finally, you may need to challenge some of unhelpful you’ve learned from growing up as a highly sensitive person in this world.  Over the years, you may have had experiences of becoming emotionally expressive and crying in inappropriate situations.  You may have been told that you are “too sensitive” or “weak.”  As you learn to appreciate the positive aspects of being a highly sensitive person and tolerate the waves of feelings as they roll through you, you’ll find yourself more comfortable in your own skin.  Using helpful thoughts like, “Being highly sensitive is both a gift and a responsibility,” or “It takes great strength to be emotionally vulnerable,” can help dispel the stigma you may carry about yourself.   

You can also challenge your own assumptions that others are often judging or rejecting you. Feeling rejected does not mean someone intended to reject you.  Remind yourself, “I’m highly sensitive to feeling rejected and may be incorrectly assuming the worst.”  When you recognize your triggers and blind spots, you allow opportunities to correct these assumptions and feel better in relationships.  Assertive communication and honesty can build bridges and reduce suffering.      

Seeking Support: 

Highly sensitive people often get a lot out of going to therapy.  Therapy allows you to explore your emotions safely and develop healthy ways of tolerating and expressing them.  It’s also an opportunity to explore assumptions you make about being criticized or rejected and develop healthy communication strategies to work through these experiences in your life.   

Learning to embrace yourself with your highly sensitive qualities will allow you to move through the world with greater authenticity and grace.  You can relish in the beautiful benefits of your sensitivity without getting stuck in the unhelpful resistance to feelings.

Written by Suzanne Smith, Ph.D. for the Lakefront Psychology Blog. If you are interested in additional articles about mental health, postpartum issues, wellness, relationships, and parenting, please subscribe to the blog using the button below. If you are interested in scheduling a consultation with Dr. Smith, please reach out via the contact page or call 216-870-9816.

The post Understanding & Embracing Yourself as a Highly Sensitive Person appeared first on Lakefront Psychology.

Talking with the people you care about most seems like something that should come easily.  And sometimes it does.  Sometimes the conversations feel relaxed, warm, and productive.  But at other times talking about something significant with the people we love feels like a daunting task.  Perhaps you end up spiraling around the same conversation that goes nowhere and leaves everyone feeling frustrated.  This is when learning a few effective communication strategies will come in handy.

These communication strategies are helpful whether you’re talking with people you are closest to like your spouse, parents, siblings, good friends, or children.  And this approach is most helpful when you’re talking about a topic that is emotionally intense or just plain difficult.  Following these strategies will give yourself the best possible chance of having a more satisfying conversation that builds connection in your relationships.

Effective Communication Strategies

Choose Good Timing.  Choosing a good time to talk about an important topic is the first key to success.  Think about the other person in this conversation.  When would he/she be most open, alert, and able to focus?  Knowing yourself and this other person as well as you do, you’ll know there are certainly bad times to bring up a difficult conversation.  For example, you don’t want to wait until the wee hours of the night when you’re both exhausted and falling asleep.  Nor would you want to start a conversation when there are distractions or time pressures.  So choose a time when you are both able to be present and give this conversation the room it deserves.

Maintain Calm.  We often start a difficult conversation when we’re emotionally and physically revved up about something.  In fact, we’re moved to address the topic precisely because it’s such an emotionally intense issue.  But our brains are simply not good at processing conversation when we’re flooded with feelings.  Emotional flooding causes the frontal lobe of our brain to quiet which makes it difficult for us to take in new information, listen effectively, and process our thoughts.  We are simply terrible listeners when we’re flooded.

So try to calm yourself so that you’re only moderately revved up when starting a difficult conversation.  And allow yourself and the other person permission to take a break when emotions rise during the conversation.  This means you’ll need to be in tune with your own signs of emotional flooding.  Notice if you tend to talk louder or clench your fists or pace when you’re getting really upset.  And use these behaviors as signs that it’s time for a little time out to calm down.  Then really allow yourself to calm.  This may mean going for a walk, taking some deep breaths, exercising, or distracting yourself with another activity.  Just make certain to agree to return to this conversation at a mutually agreeable time when you are both ready again.

Find the Mutual Goal.  In every difficult conversation there is a mutual goal beneath the surface.  Try to identify something you and the other person would both agree is important.  It may be something as simple as the fat that you both want to feel closer or more in sync or better able to resolve a plan.  At the very core, it’s usually safe to say that you both want to feel understood.  Stating this mutual goal at the beginning of the conversation helps set you both on the same team.  You want to feel like you’re working together on an issue that you share.  So neither person is wholly responsible for the issue at hand.  This helps reduce defensiveness and blaming, which are both harmful to productive communication.

Describe Your Feelings and Needs.  It’s important for you to clarify the most important message you want to share in this conversation.  This begins by describing how you’re feeling about the situation and what you need from the other person.  It helps to be specific about when this feelings comes up so that the other person can understand it.  So the recipe is to say “I FEEL…WHEN…AND I NEED.”  For example, you might say, “I feel frustrated when you make plans without consulting me and I need you to check in with me before you commit us to anything.”  This strategy is much softer than criticizing the other person which tends to lead to a defensive response.  The other person may not agree he/she made plans without consulting you, but no one can disagree with your feelings.  We each have a right to our feelings and perspectives.

Focus on Listening.  Both people in a conversation want to be heard and understood.  In order to accomplish this, both people also need to be willing to listen.  It’s very effective to agree at the beginning of the conversation that you want to take turns speaking and listening.  So while one person is describing his/her experience, the other is solely focused on listening.  And the listener must find a way to let the speaker know he/she is correctly heard.  This important strategy involves summarize and/or validating the other’s feelings and perceptions.  It’s important to note that you do not need to agree with what the other person says in order to validate their perspective.  An effective listening comment sounds something like, “I can see how you would be really frustrated in that situation.”

The goal of effective listening is to ensure the speaker feels heard and understood for his/her own experience.  This builds security in a relationship and allows both people to move through the difficult feelings.  When our feelings are not understood and validated, we tend to hold onto them even more fiercely and end up in a stalemate.  More advanced listening may involve asking questions to understand why this topic is so important to the other person, whether it’s related to other concerns, fears, or history.

Manage Expectations.  The goal of effective communication about a difficult topic is really to understand one another’s perspective.  You may not come to a specific resolution after one conversation.  And it’s important to allow yourselves to disagree about a topic without feeling like the conversation was a failure.  Really important topics typically need to be revisited again and again.  In intimate relationships, it is typical that a majority of arguments are unresolvable in that the topics will continue to resurface again and again.  This is not a sign of an unhealthy relationship.  It’s all about how you listen and support one another as you work through the difficult topics.

Notice Body Language.  Communication is more than the words we say.  Think of all the messages we absorb through someone’s tone of voice, eye contact, body posture, tears, and sighing.  To send a clear message, our non-verbal communication must match our verbal communication.  Often we send mixed messages when these do not sync up.  For example, someone who says “I love you” with arms crossed and a roll of the eyes sends a completely different message from someone who says “I love you” while leaning forward and making eye contact.  So be aware of the messages you’re sending through these non-verbal routes and try to match them up with the words you’re speaking.

Seek Help.  If your conversations continue to result in greater distance and hurt, it may be time to seek outside help.  A skilled couples or family therapist can help you both practice effective communication skills.  Sometimes it’s helpful to have an impartial third party listening, supporting, and guiding you to ensure everyone feels heard and understood.

Written by Suzanne Smith, Ph.D. for the Lakefront Psychology Blog. If you are interested in more original articles about mental health, postpartum issues, wellness, relationships, and parenting, please subscribe to the blog using the button below. If you are interested in scheduling an appointment with Dr. Smith, please contact Lakefront Psychology at 216-870-9816.

The post Communication Strategies That Really Work for Difficult Conversations appeared first on Lakefront Psychology.