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The Power of Community

Monday, August 18, 2008

Learning from Queers and Geeks

“A geek is…any dogged explorer or crazed inventor, anyone who fixates on a project and won’t let go, anyone who builds his own damn rocket! It’s a label to be proud of, in any star system.”

~ Editors, Wired

Remember when “geek” wasn’t a label to be proud of? When geekdom seemed to guarantee unwanted attention from people who were convinced they were more cool? Then geeks got together and developed tons of gadgets the cool set now can’t live without – including the Internet and the World Wide Web, which they showed us how to use – and made lots and lots of money in the process. Somewhere along the way the term “geek” morphed into a source of pride. Now it’s come so far it can be counted on to draw customers looking for technical expertise, and computer assistance companies have come up with all sorts of ways to incorporate the word “geek” into their company names. Here in Vancouver there’s a volunteer organization called Free Geek, whose tag line is “Helping the needy get nerdy since the beginning of the 3rd millennium.”

Gays and lesbians travelled a similar route through the public’s collective mind. They got proud, stood up together, and drew the public’s attention to their self-acceptance. Leadership was offered by groups such as Queer Nation, which used the slogan “We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it” and led the way in reclaiming what had been a term of derision – “queer” – for their own. In doing so, they softened its barbs, to the point where, today, the Emmy-award-winning television program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is in its fifth season. When groups of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people paraded down public streets strutting their stuff for all to see, they made their numbers count for something. They stood up as one, proud of who they are. And the general public certainly noticed.

Pam Catapia’s thoughts about wanting to live in a highly sensitive village remind me that geeks and queers have gone before us as worthy examples of how the tolerance-shifting, door-opening power of community starts with finding each other. Geeks got together at colleges and universities, around glowing computer screens, and over the Internet. They populated Silicon Valley and the Microsoft Campus. Places like San Francisco and parts of other cities are known for being more friendly to queers (in Vancouver’s gay neighbourhood, along parts of Davie Street, the city bus stops and garbage cans are painted hot pink – a clear sign of the city’s tolerance). And there are magazines focused on issues important to queers and geeks (Wired magazine is notably geek-proud, for instance). In other words, there are known places that queers and geeks can go to be welcomed, to find acceptance, to get real.

Geeks and queers also have had support from people who aren’t geeky or gay or lesbian, but who want them to be free to be who they are. One such organization is PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), a large international group of supporters.

Let’s get ourselves some of that. Granted, a highly sensitive pride event is unlikely to be a public parade, but I’m curious to learn what our ways of showing our pride are. Let’s find each other and share our stories and gain strength from acceptance – of ourselves and of each other.

How can we go about it?

Self-acceptance

Reach inside. Do what needs doing to become not just highly, but proudly highly sensitive. Re-read the books, explore counselling, search the Internet – do whatever needs to be done to get healthy and to be proud of being an HSP.

Find Each Other

Reach out to other HSPs. Take a few chances with making contact. If an attempt to identify other HSPs or to forge a new friendship with another HSP doesn’t succeed, think about why it didn’t, adjust the strategy, and try again. Repeat until successful.

Focus on Strengths

Rather than putting energy into what’s difficult about being an HSP in our culture, shift the focus to what’s great about being an HSP and what parts of our culture already champion us. For instance, a lot of HSPs do well being self-employed. If that appeals to you, how could you make it happen? Become a cultural detective. Follow clues.

Go public

Speak out. With a growing community at our backs, with a focus on finding the places where HSPs are assets and spending more time there, with good pals who are HSPs, with resources and encouragement on tap because we’ve searched them out and found what works for us individually and collectively, going public becomes easier.

Foster Allies

Anyone who already loves us just as we are is an HSP ally. Through education and invitation more will come. We are not alone.

Filed in Community | Comments (7)

Time Management for Highly Sensitive People

Friday, August 15, 2008

Time management is only necessary when the things we want to accomplish threaten to take up more time than we easily have for them. Since I know that my high sensitivity steers me toward wanting to please others and I can usually see a lot of subtle ways to make things more complete or useful or perfect, which often takes more time, it’s crucial to be selective about what gets added to my To Do list. It’s particularly important to make sure I’m the only one adding tasks to my To Do list, even if it means challenging our society’s current assumptions on the topic.

I’m old enough to remember the days before answering machines, when the phone simply rang until someone answered or you hung up and tried again later. The advent of the answering machine triggered a conceptual shift in our culture. Now the ball is in my court if I arrive home and check my messages to find that you’d like me to call you back. You assume, and society appears to assume, that I’ll add that new, unsolicited task to my own To Do list. I’d frankly rather leave it on yours.

The point here is not that message systems are bad (not at all) but that we can consider action-requesting messages from others – whether they arrive to us via voice mail, email, or even in person – to be optional additions to our own To Do lists. Because this is not the norm, a short conceptual adjustment phase may be necessary for people who are used to equating making a request to making a tick mark on their own To Do list. In my experience, the adjustment phase is short. People get used to calling back if they haven’t heard from me as soon as they’d hoped. They get used to my lack of urgency regarding their “emergency.” And because of that shift, my To Do list is a shorter, more controllable and friendly guide, less inclined to expand without my consent.

Years ago, Tony and Robbie Fanning wrote a book called Get It All Done and Still Be Human. At the end of the book there’s a very short chapter in which the Fannings explore another way of time management:

“There are people in the world who have absolutely no problems with managing their time. They seem to float along, rather unhurried, rarely upset, getting done almost everything they want, and try as you might, you never see them popping tranquilizers or hitting the bottle behind the dieffenbachia….We asked such a person what rules, if any, he followed. Irritatingly enough, he had none. So we asked him to describe the way he attacked life. ‘Attack?’ he said. This was not a familiar concept for him. Eventually, in his own good time, he gave us the following list:

10 Relaxed Rules for Managing Time

  1. Break it up – then start only what you can finish.
  2. Do the least you can.
  3. Ask yourself, ‘Who says I have to do this?’
  4. Ask yourself, ‘Who says I have to do this?’
  5. Ask yourself, ‘Who says I have to do this now?’
  6. Wear a watch without a second hand, if you need a watch at all.
  7. Learn to say ‘Yes!’ to insistent people, and then don’t do it after all.
  8. Tell yourself, ‘Ten years from now, this will seem unimportant.’
  9. If you absolutely have to do something, set aside some time for doing it when you don’t need to eat or sleep.
  10. Try real hard not to worry about getting things done.
  11. Only buy clothing with pockets; otherwise you’re always looking for a place to put things.
  12. Don’t live by slogans – thinking is better.
  13. Don’t go by the numbers; don’t think in categories.”

Filed in Curiosity, Miscellany | Comments (2)

Books | Tim Moore’s Travel Writing

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

British writer Tim Moore has charmed me thoroughly. He writes irreverent, utterly hilarious travel memoirs with the twist that he’s frequently and unabashedly incompetent at what he sets out to do.

My favourite Tim Moore adventure is told in French Revolutions, in which he hoists his unfit body onto a recently purchased bicycle and sets out to follow the route of the 2000 Tour de France six weeks before the real race begins. What follows is a tale of mishaps wound around Moore’s keen devotion to the lore of the Tour. Whether he’s begging his wife to drive over from England so he can get a ride up the Alps or cheapskating his way through France’s lesser known lodgings, he recounts his bumbling journey with enough muscle behind his wit to make me a devotee.

No, I’m not very interested in competitive sports in general or in the Tour de France in particular, but I’m hooked on any writing that makes me laugh out loud – and Tim Moore’s a professional in this regard.

“A big-faced man with a moist neck made me pay up front before entering my name with difficulty in his soiled register of the damned; as I trod carefully towards the lift he issued a two-tone grunt of dissent and without looking up thumbed at a dark stairwell. My fourth-floor window overlooked a forgotten courtyard full of dead pigeons and an avant-garde installation entitled One Hundred Years of the Fag End. Inside, the view wasn’t much better. The wardrobe was the size of a child’s coffin and contained a vegetable. Rolling back the tramp’s blanket on a bed of institutional design, I beheld a pillowcase that might have been used to filter coffee. But of course it hadn’t: after all, what’s the bathroom towel for? Still, clicking off the Bakelite switch with wet hands I wished I’d used it. The shock was so violent it flung me halfway to the bed – not bad seeing as the bathroom was a shared one right down the end of the corridor.”

~ Tim Moore, French Revolutions

My next favourite Tim Moore book is an earlier one called Frost on my Moustache: The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer, in which he revisits the Victorian-era Arctic adventures of Lord Dufferin. Again, Moore exploits his own weaknesses for the sake of his readers’ glee. This time, the setting is colder. Beginning with a crossing to Iceland on a container ship and ending on Spitzbergen, a Norwegian island well into the Arctic Circle, Moore recounts his own trip along with the history of Dufferin’s, the two stories interweaving in starkly contrasting ways often involving Dufferin’s competence as compared to Moore’s.

“Going down was worse than going up, and somehow required me to bellow out a detailed live commentary of the movements of my limbs. By the time I staggered back to the road I was drenched with rain and sweat and walking like the infant Bambi.”

~ Tim Moore, Frost on my Moustache

I’ll be eternally grateful that Moore has been willing to sacrifice himself for the public’s benefit. Both books reside permanently in my toolkit for lightening up, since a reread of either provides a reliable fix.

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The Power of Creativity

Monday, August 11, 2008

“If you want to improve,
be content to be thought
foolish and stupid.”

~ Epictetus

Life’s a lab. We experiment, starting with a question (curiosity). Creativity is about risking mistakes in search of satisfying answers.

What we often mean when we say we’re not creative about something is that we’ve stopped trying. Even the most dazzling artist or engineer or sideways-thinking marketing executive or homeschooling parent or highly sensitive group leader has failed, in the sense of tried something that didn’t lead to the result they were questing for. But their reach exceeded their gasp. They reached again, tweaked the reach, tried again, and arrived at dazzle.

Creativity is about making a decision. It’s about deciding to play with possibilities. Or just deciding to play. Framing creativity as play can help take the seriousness of expectation out of the equation – a useful shift, since serious expectation often stifles the exact thing required by creativity’s mandate: try, try again.

The power of creativity – of play – for highly sensitive people is that it can cut through the particular challenges of being an HSP in a predominantly non-HSP culture. Creativity as a state of play relaxes and encourages, engages, lightens, frees us. And it connects us with what’s bigger than we are.

So grab the hooked end of a question mark and hang on until you’re flying in the direction you want to go. Every time you touch ground, try again. Pay attention to what made you land and try something different. Pile up the attempts and climb to the top and look around. And try again.

“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

~ David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art & Fear

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Book | Kinship with All Life

Friday, August 8, 2008

When a friend recommended John Allen Boone’s Kinship with All Life to me fifteen years ago, I was intrigued enough to track it down. First published in 1954, this odd treasure was a revelation to read, not because Boone’s ideas about the ability of animals to communicate with us are new at the concept level, but because of the genuinely interested and loving way he details and validates our connection with animals.

The first part of Boone’s book chronicles his initial journey of discovery, which begins when he takes on the role of caretaker to Strongheart, a famous dog screen star. Using what he learns through his progressively closer and more communicative relationship with Strongheart, Boone goes on to discover connections with other species, from rattlesnakes to flies. His enthusiasm and great willingness to open up to other ways of understanding are instructive in themselves, and through his stories of the non-human lives that impact him, Boone shines as a learner who’s also a humble teacher.

“When we first began living together, my attitude toward Strongheart had been the conventional one. I assigned myself a place high in the scale of values because I was ‘a human,’ and gave him a place far below because he happened to be ‘a dog.’ I did this regardless of his unusual accomplishments, his world-wide fame and the large sums of money that he could earn for others. I had long been under the impression that while I lived in the upper levels of existence, all animals, not even excluding Strongheart, had to do their living on much lower and relatively unimportant mental and physical levels; and that between them and myself there could be certain rather limited service ties, but not much else. These ideas were to be radically changed.”

By the end of the book, Boone is helping a friend of his try to understand a fly that Boone has befriended and learned from, and which Boone calls Freddie.

“Thinking back over our friendship I could not recall a single instance in which the little fly had done even one of the antisocial things for which his kind are so ruthlessly hunted down and slaughtered. His character and behaviour patterns would have been commendable in a human.”

Although I feel as though my high sensitivity allows me to tune in on a deep level to animals as well as humans, Boone’s tales of cross-species communication took the possibilities of that tuning to a whole new realm.

John Allen Boone has also written other books on this topic, including Letters to Strongheart and Adventures in Kinship With All Life.

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Out-of-Context Quote Book

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

“It’s like being trapped in an elevator with my own music.”

“He’s been a pawn in my little recovery game.”

“Everything’s very in-between the trapezes right now.”

“Is dog hair your sole medium?”

Pluck them from the conversation that gives them contextual meaning and some phrases can go on to live long, meaningful lives on their own. Capturing these phrases in a little blank book so they can be remembered later creates a repository of hilarity triggers which, when browsed through later, provide a great way to lighten up and evoke memories of good times.

After fifteen years, the first entries in my family’s out-of-context quote book, each just a short string of words, are as evocative as scent, conjuring whole scenes frozen at the moment of capture. It helps that the speaker’s name, the date, and the location have been noted for each quote, but that’s an embellishment on the basics. The main thing is to grab the pen before the phrasing fades.

Some people seem to get more frequent quote book billing than others – pithy folk who can turn a phrase with skill. During the time I was housemates with a friend and her five-year-old daughter, years ago, I had to keep the quote book close by at all times because they were naturals at silliness, at glibly producing the capturable quote. Visitors to our house got in the habit of walking in through the front door and saying, “Hi. What’s new in the quote book?”

And I may have married my husband for his quote-book-packing quick-witted propensity:

Me: “I think in another life I would be a mechanic.”
He: “I would be a ladder. Or a toupee.”

Or this one:

Me: “Did you iron that shirt?”
He: “Well, I sat on it, and I was hot.”

Additions to the out-of-context quote book need not be limited to the purely hilarious or to things spoken by people you know. It’s all about whatever sparks your interest to the point of wanting to remember it later. Overheard bits of conversation can be included (I overheard one man say to another at the Vancouver airport: “I never told you this because I was kind of embarrassed, but I named my dog after your dog”). And mangled English translations from menus appear in our book with some frequency (“Chicken interlarded with bacon – à la pheasant”).

Kept on the coffee table or in the kitchen – wherever the comedy lurks – the out-of-context quote book makes remembering easy. And later, browsing through the book alone or with others wrings lots of laughter mileage out of that first spark of wit.

Filed in Community, Creativity, Curiosity, Play, Projects | Comments (3)

The Power of Curiosity

Monday, August 4, 2008

“Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid.”

~ Patricia Alexander

Curiosity is like a flashlight beam. We aim it at what we want to see more clearly. Or, rather, curiosity aims us. When we’re curious, we’re the beam of light following the feeling of wonder to the next illuminated view. It’s not about answers (that’s where creativity comes in); it’s about loving the questions.

Curiosity Energizes

There’s a difference between information input that overloads and questing that enthralls. For highly sensitive people, it can be important to know the difference. Pursuing wonder purely for wonder’s sake renews the batteries rather than drains them.

Curiosity Enlightens

Wanting very much to know something opens us to being changed by what we discover. Allowing ourselves to be drawn when we don’t know why we are can, over time, show us recurring themes of interest, which then become nameable and even more pursuable.

Curiosity Lightens

“What the…?” With our heightened senses and our appreciation of subtlety, HSPs tend to notice oddness. Seeking the unusual in the everyday can net a host of curiosities to hoot about. More intensely, emerging from a deep concentration on the absolutely riveting is like coming out of a trance or a meditation session. Time has passed unheeded. Breath has slowed and calmed. There may even be a bit of a noticeable humming buzz. Weights have lifted.

Curiosity Directs

Following curiosity, indulging in delving, changes the view. What we discover shifts the place from which we look, redirects perspective. New worlds heave into view.

Curiosity Connects

When we’re plugged into what makes us light up, when we’re enthralled, we’re beacons that attract others (that’s where community comes in). But that’s not all. The best thing about healthy curiosity well-pursued is that it connects us to the power source that’s both within and beyond us, making us feel more connected to our best self and more tuned in to the big picture.

What turns on your curiosity switch to full beam? Holding a camera in your hand? Walking into a library? Wandering through a flea market? Exploring nature? Having unscheduled blocks of time? Travelling? Identifying the switch makes the power of curiosity biddable.

“Could I be a turtle? Could I through an act of ecstasy swim unafraid and never lost, finding, finding?”

~ Russell Hoban

Middle photo by Michael Mundhenk.

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Book | Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea

Friday, August 1, 2008

An avid reader pal of mine, artist Donna Romero, had to do a lot of persuading to get me to read Gary Kinder’s Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. This non-fiction book tells the story of the wreck of the “Central America,” laden with gold from the California Gold Rush, and Tommy Thompson, the treasure-hunting inventor who found her more than 130 years later. It sounded like a tedious science nerd chronology. But Donna persisted and I will be forever thankful I succumbed.

I’ve rarely read a book more gripping, whether fiction or non-fiction, and it’s gripping on many levels, from learning first-hand about the shipwreck from records left by survivors to being privy to Thompson’s creative process in trying to locate then recover the treasure to the mastermind tactics needed by Thompson and his crew to avoid the cutthroat competition from other treasure hunters closing in on their find. Gary Kinder shadowed Tommy and his crew to write this well-researched book and his words compellingly convey both the history and the action.

“For years [Tommy Thompson] had carefully cultivated a creative mind-set, worrying that if he ever stopped being different, if he ever stopped experimenting, if he ever stopped pushing and questioning and exploring and looking at life upside down, he would no longer think the thoughts that could lead him to ask the questions that no one else had asked, which is what made him unique, which is what allowed him to be what he had always wanted to be since he was a small boy: an inventor. He wanted to take old ideas, turn them inside out, and apply them in new ways; he wanted to suck the world through his senses and exhale a vision.”

By the end of Ship of Gold, I was full to the brim with mental pictures, replete with the reality brought to life by Kinder’s tale, and I was glad to let the book’s words inform my mind’s eye without outside assistance. Then I discovered Tommy Thompson’s America’s Lost Treasure, which is filled with stunning photographs.

By the time Donna and I sat on her couch and opened the cover of America’s Lost Treasure, we had both finished reading Ship of Gold. When we saw the lush photographs – of the treasure, the machines and equipment Thompson and his crew engineered, the crew itself, and more – we found ourselves laughing with the glee of being reunited with dear friends. We kept saying things like, “Look! There it is!” – as though we’d been on Thompson’s ship ourselves and were now looking at photos of our own journey. It felt like making the discoveries twice, getting double the pleasure from the story of the recovery of the “Central America.” Her story, told through Gary Kinder and Tommy Thompson, is history brought back to vivid life, a fascinating look inside the process of invention, and a window into the world of high-stakes treasure hunting.

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Interview | Pamela Catapia

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Pam Catapia advocates for highly sensitive people (HSPs) in a variety of ways, from helping HSPs as individuals and in small groups to educating the general public about the trait of high sensitivity through media appearances. She’s a certified counsellor in private practice, with a Master’s degree in Counselling Psychology. Through counselling and through seminars for HSPs on topics ranging from workplace issues to decision-making, Pam helps HSPs gather and use tools for living well.

When did you discover that you are highly sensitive and what was that process like for you? How did you make the discovery?

I discovered that I had the trait around the year 2000. A friend of mine, who’s also highly sensitive, gave me Elaine Aron’s book The Highly Sensitive Personbecause she thought I was probably highly sensitive, too. She was right. I read the book and recognized myself, some other people I knew, and some of my clients. It was an enlightening discovery, like pieces in a puzzle finally fitting together. It’s been exciting, positive, and incredibly helpful.

Who are the people who have been the most supportive and accepting of you and your HSP traits?

Friends who are also HSPs have been supportive, but so have friends who are not HSPs but are empathetic types. I have a cousin who’s a teacher. She’s an HSP who knew about the trait before I did. She’s always been very supportive, encouraging me to design seminars to educate teachers about the trait. And there was a continuing education programmer, years ago, to whom I mentioned the trait of high sensitivity. She identified with it and suggested I submit a proposal to teach a seminar on the topic. I did, and that’s how I got started teaching seminars for HSPs.

Have you had any highly sensitive role models? If so, who and why?

The one that comes to mind is Elaine Aron, whom I admire greatly. Her books, her research, her newsletters – there’s enough there that gives me what I want from a role model: someone who’s gone before, who’s done research, who’s written and been published on the topic, who’s already out there as an HSP, who’s given talks about it, and who knows the strengths and weaknesses of the trait and the strategies that help adult and children HSPs thrive.

Would you say that you make a living using your highly sensitive traits? If so, how does being highly sensitive help you do it?

Yes, I definitely make a living using my HSP traits. When I’m doing one-to-one counselling, my acute awareness, empathy, and pattern recognition abilities make me an attuned and highly functioning helper. Being an HSP helps me choose and custom-design the strategies I use to help my clients reach their goals. HSPs excel at perceiving what others need and adapting to provide it. Ethics are very important to HSPs and vital in the field of counselling – so it’s second nature to me to put the best interests of my clients first.

I also use my HSP traits when I’m teaching or facilitating groups. I’m acutely aware of what’s going on in a group and can figure out what to do that will help the group be comfortable and that will provide the learning they wanted in a way that suits them.

When I was a medical researcher I used my pattern recognition abilities to help me with statistical analysis, which was a moderate fit for an HSP. I still use those pattern recognition skills when I read and evaluate published research to keep up with changes in my current profession as a counsellor.

Over the years, I’ve learned to use my HSP skills when making decisions about developing my career. HSPs are usually cautious, intuitive, and fact-based decision makers who are able to see trends, see how things connect to form a bigger picture, forecast the future, self-lead, take smart risks, and lead others. I think having those qualities helps me in my career in many ways.

What challenges have you faced in the process of developing your career? How have you managed to work through those challenges?

Three challenges in particular come to mind. The first one was that I chose a poorly fitting first career – nursing. It’s a fine career for those that fit it, but I didn’t, for many reasons. I chose nursing before I’d heard about the trait of high sensitivity, before I knew myself well, and when there were few female role models in other careers. Also, I talked to an advisor instead of a career counsellor before making the decision to be a nurse. I wish I had known then that nursing is about hands-on task helping, and not really about process helping, at which I excel. Another sign that nursing was a poor fit for me was that I couldn’t identify with the other nurses. I had nothing in common with them. The environment itself, with its trauma and disturbing smells, sights, and sounds, was not right for an HSP. And health care is based on a hierarchical model, which is not usually compatible with the HSP nature. Although nursing didn’t work out for me, I learned how to better choose a career by what I didn’t do: know myself; find role models and a good career counsellor; and use facts, informational interviews, and job shadowing as the basis for decision-making, not just feelings.

The second challenge I’ve had is a typical one for HSPs: being misunderstood by others, as well as by myself. Other people were constantly attributing my intentions incorrectly, misinterpreting my quietness, hesitation, and inner analyzing process. They often would not listen to my ideas or perceptions about people, and did not believe I was smart enough to do statistical analysis and other abstract processes. I was actually a gifted child, put in the “smart kid class” in grade eight. Sometimes I believed people’s misinterpretations of me and labelled myself negatively when I really shouldn’t have. Since those times, I’ve learned how to trust my intuition and my intellect, through getting second opinions from people I trust, and collecting other confirming data. I’ve also learned how to accept and validate myself, especially my HSP traits, and I spend more time with other HSPs, with whom I feel understood and have a sense of belonging. Also, when appropriate, I find ways to explain or demonstrate the strengths of this trait to non-HSPs.

The third challenge for me in my career was public speaking, which tends to be a real challenge for HSPs. I had an early beginning with meeting this challenge, though. My father is a teacher, and when I was growing up he was always teaching me things. The content of what he taught me didn’t stick because the topics were about concrete things I don’t have an aptitude for, like fixing cars and building boats, but I absorbed the process of how one teaches. In high school, I tutored another student and loved it. I had an instinct that I might be good at teaching if I could just overcome the overwhelm of being in front of people who are all looking at me and listening to me. Since I knew public speaking was my weakness, I set out to work on getting better at it. I did that by deliberately choosing opportunities to practice speaking in front of people in groups, even though I was terrified. I managed the fear by keeping my sight on my goal, by focusing on learning and improving, and by seeing it all as a surmountable challenge – conquerable through exposure. I can do this, I would say to myself, I just have to practice. I did improve and that kept me going. It helped, too, that early on I got a lot of positive feedback when I spoke to groups. In all three of my careers – nursing, medical research, and counselling – I always got positive feedback from people when I gave presentations. That helped me persist. That was the reward – having the positive feedback. In fact, I think many HSPs can learn how to speak in front of a group, even if they don’t believe they can or are very anxious. It’s a learning process that comes with great rewards.

What issue related to being highly sensitive would you most like to have help with?

I’d love to have help with empowering more HSPs. Empowered HSPs can help everyone by designing a better society. We need to design better towns and villages; ways of mastering technology; systems regarding health care, education, food, and the environment; and ways of making a living, communicating, partnering, parenting, and leading. Sometimes HSPs are like the canaries in the coal mines that miners used as an early warning system. Elaine Aron writes about studies of highly sensitive animals that provide early warnings to other animals, that notice danger and dysfunction before the others, which can save the group as a whole. Often, HSPs have the creative, long-term problem-solving abilities and wise, big-picture view needed in a situation. And often we are uncomfortable about offering our expertise, about stepping into a leadership role that would give us the power to make decisions, influence systems, and redesign things that aren’t working. (Just read the book Collapse, by Jared Diamond, and you’ll see what things are not working and haven’t worked for many cultures.) Once we HSPs have honed our leadership skills and found our confidence in leadership roles, we can offer the wise advisor style of leading that Aron describes as a necessary balance to the warrior king ways of non-HSPs. Those two styles of leadership working together enable cultures to thrive in the long term. In my seminars I teach leadership skills to HSPs, and I provide counselling and coaching to HSPs to help empower them. I consider that just a start. I would love to reach and empower even more HSPs, and I welcome greater media exposure, business contacts, and advice that will enable me to do so.

I’d also love to have help with having a nice environment in which to live. If someone can make Vancouver smaller and quieter again, or build an HSP-friendly village or town within it, let me know. An HSP village would be great. I imagine it as being very quiet, but with lots of interesting activity. There are quaint homes and stores, and there’s a university. The village is beautiful, close to water, has lots and lots of green space and many trees, and there are cycling paths and woods, and comfortable benches to sit on. You can walk to everything, yet it’s still got everything that’s needed. There are community and cultural centres, and several plazas where no cars are allowed. Homes are affordable and attractive, and each has its own space for growing vegetables or flowers, as the residents wish. There are places that sell really good chocolate, really good books, and beautiful cards, and places that provide peace and privacy and rejuvenation. There are interesting and satisfying places to work and to play. Alternative and preventive health care facilities and good schools are plentiful. Technology and traffic are reduced. There’s enough parking and it’s free. The cafés have inner courtyards. There’s no intrusive noise or music allowed anywhere. There are no televisions in public places. If there’s music in any public place, like a restaurant, it’s very soft and soothing and in the background so you don’t have to strain to have a conversation above it. There’s a lot of personal space at every level of society, lots of physical distance in all the physical places inside, with tables in restaurants not being so close that elbows bump. And, of course, everyone is respectful, good manners being something HSPs highly value.

What aspects of being highly sensitive bring you the most joy?

I want to say my deep appreciation for the arts, but there’s more to it than that. Subtleties attract me, like the interesting timbre of someone’s speaking voice or laugh, the sound of a bike riding fast over wooden boards, the sparkling sunlight path on water, the sweet fragrance of scotch broom in April, beautiful décor or architecture, gardens, woods, paintings, music, the rhythm and sound of the waves near Tofino, the beauty of certain words strung together adeptly, certain colours that look just right, or even the just-right temperature I feel as I walk or sit for a while. I also appreciate the deeper, meaningful conversations we HSPs tend to fall into, and I enjoy humour that’s subtly amusing and clever. I love not being overstimulated or understimulated. I feel the most joy in those rare moments when what I’m noticing with my five senses and my brain is in the “just-right” zone.

What words of encouragement would you most like to give other HSPs?

We have so many natural strengths to offer. Let’s support each other and work together to create what we need, including acceptance – being treasured and valued by the culture at large.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I would suggest to HSPs to find other HSPs to spend time with, for so many reasons. Being with other HSPs brings validation and a sense of belonging. You can be yourself and feel more relaxed. You can feel heard and understood. It helps you to be even more aware of your strengths and the different ways you can use them. With other HSPs, it’s easy and rewarding to brainstorm, to tap into and create synergy, that bigger something that comes into play when individuals create together.

Also, I want to say that the way I became a highly functioning HSP was by confronting, not avoiding difficult things, and by finding more ways of using my strengths. And that’s what I wish for other HSPs, too.

What are three books that you consider favourites, that you really love?

Photo from Pam Catapia

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The Perpetual Support List

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Putting a big toe into the lake, or even out of the tent door, is part of the art of adventure. It’s not all mountaintop views and standing ovations. Those are only the graduation ceremonies. The more ways we know to encourage ourselves, to believe we can stick a toe out, make a first move, put a foot forward, the more likely we are to take a step.

When a tough task has to be faced, one that will likely involve strong feelings and a state of being overwhelmed – from taking a class to going home for a holiday – plan ahead enough to make a perpetual support list before the heebie-jeebies set in. This is not a list of how to accomplish the adventure, but a list for what to do if accomplishing the adventure gets tough enough to want a way to calm down and get grounded. Once you’re back on track, you can ditch the list.

Having a list takes the cogitation out of the how-to, leaving only bare-bones instructions that even a momentarily mind-muddled person can use. And the simple step of making the list perpetual – by putting “Start over at the top of the list” as the last item – means never running out of options.

Perpetual Support at My New Job

  • Call Marcia during a break [include phone numbers]
  • Close my eyes and focus on breathing for 20 slow breaths
  • Call Harold and schedule some lunch dates
  • Sniff lavender oil in the bathroom
  • Call Evelyn and Frieda to schedule dinner out
  • Send myself flowers to be delivered at work
  • Eat a homemade brownie at break time
  • Send an email to Mom
  • Walk fast around the block during break
  • Start over from the top of the list

When the list is well-considered, tailor-made, and as foolproof as it can be before the moment of sticking the toe out into the cold air, it’s that much more powerful as a tool. Tweak it as you refine your sense of what works best for you. Often, I find I forget about the list when I’ve gotten only part way through it – a sure sign that I’m closing in on the graduation ceremony.

Everything will be alright in the end. If it’s not alright, it’s not the end.

~ Anonymous

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Cage or Gate?

Monday, July 28, 2008

What do you get when you cross high sensitivity with curiosity, creativity, and community? What do you get when the cage turns into a gate? You get the power to change the world.

Rather than merely managing our overwhelm, we can strengthen our oddness, turning attention from getting by in a predominantly non-highly sensitive culture to getting together to create our own culture and to learn from cultures where high sensitivity is valued.

Further, if our sensitive culture doesn’t close the gates on the rest of the world, but gives ourselves all we need to thrive and be strong, alone and together, while we walk proudly in the world at large, what would change about the world?

The word power has numerous meanings, including the ability to act; strength; energy, force, momentum; a person or thing that possesses or exercises authority or influence. Highly sensitive people have unique powers, abilities that stand out in a crowd. It’s time to stand up as a crowd, to both have powers and be a power, to shift a paradigm, starting from within, so that, like the bird with the final word in Anders Nilsen’s cartoon, we inhabit a paradigm that frees us.

This is not a call for ascendancy or domination. There’s not a contest between highly sensitive people and non-highly sensitive people. The embodied gradations between sensitive and non-sensitive are too infinite to draw that line with any real clarity anyway. The call here is for equality and balance, for strength tempered by good intentions, for the long view.

Sensitive awareness that’s free to question, to create, and to join in community is capable of rare feats. The world needs us now, so get cracking on pushing the gate open and let us see your shine.

A little puff of air revived me. It seemed to come from the hedge; and when I opened my eyes, there was a glint of light through the tangle of boughs and dead leaves.

~ E. M. Forster, “The Other Side of the Hedge,” in The Celestial Omnibus and other Stories

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