Introduction from The Self-Care Plan for the Highly Sensitive Person

As a clinical psychologist who has worked with Highly Sensitive People (HSP) for more than a decade, I am repeatedly asked two key questions: “How do I take care of myself?” and “What if other people don’t understand my choices?” These two questions reflect competing needs for HSPs. Do you prioritize what helps you build sustainable productivity and wellbeing? Or do you focus on fitting in with your community? Whether you choose to prioritize personal or relational wellness in any situation, you end up losing something. When you take care of yourself, chances are high that you may feel guilt or left. However, if you neglect your own needs, you may end up feeling resentful and burned out. It can feel like there are no good options.

If you are an HSP, you process deeply, have intense emotions, are easily overstimulated, and are aware of environmental subtleties. You likely are acutely aware of the endless dichotomies of life—that you cannot have joy without sorrow, or that your strength and resilience as an HSP come with incredible vulnerability. Combined with the physical exhaustion from your heightened central nervous system activity (Greven et al., 2019), you may feel tired and overwhelmed frequently.

 These conflicting needs mean you must navigate many types of grief in everyday life: from classic grief around mortality to the ever-present grief that you cannot do all the things, be all the things, or have all the things. There is the grief that injustice is everywhere, whether it’s to your advantage or disadvantage. There is the grief that comes with shifting relationships, new stages of life, unmet expectations, and changes in your abilities or looks.

 HSPs carry grief with them much of the time—processing it, feeling it, and becoming overstimulated by it. A lack of time or space to work through this grief can lead to feelings of chronic sadness and overwhelm. Self-care thus becomes a necessary tool to keep you in a functional space, able to get out of bed and engage the world around you. Self-care includes space for grief, while also cultivating practices that attend to your physical, emotional, social, mental, and spiritual needs. Learning how to identify and respond to your needs will help you feel calm, regulated, and able to cope with uncertainty.

 Your growth over time will be paired with deep feelings, which may be overwhelming, but they will also teach you valuable lessons about what you need and how you can thrive. There may be times the emotions feel unbearable, but just as you have in the past, you will make it through your trials and you will grow from them. It will be hard. It will be wonderful.

Self-care is integral to building a sustainable life—life where you can show up fully in your relationships, advocate for what you value, and process a sense of meaning and purpose in what you do. Building compassion toward yourself fosters compassion toward others, and shows you the beauty and hope that come with human existence.

For those who fear that self-care is coded language for “excuse to be selfish,” I invite you to give it a try and see how it affects your relationships. Taking care of yourself, building compassion, and finding ways to be healthier will ultimately contribute to your ability to be a better friend, partner, worker, family member, and citizen.

Join me

In the coming months, I will be posting excerpts from my book The Self-Care Plan for the Highly Sensitive Person on my Instagram page, @STEMpsychology. I invite you to follow along, either with the book daily or through social media with selected posts. Self-care is a muscle that can take time to develop, so start where you are and go your own pace.

Citation:

Greven, C. U., F. Lionetti, C. Booth, E. N., Aron, E. Fox, H. E. Schendan, M. Luess, H. Bruining, B. Acevedo, P. Bijttebier, J. Homber. 2019. “Sensory Processing Sensitivity in the Context of Environmental Sensitivity: A Critical Review and Development of Research Agenda.” Neuroscience & Behavioral Reviews 98 (March 2019): 287-305.