The Highly Sensitive Person and Childhood Trauma

been wanting to do a video like this for a while about discussing thoughts that bridge the highly sensitive person with childhood trauma and how trauma might specifically impact a highly sensitive person who's also known as a HSP but first there's something I I notice in my work that might be relevant to the highly sensitive person if you if you've looked into that if you guys know what that is with all my clients whether it's an individual or in group work I have them put together a genogram which is an exercise I talk about in nearly all my videos in a genogram specifically the way that I do them is your family tree of dysfunction and abuse to help clients get a better sense about where our trauma comes from doing one connects the dots about how bad it was where your triggers and where your stuck places might come from and we start to uncover ourselves through doing one of these exercises and one of the things I've noticed is that with clients who are drawn to this work or want to make sense about what happened to them and process their family they tend to not fit into the rest of that family system that they come from and the genogram gives us a visual on those differences like the person doing the genogram is usually the only person in the family who would ever do such an exercise of looking into the whole system in a deeper way when it comes to mental health issues trauma and abuse and sort of all the dark stuff a quality of being a highly sensitive person is depth of processing emotions and we'll come back to that later in the video in addition the overwhelming majority of my clients are the only people in both their extended family in their nuclear family the genogram is three generations that will make use of therapy or seek out trauma work specifically the only one in the whole system the sole member of the family who's trying to either explore or address or become aware of their issues or try to deal with them not just in the nuclear family again but in the extended family as well I think I've seen about 500 genograms since starting my practice in around 2013 and in all of those genograms I'd say less than five percent of my clients doing them had a family member who was working on themselves in some kind of way in some kind of therapeutic work approximately let's say 15 to 25 out of 500 had a fellow family member who was doing some kind of work whether that's working on sobriety or therapy or self-growth in some way despite that minority I've actually been blessed to have about four clients ask me to work with their siblings and that's always a gift to see two siblings both be available to and want to work and heal together in some way on their family stuff I'm not doing that in Family Therapy they're just doing individual or group work with me and that is extremely rare for abusive family systems to have more than one person wanting to to work on this stuff or even connect around it so let's hold on to that potential stat that approximately 95 percent of my clients are the only family member seeking help out of their childhood trauma or wanting growth and change through therapy that percentage is most likely higher than the 95. why I discuss all this is I'm curious about what would be the tendency for that one Soul family member that they might be a highly sensitive person what is it about that client coming from these systems just like the one that I grew up in that makes them want to explore this stuff here's a few questions for you and to think through through the course of this video are you the only one in your family looking at this stuff or at least curious about whether your family system is healthy or not does anyone else in your family system do they pop onto YouTube and look at videos about childhood trauma or mental health so KP may not know but just you know like siblings parents are they doing that kind of stuff or another way to reflect is to ask um how does the rest of your family deal with their feelings things like do they do that through drama or conflict or repression or substances or control or certain ideologies or workaholism or their image do you not fit into that family system are you the odd duck in some way what is it about you that makes you different emotionally than them I think the lens of looking at the highly sensitive person traits might be helpful to you as we think about those questions so about the highly sensitive person Dr Elaine Aaron who gave us the idea and the research behind the highly sensitive person came up with a very helpful acronym which is known as does and it gives us a framework for what it means to be an HSP the d stands for depth of processing the O stands for overly stimulated the E stands for emotional responsiveness and the S stands for subtleties sensory and stimuli meaning the person picks up on things what fascinates me about the HSP is that 15 to 20 of the population has that trait and by trade I mean a genetic disposition not unlike having brown eyes or blue eyes so it's a nature thing and it's also interesting that there's a question in Aaron's research that is about what does the trait do for us as a species from an evolutionary standpoint to have survived all those years throughout all those sort of the human the human story that this trait has survived and it only exists in 15 to 20 percent of us so let's go into that acronym a little bit more like all traits and symptoms I'd like to think about them on a scale or on a spectrum some of you might relate to these strongly in an intense ways some of you might be a little bit some of you might be in between so um the the does acronym the depth of processing it makes me think about like a tendency of seeking meaning through things like music or art or therapy exploring something deeper hsps also tend to have a very deep rich internal world going on hsps think deeply on what's going on around them you might not like flat emotional responses from others and you might want to understand more than others kind of might just take at face value so that's the depth of processing the O over stimulated you know like say no more I I have about a two hour window I identify as HSP and I have about a two hour window at a party before I kind of want to go like that's my window of tolerance or goodness with it and you might get somewhat drained at say like a chaotic kids party or a busy situation it's like going to watch the ball drop in Times Square you're like why why would anyone want to do that the HSP really might not like large crowds large gatherings moving on to the E is emotional responsiveness or reactivity we can be really aware of other people's emotions on a scale of being aware just of being aware to being consumed by other people's emotions hsps also feel their emotions more intensely and they may be overly run by their emotions which will come back later and lastly the S is subtleties and sensory is a favorite description that I think comes from from Dr Elaine Aaron is an HSP will notice that there is the sun coming in from a window and the sun's in your eyes and HSP will go over and close the blinds and I thought that that was like a really sort of interesting I I identify with that that tells you about a is that the person is really aware where others might not be aware of what's going on and that they have this sort of like forward thought to almost be empathically connecting with the person like oh you must be uncomfortable in that way try not to think about that as being like morally Superior compared to other people it's just a trait that we have which is something I'm going to come back later and related to that a lot of my clients will notice if I move a plant a lot of my clients a lot of like like my but the people who tend to watch my videos a lot like what happened to the pillow in the last video what was that why did you have the gold pillows like that um just things that they noticed it makes me think about like they're they're like there's an observing that comes with being an HSP um to understand more here are some questions in Dr Elaine Aaron's are you sensitive quiz here are some of the questions that stood out to me the first is I seem to be aware of subtleties in my environment much like the the example that I just gave um another is I am bothered by intense stimuli like loud noises or chaotic scenes another is I make it a point to avoid violent movies and TV shows another is when people are uncomfortable in a physical environment I tend to know what needs to be done to make it more comfortable like changing the lighting or the seating another is I'm deeply moved by the arts or music another is other people's moods affect me and those are just a few some of those traits and again think of those traits on a scale or a spectrum of intensity some additional traits are hsps tend to be highly empathic they tend to be they tend to need time to reflect they tend to have difficulty with change they tend to be overly stimulated they tend to be aware of the needs of others they tend to seek meaning or seek purpose in things they tend to be detail-oriented or solution focused they tend to take things very personally they tend to have difficulty making decisions or they may need to take more time to do so and also the last one is they need to have a lot of downtime or solo time which is true for me so imagine being an HSP kid in a shutdown family like an emotionally shut down family or a chaotic family or a physically or a sexually violent family I I you know I often felt like an alien in my own family and looking to what looking into what an HSP means is helpful for that perspective whether it's sort of is it us or are we or are we in the wrong place at the wrong time are we an alien like all that stuff that comes with childhood trauma my own noticing throughout my life as an HSP which I'm just still learning about still that concept is still pretty new to me is being painfully aware of how others don't feel as much as I might have in a given moment like or that they don't take interest in the emotional content of the art or the music or the history that I'm into like I'm the guy who's like can you believe that this historical figure went through all this stuff in their life and the arc and the impact they had on the world and blah blah blah and a non-hp would be like kind of like yeah um and that that you know in the past I would have taken that disinterest like really personally or that would have really affected me and I would have felt like more of an alien that's just like a little micro thing that I kind of noticed throughout the years um and being an HSP has benefits and challenges and I'm not saying and I repeat I'm not saying that the HSP is a better person than the non-hp who is like cool beans on that historical figure but and we'll come back to that later later in the video some other HSP notes HSP often gets construed with being shy or labeled negatively as being sensitive or not thick-skinned enough another is it should not be construed as solely introverted or labeled as highly neurotic or seen as social it's just solely seen as being anxious 15 to 20 percent of the population equal men and women and of that 15 and to twenty percent thirty percent of that number is an extroverted HSP so it's kind of a big soup of things going on there I'll put both Dr Aaron's website as well as her the link to her book The highly sensitive person in the description of this video the test is really neat I strongly suggest you take the test but I imagine many of you guys have already explored this topic um and wanted to be thinking about what does it mean for the childhood trauma piece in it so um if you're new to me or new to the channel welcome if you like this video feel free to hit some buttons on the screen you can't miss with any of the buttons especially the Subscribe button which really greatly supports the channel as well as creates a wider Community for childhood trauma and if these videos are helpful to you and helpful to your recovery you can consider supporting the work that goes into this channel over at my patreon I do not take on any third-party paid sponsorships on this channel because I think it mucks things up for the viewer in addition you can go to my website and do some childhood trauma e-course work that I offer there including a recent webinar recording that discusses working on childhood trauma shame triggers through an inner child exercise called dialoguing um and you could if you just follow this white ball up here that'll take you to those courses you can also get in touch with me through my website or you can connect with me through my Instagram or my Tick Tock and I will have all the links in the description of this video so now let's look at the HSP and the abusive family system for those born with this trait and growing up in childhood trauma I think the dysfunctional family system maximizes the volume on those traits that I just listed earlier that system becomes the environment that the HSP child and you know the non-hsp child have to develop in so we have we have a nature-based trait being affected by a nurture issue from what I see what I see in my clients genograms as well as my own family system growing up the abusive family system can often display the following traits um where emotions aren't safe as toughness and survival or protecting the most abusive person comes first and that can be an aggressive shoot down of emotions and feelings to a passive ignoring them through childhood neglect another is scapegoated children serve a purpose in the toxic family system and I might do a whole separate video on this meaning scapegoats conveniently distract from the real problems namely in the abusive parents or the abusive siblings and that makes me think if you've ever heard of the book or the the play or the movie Matilda you'll you'll know what I mean by all that by that scapegoating abusive family systems tend to not be child centered where Child Development isn't the main focus like why have kids if that's not going to be the focus and abusive parents also to their children as fixed abusive roles that don't change they have a narrative about you that doesn't change Through The Years or the decades this is where most of the abuse conflict comes from and this will look like why can't you be like your brother which is comparison another is you're supposed to take care of me not me take care of you which is parentification another is um you're like me not like your loser mother or your father triangulation another is you don't deserve justice or to be seen for who you are which is oppression um another is you're supposed to rescue us not be your own person which is manipulation and identity issues and the last is you're a burden which is emotional abuse even for non-hp HSP children this is a nightmare incidentally I plan on doing a separate video about why siblings can cope so differently from one another which is really usually the case is on my list of videos to do you might have siblings that are totally different from how they cope or how they think about what happened in the in the same system that you guys grew up in but for hsps who feel deeply get highly activated and get overwhelmed and they notice what's needed or is missing emotionally in their family system along with all the sensory stuff like a parent who drinks or smokes it's a louder nightmare I remember having a client telling me that they were raised by an abusive alcoholic grandparent who would change smoke and blast Yanni at like 1am while the kid was sleeping and this might overly rattle an HSP more than another family member who just might see it as a gnoring or just annoying or they just try to ignore it hope that makes sense or perhaps for the HSP there's a narcissistic or socially off parent who is weird or is aggressive with neighbors or someone in the community and I think an HSP child is going to feel the embarrassment for that person affected by the parent they might even feel the embarrassment for the parent but but not so much be focused on themselves it's often like an HSP will kind of you know hold all the emotional tension in the family or be aware of it hsps are highly empathic but I'm not specifically pointing to them being empath that's for also for another video down the road so let's do a hypothetical case you guys know how much I like doing those let's say you're born HSP and you grew up in a family system that is both chaotic and anti-love these are overly simplified genograms from my seven types of toxic family systems video and let's say the abuse is around neglect not being protected from perpetrators contempt instability being parentified physical abuse and zero affection and having Strong having a strong abuse narrative that you shouldn't need what other kids need or you shouldn't have any needs at all I think the impact of that on an HSP child would look like the following HSP children I think tend to do all the feeling or hold all the intensity in the family system because nobody else is where the the other members might be just too busy coping or repressing and HSP May intensely feel the sadness of the contempt in the parental marriage they may intensely feel or be aware of the siblings lost feelings or the siblings kind of Destruction path and also an HSP child will often get construed as being weak or odd or two cents it by the way that they feel all these things in the family and often a chaotic family systems they're in Survival Mode due to Poverty or substance abuse or just mental health chaos and an HSP in that system might hold the awareness or hold the space of the family's feelings while the family members just you know kind of repress it or cope it away they may also intensely hold all the shame of that conscious or not children growing up in this who are HSP are still kids I'm not saying that they're all extremely emotionally mature or sage-like in these families I'm saying that they feel noticed and take in all this stuff but they're most likely not conscious of all of what it means like an adult would you know and again I think a system like this would be a nightmare for any child but for a child with the traits of an HSP it isn't they might experience it differently or more intensely I think it's louder for an HSP child louder about your parents off marriage than say to your sibling or how your sibling sees it louder about your siblings personal abuse how they're growing up when they might be minimizing it or being oblivious to it it might be louder growing being in a school system that is abusive in a similar way to your own family system like louder for the HSP kid and louder in the horrific ways people in your family or otherwise treat each other I think that that's what I mean when I mean feeling like you're an alien in your own family or in your own Community I often give the example of pets in an abusive toxic system let's just say like the dog passes away and no one feels much all but for maybe one family member and I remember being about as a side story as I remember being about seven or eight years old and swimming in this kind of like low-grade motel that my mother would take us to because she could drink there and kids would swim and Mom could sit at the bar and it's the 80s and I remember these two guys they might have been in their 20s or 30s if you think like mullets and they drive Trans Ams it's kind of like a cobra Kai kind of vibe going on they were at the bar near the the pool and the motel had this tan cat that lived in the motel and the two guys thought it would be funny one day to try to light the cat's fur on fire with a big lighter and I remember this protective rage popping up and it's like I wasn't like this normally and I just sort of splashed them I got the probably got the cat too which stopped them and they just went back to their drinks half knowing that they were you know really being probably being off and that a kid just chastised them and that memory is interesting me because many of the adults might not have even noticed or felt the need to act or a worse thought it might have been funny and why I bring that up is not so much for the moral superiority of it but to the point that if you're in HSP a lot of the trauma is as it was for me is being so aware of how different you were compared to the family or the community who seemed to be totally unaffected with violence or treatment or whatever you might have thought at some point that it might have been easier to be that unaffected like them due to the loudness of these traits so now let's move on to what to do about it what to do about this HSP thing coming back to that one person on the genogram idea as an HSP you're born this way just like the Lady Gaga song I'm trying to stay relevant here um it's a gen it's a genetic trait but what does it mean for us for those who grew up in childhood trauma and abuse Dr Elaine Aaron states that the hsps with difficult childhoods are more susceptible to depression and anxiety than say a non-hsb but hsps with good enough childhoods were no more at risk than others in short is hsps are already susceptible to low levels of Serotonin with stress reducing those levels further however the genetic variation of the HSP related to those serotonin levels may have a higher ability to be resilient they may have a higher level of being able to engage in leadership or have potential greater capacity for things like absorbing learned material capacity for improved mental health quality of life and better decision making the good news about being an HSP is that you feel deeply but that's also the bad news if you're identifying with being an HSP and if you also identify with experiencing childhood trauma or cptsd here are some recovery ideas in context of the trauma work that I do I think as childhood trauma survivors we have to reclaim our identity as it got damaged in the systems that we grew up in our families indirectly or directly tell us told us that we were inferior not worth it not with it selfish and it all got twisted around the greatest gift that I received in my recovery from childhood trauma was finding out who I really am and embracing that with the help of really good people I think exploring the HSP factor is helpful if you resonate with these traits as it's such a stark difference from what the toxic family system says about these traits so as a recovery idea or sort of journaling prompts or whatever here's the first one is what I call keep doing work in my own experience the more trauma work that I did the volume of this stuff went down I think our childhood trauma The Unfinished Business the grief the rage the identity issues The Unfinished Stories the abandonment makes our inherent HSP louder and more difficult to manage um an example of that that I give is I couldn't meditate until I actually worked on my childhood trauma first so there's just a lot of noise with this stuff that happens that gets in the way I think of our sort of functioning or what we want from life doing more therapy work in her child work specifically I think boundaries practicing boundaries self-care creating good community and processing attraction our trauma with someone turns the HSP volume knob down I'd say that after like 25 years of being in recovery I'd like to think that the noise has been turned down for me from say like a 10 to a two it means I still feel things deep deeply it means that I still sense things deeply I don't really like noisy restaurants around my microwave beeps like let's not get into how loud those seven things are and most of my life is very very manageable however when I started my therapy work I felt like I was a raw exposed nerve with these traits we have a larger window of Tolerance after processing our trauma in a good enough way and I know it'll sound odd but I like to think about imagine what your life would be like if we had trained our childhood trauma or all of that that stuff is just kind of gone from our system in a good enough way so that's the first one a plug for keep doing your trauma work to turn down the noise of these traits the second let's move on to the next one I really love this one this one is very powerful is to refrain who you are in another trauma work it might be known as sort of reclaiming hero's journey this one is about identity to reframe what it means to be sensitive to do some writing about what was your family system's narrative about you was it that you couldn't handle the The Sibling Rivalry when it was actually abuse that you were too sensitive about sort of how k chaotic or messed up or repressed in the family when you might have been the only person calling it out um what might they say about what kind of kid you were so get that do some writing around like what that sort of story is um were you actually having an appropriate responses to the abuse that got construed as being overly sensitive did they describe you as the odd one does the family make fun of you for wanting the family to be more civil or to be more connected once that is done again you rewrite how being different from your family is a positive thing think of yourself as like a juggernaut leaving the and overcoming the emotionally off system it's healthier and I think more whole to feel and process your feelings that's what gets people unstuck emotions you feel in your body give you sort of a flow to your life that's what they're there for and it's a gift to still be empathic in this world it says you're alive it'll it tells you you're awake and chances are because of that gift you can create a more emotionally connected and emotionally intimate life where they might not have been able to do also being born the way you are is a gift you don't even need to create or build a case for how you have the right to exist or that you're a good person so it's your identity and you get to embrace it and you get to describe it not toxic people it's also very affirming to Value emotions to Value awareness to Value sensitivity as opposed to what our family's values are they they tend to be valuing compliance to be anonymous they or to they value a manipulation or they may value superiority or whatever so that's the second one is to reframe your identity but moving on to the last one number three is to learn to have some Mastery over the traits and I know Mastery is a big word but I like to set the bar high in ideals and goals you can call me idealistic that's fine I think the Journey of an HSP is to not just to deeply know themselves but to work with and have some control over the traits rather than be ruled by those traits I know that that's a tall order but it might look like the following you continue to find ways to do the trauma work and turn down the volume this is a big one to work on the issues of codependency and Hyper vigilance about other people's feelings this involves boundaries emotional boundaries and mental boundaries um embrace the self-care ideas like my favorite example is your partner wants to spend a week with friends or family when you only have like a four-day window at best that you can kind of manage and self-care is to Advocate less than a week another is to commit to handling intimacy by being more present instead of being so activated another is to embrace what your feelings are telling you instead of being ruled by them and last one a big one here is to have a practice of not feeling so much for others and you can notice the sun in someone's eyes but you let them close the blinds you let them come to those conclusions and my final thoughts lastly is I think it needs to be said that we need to see our traits as just different from others not Superior just because where HSP doesn't make us like wonderfully aware or conscientious people 24 7. that's a misnomer often also this is a pet peeve of mine often in the current healing culture that is out there there's a lot of egoic identification that goes on with these traits for example I really don't like it when when personalities need to sell you on or make such a point that they're an empath or describe themselves as a special myers-brigg test result up front there's there's nothing wrong with being an empath but I take issue with it with it being too special it seems egoic and somewhat may be fabricated to me and sometimes I wonder if people who are overly identifying with this stuff or being overly identifying with being an empath or confusing their trauma-based hyper vigilance and codependency with those traits and I really don't mean to slight anybody I just don't like it when these qualities are used as marketing or self-promotion or their sole identification you know turning these trade rates into a superpower kind of diminishes the humanity of these traits so there's that and I think we need to be sober and just Embrace these traits as being different but not better or worse you know I know it sounds like a contradiction from what I said in that idea number two but here is some food for thought reframing our HSP identity out of our trauma identity is different than taking the ball and running with it another issue is non-hsps feel and process differently they don't have to process like we do it's not a better or worse in a non-hsp can be seen as gifted too in the ways that they may be able to focus or they might be able to be less emotionally distracted in their life um hsps can also be abusive it's not like we fall into this Angelic category we might have had HSP parents who are greatly dysregulated and there being HSP could factor in your own sort of childhood trauma and abuse I hope that this video was helpful and I hope viewers are able to reframe and reclaim those traits compared to what the abusive family system says about them or says about you um if you like this video about an issue like HSP I compared with and included within the childhood trauma stuff I'd like to know if you guys would like to see more videos like this that can include things like Spectrum issues or ADHD and including those issues with the trauma story underneath often humans are wired for black and white thinking is what I see when we when we when we talk about diagnosis like we tend to only list or explain someone as either being ADHD or on the Spectrum without including the childhood trauma story that happens underneath all the stuff for example many ADHD symptoms can overlap with childhood trauma systems and it can be both but I'm just saying I don't think it's good when we just try to see it as one thing and one thing only it can be more than one issue and not the glump issues but to include someone's story with the issues like we did with the highly sensitive person here so as always may you be filled with loving kindness may you be well may you be peaceful and at ease and may you be joyous and I will see you next time [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Patrick Teahan

Views: 978,310

Keywords: psychology, health and wellness, childhood, family, ptsd, childhood trauma, emotional abuse, abusive parents, childhood ptsd, narcissistic mother, narcissistic father, narcissistic parents, repressed memories, emotionally abusive parents, abuse

Id: GEtygF6LHkk

Length: 32min 24sec (1944 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 02 2022