[MUSIC PLAYING] ALANE FREUND: Well, at
least it's not too crowded. But the parking lot,
it was so stressful. I thought for sure I'd be late. I had to drive around
15 times to find a spot. I'm hungry. No, I don't know. I just know my heart's
racing and I really, really wish that I could just
calm down for once. You know, monkey mind
can kill a person. Sometimes it feels that way
when you're highly sensitive. Hi, I'm Alane Freund and
I want to welcome you to this talk on highly
sensitive people. And if you're here, you
probably know someone who's just too damn sensitive. I'm one of them. Highly sensitive people
are 20% of the population. That's more than the number
of people that live in China. Almost 1.6 billion, and
growing, people in the world have a brain that's more highly
reactive, and I'm one of them. It's a trait sensitivity. We call it sensory
processing sensitivity. That's the trait
that a person is born with if they are a
highly sensitive person. It's not a disorder, it's
not a mental illness, it's not neuroticism, and
it's not even introversion. It's just that certain
parts of the brain work a little more
reactively than other parts. So we're born with it. And it's something
that can't be changed. Uh-oh. I'm Alane Freund,
and I work closely with the Elaine Aron, who
is the author of the book, "The Highly Sensitive Person." We often teach and
speak together. And I want to tell you a
little bit about Elaine Aron because she
discovered the trait. And she and I were horse
buddies at the barn, and one day she came up
to me and said, Alane, you're a highly
sensitive person. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I've been told my whole
life, thank you very much. Hypersensitive, overly
sensitive, just too sensitive. But turns out that I do
this special kind of therapy called equine assisted
psychotherapy, and she thought
that would be great for HSP-- is the nickname. And so I went home. I'd never even heard-- I didn't know my friend
Elaine was famous, and I'd never even heard the
term highly sensitive person when this happened. So I went home and I
Googled her and found out that she was literally
the author of the term as well as several
books on the topic. And from there, we developed
a curriculum together and I became an
expert in this field. And it's changed my life
and I'm forever grateful. So here's what she did. Elaine was in therapy one
day and her therapist said, you're highly sensitive. And she went home and she
started thinking about that. And then she started--
she was at UC Santa Cruz. And she put flyers up
all over campus saying, do these things
resonate with you? If so, give me a call. I'd like to interview you. So she initially
interviewed about 60 people for two and three hours a piece. And she found a lot
of similarities. So since then, the Arons-- her husband and her are
both research psychologists. And they started doing
a ton of research. And they looked over research
for the last basically hundred years. And they found evidence of
this trait of high sensitivity in 15 to 20% of
over 100 species. And basically, there are
two strategies in the world. And this is what you can find
in all these different species. The first one is, do it
right and do it once. So these are the highly
sensitive people. They think before they act. Even the kindergartner
who shows up to school the very first day
and they'll stop in the doorway and look around the classroom. What's over there? Oh, who's playing there? Mm, I smell something. Is there cooking? Am I going to cook? Are we going to get to eat? Is it sweet? It's not just if you're
in, then go for it. If you're wrong, you
just do it again, strategy, which is
the kindergartner who gets to the front door and
runs in and starts playing with the trucks right away. And so the teacher
might walk over to the door of the kindergarten
and say, oh, is he shy? And in fact, the parent
might say, no, he's not shy. He just likes to get the lay
of the land before he jumps in. Can anybody relate to that? So we need both kinds of people. And we think that that is why
we've evolved to have about 20% of almost every species
probably have this trait, this more reactive brain. So a lot of times we think that
the highly sensitive people are introverted, that
they don't want to go out and be in the world. And you can't really tell
by looking, necessarily. You can't tell by
her, whether she's an introvert or an extrovert. But 70% of highly sensitive
people are introverted and 30% are extroverted. But I like to use
these words as verbs. So I am introverted. But today I'll be
extroverting here on stage. But I had to do a lot of self
care to be able to do that. And that's what both
introverts and extroverts need. Now, here's an old study. In 1968, Thomas and Birch
found that 65% of children fit into these three
distinct types. The 40% are easies. You've heard of easy baby. Oh, an easy toddler,
an easy chi-- oh, yes. She's so easy. Those are not the
highly sensitive people. So 15% are the slow to warm
up, and 10% are difficult. And we can call these highly
sensitive children and adults orchids. The research on animals-- these are just three
distinct studies that give us a really good idea. So the fruit flies,
sitters versus rovers. So in the presence of food,
some fruit flies will sit. And some are zipping
all over the place. So it turns out-- this is kind of crazy
and hard to believe, but I promise it's true. The sitters have more neural
complexity than the rovers. They're thinking before
they go zipping to the food. The pumpkinseed sunfish,
they're in a pond studied by biologists at Cornell. And they identified two
different categories of these fish, bold and timid. And it turns out
that the bold ones were the ones who were less
responsive to novel things. So if there's a trap in the
pond that wasn't there before, 80%, 80 to 85% of the
pumpkinseed sunfish, just swam right into the
trap and got trapped. And 15 to 20% said
there's something new. Let me hesitate and
stay back from the trap. So sometimes we might say-- I might say careful
or impulsive. Primates-- there's, of
course, lots and lots of studies on primates
because their brains are more similar to ours. And the behavioral
psychologists and biologists like to really look at primates
in comparison to people. And so with the rhesus monkeys
and many different primates, they've identified about 15
to 20% are called uptight versus laid back. And again, more
and less responsive to their environment. So how do you figure out if
someone's highly sensitive? We use this acronym,
DOES, D-O-E-S. So D is depth of processing. We are deep processors,
deep thinkers. We think maybe a
little too much. Sometimes I say,
yeah, you know, I could let go of
the D for a while. Yes, the highly sensitive
people really, probably, are the first to notice that
there's issues with the climate or the highly sensitive
child is the one who notices every little piece of litter. But mom wishes we could
just get to school rather than stopping
to pick it up. They're thinking. Highly sensitive people
are thinking and processing deeply all the time. And because of that,
they can become more easily overstimulated,
which is the O. Now, everyone has an optimal
level of arousal. That's when you're
just your best self. You're not overly tired,
you're not overstimulated, you're not anxious, your heart
rate is what feels best to you. And optimal level of arousal
is different for everyone. Under arousal, we know from
the research, is not good. It can be boredom or isolation. It can really shut you down. But I should say over arousal
is the struggle for most highly sensitive people. And really, it's the
only negative aspect of being highly sensitive
is that feeling of being overstimulated. It makes you feel like
you just can't function. And we tend to go there easily. And it means that
we need more time. All that deep
processing, we need to spend time taking
care of ourselves in order to not be
overstimulated all the time. E is emotionally reactive. And it also means empathy. Because if you're having
a lot of emotions, you're probably having empathy
for others, often the underdog, be it the planet,
or the children, or people who are
struggling in a way that you're not struggling. Well, all that empathy and
strong emotional reactions-- because if you think deeply,
you're going have strong emotional reactions
about things-- all of that can also
be overstimulating. It's challenging. And I always want to say to
the parents who are listening, we can't expect our
highly sensitive children to have empathy toward
their younger siblings. No, that's not where
empathy shows up. Because they're
probably overstimulated by their siblings. But you will find
that they have empathy for the puppy, or
for younger children, or the child in
their classroom who's struggling more than they are. S is sensitivity
to subtle stimuli. We notice every little thing. The lights are too bright. The temperature changed. The tag in the clothes. And I'll just give
you a moment to think about all the little
things that you notice. The highly sensitive
person is the person who walks into the
room and notice that if the blinds were
just lowered a little bit, the sun wouldn't be
in that person's eyes, or that if they just crack
the window in the car, everybody would be
more comfortable. They're noticing every little
thing at the same time. When the water bottles in the
case of Perrier from Trader Joe's are tinkling in the back
and banging against each other, the highly sensitive person
can't drive another block if they are sensitive to sound. And we're all as-- we have as many different
ways to be sensitive as we have highly
sensitive people. Look at the jellyfish
and see if you can find the hot air balloon. I'll give you just
a few seconds. I'm moving on because I want
to increase your stress. So it's found, one of the
ways that our brains are more reactive is in visual scanning. So we are more able
to perform higher on visual scanning tests, but we
have a higher perceived stress. And if visual
scanning while you're listening to a
presentation makes you feel a little
overstimulated, you're going to
perform less well. But in optimal
conditions, you're going to really be
able to function highly because highly
sensitive person brain has better visual scanning
ability and discrimination. So where's the turtle? It's all the way to your left
about three up from the bottom. Those were not
pictures that were used in actual research on HSPs,
but it's a quick and easy way for you to see it. So more activation in
the brain in making fine visual distinction. And this study, this
research, has been replicated many, many times. So are there any
scientists listening here, people who really want to
know the nitty gritty details? Because the research on
the brain is fascinating. So here is a picture
that was actually used in one of the studies. And you're looking for what is
the difference between the two pictures. And I know whenever
I've been presented this research I could never
see that the one on the right is missing a fence post. But highly sensitive
people tend to see it more than the other 80%. So these are the areas in
which we have more visual brain activation, secondary visual
areas, visual association areas, and visual-motor
coordination areas. What that means is
it's really important that 80% of stimulation
comes in through the eyes. And it can be really
overstimulating to always have your eyes open
out in the world. So I gave you this picture
of my therapy horses with their eyes closed
because they really know how to take care of themselves. And I just want
to invite everyone who's here on Livestream
or in the room to take a few seconds to just
go ahead and close your eyes. When you close your
eyes, it doesn't matter what you do with your brain. You're welcome to think, or
just notice what you're hearing, or feel your body in the
chair, or take a few breaths. All that matters is that
sometimes you close your eyes. So I like to give highly
sensitive people-- and you're welcome to do the
entire rest of the presentation with your eyes closed if
you're feeling overstimulated. I'd like to give you
a little helpful hint. Here's an example. Every time you
open your car door, or you're about to
open your car door, you could close your eyes
for 10 to 30 seconds. So when you're getting
ready to go somewhere, you open the door,
you get in, you sit down in the driver's
seat, and close your eyes for a little bit. Or maybe when you arrive-- and one time I mentioned
this to somebody and they came back
to me and they said they were closing
their eyes for 10 minutes. Somehow the translation
got switched in their mind. And she said, it's just
making me late everywhere. And in fact, it doesn't
matter how long it is. It just matters that you
close your eyes a little bit and give your brain and all
that visual activation a rest. Here's a really
interesting study. And I'm giving you-- I'm scratching the surface
of the brain research on highly sensitive people. Some of how we've gotten
this is the scientists are doing a lot of
functional MRIs of the brain while people are doing tasks. So this was looking at people
in Asia and people in America. It's not necessarily looking
at different ethnicities so much as geographic locations. And what we found-- they used relative
task and absolute task. And Asians are better
at one and Americans are better at the other,
but they're very different. Do you see how on the left,
the performance is very wide? But as they move up the HSP
scale, the more sensitive they are, the more
alike they are, until you get to this point
over to the right where people who are
highly sensitive-- the cultural
differences are almost voided by the sensitivity. This has-- here's
the absolute task. It's almost exactly the same. And this has profound
implications for our world cultures and how-- who is it that can
bring us all together but the highly sensitive people? Here's another one. 18 newlyweds were scanned. And this study has also been
repeated and the same results in many different studies. They're viewing photos
of their partners and of strangers displaying
positive, negative, or neutral facial expressions. And what happens is the
highly sensitive people have a greater response
to all of them. Do you get that
that's the empathy and the strong
emotional reactions? We have a higher
response to all kinds of emotional representation. But it's stronger
in our partners. Here's something that's
really interesting to me. While we are more
strongly reactive to all emotional
representations and expressions, we actually, and
this is surprising, we have a stronger
reaction to positive than we do to negative. And maybe you are or you know
a highly sensitive person and you think, this
person is always negative, or they're way more negative
than they are positive. In fact, it feels that
way because they're processing everything
all the time, so you hear a lot more
than you need to hear. But in fact, our brains are
more reactive to positive input. It's a beautiful thing. Here's some other research. And since we're at
Google and YouTube, I wanted to really focus
on the workplace research. Probably everyone who's watching
here today on National Mental Health Day is
watching from work. We are more affected by
stress in the workplace. That's kind of a
no brainer, right? Bright lights, pressure to
get projects done, who knows? The lighting, the--
whatever it is, the commute. We experience more
stress in the workplace. There's a new study of HSPs who
were working internationally, who were given an
international assignment. They actually are the best
employees to be sent overseas. But they last the
shortest amount of time because of the pressure
and the stress of adapting to the new environment. So although we are
perceiving stress and it gives us a
lower well-being, HSPs tend to be rated
with a higher performance rating by their supervisors. All that deep processing
comes in handy and it makes you a
very good employee. And it makes you
good at your job, whether you're working
in a large business or as a solo preneur. Here's the good news. This is the research
I love the most. Belsky and Pluess discovered--
they're researchers in England, and they discovered this concept
of differential susceptibility. All it means is
that our brains have a different level
of susceptibility to our environments. That makes sense, right? It's also called
vantage sensitivity. So originally, they thought that
if you have this more reactive brain, it's an advantage
only in certain situations, say, only when you're
supporting someone who's having strong emotions. But actually, it's
an advantage in all-- it's generally an advantage
in all situations. So this research
was really exciting because it means that, with
just a little bit of help and intervention, we can
make a huge difference in the life of an HSP. So here's one of
the studies that helped everyone discover
differential susceptibility. They took these uptight
babies in the rhesus macaque population in another
enclosure where these monkeys are studied. And when they took the uptight
babies, the difficult babies-- remember that earlier research
from 1968 on human babies and young children-- and they assigned them
to skilled mothers, they cross fostered them
with skilled mothers. These were the
advantages that happened. They had developmental
procacity, they had a resilience to
stress, and they became the leaders in their families. So when they weren't in skilled
parenting or a low stress environment as babies
and growing up, they actually had more
injury and illness. And they didn't fare nearly as
well as the other, the larger percentage, the 80%. So we call them the orchids,
like an orchid requires a lot of TLC to keep it alive. So if you go out, and buy
an orchid, and take it home, and you just put it in the
middle of your kitchen table and you water it like you
would any cut flowers, it will die quickly. It needs southern exposure. It needs not to be watered as
frequently as you might think. It has to have just
the right kind of care. And I mentioned how
beautiful this orchid was before we started,
and I said, who's taking care of this orchid? And I was told that an
entire team of people are here to take
care of these plants. And that's really what
an HSP might need. So here's another way that
they discovered differential susceptibility. This is a graph. You can see family
stress is on the bottom and behavioral problem
severity is on this the left. And wouldn't you expect, if
there's stress in a family, that the children would
have more behavior problems? It just makes sense, right? But this does not show
that, although the line is the correlation. It does go up a little bit. That's not what we would expect
with really significant family stress. We would-- I mean,
I personally, and I think most of you
would, too, expect there to be a lot of behavior
problems if there's severe poverty, or violence,
or mental illness, or even marital conflict. So the scientists said,
why is this not computing? It just doesn't make sense. So then Tom Boyce, and
others, separated out the highly reactive brains
with the low reactive brains. And what they found was
the difference here, that the orchid children-- they're the Magenta line-- the orchid children in a low
stress environment growing up had way fewer behavior problems. This is [INAUDIBLE]
psychopathology that he was studying
here, but he studied many different variables. It doesn't matter
what's on the left. It can be illness,
injury, behavior problems. This is early signs of
future mental illness. If an orchid child or a
highly sensitive child is raised in a low
stress environment, they have way fewer problems
than a dandelion child. If they're in high
stress environment, and this, again, is
marital conflict, but it doesn't matter
what the stress is, they have way more problems. So this is the thing that's
a little aggravating for me as an orchid that just
makes me wish sometimes I could be a dandelion. Look at the dandelion line. It's practically horizontal. You know what that means? Dandelions are almost not
impacted by family stress or childhood stress. Wow. Now, you can go-- you can see
why it's so important that we have 80% of any population,
that is going to be minimally impacted by stress that are
going to be able to muscle through, take their sword out in
the world, and fight their way and keep everything functioning. At the same time, we need
these canaries as well, the ones who alert the family,
the community, the culture, the species, to signs of
stress and the negative impact that they have. So here it is in just
a slightly different graphical representation. An adverse childhood environment
results in a strong path to negative results,
negative affect, problems, for a highly sensitive person,
but a weak to moderate path for the 80% world,
the dandelions. Here's the good news. I'm sorry I've depressed you. I know if you're highly
sensitive that that's hard to hear and that most of us
did have stressful childhoods. In Western cultures, it's just
really not a friendly place to raise a sensitive child. Even the regular
public school day is challenging for a
highly sensitive child. They come out of it
exhausted and overstimulated. So most highly
sensitive children in the Western cultures grow
up feeling overstimulated and stressed by childhood. But actually, it's
OK, you adults. Because see the bottom line? Any intervention at any
age creates a strong path to great benefits. That's great. That means if you do yoga,
you have good nutrition, you take naps, you close
your eyes for 30 seconds before you get out
of your car, you meditate, you get body work,
whatever it is that you do-- those are some things that
I do-- but anything that you do that's self care, you
keep your blood sugar even, that's a big one for me. Then you're going to
experience great benefits. And guess what? Therapy is also a great tool and
I'll get to that in a moment. So why do highly
sensitive children thrive? These are pictures of me. And although I grew up in
a typical American family, I did grow up on a farm. And so the great benefit to me
was that I spent time in nature and I had a lot of
responsibilities. So I got to get out of-- away from my little
sisters and the chaos of young children in the house. The older I got, the more
responsibilities I had. I spent time in nature
and with animals, and that's a great thing. And if you can do that for
yourself, it's great as well. And if you have a child who
has some of these experiences, then they can
thrive as an adult. Here's one more study
I threw in for you because I just think
it's fascinating and it's something that
impacts my family, that highly sensitive people make better
gambling decisions because we have a more responsive
attitude toward risk. And we're more likely to
recognize opportunities. So my dad's a Texas
Hold'em player, and he and I both day trade. So those are both places
where we use our sensitivity to be successful. Here we go. This is the book
that I'm writing. It'll be out early next year,
"The HSP FIVE to THRIVE." So there are just a few
things that we need to do in order to thrive, whether our
childhood was stressful or not. The first is to believe
this trait is real. So I hope that the
fact that you're here means that I'm
convincing you that this is an innate trait that 20% of
over 100 species are born with. That's a huge number of people. The research is extensive on the
brain and the different areas of the brain that are more
activated by having the trait, being born with it. It's really important
that we have these people. They're the ones-- is there
anyone, say, in California, when we've had the fires,
who was the first person to be bothered by the smoke
in your family or community? You noticed the smoke. I was that person. I'm like, I need a mask. And you walk out around,
and we had a lot of smoke in the Bay Area of California. And you'd walk
around and you'd see all sorts of people
everywhere on the streets not wearing masks at all. And then there'd be those few
freaks with the big masks on. And those were probably
the highly sensitive people because they really
felt the impact. So I'm showing you
that the trait is real. So you need to know, if
you're highly sensitive, that you have the trait
and to believe it's real. That is this first step. And it's an easy one to do. You can take Elaine Aron's
self test that she developed. It's in the book,
and it's also where Anthony mentioned, and on
the website, hsperson.com. And once you believe
it's real, then you're more likely to take
care of yourself. And that's number two,
to design a life that's compatible with being
highly sensitive. Now, for parents and partners
of highly sensitive people, sometimes it's a
pain in the behind to have to design a life
that's compatible with somebody being highly sensitive. You just want to go. You just want to go
out to the concert. You just want to get up at
the last possible minute, get everybody in the
car, drop them at school, and get to work, none of this
deprocessing, slow transitions business. And designing a life that's
compatible with being highly sensitive involves
some of those things I mentioned before,
that kind of self care, and spending a little
more time getting places so that you have time
to do the deprocessing. Now, I look back
on my own childhood and say that
something that really bugged me was birthday parties. I hated them I was that
freak child who never wanted to go to the birthday party. And I'm dating myself, but
in my era of childhood, the way we played
musical chairs was it wasn't just that you
had to get a chair. That could be
overstimulating anyway. But we had to sit on a
balloon and pop it to keep our chair in musical chairs. And that just-- those popping
balloons sent me over the edge. Luckily, I had a
highly sensitive mom who got it and didn't force
me to go to the parties. But I have to say that
I probably sometimes forced my highly sensitive
son to go to them because it just seems
like that's what makes childhood happy, right? So I look back on
that and I thought-- and before, I've always thought
of myself-- before Elaine Aron told me I was
highly sensitive, I always thought of
myself as having something wrong with myself
that I couldn't just be out in the world doing
everything I want to do. And in fact, I look back and I'm
like, oh, I'm highly sensitive. My brain was more reactive
to all of that stuff. And actually, I had
a great instinct. It wasn't a place
I wanted to be. I wanted to be out on the ranch
building a fort in the creek where my only rule
was be home by dark. So that instinct was
such a good thing. So I can reframe my
childhood and my past in light of the fact I
was highly sensitive. I can see some of
those conflicts that I had as perfectly
normal for somebody with a more reactive brain. The fourth 5 to Thrive is
to heal from past trauma. And I already mentioned
that I really-- I feel pretty strongly that
childhood in the Western world is traumatic for highly
sensitive children. It's just-- our expectations
for the fast life that we're living
now is really hard. And very few children today,
and especially in urban areas, get to grow up the
way that I did. And I attended the first open
classroom elementary school in Henrietta, Oklahoma. And it was a great thing
because although there wasn't a lot of structure,
I was allowed to go find a quiet
corner to do my work. I just had so many advantages
that I'm so grateful for. But not everyone gets it. And so we have to be able
to heal from past trauma. And with children, we
want to prevent it. So when something really
traumatic happens, we want to talk about it
and process it right then. And probably, most
people know that the best way to heal trauma is
with a skilled therapist. So I don't want to send you
out there on your own thinking, I'm going to heal all
those traumatic experiences on my own. That can be re-traumatizing. But a skilled therapist
can be very helpful. The fifth of the 5 to Thrive is
to know other highly sensitive people if you're
highly sensitive. And this makes
sense because it's part of resiliency research. We know that people
who are in some way different than their
majority community that they're living in need
to know others like them. So it's a very challenging
life to feel unique, to feel terminally different,
to never really feel like there's anyone like you. And so this is why it's so
important for highly sensitive people to know other
highly sensitive people, so you don't feel like
a freak all the time. And so it's important to
find those communities. And that is the Five to Thrive
for highly sensitive people. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] AUDIENCE: How often do you
open floor office plans come up in your conversations? ALANE FREUND: Open floor
office plans-- you know, it's like the open classroom. It can be so overstimulating
because of the noise all the time. And at the same time,
it's more freedom, that you don't have to
be necessarily always in a certain place. So it requires-- if you
know you have the trait, then you can figure out
how to work with it. And we always like to tell
highly sensitive people to become the most valuable
person on your team so that you can negotiate
with your supervisor or your business to create
the things that you need, so to be able to go
into a quiet corner and take care of yourself. At the same time,
we often recommend to highly sensitive teenagers,
and I can say this for adults as well, to use noise canceling
headphones, for example, so that you're there
and you're present, but you can block out some
of the overstimulation. So it's a blessing
and a curse, I think. AUDIENCE: You have an
online question as well. This one says, any
advice for those of us who may be married to an HSP. And when we get home from work,
then dinner, then kids to bed, she's exhausted
slash overwhelmed and just wants time to herself. How do you build a
relationship when there's no energy or focus
left to share with the spouse? ALANE FREUND: Oh, it's so hard. And you've been
out at work all day and you think, oh,
she's been home all day. And you're ready to
engage with the children. And I know there's
a story in my family that my dad would come home from
work and get me all riled up, wrestle with me, and
toss me in the air and get me all riled
up, and then my mom couldn't get me to sleep. And she was so worn
out from having been with me all the
time because I was one of those difficult babies. So the highly sensitive
parent or partner who's at home with
the children all day, she has to have self care. And I'll never forget that
when I had a young child, I looked for yoga class, every
kind of meeting or activity that I wanted to do. I only went places with
childcare, for example. So the partner, the stay at home
parent who's highly sensitive, needs to design a life
that's compatible. And the person who's the
dandelion who's at work can help support that. At the same time, I know
you come home from work and you're tired, but
to give the person who's highly sensitive time to
get out of the house and go sit quietly-- there are two places
that we recommend most for highly
sensitive people, your car and the bathroom. And just to-- those
are two places that you're allowed to
go and people aren't allowed to interrupt you. Like, strangers usually will
not knock on your car door when you're hiding in your
car with your eyes closed. But it's also, of
course, great to go sit next to a Redwood
tree in nature if you have that ability. So we need to give those
partners an opportunity to have self care alone,
away from the children, both during the day and maybe
right at the end of the day. And then they can recharge
and be more available to you. AUDIENCE: Kind of related to
the question of open offices, if you're designing for teams
or groups of people, given the dynamics of the percentages
of highly sensitive people versus dandelions,
how can you optimize for both types of people? ALANE FREUND: Well, I
saw this beautiful design where they were putting these
phone booths in the middle of the open workspace. And they were places that
you could pull blinds down if you wanted to. And I think that it's so
important to have the getaways. And the research on extroverts-- not even highly sensitive
extroverts, just extroverts in general-- is that they are
more overstimulated and overwhelmed
than the introverts because introverts are more
likely to pursue time alone. So when you have these
sort of, oh, closets, when you have
breakout places that are quiet zones, low
light, places to chill, whatever you might creatively
call them in your workplace, then everyone can
make use of them. And here's something that you
can look at any environment. The highly sensitive
person, what they are bothered
by or experiencing and what they need
for intervention, is usually what everyone
would benefit from. So I'll give you
a child example. In the preschool, when the
highly sensitive child-- one child starts to scream
because it's too loud and worked up in the classroom,
and they get overstimulated, then that means that everybody
is starting to feel on edge. So the highly sensitive
person is your canary. And if there's
someone on your team who's saying the
lights are too bright, the pressure is
too much, there's nowhere to get away and
take care of myself, then that person is
probably giving voice to things that are living
in the entire team. AUDIENCE: So I've always
been told my whole life that I'm too sensitive,
so when I heard about HSP I was like, aha. I especially felt it last year. I had a pretty severe
concussion and I was very sensitive
to light and sound, and I was questioning how much
of that had I had formerly and how much of that is my brain
recovering from the trauma. And I was wondering if you could
talk just a little bit more about the brain. I know were saying before that
there was more research you could delve into. I'd love to hear a little
bit more about that. ALANE FREUND: So you've got two
parts to your question there and one is about trauma
as well as the brain. And trauma activates the
brain in a similar way that the trait of sensory
processing sensitivity, or highly sensitive
people, activate the brain. So when you get two things
going on at the same time, it's extremely challenging. If you look at veterans, and
other survivors of trauma, and people with PTSD,
post-traumatic stress disorder, we see that they look like
highly sensitive people because they are more sensitive
to their environment because of the trauma. So both people need-- but
when you have both going on at the same time,
the recovery period has to be way more
protected and often longer. In fact, we're slow-- highly
sensitive people are slower to develop, slower to recover. However, we recover
better if we do everything that we need to do. So when the brain
gets act-- you already have a highly reactive brain. When the brain gets
further activated by a brain injury, a
traumatic brain injury, then it's very, very
important to give it that settling and
quiet that it needs. I remember there's a lot
of talk among athletes about concussions
and brain injuries. And in the schools,
when a child, a minor, gets a brain injury, the rules
for what they have to do, what they have to
abstain from, are just-- they seem really radical. Like, no stimulation
and no input at all for a period of time,
and almost sometimes months before they can get back
on the court or the field. And that's what a highly
sensitive person needs, is that level, the way we
would protect our children with a concussion, for example. AUDIENCE: Thank you. AUDIENCE: And then we have
another question online. And this one says, I come
from a family that just says what they think out loud. I'm now realizing that
my partner is an HSP, and comments and thoughts
that were normal to me to say out loud have
been hurtful to her. She's distanced herself from me
emotionally to protect herself. How do you think I can
overcome that or what advice can you give? ALANE FREUND: It is-- it's so great for HSPs
to be with partners who are not highly sensitive. It's also great for HSPs
to be partnered together. They have their own
unique challenges. So the fact that you're
not highly sensitive, it sounds like, is a
gift to your family. Because you can monitor
what you're doing, and you can recognize when
she's feeling challenged. But I'd like to think of
it as the bucket gets full. There are probably some times
when you can say whatever to a highly sensitive person. And they're in optimal
level of arousal and they think, oh,
that's just you. And then there are
times when they're exhausted and overstimulated,
and the comment is just way too much. It's really important
to be able to modulate. At the same time, the
highly sensitive person in a partnership
has a responsibility to do her own self care
so that her bucket isn't full and so that every little
thing is not taken personally. And I'm going to say,
speaking from experience, it's hard not to take
things personally. It really is. I have so much compassion
for that and empathy. And at the same time,
we have to be able to-- sometimes a couples
therapist is so helpful to help you identify what is
personal and what isn't, and to just-- to build that fence. It doesn't have to be a concrete
wall that's 20 feet tall, but a fence between you so that
you say, ah, this is your acre and this is my acre. And when you're saying
that, it's just you. And you're still loving to me. And I need to go
take some self care. I like to coach couples
to have a policy-- I'm not going to say a rule--
a policy in their couple that when they are
struggling with something, that if any person in
the couple, either person in the couple, starts
to feel overstimulated, like your heart rate's coming
up, you're feeling stressed, you're feeling hurt and
angry, to take a time out. And it's not--
you want to say, I don't want to talk about this. It's not that. It's to say, I can't talk
about this anymore right now. I'd like to take a break. Can we come back
to it in an hour? So to really practice self
care is the responsibility of the highly sensitive person. To practice loving care
is the responsibility of the dandelion partner. AUDIENCE: Conflict is one of
my biggest anxiety triggers. What advice would
you give to HSPs if conflict is an
expected part of our job, especially if we are expected
to move up in the job ladder by persuading colleagues
who are strongly opinionated and/or may be opposed? ALANE FREUND: And/or maybe what? AUDIENCE: Opposed. ALANE FREUND: Opposed, yeah. I'm triggered by conflict, too. And it's really hard. But I bet you anything, to
be saying the same thing over and over again just because
it's so true and so important, that if you are at your
optimal level of arousal, you can manage those folks. So here are some
tips that we use that are so important for
highly sensitive people in many situations, even in
conflicts with your partner. This can apply to some of
the other questions as well. Practice. Really develop a plan. Imagine, or even write
down, every opposition that could possibly come up,
and practice a response to it. Write out a response
to it so that when you're in the conflict,
it's not hitting you new. Because have you noticed
that it takes longer for you to come up with the response? Like, I always have
a great comeback for everything 3
minutes, or 30 minutes, or 3 days after the
conversation happened. So to really prepare-- here's another thing
that's so important. I like to tell HSPs
that we need to come out about our sensitivity. We need to tell our
supervisors, our employers, and even our teams,
about high sensitivity. And how do you say that? You say, you may have
noticed that some people have stronger feelings or more
reactions to certain things. And I'm one of those people. The plus side is that I'm really
thinking about what's going on. And my problem solving is deep. And I can guarantee
your team recognizes that, that when you come up with
the solutions or a strategy, that it's very well thought out. And it's even hard to
find the loopholes in it because you've thought about
it and worked on it so hard. So being prepared for
those situations-- it's also really a great
tool, whenever possible, to negotiate with
the person who's in charge of whatever
meeting is happening, when you're hashing out
whatever the proposal is or the project that
you've been working on, to limit the time of it,
and to put a break in it, or to schedule this meeting
over two different periods-- one in the morning,
one in the afternoon, or two subsequent days-- so that you have time
to go back and process the information
that's been coming in and get your rebuttals,
your responses ready so that you're not overstimulated
when you're trying to do it. It's a little bit
weird in the meeting, but again, if you can
just take a breath and even close your eyes
for a couple of moments, it will help you reset. [APPLAUSE]
