[LISA LEWIS] The Am I Ok? Podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Faith Fringes, the Holistic Counseling Podcast, and Beta Male Revolution, go to the website, www.practiceofthepractice.com/network. Welcome to the Am I Ok? Podcast, where you will discover that being highly sensitive is something to embrace and it’s actually a gift you bring to the world. We will learn together how to take ownership of your high sensitivity, so you can make positive changes in your life, in the lives of others, and it’s totally okay to feel this way. I’m your host, Lisa Lewis. I’m so glad you’re here for the journey. . Welcome to today’s episode of the Am I Ok? Podcast. I’m your host Lisa Lewis. Today I want to share a reverse podcast with all of you. I was a guest on the Practice of the Practice podcast, where I was interviewed by Joe Sanok, author of Thursday is the New Friday. He’s also a TEDx speaker, a consultant, a top podcaster and the person, including his team of experts who helped me launch my podcast. In the podcast I talk about working with highly sensitive people. Do you consider yourself a highly sensitive person? Do you have a highly sensitive person in your family and what are some of the things to be aware of? Have a listen. [JOE] I’m so excited today to have Lisa Lewis who has the Am I Ok? Podcast, which is working with highly sensitive people. An HSP is something that’s near and dear to my heart. I’m pretty sure that my oldest daughter might be an HSP. But I don’t want to like label her too early and maybe Lisa can tell me how early it’s helpful to talk to people about being highly sensitive and things like that. But Lisa, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. [LISA LEWIS] Thank you, Joe. I’m so glad to be here and to be a part of the Practice of the Practice podcast as well. I launched my podcast last Wednesday and it’s up and running. So I’m barely one week old. [JOE] Well, let’s start with the podcast. So you have a podcast aimed at helping highly sensitive people and people that love them. What’s your story in regards to HSPs and wanting to start a podcast that helps people that are highly sensitive or the people that love them? [LISA] Well, my story actually I was thinking about this how it all like originated is back last year during the pandemic and working, I’m a licensed clinician, mental health professional. So I work with clients and just this intensity of what everyone was going through and including myself and my family. I would hear with my clients about, am I okay? Will I be okay? And I’d asked myself that question too. So that’s what kind of launched the idea of Am I Ok? because I’ve heard that so many, so many times just to myself and in my practice. I am highly sensitive, I identify with highly sensitive. So I want people that are highly sensitive, whether it’s for themselves or they know someone that is, or they’re thinking, questioning themselves to find out more information to how they can feel okay with themselves. [JOE] Yes. Well maybe take us through a little bit of what is a highly sensitive person. Some people may not have heard that term, or maybe they’ve heard it, but don’t really know how to classify or think through that. Help us understand what does it mean to be an HSP [LISA] So HSP, it can show up in many different ways. We usually care deeply. So we have a lot of empathy. We feel deeply. So again, that empathy and the feeling deeply is that it’s at an intensity level that maybe above average. Sometimes we don’t know how to turn that off. And we also think deeply. So we don’t like to be so much surface level thinking. We like to take it a little bit deeper, so we can go from really like micro ideas and really expand it to macro ideas. Also, we can have sensitivity to like the five senses, to smell, to touch, to hear, to sight. So highly sense of people, it’s not a mental disorder. It’s not a physical disorder. It’s actually a personality trait that you’re usually born with. Dr. Elaine Aron has done all of the research on it, and she has what a highly sensitive person is also known as sensory processing sensitivity and highly sensitive people are about 20% of the population. Also 50% of the people in therapy are highly sensitive persons. So our brain is wired a little differently than most and we really pick up on more subtleties with depth of processing and emotional regulation. And she coined it. There’s an acronym that she calling to call it does DOES. What that stands for is depth of processing over stimulation, emotional responsitivity or empathy and sensitivity to subtleties. [JOE] Yes. So for most families, I mean, I think about one of my daughters who reacts, she has a strong startle response so when, like there’s a fire drill at school, or if there’s unexpected loud sound. With kids, how does this show up and how important is it to give them that label early on? Because I think labels sometimes can help with resources or shortcutting or understanding, but it also can become something that if someone really kind of labels themselves or gets labeled and maybe that’s not good at an early age. So how does this look in kids and what do you encourage in regards to parents as they notice maybe some sensitivity in their kids? [LISA] Well I work mostly with adults. However I also have children too, and also I was a child at one time. So it’s, I don’t like labels myself and it’s really more about understanding what is really happening in this situation. And the more that we can understand what’s happening in this situation and get some tools and techniques, then we can either help ourselves or help our loved ones, including our children. So if you look at the startled technique and, the central nervous system may be wired a little bit differently, so there’s that startle technique. And it’s this learning some tools and techniques, how to bring it back down to a state of resiliency, so more of a more neutral or of a more pleasant instead of like an unpleasant sensation. [JOE] And whether it’s with an adult or a child, how do you teach that in a way that doesn’t feel like it makes them feel different than other people and more kind of understand this is kind of who I am, and this is what I need, like teaching those skill sets? What would you suggest? [LISA] Well, I suggest, and how I work with clients, especially around just feeling so deeply, feeling maybe too much is really working with what a personal boundary is. And a boundary is not about letting people in or out or blocking people. It’s really how you can regulate yourself. So personal boundary, and I like to use like an energetic bubble, we all have an energetic bubble that really goes all around us. And I like to work with people and I’m working with setting boundaries. What does that even look like? What does that even feel like? And it’s like, we can face each other and I can walk towards the person and they tell me like, okay, when to stop. When am I comfortable? When am I not comfortable? And people are surprised that maybe I come all the way up to their face, maybe I run into them, or maybe there’s more of a distance. So it’s really knowing what is comfortable for you and then learning how to kind of set that boundary with other people that are in your life. I like to use the example of being at the grocery store and being in the checkout line. If someone is like right up next to me I feel like I can notice that I’m really sensitive to that and I’d have to ask the person to back up a little bit to be out of my personal space. So that’s how I like work with people, setting emotional and physical boundaries. [JOE] And when you’re working with HSPs I would imagine, tell me if this is true or not, that that’s kind of a new skill to start to set those boundaries. And for them it might feel more aggressive than they prefer. It might feel more confrontational than they prefer. Like, what are some mindsets or ways that you help them kind of believe in themselves enough to say I have a right to say to someone back up in the grocery line because they’re kind of, I’m guessing making that kind of emotional kind of scale is like, well, I could just put up with this and move on and not have to deal with potentially a confrontation or I can feel good about setting boundaries. How do you help people think through that and challenge, maybe the ways that they’ve thought in the past? [LISA] So how I help them work through that is really just really getting to know themselves and knowing what they need and just recognizing inside themselves, “Oh, okay. Am I uncomfortable with this situation? What is happening inside me?” And it’s learning to read really your body. And I also work with mind body therapy. So that’s what I use that practice with my clients and also with myself. So just recognizing, oh, wow, like I am really uncomfortable right now. Or this is happening. What can I do? Do I need to do something for myself? Can I talk to this person to allow them to understand what I need for myself? [JOE] Yes. So what are some other examples? I think that hearing kind of the grocery store example is helpful for people to understand maybe how an HSP is viewing the world and what they can do to positively affect the world. [LISA] So HSPs show up in many different ways. There’s a lot of them in the helping field. So we see that with counselors, therapists, doctors, nurses, emergency workers, also too, like the heads of states, heads of countries. So these people are really good communicators. They can bridge the gap, especially in high conflict. They can hold that space when there is conflict and they can hear it and they can process it and then they can articulate it so other opposite sides can hear what is happening. So that will allow them to come to a place of understanding and hopefully a place of resolution. [JOE] Yes. I remember reading one of the books that you had recommended about HSPs. I think it’s The Highly Sensitive Person in Love where the author was talking about how people thought that for a bit, maybe HSPs were, it was like a flaw in evolution, but that actually when you look at it there’s evolutionary benefit to just someone being highly sensitive. She was talking about how, imagine you’re walking through the jungle and you’re in a spot you’ve walked a bunch of times and everyone else is just ignoring all the signs of there being a tiger or something dangerous. And then you have one little kid that’s in that group and they’re a highly sensitive person or one parent that’s highly sensitive person and they’re tuned in differently and they know there’s something off, like let’s just pause. And those families survived more because of the HSP. But then you can’t, if a hundred percent of the population were HSPs, that’d be difficult in its own way, but we’ve really kind of undervalued how HSPs can help us. I just found that really fascinating, kind of the evolutionary nature of highly sensitive people. [LISA] Yes, and that’s really a good point and that comes back to like, we’re 20% of the population and we’re needed to like survive for the population to survive just for the reasons that you named. And it’s also in other animals as well. So yes, we are, I like to think of maybe we’re on the outside looking in, just being very aware and conscious of what’s happening if there is, really comes back to that primal state. Are we in any danger and even as a highly sensitive people, when they walk into a room, they can know like what’s happened. They can read the room, whether it’s an argument are has there been silence or happiness, or choke, laughter. They can read it. [JOE] Yes. Now I want to talk a little bit about what you’ve discovered through the podcast and through taking the time to interview experts around this topic and kind of formulate your own thoughts around it. What’s been challenging with the podcast, what’s been exciting with the podcast? [LISA] Well, what’s been really exciting is that I’m interviewing so many great experts on this subject and that I’m even learning more about it myself. I don’t know if there’s been like anything really challenging about it. What I’ve come to learn in this, what I’ve really wanted, how this really wanted to unfold is just even talking to friends when they’ve listened to the podcast. And just the question of am I okay, that is a bridge for people to start talking about themselves and what’s happening to themselves. And I was just listening to a couple of my friends last week and it just started like opening, they just start opening up and blossoming. And there’s things about them I didn’t know. And I was like, yes, this is what I’m really wanting. This is my, maybe I’m seeking for not only myself, but for everyone in the world. It’s just to really feel like they belong, they fit in and it’s okay if if you’re, I don’t even want to use the word different, but we need you and I want everyone just to feel okay with themselves. [JOE] Yes. Well, and it’s interesting kind of working with podcasters so much now to see how some of the first questions when we’re discovering what a show is going to be about. That to me is a question that just kind of cuts through the heart of all the other questions is what’s a topic that when you’re hanging out with your friends, if you’re having a glass of wine or green tea on your porch that you could just keep talking about for hours. Because I feel like that’s where for one you want a topic that someone’s just going to enjoy talking about. If you enjoy talking about something and you’re curious about it, instead of saying, “Well, where’s the market going?” it’s just going to be a better podcast. And secondly, just for longevity to say if this is something that you’re naturally talking to your friends about to be able to bring that back into the podcast and almost kind of test out ideas with your friends and see how they land, even if you’re not doing that consciously it just makes it that it’s a part of your life, an extension of your life that you just happen to be podcasting about. [LISA] Yes. I love that. And again, like highly sensitive people, we can start micro and go macro and it really expands our lens and we can get to the point, like why are we here? Why are we living? What is this all about? Do I matter? Does this matter? [JOE] Yes. And how do HSPs make the most out of that kind of super power, because I think that there can be times that can be really helpful and there’s probably times that that makes life difficult for them. [LISA] Yes. And it also can feel like a burden, like to feel and to care so deeply can feel really heaviness inside ourselves, wondering like, do we have to care less or do we have to feel less? And does that mean we care less? And that’s not what we want to do. So it’s literally learning to navigate maybe if I just kind of pull back a little bit of my energy, that I can still be present with the person while they’re experiencing what they’re experiencing. It doesn’t mean I have to merge or I have to have that really deep empathy where it’s going to really affect me. So it’s really learning how to, just like I said, in the beginning to keep that boundary, really be present and grounded with yourself so you can show up for the other person and also show up for yourself the way that you want to show up. [JOE] Well, and how much, when you’re either working with a couple or someone, an HSP that is in a couple, or someone that loves an HSP, how much do you put on the non-HSP to adjust the environment or change things in the house or those sorts of things compared to the HSP, maybe creating their own boundaries and advocating for what they need. Like, how do you sort that out? [LISA] So that’s what we call it, that’s really a dance. And that’s something that the two individuals, if in the relationship will need to work out between themselves, and that may look different for any partnership, any relationship, whether it’s professional, personal, and also for the HSP to take ownership and accountability of their feelings in their reactions. Sometimes we do have to even let the other person know, and also like we may have to push ourselves a little bit so the other person in the relationship feels heard, feels seen, and also getting their needs met. It’s not all about the HSPs’ needs getting met. [JOE] Yes. And in those boundaries, I think that that probably is a dance where of course any partner wants to help make their partner’s life easier, but there’s also some of that individual responsibility to do their own work and advocate for what they need. Because I imagine that’s hard for some HSPs to learn, to set those boundaries and advocate for those. And that might be more of like a new language for some people. [LISA] Yes. And that’s is like, it would be like learning a new language if you’re learning like a foreign language. This is a new language about yourself and the more that we can learn about ourselves, the more at ease we can be with ourselves and we can reframe that story maybe that story that’s keeping us in the past or not allowing us to liberally in the present moment. [JOE] Yes. Well, the last question I always ask my guests is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? [JOE] I want them to know that they are appreciated, that the work that they’re doing is so important, no matter if you’re working with an HSP or what your population is. Also to remember your own self-care, that we are in this profession because we do care and we give so much of ourselves that is so important to also take care of ourselves. When we can take care of ourselves, we’re modeling to our clients and other people in our lives that we do matter to ourselves and in that way, again, we can show up the way that we want to show up for other people and also ourselves. [JOE] Oh, that’s so good. Thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast Lisa. If people want to learn more about your podcast, learn more about your work, what’s the best way for them to connect with you. [LISA] Okay. So my podcast, Am I Ok? and that is the letters O and K, the question mark. You can find that on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Deezer, on all the podcasts. You can also go to my website at wwwamiok.podcast.com. You can email me at lisa@amiokpodcast.com. I’m on Instagram and Pinterest as well. [JOE] Thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast Lisa. [LISA] Thank you, Joe. So glad to be here. Thank you for listening today. Remember to subscribe, rate and review, wherever you get your podcast. To find out more about highly sensitive persons, please visit my website at www.amokpodcast.com and subscribe to my free eight-week email course. This is Lisa Lewis, reminding each and every one of you that you are ok. Until next time, take care. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want to professional, you should find one.