[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. Thank you so much for tuning in. I would like to remind my listeners that I offer a free eight-week email course titled Highly Sensitive People. My email course provides weekly tools that help you feel more whole in a world isn’t exactly made for us and I show you how your sensitivity can be seen as a unique gift and how many others are just like you. To find out more about my email course. Please go to my website, amiokpodcast.com. Today, my guest is Natalie Moore. Natalie is a licensed therapist and expert speaker based in Pasadena, providing online therapy to California adults. She helps ambitious creative millennials increase their emotional resiliency and transform limiting patterns to create the life, love and career of their dreams. Natalie incorporates holistic modalities like mindfulness, somatic psychology, and breathwork into her work to support the natural healing process. [LISA] Welcome to the show, Natalie. [NATALIE MOORE] Thank you so much for having me, Lisa. I can’t wait to get started. [LISA] Great. So I just want to put out there that we’re in Los Angeles, California and today is like the one day of having a horrific rainstorm. So you may hear raindrops or rain pouring down the roof in the background. As I was talking to Natalie beforehand, she said that would be put everybody in a meditative state. So I’m like, yes, you’re right. I do like to listen to the rain. [NATALIE] I like to put a positive spin on things, too. I just can’t help it. [LISA] So I like to ask all of my guests on the show, if you consider yourself a highly sensitive person? If so, would you please share a little story about that? [NATALIE MOORE] Yes, I’d love to. I do consider myself a highly sensitive person. The funny thing is I didn’t realize it for so much of my life. I didn’t realize this until maybe four or five years ago. I’m in my mid thirties now. I don’t think I would’ve described my myself this way because my family actually really appreciated toughness and being able to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and be able to tolerate difficult environments and difficult situations. So being sensitive, wouldn’t be considered a strength or something you would want to talk about or express in any way. I didn’t realize until a few years ago, when I was going through a difficult illness, that I was much more sensitive to my environment. I was actually allergic, severely allergic to something in my environment and had to start getting really attuned to my body and what things I could eat or not eat. I realized that I had food allergies that I had never known about before until I had this illness and did some deeper digging into myself. So I was sensitive to my environments. I was sensitive to foods. I realized I was very sensitive to people’s moods, emotions and energies and needs, and that all of these differences were masked over the years. I didn’t feel that, I didn’t have an awareness of them, and I didn’t think that they were good things. So things that I may have had a bit of an awareness about, I would downplay or try to minimize in some way. So it wasn’t until a few years ago when I got sick and had to do a deep dive within myself and really heal myself from the inside out that I started to realize how all of these sensitivities. This is so interesting. How long have I been this way? Have I always been this way? Did I become more this way? Then it all, it was like puzzle pieces coming together. It all started to make sense. It was, “Oh, that’s why I’m therapist because I’m sensitive to people’s emotions. Oh, that’s why I tend to burn out more quickly as a health professional because I can pick up people’s energies and have maybe a hard time releasing those. Oh, there’s certain places and people and things that I don’t feel comfortable around. That’s why I’ve purged those things out of my life.” There was this aha moment where it all started to make sense. Then I actually learned about the concept of a highly sensitive person around that time too. Then it was just more aha moments after aha moments after that. Having that information now has been so transformational for me because instead of there being all these little quirks or eccentricities, that didn’t make sense and didn’t come together in any way now I understand the overarching pattern and can work with that and do things to help me optimize my life, as opposed to just having these things that get in the way of me being able to do all of the amazing things that I want to do. [LISA] Wow. I can re relate to so much of your story. I, myself, I didn’t realize I was highly sensitive until I started doing my own therapy and that was in my forties. So I wish that I understood myself a little bit better early on in life and that’s okay. Sometimes things work out like that. Also like all of these things that you mentioned about what you know about yourself and how you adapt to other people and the environment and all those things. I’m sure you incorporate all of that in your own therapy and the way that you work with people. This leads to my next question about how did you decide to work with millennials? Can you just describe what is a millennial? [NATALIE] Yes. So millennials are people who are in their late twenties to now, the oldest millennials turned 40 this year. So I used to say twenties and thirties, but actually people in their younger twenties are now gen Z and people in their mid to late twenties up to 40 are millennials. So when I used to talk about working with millennials, it was all about them starting their career and maybe getting their first place for the first time and maybe getting into serious relationships for the first time and figuring out what they want to do with their life. Now, millennials are buying houses and having babies and entering into another phase of their adulthood. So to answer your question, I didn’t find my new niche. My niche actually found me, which I think is a common refrain in our profession. I started a private practice as a marriage and family therapist intern. They’re called associates now. That’s when you’re pre-licensed and you are still getting clinical supervision from someone who is licensed. I was just so bright eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to start my practice. I was willing to work with anybody. I just wanted to get experience and I needed to make some money. So I started seeing everybody and anybody who was willing to work with a 23 year old therapist at the time. It just so happened that the people who wanted to work with a 23 year old therapist were around my age, people who felt that I could understand them and relate to them, understand the pop culture references and be a tech and social media native myself, so that they wouldn’t have to stop and explain so many things, and people who didn’t necessarily want their therapist to be like a maternal or a paternal figure. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Some people really want that and really benefit from that. But the folks who were very attracted to working in my practice wanted someone their age, where they could feel really comfortable talking to me about their different things that were going on in their life that they maybe felt that I could understand a little bit better. That’s how I started working with that age range. I also did a lot of marketing around my holistic approach, bringing in mind, body, and spirit, and doing a lot of mind, body exercises within therapy. I think the younger generation is really wanting that and craving that and seeing that there was a therapist who was catering to their not only mental health, but also physical and spiritual health, I think that was another big draw for that age group. [LISA] What does that look like to work using a holistic approach with millennials, let’s say that are highly sensitive? [NATALIE] So understanding that millennials have a lot that is expected of them. So they are the new sandwich generation now, meaning that not only are they starting to take care of their aging parents or seeing that down the road, they’re starting to have children of their own or again, seeing that down the road. They’re also a generation that compared to the couple before them, gen X and baby boomers have actually made the least amount of money compared to these other generations. So there’s a lot of financial pressure on millennials and urban millennials, especially are having a really hard to, like you said, Lisa and I based in Los Angeles, so we understand that in this city, particularly rent, cost of living, buying a home, these things are so expensive and rising by the day. It seems there’s a lot of financial pressure on millennials to not only take care of themselves, but also accommodate budging families and aging parents. So there’s a financial pressure component, which is difficult for the average person and might be even more difficult for a highly sensitive person if they feel a great obligation or desire to care for their aging parents and maybe see some mental or physical degradation that’s already occurring that they want to help with. So there’s a financial component of this. There’s also the element of millennials having so much stimulation in their lives, not only in work, but also the amount of time that they’re spending on devices. Ever since COVID, spending so much time on screens, having that screen fatigue, having that overwhelm of constant information to let in, whether it’s on the computer or the phone or any device, really the news, the news feed, all the social media, all these images and words and messages that are coming in. That, again, might be tough for the average person to filter through, but even more challenging for HSPs. Being so sensitive and having just this flood of stimulation all the time is so much to deal with. You might say, oh, well, all generations are dealing with that. I think it’s easier for other generations. Maybe older generations can choose to opt out of those things, whereas I know that millennials feel a great, many feel a great pressure to be on social media, if they’re promoting a business or if they have to be on there for work or they’re maybe looking to get promoted or expand in their career. And a lot of millennials feel they need to stay connected with everybody in their lives and need to see what’s going on with their nephew on the east coast or whatever the case may be. That’s a lot to take in, on such an ongoing basis. So I would say there’s the financial component, there’s a social media component, there’s also the relationship component of, you know I help a lot of HSPs who also identify as codependent; so people who tend to take on the needs of others and try to meet other people’s needs before they meet their own. So I help people to develop greater boundaries so that they can distinguish between their own needs and the needs of others, their own feelings and the feelings of others, so that they don’t get so overwhelmed in that capacity of their life either. So I would say, I hope millennials/HSPs in areas of career, relationship, and also their inner life, I want people to be able to find inner peace within themselves and to be able to enjoy alone time and silence and stillness. And for the HSPs and millennials that I work with, who also struggle with anxiety, the body and the mind can be a scary place and a triggering place. So another area of my work also involves helping people observe their thoughts, observe their body sensations, increase their emotional regulation capacity so that they can deal with all of these struggles and stressors that we’re talking about today. [LISA] Yes. Wow, that’s a lot of information right there. I just hear that as millennials, whether you’re an HSP or not, I hear that just that maybe that difficult and feeling like maybe I don’t measure up, there’s so much to measure up to as far as keeping up with social media, keeping up with me, my job, trying to make, maybe the monthly rent is keeping up financially and that can feel really heavy and burdening. And also, the flip side of that is how can I stay? Maybe if I’m dealing with all of these outside things, how can I stay inward, just really keep myself present even though if I look out into the environment? Maybe it feels really overwhelming. How can I stay more present and be okay with myself? Especially as HSPs that our tendency is to want to help people and that’s like our natural gift and also that we have to take care of ourselves first and how important that is. So I want to ask you about how can HSPs, millennials harness their sensitivity as their superpower. [NATALIE] Such a great question. I think that’s one that requires ongoing exploration in order to answer, but I’m happy to speak to some of these points. I think the first step with anything is acknowledging something and coming to an acceptance of it. Like I said, in the beginning, not only my family, but I know that in American culture, in general American society, we tend to have this idea that being a hard worker and being tough and being self-sufficient and get back up and dust yourself off and get back in it. We have so many archetypes and ideas of what it means to be strong, what it means to be a strong and resilient person that don’t necessarily apply to an HSP. So I think acknowledging is the first step, accepting, maybe redefining for yourself what it means to be strong and resilient. For me, strong and resilient might mean instead of seeing eight clients in a day and powering through it and knowing that I’m going to be really drained at the end of the day, strength might be capping myself at six or seven, clients knowing that I can do my best seeing one or two clients less in a day, and that I can prosper in other ways, that it’s not just about time and money and output. It’s about how can I create the life that I want for myself without creating these great consequences or expenses that are going to set me back time and time again. So I think there’s acknowledgement, there’s acceptance, there’s redefining and there’s making changes in your environment. So like you said, at the beginning in the intro this world wasn’t necessarily designed for us or optimized for us. We have to create that for ourselves. So I’ll give some personal examples. I don’t fit within the mold of a 9 – 5, 40-hour a week job, sitting in an office or sitting behind a computer screen. That’s not something that going to work for my brain or my physiology. So in order to break out of that, I had to do something really uncomfortable, just starting my own business. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had to figure it out over time. It makes sense for me to have my own business so that I can control my hours and know that I have a ton of privileges. I know that most people do not have the privilege to do that, but I’m just giving that as an example of something that I’ve done for myself in order to optimize my environment for my unique physiology. I’ve also adapted my home. My partner and I are both HSPs in different ways. We have different sensitivities, which helps be tough if all of our sensitivities overlapped. So we’re just really weird about certain things. We like it quiet from certain times, we like to block out the light with tons of layers of light blocking curtains and things like that. Anyone who comes to our house would probably just laugh at all the ways that we adapt our sensitivities. I have a lot of food sensitivities. So if you look at the fridge, everything’s gluten free, dairy free, this free, that free. Again, a lot of privilege here to be able to do these things. But because we have that knowledge of what our sensitivities are, we can be funny and quirky about how we adapt our home to those sensitivities. So I think acknowledgement, acceptance, redefining strength and resiliency, adapting your environment, adapting work. Sorry to interrupt, but I just want to add another one. Back to relationships, being really intentional about the relationships that we have in our lives, understanding where you are on that extrovert, introvert scale. I have different social needs and my partner. I do things that meet my social needs and he does things that meet his need for alone time. So being able to kind ramp things up when we need more stimulation and ramp things down when we need less, having certain routines in the morning and at night that help us energize and wind down. These things are not necessarily just for HSPs. Everybody would benefit from having these kinds of sensitives, but knowing yourself and instead of trying to match yourself to the environment, match the environment to you. Do what you can in the environment to optimize your mental and physical and spiritual health. [LISA] I love that. As you are sharing about just the way that you live and the things that you’ve done to make it comfortable for yourself and your partner, I think it’s a great way for people that are maybe non-highly sensitive when they come to visit and say, “Oh, wow, look at this. Oh, wow.” Like there’s other ways to live and to take care of myself. So I think that’s part of just teaching other people that maybe don’t understand highly sensitive people, what it’s like to be highly sensitive and the things that we have to do to take care of ourselves. [NATALIE] I love that you bring that up too, because there’s an element of tolerance and just playing, not making fun of people for their differences. I’ve had people in my family poke fun at certain things, but it hurts when people make fun of the ways that you’ve adapted your life to work for you. So I think there can be a greater sensitivity to the sensitive people in the world as well. We have room for improvement in that area, I think, as a society. [LISA] Yes. I agree with that. Going back to your point of doing less, it’s not about how much we can do or doing more, it’s about really doing less. And that can be hard as a highly sensitive person, if you are a perfectionist or overachiever. I mean, that’s the way that we feel that we’ve been wired to do more. If we achieve more, we’ll have greater sense of accomplishment inside ourselves. But if we actually do less, take care of ourselves less, if that’s like working less, it all evens out. I think it all unfolds to even come to that place that even if we were to achieve or think that we have to do more, that actually if we do less, it all unfolds maybe at a better rate to achieve the same end goal, if that makes sense. [NATALIE] It does. It makes perfect sense. Deepak Chopra in The Seven Laws for Spiritual Success, that’s the, I believe, I don’t know if it’s the first chapter, but it’s definitely one of the main points that he makes in the book is do less achieve more. He talks about how people tend to, in their quest for success, try to do so much. Because they’re doing so much and so many different things, they’re spreading themselves thin. They’re not able to do a deep dive on any of things. They’re not able to do any of those things very well. The person who’s running three businesses and has kids and has a spouse and has a social life and has all of these things going on, they’re not able to do any of those things very well because they’re trying to do them all at this really high level. But if that person can pair down and prioritize, okay, well, what’s most important to me? Well, what do I really spend more time with my kids? How do I make that possible for myself? Do I need to change something about my lifestyle? Do I need to change something about how I work? Do I need to have a serious conversation with my partner about how we’re going to share financial responsibilities and role responsibilities? So then instead of it being this I’m running around and I’m frantic and I’m not doing anything very well, I’m pairing down and I’m getting really intentional about the things that are important to me, doing those things really well. Then the other things can be deprioritized, because maybe you don’t get as much out of those things. Or maybe you change your lifestyle where you don’t have to make as much money to buy that brand new car because you’re just deciding, ok, I’m just going to drive a used car for 10 years and keep my stress low. I can’t prescribe what those things are because they’re different for every person but I think the idea here is to be intentional about what’s important, how do I want to spend my time and energy? What’s not important? What am I doing just to keep up with the Joneses or meet societal expectations or parental expectations or whatever the thing is? What can I let go of that really doesn’t serve me in the long run? [LISA] Yes. I love that. And this, the stress level and the stress levels through the pandemic, the last 18 months to going on two years now have been so high and we were thinking that we have to meet the same expectations as we did before the pandemic. That’s just not possible. It’s just so much going on. As times goes on, we’re seeing the, especially in the mental health where the result of all of that in the last 18 months to two years, just with the increase with the people reaching out for mental health services, which I’m glad they are. I think that we all always use a little mental health therapy somewhere down the road in our life. [NATALIE] I agree. I could not agree more. [LISA] So will you guide us through an experimental exercise now so listeners can take away a new therapy tool? [NATALIE] I would love to. There’s one that I love doing specifically with HSPs and it involves a visualization. So I’m happy to guide us in that. [LISA] All right. Thank you. [NATALIE] Okay, cool. So this visualization is all about creating a safe space around yourself. This can be used in situations where you might feel more stressed or anxious. It’s also really helpful for if you’re going to be in an interaction with a person who tends to maybe be more triggering for you, or might have more of an emotional drain on you than others. Again, it’s all about creating a safe space. So if you are in a position right now, listening to this podcast where you can change your posture to something that is going to allow you to have your feet flat on the floor, that would be optimal and seated or lying down. If you’re seated, having your spine erect, but also supported at the same time, taking a deep breath here into the low belly. You’re just going to start, there’s no right or wrong way of doing this. I’m just going to start by visualizing where your body ends and the rest of the world begins. So this might be on the edge of your skin. This might be on the edge of your clothing. This might be at the edge of where the breath that your breathing ends and the rest of the air around you begins. This could be where your hair ends and the rest of the world begins. Just getting a sense of where you end and everything else begins. Beautiful. Then we’re going to add to this a little bit more. You’re also going to visualize if you had a safe space around you that could help protect you from energies that are draining you or protect you from emotions of other people, needs of other people, anything outside of you, what that might look like. Again, no right or wrong way here. It could look like glitter. It could look like a fog. It could be an actual physical structure, like a wall made out of wood or metal or bricks or glass. This could be a bubble around you, a special vortex. Get creative here. It really can be anything. Then just noticing how far away this structure or fog, how far that would be from your body. So this could just be tiny little millimeter away from your skin that protects you. Could be a few inches, a foot, a few feet, a few yards, just picturing whatever feels right for you. Then just noticing how far around you that goes. Does it go all the way from your feet to your head, go around you like a sphere or like a room or a box? As you visualize this, just noticing what you feel in your body, if there’s any relax or release, and then noticing if there’s any part of this vortex around you that has a door, a window, a hole, or maybe a veil that can be lifted up and down, depending on if there’s things you want to let in or let out of your vortex. You can think of it almost like a cell wall that lets certain things in and let’s waste out. It is very discerning. I’m just noticing where that area would be in your vortex if it’s near your face or hands, feet or any other area. Just thinking about the things you want to let in. Maybe you want to let in gratitude, love, appreciation, positivity, excitement, thinking about the things you would want to release, anxiety, stress, disempowerment. Just remembering that this safe space is available to you at anytime whenever you need it. I’m taking one more deep breath here, closing this visualization. You can either keep this vortex around you for as long as you want, or you can let it dissipate until the next time you want to bring it back in. Beautiful. When you’re ready come on back. [LISA] Thank you Natalie. That was really beautiful. I was imagining a veil around myself and just letting it rise and fall, letting out what I wanted to let out and letting what I wanted to come in and come in. So it’s just like a natural flow going back and forth. It was really beautiful. It just reminded me — [NATALIE] I’m glad you enjoyed it. [LISA] Thank you. Just reminded me that I have choices, what I want to let in, what I want to let out. [NATALIE] Beautiful. That’s exactly what I was hoping for. [LISA] I just love that. Thank you so much. [NATALIE] You’re welcome. [LISA] So what is the most important thing you want listeners to know or take away from our conversation today? [NATALIE] That your high sensitivity is your gift. It’s your strength. It’s something beautiful that you have an opportunity to learn from and grow from and embrace, and that anybody who shames you or blames you or doesn’t understand you, that’s not on you. That’s on them. Live your love for yourself and do what you want to do in this life, in this world. [LISA] Thank you for that. Where can listeners get in touch with you? [NATALIE] The best way to find me is through my website, which is awakentheself.com. So that’s A-W-A-K-E-N-T-H-E-S-E-L-F.com. [LISA] I believe you have a free gift that you are sharing with listeners today. [NATALIE] I am. So it’s called The Somatic Resourcing Guidebook; How to Overcome Overwhelm. It guides you through an exercise, similar to what we did today, but a little bit different. Instead of creating a vortex around you, you’re connecting to a beautiful memory or an image or a person, and noticing what you feel in your body, the feelings, the body sensations, and giving yourself that little boost of calmness and joy that you might need where you feel overwhelmed. So it guides you through step by step, exactly how to do that and how to identify your emotions and the sensations in your body. [LISA] Wow. That sounds wonderful. Thank you for offering that to everybody. [NATALIE] Of course. I believe you’re going to link to that in the show notes so that everybody can find it. [LISA] Yes, there will be a link to it in the show notes. Thank you for coming on the show today, Natalie. It was great to have you here. [NATALIE] It’s been my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me [LISA] Thank you my listeners for tuning in today. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you get your podcast. To find out more about highly sensitive persons please go to my website at amiokpodcast.com and subscribe to my free eight-week email course to help you navigate your sensitivities and show you that it’s okay not to take on everyone else’s problems. This is Lisa Lewis reminding each and every one of you that you are okay. Until next time, be well. Thank you for listening today at Am I Ok? Podcast. If you are loving the show, please rate, review and subscribe to it on your favorite podcast platform. Also, if you’d like to learn how to manage situations as a highly sensitive person, discover your unique gift as a highly sensitive person, and learn how to be comfortable in your own skin, I offer a free eight-week email course called Highly Sensitive People. Just go to amiokpodcast.com to sign up. In addition, I love hearing from my listeners, drop me an email to let me know what is on your mind. You can reach me at lisa@amiokpodcast.com. 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.