[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/slash network. [LISA] Today, my guest is Tom Falkenstein. Tom has worked in the mental health sector since 1999 and as a cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist since 2006. After obtaining his degree in psychology at the University of Glasgow, he completed his five-year post-graduate training in psychotherapy in Berlin. He then moved back to the UK where he worked as a psychotherapist in London. During this period, he developed a particular interest in high sensitivity and working with highly sensitive people. He has been training with Dr. Elaine Aron since 2015, and has founded the European center for high sensitivity currently practicing in Berlin. He also offers consultations for highly sensitive people in both English and German. The Highly Sensitive Man is his first book and was published in Germany in September, 2017. It has been translated into a number of other languages, singer, songwriter, and activist Atlantis Morisset praised The Highly Sensitive Man as I quote, “a breath of fresh air in the midst of a cultural determination to reduce toxic masculinity. This book is a bomb of movement and a revelation,” end quote. Welcome to the podcast, Tom. [TOM FALKENSTEIN] Hi Lisa. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you for that lovely introduction. [LISA] Oh, you’re very welcome. It’s wonderful to have you here and I like to ask all of my guests if they consider themselves highly sensitive and if they are, and if you can, yourself, could tell us a little story about that? [TOM] Yes, I do consider myself as highly sensitive and the way I came, I found out about it was basically through the research for my book. So I first heard about the term high sensitivity in Elaine Aron’s research in 2013, as you mentioned, when I was working in London and through my work with male patients, the whole Google talk about being or feeling particularly sensitive since childhood. It basically made me think about sensitivity a lot and when I then started then I decided to write a book on highly sensitive men. I did a lot of research for that. Yes, and then through the research, I then realized that I’m highly sensitive myself. And I think because I mainly grew up with a lot of sensitive people around me and through my profession where I think a certain sensitivity is a benefit, I think I just, and I had known about the concept. I just hadn’t realized, and I hadn’t really thought about sensitivity my personal life. And all that changed when I started writing the book. [LISA] And what are some of the characteristics of a highly sensitive man? [TOM] Well, I think when I started writing the book, as I said, it was inspired by working with male patients who talked about being particularly sensitive since childhood. They described that they often felt they had been very emotional and didn’t like certain things that was expected from them as boys. And that this is actually from a lot of boys. So they often didn’t particularly like competitive games or didn’t present a certain extroverted typical boy behavior and they really struggled with that. And I think what characterized the whole sense of men is in a way, not that different from what a highly sensitive woman, what I would characterize as a highly sensitive woman. But I think the difference really is how boys and girls are being socialized differently in our society. And I think that adds a certain layer to, for highly sensitive men and boys. But I think it has the characteristic themselves. I do think that Elaine Aron has, she came up with those four criteria, the DOES criteria for high sensitivity. I think those four criteria describe high-sensitivity very well. D is for depth of processing, to really process information, very deeply. So to think a lot about what is going on in your life and what is going on around you, maybe also that certain thoughts stay with you for a long time or you process it. And then O in DOES stands for the tendency to feel quickly overstimulated. So the idea that when you think a lot, and when you feel a lot, that you also really feel over-aroused basically, and overstimulated by information and by the processing. E is for emotional reactivity, including empathy, which is quite self-explanatory. But I think it is important to highlight that she in her opinion is not just negative in inverted or negative feelings but also positive feelings. So basically having strong, emotional reactions, good and bad feelings, so to speak if you want to call them. I don’t like calling them. You understand what I mean. And including empathy. So having a strong tendency to feel empathy. S is for sensitivity to subtle stimuli, so being very sensitive to maybe certain noises or certain smells or sense, or maybe noticing little details, visual details around you more quickly. So all those characteristics are the same for highly sensitive men and sensitive women, but I think when it comes to living with a certain sensitivity and emotionality, I think I still, my impression is, I don’t want to generalize too much, but my impression is that it’s still more challenging for men, because I think we often struggle with the idea of men being emotional except anger. We used to, but I think the more vulnerable feelings, I think I often get the sense society is a bit uncomfortable with that if men become too emotional. [LISA] How do, I’m just listening to what you’re saying, and I’ve got all these questions coming up in my head and I’m just thinking of if I were man, just listening and I’m wondering if I was highly sensitive and, oh, we are identifying with all the things that you’re saying. And it’s like, okay, now I can maybe understand myself and I still have all these challenges that I have to, I don’t know, overcome or deal with or accept. And I’m wondering what do you recommend for these challenges that may show up as being a highly sensitive, man, not being acceptable in our society? [TOM] Yes, I think, I mean, I always struggle a little bit. I’m always very aware of, I don’t want to generalize too much. I think it depends, different people have different challenges very much, depending on what their lifestyle is and what their biography was like and what kind of job they have and all these things play a role. And I remember when I did the research on a book, I interviewed about 25 men, highly sensitive men, and it was a very varied group. They were very, it was not a homogenous group. Some were young, some were old, some were very, what you would call very masculine jobs. They were policemen or lawyer and others were artists and social workers or in therapists positions. For me, it was quite important when I then decided to include some of those interviews for my book. It was important that I entered and ended up interviewing including nine of those 25 interviews. It was important to me to show that variety, you know by the men that I picked to be included. And having said that, I think listening to their stories and you read as you, maybe have read the book already or who read it, they might see that there are certain similarities, I feel that do come up despite them being so varied. I try to do group together some of the issues and then try to address them in the book in the second half. In the second half, the book is very much mainly exercises and very practical, whereas the first half is very theoretical. It gives you, I want you to, it was quite important to me to include a good chunk of research so that the reader knows, oh, there is some research done on high sensitivity. And we talk about men and mental health or masculine identity. I felt it was important to talk about mental health and give some figures, which are quite shocking when you read them just in terms of the suicide rate and sample of men. But what, the sort of three, sort of broad areas that I picked up are well-funded issues around self-worth and self-acceptance. I often also noticed that there were issues around living a particular lifestyle that is just not not suitable to deal with temperament. What a lot of them often described is just a sense of if you haven’t lived up to the boy code early on in life, that it really can leave you with a lot of self-confidence issues really, and self-acceptance issues. And that is something that came up. So, I, therefore it was important to me to include some exercises to work on that. And when I talked earlier about the criteria, the DOES criteria, one of them was, as I said, was focused on emotional reactivity. So we do know that it is important for highly sensitive men to learn some emotional regulation skills. And again, that is something that I feel like I presented quite a broad, different ideas of how to tackle and how to improve emotional regulation. So I think those things are quite important. And as I said earlier, in terms of the lifestyle, just to make sure that you have, I mean, no one does it perfectly, of course, but maybe it’s important for you to get enough downtime or maybe it’s important to make sure that you’re not constantly feel overstimulated or maybe it’s important to reduce the time to say no more often or reduce time you spend with other people, particularly if you are also introverted. So I think that just were very practical ideas that you could do if you have a very nervous and reactive, not a nervous, very reactive and sensitive central nervous system. [LISA] I just want to go back to the emotional regulation and the emotional regulation are we talking about, is it anger, is it like crying? [TOM] Yes, it is working with strong feelings. And a lot of highly sensitive men experience their feelings very strongly. Then of course it can be different feelings. It can be all of these feelings. It can be anger, maybe the tendency to feel angry very quickly, but with anger, I personally feel it’s always important to look a little bit more underneath, so what is actually underneath the anger, because I think often it’s a secondary emotion and there’s another emotion underneath. And it could be shame and it could be their loneliness or sadness and then you flip very quickly to anger. So it can be all sorts of feelings, but I think it is important to, since highly sensitive men experience feelings more strongly, it is important and they quickly feel more overstimulated. I think it is important that they have some tools to regulate those feelings. And it can be very simple to, could just be, to become more aware of what you’re actually feeling and maybe naming it to yourself, observing throughout a day, oh I’ve been feeling sad or I’m feeling lonely or whatever it is. There’s often just naming them and practicing to name them can, it’s a very simple example, but I think it can help a little bit to identify it and then put a little bit of distance between you and your feeling. So that would be, for example, just a very simple strategy to work. [LISA] Yes. I love that. That’s kind of how I work with my clients too. I’m interested and as I was reading your book, I jotted some notes down that I wanted to ask you about. What does that look like as a man gets more in touch with himself as a type masculine, as you called it, this suit of armor begins to loosen or fall off? [TOM] What it looks like, you mean? [LISA] Yes. Like what would that even look like or maybe even feel like if a man is, he’s really getting to know himself and noticing, wow, I have this armor or this wall protecting myself and he gets more comfortable with himself and it begins to just loosen or begins to fall off. [TOM] Yes, I think it will, I think feel less tense. I think the word listen is a good, isn’t it? I suspect men will feel freer and less caught up in this whole armor and sort of this idea that you have to present yourself in a certain way. And I know a lot of it is changing and I think of course the genic definition of what it means to be a man, or what we see as masculine is changing. But at the same time, just yesterday, I spoke to a mother who talked to me about her three year old son who, sorry five-year-old signing who doesn’t like playing football, or he doesn’t like wearing glitter at home and occasionally he puts on a dress and is a very thoughtful, sensitive boy and thinks a lot about the world and things very deeply about things. And his father is really struggling with that. So, and these are well-educated people living in a big city and in their mid thirties. When I hear those stories, it just reminds me a little bit that although things are changing, I do sometimes wonder whether they’re really changing as much as we think they are and whether those expectations of what would be what society expects from boys and men, whether that, I think that’s still at work really, or they’re still still in there. So if you find a way to, for yourself to broaden this very narrow definition of masculinity, maybe reduce this a little bit, I suspect that you will feel, I would believe you feel a bit freer and a bit softer and a bit more authentic and maybe a bit more that you can be a bit more than just what you present to the world. [LISA] Yes. It’s not all about this or that or black and white, or if this happens, this will happen. It’s a wide range of different feelings and emotions. [TOM] Exactly. [LISA] They call that the spectrum. [TOM] Yes, yes. [LISA] What would you recommend to parents that are listening if they’re realizing that they have a highly sensitive child, whether it’s a boy or girl and they’re having a hard time with that? [TOM] Well I mean, it’s a bit difficult for me because I don’t work with children. Norma asked me and I said to her, well, I don’t really don’t work with children. I worked with my therapist who, for adults and work-at-home clients, but not children. So it’s a little bit tricky for me to give advice, but another Elaine Aron thing that we shouldn’t label children early on with calling them highly sensitive. I personally think that’s a good thing. I think there are other ways to describe things you can say, I really, you can start talking positively. But first of all, I think if you struggle with it, let’s say your son is very sensitive, I think you could have a think about whether there’s anything about his sensitivity that you actually like. So for example, yesterday this mother said that she really likes that her son thinks so much and that he thinks so deeply about things. Sometimes it’s a problem, but the most time she really enjoys that. If you can find something to, like about the sensitivity in your child, then I think it’s worth mentioning that and finding that out. But that is for yourself. I also think if you’re really struggling, if you really struggling with it, I think you have to ask yourself the parent, why are you struggling with a particularly sensitive or emotional son or daughter? Let’s stick to the example of the son, now, what is that about? Is that because it brings up stuff that, from your own life or may be your own sensitivity or emotionality wasn’t accepted when you grew up or is it because you don’t see yourself in your son or, I just think there’s so many interesting questions to explore, but I think generally speaking, I do think what I would recommend is not to label the child, but you can name it differently and I can say, are you really thoughtful or you really thought about others or you’re really empathetic or whatever. I think those are ways you can describe it and you can, and if you find something that you like, it’s important you mention that to your child. And if you really struggle with it, I think you should ask yourself, what is this actually about this? I think often I wonder whether it’s also doubt or what the neighbors could think or don’t want a child who is different or whatever it is. I don’t know whether that answers your question. I feel like I’m rambling a bit, but I hope that answers your question. [LISA] No, it does answer my question and thank you very much for answering that and giving a wide perspective on that. And what I hear is this, you know if parents do struggle with that, just like parents may struggle that they may have an image of what they want their child to be when they grow up, that’s more of the parent’s issue, not so much the child’s issue. [TOM] Absolutely. I was thinking that yesterday, exactly. It’s nothing of a child fault. It’s something to do with your expectations and your ideas about what you thought your son would be like. The three main areas that I highlighted in the book as problematic, the first one was how to deal with overstimulation and intense feelings, because that is something that came up in the interviews with the men. And I gave a lot of exercises for that. Then the second is, as I mentioned, the whole topic around self-worth and having not lived up to the boy code maybe early on in life and getting sometimes very explicit and sometimes not so explicit messages that this is not okay or that you’re too sensitive or too much as a child. As I said, these can leave marks. So the second area that have often been mentioned by highly sensitive man is the whole topic of self-worth. Then the third one that I said was the lifestyle and self care, the whole question of if you’re quite sensitive, do you actually take care of yourself in a good way? Sorry, just about that. I just remembered suddenly what the third one was. So I just want to mention those three. [LISA] Oh, that’s what I’m glad to hear, glad you’re able to share that with us. How does high sensitivity affect relationships with men? So if you’re a highly sensitive man, how does that affect your relationships with other men? [TOM] That is something that came up a lot, actually in the interviews of the men that interviewed for the book. A lot of them said, first of all, the day often feel bored when they meet other men who, let’s say who stick to very traditional ways of interacting with other men. So there’s a lot of small talk or doing things together rather than having a deeper conversation. They often feel very quickly bought. And I think it just shows again that when we talk about high school, I think the D, what I mentioned earlier, that DOES criteria, D is the fundamental thing, the depths of processing that you need depth in your life. And that could be a conversation you felt, that you really like deep conversations, and this has been brought. So none of those men described this that they often feel with other men, they can’t quite talk as deeply because somehow conversations, because it comes back to this whole stigma around emotions and men. I think that conversation, maybe it doesn’t touch on emotions or feelings and therefore it stays on a certain, covers other topics, but it doesn’t go by deep, maybe, for some of them. And at least that’s what they described to me and that this is something they found difficult at the same time. The same time, I think this whole idea of slightly being, not all of highly sensitive men, some of them mentioned that they feel that they grew up with a sense of not being quite manly enough so that they’re not living up to this boy code. And of course then sometimes also said insecurity and when you interact with other men who may be live a more lit up that the norm, let’s say. But the interesting, other aspect is that they often said that if they manage to initiate like a deep conversation with maybe someone who is not used to do that with other men, who’s not used to do that, there’s a certain level of trust. They’re also someone who other people open up to very quickly and then suddenly you can have a good conversation or even with someone who maybe seems or is less sensitive, or is a bit more traditionally masculine or is up to him to do the norms. And I think this is really fascinating that in some ways it can also be, they can also be a model in a way to maybe destigmatize feelings a little bit in a conversation between men that it’s okay to talk about feelings and it’s okay to go deep and it’s okay to show vulnerability. And I think highly sensitive men can be, can take the lead with that a little bit, because I think it just comes to them possibly a little bit easier. [LISA] Yes. So then I have to ask you about how does a highly sensitive man, how does that affect their relationships with women? [TOM] A lot of them described really good relationships with women. Sometimes what I think too, what came up a couple of times was those men who self-identified as highly sensitive being very drawn to emotionally unstable women. So that is something that came up a couple of times as well. So maybe the — [LISA] So that’s interesting. [TOM] Yes. I mean, this is just based on the interviews. It might not be representative at all to the wider population of highly sensitive men, but some of them mentioned that they feel quite drawn to that because of the intensity and because of the emotionality, in a way. But then of course it can be quite difficult and sometimes even dysfunctional relationship, but mostly they all describe that it’s quite easy. It’s often a very easy relationship with women. But one challenge is that they all felt that they would then be put in the friends zone mode more than in their own potential. So you’re understanding and have a good conversation, but it somehow then some women don’t find that particularly, maybe some people don’t find it particularly attractive or they find it attractive, but maybe it’s not enough or what are other things, why those men are not being chosen as a partner, but some men, if you’d mentioned that said that their relationship in a way, or the conversation or the connection happens quite easily, but then being, making a step to be quite proactive about pursuing a woman for romantic relationships. Then it’s difficult for them because they struggle with, some struggle with a self-confidence or the woman puts them more into a friend’s category. [LISA] What do you recommend for highly sensitive men to find or to be in a relationship if they want to be in a romantic relationship or a partner they want to be in a committed relationship [TOM] In terms of how to go about with that? [LISA] Yes. [TOM] I mean, I think you have to, I wonder, I mean, I don’t know, but I wonder whether it comes back to how you see your sensitivity yourself. Think if you self identify as highly sensitive and you read the, that’s why it was important for me, the book to talk a bit about the research and to show that this is not some sort of esoteric concept. It is, well, there’s still some things we don’t know, but there’s also a lot of you do know. And there’s a lot of research out that it was important to me to talk about briefly in the book, in the first part. And I think for men who identify as highly sensitive, it was important to know that first of all, and it’s real and that exists. And I think then it’s a bit about, well, how do you see it yourself? Do you think being sensitive, do you think being a highly sensitive man gives certain qualities, or your sensitivity gives you certain qualities? And is that something that maybe could make you a really good partner? A lot of them, for example mentioned that they were really keen on monogamy. They were not particularly keen on having loads of different sections of theirs. And I think you can look at that from different angles or you can say it should be this, or it should be that, and so much this, but if you also think, well, this is, could be a really good quality to have or relationship or committed relationships. So I think it’s about exploring how you, what your own take, what your own view of your own sensitivity is, and whether there are qualities that come with your sensitivity and with you being emotional that are a real, what’s the word? I don’t want to say that I catch, but you know what I mean, but I call it qualities that make you attractive and that make you that someone will surely see that these are attractive qualities, et cetera. I wonder whether it comes back to this whole self-worth question And maybe also asking yourself well maybe there are certain ways of meeting women or meeting men that don’t suit you. I mean, if the whole, I mean, I was just thinking the other day it’s when a certain, meeting someone and certain circumstances don’t suit you because you’re more than I need to meet someone more slowly than I would go. I wouldn’t force myself. I wouldn’t suggest forcing yourself doing something that just feels uncomfortable. [LISA] And I’m also hearing in this too, not to not to hide anything about yourself or feel like you have to do something less than to be with somebody. [TOM] Yes, exactly. Exactly. And to believe that you have something to offer, that your sensitivity and everything comes with it, you know your depth of processing, the fact that your emotional, that these are, that is something that you have to offer is a value and not to, as I said, not to hide it. [LISA] Yes, a highly sensitive man does have many things to offer. [TOM] Yes, exactly. I think that is important too, to highlight to your audience. [LISA] Yes. So my last question, what is the most important thing you would want listeners to know about highly sensitive men? [TOM] I think when, my hope is that when your listeners read the book, and I often get emails from women who bought the book and read it and really enjoyed it and found it interesting or found the exercise was very useful. I think they often say, oh, it really helped me to understand since sensitive men were a lot better or would help me to understand my son or my husband or my father or my brother. I think that always really moves me. And I think I’m really, although it was a book written by Matt addressing sensitive men, I’m really happy that women seem to respond to the book as well. And the tone, when I wrote the book tone, it was really important for me to say that high sensitivity is real, that it exists. It’s not integration, it’s not shyness, it’s not neuroticism. It is a different concept and it is a neutral trait. It is not the worst thing to have, but it’s also not the best thing. It’s not the superpower that everyone that sometimes go online or read stuff online and people really put it on, they only define themselves suddenly by their sensitivity and they put it on a pedestal or people online talk about how awful it is to be sensitive and how it can barely function. I think when I wrote the book, it was quite important to me to put it somewhere in the middle. It is a trait and it comes with certain advantages and it comes to certain disadvantages and sometimes it’s a blessing and sometimes it is, but it’s not so extreme like how sometimes, we talked about it. And it’s just one aspect of your personality. It’s many other things that have shaped you and influenced you and who you are, but it is an important layer to your personality. And that is important to me to print across. [LISA] Yes. Thank you. I love how you just, you really just named it as just being real, there’s advantages and disadvantages and that’s just like with all things in the world and just take a step and just to do that, I think do the best that you can with what you have and what you understand about yourself. [TOM] Exactly. [LISA] So how can listeners get in touch with you, Tom? [TOM] Well, they can find me on Instagram. I’m on Instagram, Tom Falkenstein. And I have a website hsp-eu.com. The book The Highly Sensitive Man is available in English and German, in Dutch and Swedish and the American publisher is Kensington and it’s available everywhere. I started to do some workshops. I did a workshop last year for highly sensitive people, not just men, also women in the Netherlands and we have plans to repeat that and to offer more workshops across Europe. But then of course COVID happened and all of that is canceled for the moment but at the moment they can look at me in all these channels that I’ve just mentioned. [LISA] Well, thank you very much, Tom, for being with us today and for sharing about highly sensitive men. [TOM] Thank you very much, Lisa, for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation and I hope your listeners will enjoy too. [LISA] Thank you. [TOM] Thank you. Bye-bye [LISA] Thank you for listening today at Am I Okay? 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.