[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. During the month of February, my podcast episodes will be focusing on HSPs and love. Today’s special guest will be talking about just that topic as we get ready for Valentine’s day, whether you are in a relationship or not. Today, my guest is Alissa Boyer. Alissa is a mentor for highly sensitive people. She’s the creator of a highly sensitive and soulful membership where she teaches HSPs how to reduce overwhelm, manage their energy and love who they are. Alissa is a host of a podcast called The Sensitive and Soulful Show and is also a writer for the award-winning HSP blog, Highly Sensitive Refuge. Welcome to the show, Alissa. [ALISSA BOYER] Thanks, Lisa. I’m so excited to be here. [LISA] I’m so excited to have you here too, another HSP. [ALISSA]2 That’s always fun to talk to fellow HSPs. I love it. [LISA] Me too. I always like to ask my guests on the show if they consider themselves a highly sensitive person, and I assume you are, and if you can just share a little story about that. [ALISSA] Yes. So I definitely do consider myself a highly sensitive person. I score 24 out of 27 on Dr. Elaine Aaron’s HSP self test. I mean, my story is I’ve always known I was a very sensitive person. Of course, ever since I was a little kid, I was just super emotional and passionate and creative. I just was always thinking so deeply and feeling everything so deeply but I didn’t know that there was a term for this until I was in my early twenties. I was working in this really high stress corporate work environment. I’m a very like high achieving type of person. I always strive to do my best and in this environment, everyone was working these long, crazy hours and just pushing themselves so hard. I was trying to keep up with them. I wanted to climb the corporate ladder and do all of the things. I started getting really sick. I started experiencing severe digestive issues, which led me to seeing multiple doctors, eventually seeking out support from a holistic practitioner. As I started working with him, I started learning the impact of emotional stress and anxiety and how this can really wreak havoc on our body and especially our digestive system. So it was actually around this time, then that my mom introduced me to the book, The Highly Sensitive Person by Dr. Elaine Aaron. I still don’t know how she had heard about it, but she was like, you need to read this book. I was definitely on a self discovery path at that time. So I read the book in a couple of days and it just made perfect sense about me. I was like, oh my gosh, this is literally me. This is my life. It explained why I was getting so stressed and so sick in this really overwhelming environment because I’m a highly sensitive person and I can’t push myself the way the less sensitive people around me could. So learning that changed my life and it eventually led me to all of the work that I’m doing today. So I’m so grateful to learn and to know it and to share the wisdom now. [LISA] Thank you for sharing that. Yes, her book was recommended, I think anyone that’s HSP or non-HSP and wants to learn of about HSPs, once they read that book, it just sends them into a, a new direction in their life. [ALISSA] Yes, it totally does. [LISA] How does an HSP, what does that mean for an HSP to be in love? [ALISSA] Ooh, I love that question. To me, feel like being a highly sensitive person, we live in technical, like everything we experience is deep. So I feel, and my experience has been, we love hard. We feel deeply, we care deeply. We are deeply immersed in what we’re doing. So I think that when we’re in love, I believe that our partners are very lucky to have an HSP partner because we are going to be so attentive to them and be so caring and really feel it all along such an intense level. Of course, this can also be hard too, because on the flip side of feeling the joy and the love deeply, that also makes us more susceptible to feel the pain and the hurt deeply, which, you know we can’t ever promise that things will go perfectly smoothly. So when we open ourselves up to love, we open ourselves up really to the full spectrum of what’s possible for us. So I think it’s a really beautiful, beautiful experience, both for ourselves and for those on the receiving end of our love as well. [LISA] Yes, I agree. I, as myself being the long term marriage that, I experiencing very deeply all the love and joy, and also the pain can be just as deep as the love. Sometimes for myself, I find that hard to balance. Is there a specific formula for an HSP to be in love? Is there something they need to look out for themselves? [ALISSA] Oh yes. I think there’s a lot to it. I think sometimes where we, as HSPs might struggle in love and relationships is overgiving and overdoing it for our partners and sometimes forgoing our own needs. There’s oftentimes this feeling we’re always like a caretaker, or we always have to be managing everyone else’s emotions around us. At least that’s been my experience of something I’ve had to work on as well as many of the HSPs that I work with as well. So that’s something to look out for, is, are we only focusing on our partners needs and forgetting about our own? Because I think that in order for us to show up fully and have a really meaningful, deep, connected relationship we have to take care of ourselves as well, and pour back into our own cup so that we can show up more fully for our partners. So I think having that awareness is really important. Also just like learning to communicate clearly what our needs are. Because again, speaking from my own experience and the HSPs that I’ve worked with, a lot of times, we might just stay silent and feel a little bit disappointed maybe by the lack of depth in our relationships, or maybe our significant other just is isn’t quite hitting the mark. Or we would really love more compliments or something like that, but we feel too scared to speak up or we don’t know how to speak up. I think it’s really important for us to learn how to share what we need so that we can get the fulfilling relationship. So I think there’s a lot to it, but those are couple of things that come to mind for me. [LISA] Yes. What do you recommend to share or to feel more comfortable, not scared to speak up. Can you give a couple examples of that? [ALISSA] So to me, I think if it’s a new concept to just share what you need, I always tell people to start out small and start getting comfortable using your own voice. So for example, if your significant other is always the one who chooses where you go out to eat, or they always choose the TV show you watch, and you’re always like, “Oh, it’s fine, we can do whatever you want, I don’t care;” and we never have of an opinion, that’s a perfect opportunity to start practicing, sharing your opinion and what you might like. I think a lot of times we don’t even know what that is because we’ve been so used to just doing what will make the other person happy. So for those examples, like have an opinion about where you go to dinner, have an opinion out what you watch on TV. Even if you don’t feel super strongly about it, start practicing sharing. That’s a great way to get yourself used to it. Then from there, I think it’s about really trying to be clear about what we need and that can be hard. But for example, if you would love to spend more quality time with your partner after work, like uninterrupted, an hour of time, just not on your phones, just catching up, try to just say that in a loving way. Like, “Hey, I feel really connected to you when we can just connect without our phones after work. Could we do that, make that more of a priority for us?” Or something like that. Just being very clear and direct is a great way because that’s how we can get our needs met and feel more satisfied. [LISA] As a month of February, and especially in the United States is geared towards Valentine’s day on February 14th and that can be overrated and underrated depending if, how you feel about that day and, so starting out small asking for a need to be met and using maybe this month to feel more love for yourself and maybe not giving as much to other people. I’m wondering how does that feel in a HSP? Reel in maybe your energy or empathetic skills in a little bit. That might feel strange or weird to HSPs. [ALISSA] Definitely something that I know is yes, weird and uncomfortable for a lot of HSPs to like show ourselves the love first or not always say yes to things. It can be super foreign. To that, I always tell people, well, why do you think you’re not worthy of having that love? Why do you think that you don’t deserve that same care? I actually had a meeting with some of the people in my membership last week and we were talking about self-love and just the little ways that they’ve started showing themselves love. It’s like very small ways. It’s literally like they are choosing not to be on social media past seven o’clock at night because they find that it makes them feel drained and burnt out. So that’s a simple way to show themselves love, is like, hey, I recognize that this doesn’t feel good. So I’m going to take more time that’s just uninterrupted for myself. Or taking themselves out on a nice walk just because it feels good. Even if they have a busy work day, it can just be in these small moments where we can choose ourselves. I think that when we know how to prioritize ourselves and take good care of ourselves, we build our own respect for ourselves. We feel better about ourselves. When we’re coming from that place in relationships, it only helps our relationships because we feel better about ourselves and we’re not looking to our partner to complete us or fulfill every single thing. We have our own back and we are taking good of ourselves so we can show up more fully, which I just have found to be really helpful. [LISA] I love that, to show up more fully for ourselves so then we can show up for other people the way we want to show up and not give as much of ourselves. That we save some of that energy for us. I heard, as a therapist and working with HSPs people ask, is it better to be in a relationship with another HSP or is it okay not to be in a relationship with an HSP? Can it still work out? [ALISSA] That’s such a good one. I always hear people ask me that too. I’m like, oh man. So I think there’s going to be benefits and struggles to each one. For me personally, I’m married to a non-HSP and I enjoy the way he balances me out. He is definitely like, I’m an introverted HSP. He’s an extroverted non-HSP. We’re very different, but he has really gotten me out of my shell and helped me with building confidence and asserting myself. On the flip side, I have helped him with seeing other people’s perspectives and slowing down and having more empathy. So for us, it’s a really like beautiful yin yang balance, but a key to HSP and a non-HSP working well together, in my opinion, is there really needs to be a level of self-respect. I mean, of respect mutually for each party, because I think that being an HSP is a very different experience from being a non-HSP. So there are a lot of times my husband doesn’t always understand my sensitivity. He doesn’t understand personally why something might be upsetting to me or overwhelming, but he respects me and knows that’s a part of me. So we’re able to live harmoniously as a result. Then for two HSPs together, I mean, the huge benefit is that you understand the HSP experience. So if your partner is struggling with something, you’re more likely to really be able to empathize, understand it firsthand and know how to support them and show up for them. I would say one thing that can be hard about two HSPs is if both are dysregulated and overwhelmed at the same time it can be hard for you to find that balance if both are really feeling overwhelmed. I think it’s just, as long as one can stay more grounded as much as possible, I think that’s really important for two highly sensitive people together. [LISA] What do you recommend? I can see, because I’m an HSP and my spouse is an HSP. So I’m wondering if two HSPs are together and they’re stuck if it’s just empathetic role that they naturally do, what do you recommend? What’s one thing they can do to get unstuck? [ALISSA] What comes to mind to me is just stepping away. If you can take a moment to step away and calm yourself and return to the situation. I think sometimes we stay too long in a conversation or situation that’s really overwhelming to us, and we’re not able to find that regulation that we really need. So sometimes it’s like, okay, maybe I need to step away, do some deep breathing, do whatever calms me and then come back to this from a more grounded state. Sometimes it’s just, we just need a little bit of time. But I think the first thing is having awareness of what that feels like in your body when you’re starting to become overwhelmed and over stimulated. Then with that awareness, it helps you to know when you’re reaching a point of no return and you really need to take a step back so that you can regulate your nervous system and come back to a place of being more grounded and clearheaded. [LISA] I love that. So it’s like, just knowing when to, like you said, to pause and step away and then coming back when you’re both maybe more regulated? Is there such a thing as giving too much love or being too much in love for an HSP? I’m just thinking about because it can be so over-stimulated. [ALISSA] I like that question, I think, yes there can be times where, it depends on the place that you’re coming from, is what’s coming up for me. So if you’re feeling overwhelmed with the love and the amount you’re giving in your relationship, if it’s coming from a place of you’re doing this out of anxiety or a need for security, you’re overgiving, you’re overly showing love because you feel insecure about the other person leaving or changing their feelings or whatever, like, I can say this for experience, because I used to struggle with this where I would just feel this need to be always be perfect and always overgiving and always just be extremely loving. I realized that at the core of it, I was just feeling so insecure that I never wanted them to even think about potentially leaving me. So I just over did it. That was where it was overwhelming for me. It wasn’t authentic and it didn’t feel good. Then from another perspective, coming from a very healthy place, love can be still over-stimulating and overwhelming. It’s like, it can be like, wow, this just feels so good. I’m so happy. For me, sometimes excitement feels the same as nerves or anxiety. So I’ve definitely had times where I was feeling so happy that I would give myself a stomach ache because it was so much. It wasn’t a bad feeling. It was just like a lot for my system to handle, I suppose. So yes, those are my thoughts on that one. [LISA] I love those answers. What do you recommend to differentiate between the excitement and maybe if there’s nerves or anxiety? [ALISSA] I think it’s definitely something that comes with awareness. So it’s like understanding where the feeling is coming from. For me, when it’s nerves or anxiety, it can have this like feeling of doom. There might be some sort of like a constricting feeling, like I have a lot of energy in my body, but it almost feels like constricting in my chest. That’s how it personally shows up for me. Maybe it just feels like if I think about it, it’s like my body wants to roll up into a ball and I’m just like, ah, I just feel so overwhelmed. I want to go into protection mode and it’s just a lot of energy versus excitement. I’m going to feel more expanded. It’s like, I can take a deep breath. I might have all of this energy pulsing throughout my body, but I feel more open rather than this need to contract and hide. So it feels good, but I think it’s, the similarities to me are always like that energy pulsing through. There’s a lot of energy, but I have to notice if it’s expansive or if it’s a constrictive feeling. [LISA] I work with energy. I’m trained in energy healing. So when you use those terms, like expansive, even when I heard the word expansive, it just feels at ease, a calmness in the body. Then when there’s that feeling of overwhelm or constriction, it just feels tight and rigid. HSPs, we often feel that we are perfectionists and it’s hard for us. This was really hard for me to overcome this, but not being perfect and it’s okay to make mistakes. I’m wondering how do you work with that with HSPs with perfectionism? [ALISSA] Oh yes, perfectionism is a big one for sure. I’ve struggled with it as well and still do in various forms. For me, I think a lot of it comes back to, there’s a level of self-compassion we have to have for ourselves, because I think we often hold ourselves to these ridiculously high standards that are impossible to reach because no one is ever going to be perfect. It’s just not feasible. So I think that learning to have compassion for ourselves, and one way I’ve learned to do this is with inner child work and getting more connected with the little girl inside of me and realizing that when I’m really hard on myself and when I’m giving myself a tough time, because it’s like, oh, why didn’t you do that better? Why how could you have messed that up? When I imagine myself saying that to a little girl version of me, that’s inside of me, that doesn’t feel good. I don’t want to talk to myself like that. I know that I’m doing my best and I’m human and I’m not always going to be perfect. So learning to have self-compassion is huge. Beyond that, I think the deeper thing here is like looking at our worthiness and our self-worth. Are we attaching our perfectionism to our worthiness? Are we attaching our worthiness to always achieving all of the things and never making a mistake? Because if we are then the first sign of a mistake is crippling to us. We’re like, oh my gosh, who am I as a human if I can’t do this perfectly? So it’s a pretty layered thing, but those are a couple things I work on with HSPs and continue to do with myself all the time. So I think it’s really important. [LISA] How long does it take Alissa, I’m just curious to understand that little girl, the little boy inside you that is trying to be perfect or maybe trying to meet other people’s needs. As could be like, maybe those are the unspoken needs of our parents, even though we are adults now that we’re maybe replicating some old patterns in our adult lives with our professional relationships, our personal relationships. How long does that take to really get to understand that part of yourself? [ALISSA] I’d say it’s such an ongoing going practice of, it’s really such a practice. So I’m trying to think of when I even started doing that work specifically, maybe four or five years ago, and there’ve certainly been times in my life where I’ve fallen off or forgotten about it, but as soon as I can remember and get back on to thinking in that way and being connected, it’s really, really powerful. I think that just being another, it’s another opportunity to be compassionate with yourself is as you’re trying new modalities of connecting with yourself and self-compassion, like be compassionate with yourself. Know that it will likely take time to implement. I think it will be different for everyone, but I would just say, I’ve been doing this for several years and I still have moments where I fall off, but it’s not really about doing it perfectly every time, but rather noticing when you fall off and then just getting back on and being gentle with yourself. [LISA] If you can give some examples of words or maybe it’s things that you do to honor yourself with self-compassion. [ALISSA] I like reminding myself that no matter what I do, it’s perfect. Whatever I’m able to give in the current moment that I’m in, it’s perfect. I’m doing my best as best as I can in the moment. So when I say it’s perfect, I really just mean it doesn’t have to actually be perfect, just whatever you’re able to give. Whatever you did, it is what it is. That’s something that has helped me. It is what it is. I used to just overthink and be like, really beat myself down, “How could you have made this mistake? How could you have done X, Y, or Z? Or why did you say that? You sounded so dumb.” And now it’s like, I can’t go back and change it. I don’t want to sit and ruin the next few moments of my life because I’m berating myself over this. So instead it’s like, it is what it is. That was how that moment went and that’s okay. We move forward. Again, reminding myself to just be gentle with myself, just seeing that the girl inside of me, I’m just doing my best and some days I’ll stumble and it’s okay, we can get back up. [LISA] I love that. As you’re talking about that and sharing your ideas, I’m just thinking about if a HSP is ruminating a path and get stuck in that rumination about things that they could have done differently. So in the present, the outcome would be different and just talking to yourself with kindness in that you can’t go back and change the past. You did your best at that time with the information that you had. [ALISSA] Absolutely. It’s like that Maya Angelou quote, it’s like, when you know better, you do better. We learn from everything. It happens and then we can move on and there’s no point in sitting on it for too long because it’s not going to change anything. We know that and ruminating can just, it is just a pattern that we’re repeating, but yes, having that awareness really helps. [LISA] What ritual or self-care practice can an HSP do for themselves and, or love or their partner for Valentine’s day or for the month of February to make it extra special? [ALISSA] Ooh. So I love doing a loving kindness meditation. I think the other term for it is meta meditation. Maybe I could be wrong, but basically, and there’s so many of them out there online, but it’s just like first cultivating love for the people in your life, the simple relationships, the relationships of acquaintances and even relationships that are difficult; like cultivating love for all of those relationships in your life and meditating on the love you have for yourself. I think that’s such an incredible gift because it just can soften us. I think so often we’re just moving so fast and we’re so focused on all the things that are wrong and all the things that we need to fix. So when we take some time to just tap into our heart space and cultivating that feeling of love for ourselves and the people in our lives, it just uplifts ourselves and the people around us. It feels good. I think that also, like I touched on, I think just making it a practice to notice more of the things you like about your significant other, rather than only focusing on their areas of improvement that will drastically help relationships. You’ll start to see more of the good when you focus on the good. [LISA] Thank you so much for sharing that. That’s something I’m doing with my partner right now. It’s been a challenge for me to focus more on the positive things and not dwell on the negative things. And that I have to say just doing the work myself and it’s always easy, but to keep practicing and keep cultivating the self-care practices. [ALISSA] I so feel you on that. I’m practicing the same thing. It’s amazing when I just show appreciation for the little things that he does, that I might not have shown appreciation for it. It’s like, I can tell it makes him feel good and then I get the love right back to me because he’s more appreciative. So sometimes we have to be the ones to take the lead on, on that, but it can certainly make a good shift in a relationship. [LISA] It sure can. Then also just putting yourself in their shoes and say, oh yes, that would feel good. Even if I were to receive that, that would feel good. So why not share that with somebody, something positive that they they’ve done or they’re doing. [ALISSA] Absolutely. I don’t know if you’ve talked about the love languages quiz on your podcast, or if you will be, but taking that quiz was something that really helped my partner and I too, because I could learn his love language. He could learn mine. So it helped us even to like give compliments or show love in a more meaningful way to one another, because it just speaks to you more when it’s in your love language specifically. [LISA] That’s a great idea. No, I haven’t talked about that on my podcast, but thank you for that idea and sharing that. Do you want to touch about the five love languages or give like a little recap on them? [ALISSA] Yes. The five love languages are, it’s a quiz you can take online. They are quality time, words of affirmation, physical touch, acts of service. I am blanking on the last one, but I’m sure it’ll come to me. Oh yes. Words of affirmation. I don’t know. I’m blanking on the last one, so I’m not doing a very good job explaining. Someone listening will be like, oh my gosh. But it’s nice because it can rank your love languages with that quiz. Then it helps to know what yours are and what your partners are so that you can show affection in the way that really speaks to you. [LISA] Yes. There’s also the book too, if anyone’s interested in reading the book that explains all the different love languages. I think it gives examples and things to do with your partner, exercises to do. [ALISSA] Oh, I think I thought of, did I say gift giving? If I didn’t, that was the fifth one. [LISA] Yes, that’s it. Yes. [ALISSA] That’s it. Because I’m like that one isn’t mine at all. So I always forget about it. [LISA] What is the most important thing you want listeners to know from our conversation today, Alissa? [ALISSA] I want listeners to know that if you want to have more meaningful relationships in your life, whether it’s romantic or more meaningful friendships that when we can turn it back to ourselves and show ourselves more love and more affection and really show up for ourselves in the way that we want others to show up for us, it really can make such a shift. I think a lot of times we feel frustrated because other people aren’t doing what we wish that they were doing. So if you are feeling frustrated or you are feeling like you don’t have quite the relationships that you want, take a look at yourself and look at the ways that you can be more loving to yourself. Because sometimes just some shifts like we’ve spoken about today can really help you start to cultivate more of that feeling of self-love and compassion. From there, you really can have more of the confidence in the rest of your relationships in your life. It has a really positive ripple effect. [LISA] Where can listeners get in touch with you? [ALISSA] The main way is through my Instagram account, which is at Life by Alissa. There, I share tons of free content for HSPs and I have all of the links to work with me in my bio there. So I would definitely say, go check me out on Instagram. [LISA] Yes. I’ve done that. I’ve checked you out on Instagram and your website. I listened to your podcast and they’re wonderful. [ALISSA] Oh, thank you so much. [LISA] You’re welcome. Do you have a free gift that you’d like to share with the audience? [ALISSA] Yes, I have this guide, I call it the, I forget how I named it, but it’s about explaining being a highly sensitive person to non-HSPs. The reason I created this was because I have so many HSPs reaching out and saying, I don’t know how to explain my sensitivity to my non-HSP partner or parents or friends. So I created this guide. It’s a PDF, you can literally print it out or email it to the person you want to share it with. It just breaks down the trait of sensitivity, gives some information and it helps take some of the pressure off of you to explain it all. So I’m getting really nice feedback about that one. [LISA] Oh, great. I like to check that out myself. All of this information will be in the show notes. So if you missed it look on the show notes and you’ll be able to get that. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Alissa. Thank you so much for all your information and how HSPs can focus on being in love for the month of February. [ALISSA] Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation. Always good to talk about this stuff. [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 visit my website at www.amiokpodcast.com and subscribe to my free eight-week email course to help you navigate your own sensitivities and to 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.