Living as a Sensitive Being

Welcome to the Sensitive Being Podcast. Let's begin the conversation around sensitivity. What does it mean to be sensitive? Is it a good thing.... Something that increases your intuition and ability to navigate life in alignment with your true self? Or is it a curse that means you are easily stressed and overwhelmed? What if both is true? Is there a way in which we can cultivate and tone sensitivity to work for us?

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Transcript

00;00;12;05 - 00;00;36;28
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Sensitive Being podcast. I'm Michelle Marsh and on the Kundalini yoga teacher and a Romanized therapist specializing in cultivating and toning sensitivity. Sensitivity is a gift when it's balanced in tune, but when it is highly charged and without toning in control, it can feel unbearable, leading us to act, think and feel in ways which do not align with our true selves.

00;00;37;24 - 00;01;13;15
Speaker 1
The Sensitive Being podcast is here to help you to gain clarity through the synthesized lens of Western medicine, psychology, natural medicine, spirituality and yogic philosophy. I'm so glad you're here. Hello and welcome to Episode one. I am so stoked to be bringing this new podcast to you to teach you about brain a sensitive brain. So in this first episode, that is exactly what we're going to be looking at.

00;01;13;15 - 00;01;35;19
Speaker 1
We're going to be looking at what sensitivity is. Is that good or bad? How do we cultivated? Where does it come from? And I'll say, just going to give you a little hint about where we will be going in the future. So before we get into that, I thought I would introduce myself. In case you don't know me already.

00;01;36;18 - 00;02;07;22
Speaker 1
I live in Perth, Western Australia, with my three beautiful children and one husband, two cats and a dog. And not nearly enough plans, if you ask me. I started I started my working career as a registered nurse. I moved into clinical hypnotherapy and then into live and health coaching before coaching and running a company providing app type services, which means employee assistance program type services.

00;02;08;01 - 00;02;43;06
Speaker 1
And then long story short, I worked hard to fit myself into society's expectations with zero understanding of how my brain and nervous system and myself uniquely works. And I ended up completely burnt out, full of anxiety. I was depressed at times and yeah, you know, the burn out didn't hit overnight. On reflection, there was this 2 to 3 year decline where I really should have reached out for help.

00;02;44;04 - 00;03;37;03
Speaker 1
I didn't know I needed it, though. And yeah, I guess when you're I guess I know when you're dissociated from your emotions and how your body is feeling and when you're really good, as is a hypnotherapist. I was very good at thinking positively. I backdated everything and I really wasn't aware that I was not okay. So eventually, about five years ago, I acknowledged my state of health mentally and physically, and I began my search for my true self, which meant an unraveling of many illusions and beliefs and some damn hard work in the form of of study and facing truth and making big, life changing decisions.

00;03;37;19 - 00;04;17;26
Speaker 1
And here are now my life is completely different. So that synopsis that I'm giving right there is obviously a very quick and concise overview of a massive process. And I'm speaking at, because I know when I have talked about it in the past that it's resonated with a lot of people. And I'm going to draw on my own experience as I go along in the different episodes of this podcast to help illustrate different points about the nervous system and what happens when you're a highly sensitive person as I am.

00;04;18;18 - 00;04;59;12
Speaker 1
So I'll be talking a little bit more about what the highly sensitive trait is in a moment. So I won't go into that too much right now. But it's just worth noting here, you know, based on the experience I was just telling you that I was born a highly sensitive person. And yet at some point within my life, I have shut down or created boundaries within myself and dissociated from my body to a point where I wouldn't have said that I was sensitive at all, that I didn't even know how to cry and or experience heightened emotion and all until I reconnected with my body.

00;04;59;25 - 00;05;33;00
Speaker 1
And so there's a lot of people walking around there in exactly the same way. And this is what we do to ourselves, is as a protective kind of mechanism when when the world is quite painful. So speaking about sensitivity, let's go into it a little bit deeper. What is sensitivity? What does it actually mean? Well, we can talk about it in the sense of our five senses taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight.

00;05;33;17 - 00;06;02;28
Speaker 1
They're the ones we usually think of. Right. There's also many other ones that have been identified by scientists. So we've got an appropriate reception, appropriate proprioception, the perception of a body awareness. Sigh A good way of doing these is that. Close your eyes. Now take take your pinky finger and touch it to your right eyebrow. And did you find your right eyebrow?

00;06;02;29 - 00;06;32;21
Speaker 1
Okay, then that's proprioception. It's it's the the ability to know where different body parts are and to move in that way without using like like your sight. It's just this this knowing of of where your body parts are. And there's also interception as well, which is the perception of sensations from inside the body. So those things include my physical sensations.

00;06;32;21 - 00;07;02;24
Speaker 1
I like your stomach grumbling when you're hungry for food, but it also includes emotions. So obviously all of us are sensitive and some kind of level. So when we're talking about sensitivity, it's not a I am sensitive or I am not. It is like a scale of how sensitive we are. Often times neurodiverse people will understand what sensitive sensitivity is like and at a deep level three lived experience.

00;07;03;06 - 00;07;38;16
Speaker 1
And in saying that a lot of neurodiverse people will also say that it's a it's a bit of a curse and not say much of the benefit because that's the way the Western medical system ten treats it as well. So, you know, how how can we you're treat sensitive how how can we train these so whether it's sensitivity to touch or bright lights or loud things or a combination of everything or maybe your two emotionally sensitive.

00;07;38;25 - 00;08;21;05
Speaker 1
But what I'm hoping is that through what I'm teaching here, I can help you to see the blessing in disguise inside that, I fully acknowledge the pain and frustration that anybody with any type of high sensitivity, whether it's diagnosed or not, the frustration that you have with yourself and with society, I have felt it acutely myself and I also watch my children struggling with that and and, you know, work through it myself is how can I support them as well as supporting myself in this in this sensitivity?

00;08;21;06 - 00;08;44;24
Speaker 1
It is it is quite the journey. But I can guarantee that there is a big gift in that. So I want to tell you about the self sensory system and introduce you to this concept as well. And say the self sensory system is, is from yogic teachings and a developed self sensory system allows us to sense the truth.

00;08;45;24 - 00;09;15;16
Speaker 1
So it's like your intuition, it's where the where your true power lies and everybody has a self sensory system. So again, by time, by cultivating so meaning increasing our sensitivity and as long as it's toned, meaning it's, it's not running amok. And that way we are in control of that. This is where we can tune in to our own guidance.

00;09;15;16 - 00;09;45;29
Speaker 1
It's our intuition. It's it's where we can sense what's coming in the future. It's where we can sense the energy of a room when we just walk into it. So a cultivated self sensory system is obviously like having a superpower in in a manner of speaking. It's really with cultivating that and it's and it's through our body and through our mind that we can we can do these three different practices.

00;09;46;04 - 00;10;19;18
Speaker 1
So high sensitivity or a highly sensitive person from a psychological or a Western medicine point of view is a personality trait or some say, a way of the brain and nervous system functioning that is genetically inherited, basically what it means is that highly sensitive people process things deeper or any kind of sensory input at a deeper level than the average person.

00;10;20;03 - 00;10;52;05
Speaker 1
So I quite often imagine this like a, you know, some kind of sensory input. An input comes into the brain and it's like we have a little person in our brains sorting through the information and filing it away. So with a regular brain, the information comes in and the person glances at it. They read the title, maybe the first paragraph, or they're at the abstract, whatever, whatever the information is in space coming in.

00;10;52;15 - 00;11;15;26
Speaker 1
Oh yeah, that goes over here and kind of puts it over there and it might make a few, few quick connections and, and that's done. And so with more and more stimulus coming in through sight, sound, touch, you know, when, when you're reading things or when I say stimulus, it's literally anything through conversations or just looking around a room and it's all getting filed away quite quickly.

00;11;16;21 - 00;12;01;17
Speaker 1
And then in the highly sensitive brain, what happens is that piece of information, that sensory input comes, comes in and the little filer in there looks at it and doesn't just read the title in the first paragraph to get a gist of what's going on. But raids all of it deeply repetitively, and then wanders around the room looking at other pieces of information to see where there might be some curious connections at a very deep level, not the obvious connections at a title that deep, deep connections somewhere down at around the 5000 word mark or something.

00;12;02;10 - 00;12;31;01
Speaker 1
I'm hoping this makes sense to you. It makes sense in my brain. I can say the pictures. And so eventually that piece of information will get filed away with deep connections. In the meantime, though, other information has been coming in and so it's piling up. And there's now a backlog in the highly sensitive brain. And this obviously then ends up being quite a messy state as information keeps coming in.

00;12;31;17 - 00;12;59;15
Speaker 1
And the the little filer in the the filing person in the highly sensitive brain is trying trying to file things away, but they can't help but read every word and look for all the connections. But what happens is eventually there's all these pieces of sensory information coming in, if you just imagine them as pieces of paper coming in, that the brain just ends up a complete and utter mess.

00;13;00;17 - 00;13;42;02
Speaker 1
And so what ends up happening is there's shut down and there's an inability to connect anything at all. Whereas if the highly sensitive brain have space and time, you can imagine how incredibly powerful that ability to make deep connections is when there's that deep, deep processing. Now, of course, the regular brain can also get overwhelmed as well, and you know that it can happen to everybody, and it does happen to everybody these days, because look at all the information that we've got.

00;13;42;02 - 00;14;14;21
Speaker 1
We've got so much going on that even the little file are failing. Person in the regular brain is getting a backlog of papers stacked up because we just have information overload all the time in our in our daily lives. So in my mind, it actually doesn't matter if you are neurodiverse or a highly sensitive person, ADHD or you have have a regular functioning brain, everybody is getting overwhelmed.

00;14;15;12 - 00;15;07;10
Speaker 1
And the answer to that is that we need to tone our sensitivity. You think about toning the sensitivity, it's training that to work for us and so obviously that's what we're going to be talking more about it before I move on from this highly, highly sensitive person trait, I just wanted to say as well, it's an innate trait, which means that unlike many of the mental health disorders that obviously medically diagnosed quite, quite a lot that are basic based on a set of behaviors or symptoms, and sometimes it's helpful to diagnose things so that you have a starting point to go from or a set of knowledge that you can draw on.

00;15;07;23 - 00;15;41;12
Speaker 1
But this is this is a nightmare trait that can actually be seen in many other species asides from humans. 

00;15;41;20 - 00;16;20;23
Speaker 1
And I just I just really want to say that because it's quite interesting when you look at the highly sensitive trait, which is in around about 20% of the human population. And so they've actually studied it and seen that and witnessed it in over a hundred other species at the same percentage, 20% seem to be highly sensitive, meaning they have this deep processing which usually then comes into a high sensitivity is as part of that as well.

00;16;20;23 - 00;16;51;13
Speaker 1
But the deep processing is the is the main path. So from those studies, what they've learned, what they've come to understand is that high sensitivity is a survival strategy. From an evolution point of view, these 20% of the population makes connections that quite often other people wouldn't wouldn't make, and they're highly creative and quite often hyper vigilant and highly aware of of their surroundings.

00;16;52;05 - 00;17;21;08
Speaker 1
So obviously that works works well and and it helps any species, humans, animals to move into new ways of acting. Or it gets we get to see new and different things. And obviously it's not only highly sensitive people that are born with this trait, that have that ability, this this is just this trade helping in in an evolutionary point of view.

00;17;21;19 - 00;17;50;10
Speaker 1
And so the interesting thing is, is that, you know, from a spiritual point of view, we've come into the Aquarian Age now where there is a massive amount of energy going along. And as a species as a whole, as humans are, are evolving. And we're all becoming naturally more sensitive at that at the moment. And so what they've shown in these studies with these the highly sensitive trait is 20%.

00;17;50;20 - 00;18;27;03
Speaker 1
What happens is if the, the species say humans in this case get more sensitive than the next generation that is born, the 20% that are highly sensitive are going to be even more sensitive and have more ability to deeply process things. So you can see that it keeps evolving. The reason why I'm banging on about these is to is to really show how important it is to to be aware of sensitivity and to and to nurture them.

00;18;27;18 - 00;18;57;06
Speaker 1
Because obviously, the more sensitive we are, the more gifts we can obtain from that. But we're also putting ourselves at risk because the more sensitive you are, the more open you are, the more deeply processing you are, the more at risk of trauma you are as well. Trauma being the the damage inflicted from from any kind of stimuli at all.

00;18;57;06 - 00;19;23;22
Speaker 1
So it's it's the wounding trauma is the wounding itself. And so yet there there's a there's a risk benefit ratio that is, you know, one is one is as great a potential is as the other one that we really need to be aware of. So is a really good or bad to be sensitive. I'm saying that we are becoming more sensitive anyways, all of us.

00;19;24;11 - 00;19;59;04
Speaker 1
But if you had a magic wand, would you want to magic that away and just not be sensitive? Let's have a look at it in two ways. There's sensitivity when you're aligned and then there is dysregulated sensitivity as well. So if you are aligned and sensitive and aligned sensitive brain, then you are greatly intuitive. You will have a sense of inner strength and stability.

00;20;00;05 - 00;20;33;10
Speaker 1
You'll be focused, you'll have strong boundaries, you'll have this sensitive awareness of what is going on around you. You want to feel empathic and healthy and you're going to be living purposefully. So that is all of the gift that comes with being an aligned, sensitive. But what about dysregulated sensitivity? What happens in we've talked about a little bit already, but you can feel overwhelmed.

00;20;33;10 - 00;21;13;23
Speaker 1
Fatigued. I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue when I was just 19 years old, having no idea why shut down burnout, extreme emotions or no emotions at all. Scattered or fuzzy mind, depressed, anxious social avoidance. I have been there to difficulty keeping a normal job pain prone to infections and poor health memory problems, nervous flexion, nervous system fry or dysfunction.

00;21;14;18 - 00;21;40;26
Speaker 1
And like I said earlier, high risk of trauma. So I can very much point out I could and I won't right now, point out, you know, all the different times where I have experienced those through my life. And what was frustrating up until knowing that my my brain functioned in a different way was that I just thought I was really defective.

00;21;41;25 - 00;22;05;29
Speaker 1
And I thought something was wrong with me. I thought that I was I was weak. I remember saying to my husband when we went, we were we were just dating at the time. And, you know, I was nursing and I had friends that would work full time and they throw in the odd night shift here and there, you know, for extra money.

00;22;05;29 - 00;22;28;02
Speaker 1
And then they'd party hard and still be out the next day doing stuff. And, you know, I was just kind of flopping and failing all the time. Half the time I'd have to call in sick to work. And I had no idea. I just thought I was pathetic. And at the same time, you know, I'm trying to eat while I'm trying to all the same things, right?

00;22;28;18 - 00;23;06;23
Speaker 1
Meditating. And I couldn't understand why I when I was looking after myself, why they seem to have more energy than me and they didn't need as much downtime and hibernation time as me. You know, that's why it's so important for this education and this understanding of how the nervous system works and how neurodiverse we all are. We're all somewhere on a sliding scale of things and giving that understanding to each other then to say, you're not you're not dysfunctional.

00;23;07;05 - 00;23;26;29
Speaker 1
There's nothing wrong with you. Your body and your mind and your brain just works in a different way. And this is what would be good for you, because when you learn all of that and you get your practices in the right way and you actually truly nurture yourself because what I was thought was self care back then was not.

00;23;27;12 - 00;23;59;16
Speaker 1
And that's another episode as well. And now that I truly know what self-care is and what I what I require for my brain and my unique body, now I have an abundance of energy. Now my mind is clear most of the time. And now, now I am living that purposeful life. I am that aligned, sensitive person the majority of the time, and that disregulation still comes in every now and then.

00;23;59;29 - 00;24;31;10
Speaker 1
But you know, it's an 80, 20 or 9010 kind of existence and that is pretty magnificent if you ask me. So you're probably wondering now how do we cultivate and tone our sensitivity? How do we get our sensitivity? If you feel like it's not heightened at the moment or there's areas you would like to cultivate how to improve it, but how do we do that in a way where it's where it's toned and it's not out of control?

00;24;31;11 - 00;25;02;10
Speaker 1
Because we don't want to be highly sensitive and disregulated, I should probably say as well, what happens when we're not sensitive at all is flying blind. You're not going to have that intuitive sense. You're not going to feel empathy and compassion for for animals or other people. You're going to struggle to connect in relationships. It's it's a rather shut down existence.

00;25;02;10 - 00;25;33;09
Speaker 1
It's the same as where disregulated, disregulated, sensitivity goes to. Is that shut down? It's a it you end up quiet, avoidant, unable to feel or experience emotion. And yeah, that may mean that you're not feeling sad or anxious, but it also means you don't get to feel joyful and alive and fulfilled. It's a really mundane kind of way to live.

00;25;33;09 - 00;26;02;20
Speaker 1
And and when I say mundane, I don't mean in the sense that it's not good to live in this world because these and be embodied, because it's all about being embodied in this world. There's so much in our mundane world, but it's a closed off existence. It's working 9 to 5 and then coming home and eating dinner and going to sleep and getting up and doing it all over again and not really feeling anything about it.

00;26;04;02 - 00;26;36;12
Speaker 1
And I don't know about you, but that does not excite me. No, that's not what I want from life. So back to how do we cultivate and China sensitivity? So we align sensitive. This comes into a few different points. It's about self-identity. Now, knowing yourself, it's about nervous system and glandular regulation and tightening from a very physical point of view as well.

00;26;36;21 - 00;27;11;20
Speaker 1
So there's the the mental and spiritual work with integrating and releasing subconscious habits and patterns and karma. But there's also the physical work that needs to be done on the nervous system and the glandular system as well. And so that's a huge topic. A huge topic. So we're going to delve into that in episode three. In episode two, which is going to look a little bit deeper into why it's worth cultivating and tightening sensitivity.

00;27;11;20 - 00;27;32;27
Speaker 1
So we've touched on it a little bit today, but we Kingi We can go deeper into understanding that and it's worth understanding it and a deeper point of view. So you know why it's worth doing the work to cultivate in time. So before I close off, I also just wanted to just go into a little bit about where sensitivity comes from.

00;27;33;07 - 00;28;06;23
Speaker 1
So obviously there are those that are highly sensitive that are born with the trait. But as I've indicated, our brains are plastic. So that means that all of us is changeable. Everything about the way our brains function and nervous system functions, every cell in our body, it's all plastic. That means it's changeable, it's malleable. And so if you're not in that 20% that you were born with that trait, it can be cultivated through personal development things like Kundalini yoga, meditation.

00;28;07;08 - 00;28;43;05
Speaker 1
You can cultivate your sensitivity and go into being that type of person that functions in that way, a sensitive person. It can also be a spontaneous awakening so that that can be a spiritual awakening, but it can also occur through trauma as well. And obviously, when spontaneous, there is a lot more risk involved versus when you decide, I'm going to cultivate this because as you're cultivating, you're also toning.

00;28;43;05 - 00;29;18;17
Speaker 1
And toning is where the boundaries are so that your your nervous system can cope with the sensitivity level of sensitivity that you are going to. Whereas if it's spontaneous, quite often they're highly sensitive people to people born with the trade itself, it's more of that spontaneous way. So the high sensitivity is there, but it's not toned. The nervous system is is not at a capacity to be able to hold that.

00;29;18;26 - 00;30;14;16
Speaker 1
And that's where all the problems come in. So I'm going to sign off now and say thank you very much for listening to Episode one. Please get in contact if you would like to share your thoughts or feelings with me at all. You can find me on social media at Aroma and I says You can also visit my website at WW dot a roman ss dot com w a Roman SS is spelled ar0 and a in a s i s have an absolutely beautiful day and see you next time.