Habits

How to cope with and regulate your emotions as a highly sensitive person

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When people talk about regulating emotions as a highly sensitive person, they often use the pot of water heating up on the stove analogy. In this scenario, by suppressing your emotions it’s like you’re trying to hold down the lid on this boiling pot of water, but eventually the pressure from the steam gets to be too much and it pushes out in a little burst.
I don’t like this analogy though because it seems to only speak to the emotions we typically label as negative. But if we truly want to honour ourselves as a highly sensitive person, then we need to feel all of our emotions.
So instead of thinking of it as a boiling pot of water, I like to think of it as holding onto apples. Find out what I mean in this episode.

Beyond Masculinity and Femininity: Redefining Balance Without Gendered Terms

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A little while ago, a client of mine shared that they were at odds with themselves because they didn’t feel ‘masculine enough’ and that they operated ‘too much in the feminine’ energy. But at the same time, they didn’t want to be caught up in the culture of toxic masculinity either. They noticed that I had a Yin Yang symbol in one of my tattoos and asked what I thought about the idea of finding a balance between the masculine and the feminine.

Because I believe in the power of words, I told them, “Instead of talking about masculine and feminine, let’s talk about the Inner Warrior and the Inner Poet.”

Three Little Birds: The power of changing anxiety what if’s to even if’s

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I’m a few weeks into the Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) for my OCD, which I’ve talked about in the last few posts, so if you’re curious what that’s all about check it out here and here. Basically it’s a way to lean into the anxiety, rather than do something to try and calm it or make it go away.
Turns out this is especially helpful with OCD because my obsessive thoughts only get more and more intense (and creative) the more I try and make the anxiety go away.
It’s been a really interesting learning experience for me for how I manage all of my anxiety, not just the OCD related anxiety, and it really came to a whole new level of clarity for me last week.

What planning my garden teaches me about coping with anxiety

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I know it’s only February and it seems like it’s really early to start thinking about planning a garden, but the truth is in my corner of Canada our growing season is typically really short – like June through the end of August into the beginning of September kind of short. This means that for a more prolific vegetable garden, we have to start planting and growing things inside in the next couple weeks. My mom actually has already started.

As I’m sitting here contemplating the piles of seeds, pots and potting mix I have waiting for me, I’m feeling a TON of anxiety and I’m totally caught up in so many of the what-ifs.

Dealing with Uncertainty – what it’s like living with OCD

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I came to a realization recently that I thought might be helpful to share because it highlighted one of the sneaky ways we can sabotage ourselves. It’s so sneaky because it feels like we’re really just trusting our own intuition and experience – but really it’s just trying to keep everything the same because, to our nervous system, “the same” is safe. But as I’m learning, living with OCD adds a whole other layer of complexity to everything.