I've been wanting to do a video like this for a while, about discussing thoughts that bridge the Highly Sensitive Person, with childhood trauma, and how trauma might specifically impact a Highly Sensitive Person, who's also known as a HSP. But first, there's something I notice in my work, that might be relevant to the Highly Sensitive Person. If you've looked into that, if you guys know what that is; with all my clients, whether it's in individual or in group work, I have them put together a genogram, which is an exercise I talk about in nearly all my videos. And a genogram, specifically the way that I do them, is your family tree of dysfunction and abuse; to help clients get a better sense about where our trauma comes from. Doing one connects the dots about how bad it was, where your triggers and where your stuck places might come from, and we start to uncover ourselves through doing one of these exercises. And one of the things I've noticed is that with clients who are drawn to this work, or want to make sense about what happened to them, and process their family. They tend to not fit into the rest of that family system that they come from, and the genogram gives us a visual on those differences. Like the person doing the genogram is usually the only person in the family who would ever do such an exercise of looking into the whole system in a deeper way; when it comes to mental health issues, trauma and abuse, and sort of all the dark stuff. A quality of being a Highly Sensitive Person is depth of processing emotions, and we'll come back to that later in the video. In addition, the overwhelming majority of my clients, are the only people in both their extended family and their nuclear family- genogram is three generations- that will make use of therapy or seek out trauma work, specifically. The only one in the whole system, the sole member of the family who's trying to either explore, or address or become aware of the issues or try to deal with them, not just in the nuclear family again, but in the extended family as well. I think I've seen about 500 genograms since starting my practice in around 2013. And in all of those genograms, I'd say less than 5% of my clients doing them, had a family member who was working on themselves in some kind of way, in some kind of therapeutic work. Approximately let's say 15 to 25 out of 500 had a fellow family member who was doing some kind of work, whether that's working on sobriety, or therapy, or self growth in some way. Despite that minority, I've actually been blessed to have about four clients ask me to work with their siblings, and that's always a gift to see two siblings, both be available to, and want to work and heal together in some way on their family stuff.
I'm not doing that in family therapy, they're just doing individual or group work with me. And that is extremely rare for abusive family systems, to have more than one person wanting to work on this stuff, or even connect around it. So let's hold on to that potential stat, that approximately 95% of my clients are the only family member seeking help, out of their childhood trauma, or wanting growth and change through therapy. That percentage is most likely higher than the 95%. Why I discuss all this is, I'm curious about what would be the tendency for that one sole family member that they might be a Highly Sensitive Person. What is it about that client coming from these systems, just like the one that I grew up in, that makes them want to explore this stuff? Here's a few questions for you, and to think through, through the course of this video. Are you the only one in your family looking at this stuff, or at least curious about whether your family system is healthy or not? Does anyone else in your family system, do they pop onto YouTube and look at videos about childhood trauma or mental health? It's okay if you may not know, but just like siblings, parents, are they doing that kind of stuff? Or another way to reflect is to ask, how does the rest of your family deal with their feelings? Things like, do they do that through drama or conflict, or repression or substances or control, or certain ideologies or workaholism or their image? Do you not fit into that family system? Are you the odd duck in some way? What is it about you that makes you different emotionally than them? I think the lens of looking at the Highly Sensitive Person traits might be helpful to you, as we think about those questions. So about the Highly Sensitive Person, Dr. Elaine Aron who gave us the idea, and the research behind the Highly Sensitive Person, came up with a very helpful acronym, which is known as DOES, and it gives us a framework for what it means to be an HSP. The D stands for depth of processing. The O stands for overly stimulated. The E stands for emotional responsiveness, and the S stands for subtleties, sensory and stimuli, meaning the person picks up on things. What fascinates me about the HSP is that 15% to 20% of the population has that trait, and by trait, I mean a genetic disposition, not unlike having brown eyes or blue eyes. So it's a nature thing. And it's also interesting that there's a question in Aron's research, that is about what does the trait do for us as a species from an evolutionary standpoint, to have survived all those years, throughout all those sort of...the human story that this trait has survived, and then it only exists in 15% to 20% of us. So let's go into that acronym a little bit more.
Like all traits and symptoms, I like to think about them on a scale or on a spectrum. Some of you might relate to these strongly, in an intense way. Some of you might be a little bit. Some of you might be in between. So, in the 'DOES' acronym, the depth of processing, it makes me think about, like a tendency of seeking meaning through things like music, or art or therapy, exploring something deeper. HSPs also tend to have a very deep, rich, internal world going on. HSPs think deeply on what's going on around them. You might not like flat emotional responses from others, and you might want to understand more than others kind of might just take at face value, so that's the depth of processing. The 'O' - overstimulated, like say no more. I have about a two hour window. I identify as HSP, and I have about a two hour window at a party, before I kind of want to go. like that's my window of tolerance, or goodness with it. And you might get somewhat drained at say like a chaotic kids party or a busy situation, like going to watch the ball drop in Times Square. Like, why would anyone want to do that? The HSP really might not like large crowds, large gatherings. Moving on to the 'E' is - emotional responsiveness or reactivity. We can be really aware of other people's emotions, on a scale of being aware- just of being aware to being consumed by other people's emotions. HSPs also feel their emotions more intensely, and they may be overly run by their emotions, which we will come back later. And lastly, the 'S' is subtleties and sensory, is, a favorite description that I think comes from Dr. Elaine Aaron, is, an HSP will notice that there's the sun coming in from a window, and the sun's in your eyes, and an HSP will go over and close the blinds. And I thought that was like really sort of interesting... I identify with that... it tells you about a) is that the person is really aware where others might not be aware of what's going on and that they have this sort of like, forward thought, to almost be empathically connecting with the person - like 'oh, you must be uncomfortable in that way'. Try not to think about that as being like, morally superior, compared to other people. It's just a trait that we have, which is something I'm going to come back to later. And related to that, a lot of my clients will notice if I move a plant. A lot of my clients, a lot of the people who tend to watch my videos a lot, 'What happened to the pillow in the last video?' 'Why did you have the gold pillows stacked like that?' Just things that they noticed. It makes me think about there's an observing, that comes with being an HSP. To understand more, here are some questions in Dr. Elaine Aron's 'Are you Sensitive?' quiz. Here are some of the questions that stood out to me.
The first is: I seem to be aware of subtleties in my environment; (much like the example that I just gave). Another is: I am bothered by intense stimuli, like loud noises or chaotic scenes. Another is: I make it a point to avoid violent movies and TV shows. Another is: when people are uncomfortable in a physical environment, I tend to know what needs to be done to make it more comfortable, like changing the lighting or the seating. Another is: I'm deeply moved by the arts or music. Another is: other people's moods affect me. And those are just a few. Some of those traits, and again, think of those traits on a scale or a spectrum of intensity. Some additional traits are HSPs tend to be highly empathic. They tend to need time to reflect. They tend to have difficulty with change. They tend to be overly stimulated. They tend to be aware of the needs of others. They tend to seek meaning or seek purpose in things. They tend to be detail oriented or solution focused. They tend to take things very personally. They tend to have difficulty making decisions, or they may need to take more time to do so. And also the last one is, they need to have alot of downtime or solo time, which is true for me. So imagine being an HSP kid in a shutdown family, like an emotionally shutdown family or a chaotic family, or a physically or a sexually violent family. I often felt like an alien in my own family, and looking into what an HSP means, is helpful for that perspective, whether it's sort of: 'is it us, or are we in the wrong place at the wrong time?' 'Are we an alien' like all that stuff that comes with childhood trauma. My own noticing throughout my life as an HSP, which I'm just still learning about, that concept is still pretty new to me, is being painfully aware of how others don't feel as much as I might have in a given moment, or that they don't take interest in the emotional content of the art, or the music or the history that I'm into. Like, I'm the guy who's like, 'can you believe that this historical figure went through all this stuff in their life and the arc and the impact they had on the world'... and blah, blah, blah. And a non HSP would be like 'mmmm'. In the past, I would have taken that disinterest like, really personally, or that would have really affected me. and I would have felt like more of an alien that's just like a little micro thing, that I kind of noticed throughout the years. And being an HSP has benefits and challenges. And I'm not saying, and I repeat, I'm not saying, that the HSP is a better person than the non HSP, who is like, cool beans on that historical figure. And we'll come back to that later, later in the video.
Some other HSP notes- HSP often gets construed with being shy, or labeled negatively as being sensitive, or not thick skinned enough. Another is, it should not be construed as solely introverted, or labeled as highly neurotic, or solely seen as being anxious. 15% to 20% of the population - equal men and women, and of that 15% to 20%, 30% of that number is an extroverted HSP. So it's kind of a big soup of things going on there. So, now let's look at the HSP and the abusive family system. For those born with this trait, and growing up in childhood trauma, I think the dysfunctional family system maximizes the volume on those traits that I just listed earlier. That system becomes the environment that the HSP child, and the non HSP child have to develop in. So we have a nature based trait, being affected by a nurture issue. From what I see in my client's genograms, as well as my own family system growing up, the abusive family system can often display the following traits- where emotions aren't safe, as toughness and survival, or protecting the most abusive person comes first. And that can be an aggressive shoot down of emotions and feelings, to a passive ignoring them through child neglect. Another is, scapegoated children serve a purpose in the toxic family system, and I might do a whole separate video on this, meaning scapegoats conveniently distract from the real problems, namely in the abusive parents or the abusive siblings. And that makes me think if you've ever heard of the book or the play or the movie 'Matilda', you'll know what I mean by all that, by that scapegoating. Abusive family systems tend to not be child-centered, where child development isn't the main focus. Like why have kids, if that's not going to be the focus? And abusive parents also see their children as fixed, abusive roles that don't change. They have a narrative about you that doesn't change, for the years or the decades. This is where most of the abuse conflict come from, and this will look like: 'why can't you be like your brother?' Which is comparison. Another is, you're supposed to take care of me, not me take care of you; which is parentification. Another is, 'you're like me, not like your loser mother or your father' - - triangulation. Another is, you don't deserve justice or to be seen for who you are, which is oppression. Another is, you're supposed to rescue us, not be your own person. Which is manipulation and identity issues.
And the last is 'you're a burden', which is emotional abuse, even for non HSP children, this is a nightmare. Incidentally, I plan on doing a separate video about why siblings can cope so differently from one another, which is really usually the case. It's on my list of videos to do. You might have siblings that are totally different from how they cope or how they think about what happened in the same system that you guys grew up in. But for HSPs who feel deeply, get highly activated, and get overwhelmed, and they notice what's needed or is missing emotionally in their family system; along with all the sensory stuff, like a parent who drinks or smokes. It's a louder nightmare. I remember having a client telling me that they were raised by an abusive alcoholic grandparent, who would chain smoke and blast Yanni at like 1am, while the kid was sleeping. And this might overly rattle an HSP, more than another family member, who just might see it as annoying, or annoying and they just try to ignore it. Hope that makes sense. Or perhaps for the HSP there's a narcissistic or socially off parent who is weird or is aggressive with neighbors, or someone in the community. And I think an HSP child is going to feel the embarrassment for that person affected by the parent. They might even feel the embarrassment for the parent, but not so much be focused on themselves. It's often like an HSP will kind of hold all the emotional tension in the family or be aware of it. HSPs are highly empathic, but I'm not specifically pointing to them being empaths. That's also for another video down the road. So let's do a hypothetical case. And you guys know how much I like doing those! Let's say you're born HSP and you grew up in a family system that is both chaotic and anti-love. These are overly simplified genograms, from my 'Seven types of toxic family systems' video and let's say the abuse is around neglect, not being protected from perpetrators, contempt, instability, being parentified, physical abuse and zero affection, and having a strong abuse narrative that you shouldn't need what other kids need, or you shouldn't have any needs at all. I think the impact of that on an HSP child would look like the following: HSP children, I think, tend to do all the feeling, or hold all the intensity in the family system, because nobody else is. Where the other members might be just too busy coping or repressing. An HSP may intensely feel the sadness of the contempt in the parental marriage. They may intensely feel or be aware of the sibling's lost feelings, or the siblings kind of destruction path.
And also an HSP child will often get construed as being weak or odd or too sensitive, by the way that they feel all these things in the family. And often in chaotic family systems, they are in survival mode, due to poverty or substance abuse or just mental health chaos. And an HSP in that system might hold the awareness, or hold the space of the family's feelings, while the family members just kind of repress it or cope it away. They may also intensely hold all the shame of that, conscious or not. Children growing up in this who are HSP, are still kids. I'm not saying that they're all extremely emotionally mature or sage-like, in these families. I'm saying that they feel, notice and take in all this stuff, but they're most likely not conscious of all what it means like an adult would. And again, I think a system like this would be a nightmare for any child. But, for a child with the traits of an HSP, they might experience it differently, or more intensely. I think it's louder for an HSP child, louder about your parents off marriage, than say to your sibling, or how your sibling sees it. Louder about your sibling's personal abuse, how they're growing up, when they might be minimizing it or being oblivious to it. It might be louder being in a school system that is abusive in a similar way to your own family system, like louder for the HSP kid, and louder in the horrific ways people in your family or otherwise treat each other. I think that that's what I mean when I mean feeling like you're an alien in your own family or in your own community. I often give the example of pets in an abusive toxic system. Let's just say like the dog passes away and no one feels much, all but for maybe one family member. And I remember being about (as a side story), I remember being about seven or eight years old, and swimming in this kind of like low grade motel, that my mother would take us to, because she could drink there, and kids would swim and mom could sit at the bar. And it's the 80s and I remember these two guys they might have been in their 20s or 30s. If you think like mullets and they drive Trans Ams, it's kind of like a Cobra Kai kind of vibe going on. They were at the bar near the pool, and the motel had this tan cat that lived in the motel, and the two guys thought it would be funny one day to try to light the cat's fur on fire with a bic lighter. And I remember this protective rage popping up, and I wasn't like this normally, and I just sort of splashed them. I probably got the cat too, which stopped them. And they just went back to their drinks, half knowing that they were really probably being off and that a kid just chastised them.
And that memory is interesting to me, because many of the adults might not have even noticed, or felt the need to act, or worse, thought it might have been funny. And why I bring that up, is not so much for the moral superiority of it, but to the point that if you're an HSP, a lot of the trauma is, as it was for me, is being so aware of how different you were, compared to the family or the community, who seemed to be totally unaffected with violence or maltreatment or whatever. You might have thought at some point that it might have been easier to be that unaffected, like them, due to the loudness of these traits. So now let's move on to what to do about it. What to do about this HSP thing? Coming back to that one person on the genogram idea, as an HSP you're born this way, just like the Lady Gaga song. I'm trying to stay relevant here! It's a genetic trait, but what does it mean for us, for those who grew up in childhood trauma and abuse? Dr. Elaine Aron states that the HSPs with difficult childhoods are more susceptible to depression and anxiety than, say, a non HSP. But HSPs with good enough childhoods, were no more at risk than others. In short is HSPs are already susceptible to low levels of serotonin, with stress reducing those levels further. However, the genetic variation of the HSP, related to those serotonin levels, may have a higher ability to be resilient. They may have a higher level of being able to engage in leadership or have potential greater capacity for things like absorbing learned material, capacity for improved mental health quality of life, and better decision making. The good news about being an HSP is that you feel deeply, but that's also the bad news. If you're identifying with being an HSP, and if you also identify with experiencing childhood trauma or c-PTSD, here are some recovery ideas in context of the trauma work that I do. I think as childhood trauma survivors, we have to reclaim our identity as it got damaged in the systems that we grew up in. Our families, indirectly or directly, told us that we were inferior, not worth it, not with it, selfish, and it all got twisted around. The greatest gift that I received in my recovery from childhood trauma was finding out who I really am, and embracing that with the help of really good people. I think exploring the HSP factor is helpful if you resonate with these traits. As it's such a stark difference, from what the toxic family system says about these traits. So as a recovery idea or sort of journaling prompt or whatever, here's the first one, is what I call 'keep doing work'. In my own experience, the more trauma work that I did, the volume of this stuff went down.
I think our childhood trauma, the unfinished business, the grief, the rage, the identity issues, the unfinished stories, the abandonment, makes our inherent HSP louder, and more difficult to manage. An example of that that I give, is I couldn't meditate, until I actually worked on my childhood trauma first. So there's just a lot of noise with this stuff, that happens, that gets in the way, I think of our sort of functioning, or what we want from life, doing more therapy work and inner child work specifically, I think, boundaries, practicing boundaries, self-care, creating good community, and processing our trauma with someone, turns the HSP volume knob down. I'd say that after 25 years of being in recovery, I'd like to think that the noise has been turned down for me, from say, like a ten to a two. It means I still feel things deeply. It means that I still sense things deeply. I don't really like noisy restaurants or how my microwave beeps. Like let's not get into how loud those f-ing things are! And most of my life is very, very, very manageable. However, when I started my therapy work, I felt like I was a raw, exposed nerve with these traits. We have a larger window of tolerance, after processing our trauma in a good enough way. And I know it'll sound odd, but I like to think about- imagine what your life would be like if we had drained our childhood trauma, where all that stuff is just kind of gone from our system in a good enough way. So that's the first one, a plug for keep doing your trauma work to turn down the noise of these traits. Let's move on to the next one. I really love this one. This one is very powerful, is to reframe who you are. In another trauma work, it might be known as sort of reclaiming Hero's Journey. This one is about identity, to reframe what it means to be sensitive, to do some writing about: what was your family systems narrative about you? Was it that you couldn't handle the sibling rivalry, when it was actually abuse. That you were too sensitive about, sort of how chaotic or messed up or repressed in the family when you might have been the only person calling it out? What might they say about what kind of kid you were? So get that... do some writing around.... like what that sort of story is. Were you actually having appropriate responses to the abuse, that got construed as being overly sensitive? Did they describe you as the odd one? Does the family make fun of you for wanting the family to be more civil, or to be more connected? Once that is done, again you write how being different from your family is a positive thing. Think of yourself as like a juggernaut leaving and overcoming the emotionally off system. It's healthier, and I think more whole, to feel and process your feelings.
That's what gets people unstuck, emotions you feel in your body, give you sort of a flow to your life. That's what they're there for, and it's a gift to still be empathic in this world. It says you're alive. It tells you you're awake, and chances are because of that gift, you can create a more emotionally connected, and emotionally intimate life, where they might not have been able to do. Also, being born the way you are is a gift. You don't even need to create or build a case, for how you have the right to exist, or that you're a good person. So it's your identity and you get to embrace it, and you get to describe it, not toxic people. It's also very affirming to value emotions, to value awareness, to value sensitivity, as opposed to what our family's values are. They tend to be valuing compliance, to be anonymous or they value manipulation, or they may value superiority or whatever. So that's the second one, is to reframe your identity. Moving on to the last one, number three, is to learn to have some mastery over the traits, and I know mastery is a big word, but I like to set the bar high in ideals and goals. You can call me idealistic, that's fine. I think the journey of an HSP is to not just to deeply know themselves, but to work with, and have some control over, the traits rather than be ruled by those traits. I know that that's a tall order, but it might look like the following: You continue to find ways to do the trauma work, and turn down the volume. This is a big one- to work on the issues of codependency and hypervigilance about other people's feelings. This involves boundaries- emotional boundaries and mental boundaries. Embrace the self-care ideas. Like my favorite example is your partner wants to spend a week with friends or family, when you only have a four day window, at best, that you can kind of manage, and self-care is to advocate less than a week. Another is to commit to handling intimacy, by being more present, instead of being so activated. Another is to embrace what your feelings are telling you, instead of being ruled by them. And last one, a big one here, is to have a practice of not feeling so much for others, and you can notice the sun in someone's eyes, but you let them close the blinds, you let them come to those conclusions. And my final thoughts lastly is, I think it needs to be said that we need to see our traits as just different from others, not superior. Just because we're HSP doesn't make us wonderfully aware or conscious of people, 24/7, that's a misnomer. Also, this is a pet peeve of mine, often in the current healing culture that is out there, There's a lot of egoic identification that goes on with these traits.
For example, I really don't like it when personalities need to sell you on, or make such a point that they're an empath, or describe themselves as a special Myers Briggs test result upfront. There's nothing wrong with being an empath, but I take issue with it being too special. It seems egoic, and somewhat maybe fabricated, to me. And sometimes I wonder if people who are overly identifying with this stuff, or being overly identifying with being an empath, are confusing their trauma based, hypervigilance and codependency with those traits. And I really don't mean to slight anybody. I just don't like it when these qualities are used as marketing, or self-promotion or their sole identification. Turning these traits into a superpower, kind of diminishes the humanity of these traits. So there's that, and I think we need to be sober and just embrace these traits as being different, but not better or worse. I know it sounds like a contradiction from what I said in that idea number two, but here is some food for thought - reframing our HSP identity, out of our trauma identity, is different, than taking the ball and running with it. Another issue is non HSPs feel and process differently. They don't have to process like we do. It's not a better or worse and a non HSP can be seen as gifted too, in the ways that they may be able to focus, or they might be able to be less emotionally distracted in their life. HSPs can also be abusive. It's not like we fall into this angelic category. We might have had HSP parents who are greatly dysregulated and their being HSP could factor in your own sort of childhood trauma and abuse. I hope that this video was helpful, and I hope viewers are able to reframe and reclaim those traits, compared to what the abusive family system says about them or says about you. If you like this video about an issue like HSP, compared with, and included within, the childhood trauma stuff, I'd like to know if you guys would like to see more videos like this, that can include things like spectrum issues, or ADHD, and including those issues with the trauma story underneath. Often humans are wired for black and white thinking, is what I see; when we talk about diagnosis, we tend to only list or explain someone as either being ADHD, or on the spectrum, without including the childhood trauma story that happens underneath all that stuff. For example, many ADHD symptoms can overlap with childhood trauma systems, and it can be both. But I'm just saying, I don't think it's good when we just try to see it as one thing, and one thing only. It can be more than one issue, and not to glump issues, but to include someone's story with the issues, like we did with the highly sensitive person here. So as always: May you be filled with loving kindness. May you be well. May you be peaceful and at ease. And may you be joyous. And I will see you next time.
