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Picture of Katy
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Hi there,

Haven't been here for a few days.. but see you are talking about HSP and came up with some interesting things, which I want to read when I can concentrate better. Really going thru a rough time. Can I ask for your prayers again? Thanks.

Katy
 
Posts: 538 | Location: Sarasota, Florida | Registered: 17 November 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Hey Brad, Phil, JohnBoy and others,

Thanks for keeping my HSP thread warm.. I do want to get back to that, but for now I'd like to know what your Myers Briggs type is... to help me put together the pieces of the "puzzle" :-)

I am an INFJ.

Thanks,
Katy
 
Posts: 538 | Location: Sarasota, Florida | Registered: 17 November 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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[QUOTE]your Myers Briggs type is...[QUOTE]

I don't remember. Perhaps you can forward me to a place on the web where this test is given.

Also, hope you've been well of late.
 
Posts: 5413 | Location: Washington State | Registered: 21 September 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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INTJ here, Katy.
Suspecting Brad is the same, as I recall from a discussion we once had on the forum about this.
JB is INTP.
w.c. - don't recall him ever saying. Perhaps he'll share.

And you?
 
Posts: 7539 | Location: Wichita, KS | Registered: 09 August 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Further thoughts on Highly Sensitive People:

I believe I come from a lineage of highly sensitive people. I see it at work. I don't believe it's just a shame-based reaction. I don't believe it's just a lack of confidence or self-esteem. These, and other things, could all play some part, but I believe that some people just have brains that are more "active" in their idle state. It's a type of hypersensitivity. This hypersensitivity, while painful at times, is also a great asset � particularly for the artist or writer. It can be, as I see it, a kind of higher level on consciousness, although I recognize also that it seems to have a blinding effect in other areas.

I also suppose that a great deal of the "highly sensitive" part of the equation could come from being too concerned (manically at times) with wanting to control all the events around us. Life never seems to settle because life is always in motion and we can never, ever find a comfort zone no matter how passionately we try to construct stability into our environment. We end up being totally controlled by outside events in our attempt to over-control them. Thus I wonder if some HSP's might benefit from a more Buddhist-like approach to life (or certainly a Christian one would do nicely if one sees one's life in God's hands). If one recognized that life is change we might quiet our brains a bit if we could learn to let more stuff roll off us like water off a duck's back. In a very real sense, it's "giving in" or surrendering in order to get to the authentic parts of one's life that aren't merely instinctive reactions to outside events. Probably the hardest thing involved in this is getting rid (or reducing) others' expectations of us. It also might require a good dose of imagination and even humor as we notice our ever-active brains trying to create problems where none exist.
 
Posts: 5413 | Location: Washington State | Registered: 21 September 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Picture of Katy
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quote:
Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
[qb] [QUOTE]your Myers Briggs type is...[QUOTE]

I don't remember. Perhaps you can forward me to a place on the web where this test is given.
Also, hope you've been well of late. [/qb]
Hi Brad,

This link should take you to the Myers Briggs Test:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm
I am hanging in there; thanks for asking.

Katy
 
Posts: 538 | Location: Sarasota, Florida | Registered: 17 November 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
[qb] Further thoughts on Highly Sensitive People:

I believe I come from a lineage of highly sensitive people. I see it at work. I don't believe it's just a shame-based reaction. I don't believe it's just a lack of confidence or self-esteem. These, and other things, could all play some part, but I believe that some people just have brains that are more "active" in their idle state. It's a type of hypersensitivity. This hypersensitivity, while painful at times, is also a great asset � particularly for the artist or writer. It can be, as I see it, a kind of higher level on consciousness, although I recognize also that it seems to have a blinding effect in other areas.

I also suppose that a great deal of the "highly sensitive" part of the equation could come from being too concerned (manically at times) with wanting to control all the events around us. Life never seems to settle because life is always in motion and we can never, ever find a comfort zone no matter how passionately we try to construct stability into our environment. We end up being totally controlled by outside events in our attempt to over-control them. Thus I wonder if some HSP's might benefit from a more Buddhist-like approach to life (or certainly a Christian one would do nicely if one sees one's life in God's hands). If one recognized that life is change we might quiet our brains a bit if we could learn to let more stuff roll off us like water off a duck's back. In a very real sense, it's "giving in" or surrendering in order to get to the authentic parts of one's life that aren't merely instinctive reactions to outside events. Probably the hardest thing involved in this is getting rid (or reducing) others' expectations of us. It also might require a good dose of imagination and even humor as we notice our ever-active brains trying to create problems where none exist. [/qb]
Brad, Don't know if you went to the "official" HSP site, Dr. Elaine Arons site www.hsperson.com, but here is how she defines HSPs:
"If you find you are a highly sensitive person, or your child is, then you need to be aware of the following points:

This trait is normal--it is inherited by 15 to 20% of the population, and indeed the same percentage seems to be present in all higher animals.
Being an HSP means your nervous system is more sensitive to subtleties. Your sight, hearing, and sense of smell are not necessarily keener (although they may be). But your brain processes information and reflects on it more deeply.
Being an HSP also means, necessarily, that you are more easily overstimulated, stressed out, overwhelmed.
This trait is not something new I discovered--it has been mislabeled as shyness (not an inherited trait), introversion (30% of HSPs are actually extraverts), inhibitedness, fearfulness, and the like. HSPs can be these, but none of these are the fundamental trait they have inherited.
The reason for these negative misnomers and general lack of research on the subject is that in this culture being tough and outgoing is the preferred or ideal personality--not high sensitivity. (Therefore in the past the research focus has been on sensitivity's potential negative impact on sociability and boldness, not the phenomenon itself or its purpose.) This cultural bias affects HSPs as much as their trait affects them, as I am sure you realize. Even those who loved you probably told you, "don't be so sensitive," making you feel abnormal when in fact you could do nothing about it and it is not abnormal at all.
The book The Highly Sensitive Person is a general introduction to the topic. It has now sold well over 300,000 in thirty-five printings, including in French, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese and Greek."

Katy
 
Posts: 538 | Location: Sarasota, Florida | Registered: 17 November 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by Phil:
[qb] INTJ here, Katy.
Suspecting Brad is the same, as I recall from a discussion we once had on the forum about this.
JB is INTP.
w.c. - don't recall him ever saying. Perhaps he'll share.

And you? [/qb]
Phil, I am INFJ, the rarest type (1% of pop.) And most HSPs are either INFP or INFJ.

I took the test back in the late seventies at the prayer group I belonged to. They wanted to know our "gifts". I came out an INFJ then, and am still one.
Also are you familiar with the book "The Introvert Advantage"? Hmmm, I wonder if there are any extroverts who come here.

Katy
 
Posts: 538 | Location: Sarasota, Florida | Registered: 17 November 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Not familiar with that book, Katy. But yes, introverts do tend to like discussion forums. There are a few extraverts who hang out here as well.

INTJ types are also less than 1% Doesn't matter to me, except I used to feel quite the oddball in groups and was often called anti-social. But, hey, I like a good party as much as the next person! Smiler

I can certainly see a correspondence between HSP and INFJ. You have the introverted intuition, but with a more extraverted feeling function as auxilliary. That makes for an intense inner life with strong affective sensitivity to the outer world. Learning healthy boundaries and communication skills would be especially important for such types, in part for self-protection, but also to not destroy relationships with intense emotional reactions.
 
Posts: 7539 | Location: Wichita, KS | Registered: 09 August 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Katy said: Being an HSP also means, necessarily, that you are more easily overstimulated, stressed out, overwhelmed.

Having been allergic to so much stuff all my life, I have at least a superficial understanding of it. Our bodies can handle a certain amount of toxins. But we live in often totally artificial environments among plastics, detergents, etc, and often in closed-in air spaces. Thus we often find ourselves having an allergic reaction to one thing or another, but the real culprit isn't necessarily a certain substance or that you're highly prone to allergy by nature. It's just that your body is already at the edge of being able to absorb any more toxins. The slightest little bit of anything puts you over the edge.

I guess when I think of HSP I think of the main attributes as being "more easily overstimulated, stressed out, overwhelmed". Throw "fear" in there and you get the complete picture. Sometimes I wonder whether I would consider myself an HSP if I lived on a farm in Montana in the 1890's. Or modern life is just so chock full of stresses that it leaves us with very little reserve. I'm truly impressed by those (like bank presidents, public speakers or even the President of the United States) who can handle so much pressure and stimulation. But of course, we don't quite handle it all as well as we might think. Note the epidemic of alcohol and drug abuse, divorces, crime, etc., etc. Maybe we would all have been quite normal people in a slower age and would not have even understood the concept of HSP. But stress exposes weaknesses and so it's not particularly surprising to me that HSP would be isolated as a unique problem. Thus I think part of the solution is something Thoreau said: " Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail."

He also said: "As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness."

Ya think Henry David was an HSP? Wink
 
Posts: 5413 | Location: Washington State | Registered: 21 September 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by Phil:
[qb] Learning healthy boundaries and communication skills would be especially important for such types, in part for self-protection, but also to not destroy relationships with intense emotional reactions. [/qb]
Phil, that seems to be very true of me, and I am working on it, especially communication skills with my husband (we're both HSP) I mean, I think I have the skills and the know how, but it's very difficult for me to put them into practice; maybe because the "feeling" part of me is so intense.

Thanks,
Katy
 
Posts: 538 | Location: Sarasota, Florida | Registered: 17 November 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
[qb] Our bodies can handle a certain amount of toxins. But we live in often totally artificial environments among plastics, detergents, etc, and often in closed-in air spaces. Thus we often find ourselves having an allergic reaction to one thing or another, but the real culprit isn't necessarily a certain substance or that you're highly prone to allergy by nature. It's just that your body is already at the edge of being able to absorb any more toxins. The slightest little bit of anything puts you over the edge.
[/qb]
Brad, Toxins, toxins, toxins, yes I am aware of all the toxins.. both the seen and the unseen... those in the air, food, water, "negative thinking" toxins, toxic people and more.

I think fasting is the best way to get rid of all kinds of toxins.. not only to get rid of, but to get a body/mind so clean, and faith so strong that you can "render harmless" any more toxins from affecting you.

I am a distributor of Young Living Essential oils, and they say it's very important (I have learned this elsewhere, too) to cleanse, starting with the liver where many toxins are stored, including the toxin of "anger" and other negative emotions. I usually do my main cleansing in the spring... spring cleaning ;-)


Katy
 
Posts: 538 | Location: Sarasota, Florida | Registered: 17 November 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
[qb] I guess when I think of HSP I think of the main attributes as being "more easily overstimulated, stressed out, overwhelmed". Throw "fear" in there and you get the complete picture. ."[/qb]
More easily stimulated, yes. It's the "nervous system" that we are concerned with here. The way the nervous system functions, and we are born "that way". Again, it isn't a "disorder", but is a trait, according to Dr.Elaine Aron.

But fear? No, no, no. Neither fear, nor shyness is the same as HSP, though HSPs are more prone to these things.

Why don't ya read the book, huh???

Katy
 
Posts: 538 | Location: Sarasota, Florida | Registered: 17 November 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
[qb] I'm truly impressed by those (like bank presidents, public speakers or even the President of the United States) who can handle so much pressure and stimulation. Ya think Henry David was an HSP? Wink [/qb]
I am amazed, also, at how much stimulation these people can take. And they say Pres. Bush is an HSP. Doesn't seem to add up though, does it?

Henry David... probably.

And Abraham Lincoln too. All the great one's LOL

:-)

Katy
 
Posts: 538 | Location: Sarasota, Florida | Registered: 17 November 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I am a distributor of Young Living Essential oils, and they say it's very important (I have learned this elsewhere, too) to cleanse, starting with the liver where many toxins are stored, including the toxin of "anger" and other negative emotions. I usually do my main cleansing in the spring... spring cleaning

That sounds like a good idea, although I no longer chase the "optimum me" like I once did. I'm not quite sure yet whether that is a healthy "giving up" or not. I was reading through some quotes by Henry David Thoreau and a few caught my eye that seemed appropriate for anyone, particularly HSP's:

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
 
Posts: 5413 | Location: Washington State | Registered: 21 September 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Why don't ya read the book, huh???

Katy, I'm not sure how widely that book is distributed, although I had intended to buy it had I found it on a recent excursion to the bookstore. I'll keep it in mind.
 
Posts: 5413 | Location: Washington State | Registered: 21 September 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Just curious, here, how it was decided that Presidents Lincoln and Bush are HSP. Neither strikes me as such.

----

Brad, you have some good proverbs and aphorisms for my thread on that topic in the spirituality forum. Smiler
 
Posts: 7539 | Location: Wichita, KS | Registered: 09 August 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
[qb] Why don't ya read the book, huh???

Katy, I'm not sure how widely that book is distributed, although I had intended to buy it had I found it on a recent excursion to the bookstore. I'll keep it in mind. [/qb]
Brad, It is pretty widely distributed. I've seen it in most of the major book stores. You can definately find it at Amazon. Also you could probably get it at the library.

Katy
 
Posts: 538 | Location: Sarasota, Florida | Registered: 17 November 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
[QB]
He also said: "As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness."

Brad, I have been trying to simplify my life for years... It has gotten to be too much of a hassle.. so I am begining to just "accept" things the way they are... sigh...

Katy
 
Posts: 538 | Location: Sarasota, Florida | Registered: 17 November 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Katy said: Brad, I have been trying to simplify my life for years... It has gotten to be too much of a hassle.. so I am begining to just "accept" things the way they are... sigh...

That�s a very difficult thing to do. As Clint Eastwood wisely said �A man�s got to know his limitations.� Well, in the context of Dirty Harry having just dispensed with a bad guy it might not seem so wise. Wink
 
Posts: 5413 | Location: Washington State | Registered: 21 September 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Just to note, here, Katy, that this info about HSPs has been very helpful to a person I've been meeting with. Thanks for calling it to our attention.
 
Posts: 7539 | Location: Wichita, KS | Registered: 09 August 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Originally posted by Phil:
[qb] Just to note, here, Katy, that this info about HSPs has been very helpful to a person I've been meeting with. Thanks for calling it to our attention. [/qb]
Hi Phil and all:

That's great, Phil. So glad someone else is being helped with that knowledge.

I haven't been here for a while, and so am getting acclimated again.. and kind of lurking. A lot has happened to me.. "bad", but now Good! The kundalini is moving again and I'd like to share some things with you later on.

Also I'd like to know if anyone else is experinecing a new "wave" of kundalin energy these days. I don't know if it's co-incidence, or what, but last year at this very same time.. almost to the exact date(s) I was going thru a lot and having some of these same experiences. Only this time it is much better. I am feeling really good.. first time in years.

Seems like often in the springtime I have these experiences.

"HSP" Katy
 
Posts: 538 | Location: Sarasota, Florida | Registered: 17 November 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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