Join me in my next research study and book as I explore a topic near and dear to my core being, creativity.  The book will be about expanding the way we HSPs and HSS/HSPs understand and relate to all things creative.

Who I am looking for:

Identify as a highly sensitive person and/or a high sensation seeker

Highly self-aware of sensory processing sensitivity and/or sensation seeking

“Accomplished” as a creative, in any capacity that has worked for you

Understand and relate to creativity as more than simply an artistic end-product

Willing to participate with me in a recorded Zoom interview of about 60 minutes

Willing to allow me to use your words and possibly snippets of your interview for the book and/or a film

Whether you are a painter, potter, sculptor, dancer, entrepreneur, educator, healer, engineer, builder, poet, writer, nurse, CEO, car mechanic, chef, landscaper, business owner, manager, leader, artisan, scientist, or thinker I want to talk to you about creativity big and small!

If interested, please contact me at tmcooperphd@gmail.com for a brief survey from which I will make the final selections.

If you know of an exceptional HSP or HSS/HSP creative, please feel free to share this invitation!

Thank you!

How has Empowering the Sensitive Male Soul helped you? Have you read it or listened to it yet? This book fills gaps in the literature on highly sensitive men, especially in the area of self-care, but also relationships, career, parenting, and the creative life!

Let’s give this book some love, please share!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087S9NVVB

Consulting

Did you know that I offer consulting one on one? Regardless of your circumstances, there is an option sure to fit you. I invite you to check it out.

Dr. Cooper is pleased to be able to provide highly sensitive people (HSPs) and high sensation seeking highly sensitive people (HSS/HSPs) with consulting on such crucial areas of life as:

• career
• self-care
• highly sensitive men
• understanding sensory processing sensitivity and sensation seeking
• increasing self-awareness
• realizing potential
• creative spirituality
• critical creative thinking as a lifelong practice

Approaching consulting as a strong intuitive and broadly educated, diverse thinker, Dr. Cooper provides a uniquely supportive and nurturing space where you may make important and crucial realizations, begin to form a context and overall vision for your life, and develop a self-care practice that is significant, supportive, and sustainable.   Drawing on his knowledge and experience of working with the four core D.O.E.S. aspects of sensory processing sensitivity, Dr. Cooper will help ground you in an accurate understanding of the trait, based in the scientific peer-reviewed literature.

Whether you are contemplating a one on one session or attending one of Dr. Cooper’s seminars for HSPs, HSS/HSPs, or highly sensitive men, you are sure to benefit from your time spent with one of the leading figures in the field of high sensitivity.

https://drtracycooper.wordpress.com/consulting/

So looking forward to the first ever seminar for high sensation seeking highly sensitive people! We are often overlooked with not enough attention paid to the intersectionality of our two traits.

Join me March 13th from Noon until 4pm, CST for a seminar that is sure to promote connection, collaboration, and feeling seen and heard. HSS/HSPs may represent the best of both worlds when we learn to balance and honor the gifts that both traits provide.

Please help me spread the word about this seminar in your social media groups!

I’m not sure the author of this article fully understands highly sensitive people or Sensory Processing Sensitivity. I’m okay with the term “sensitive striver” as a descriptive term but she loses me at recommending listening to our intuition as a way of circumventing overthinking. First, it is precisely intuition, which HSPs are typically quite high in, that sparks us to think and reflect more on a problem and possible solutions or action plans. If we “go with our gut” we miss the point of Sensory Processing Sensitivity as an evolved psychological mechanism, or adaptation, that allows about 20% of the population to process ideas, concepts, and all stimuli to a greater degree in the brain. Our brains are literally built for deep thinking and reflection and not built for quick action and fast decisions. The fast thinking and quick decisions are what less sensitive people make and what they are better at. The problem is not every circumstance is suitable for quick decisions where gut instinct arrives at an intuitive decision without rational thought processes coming into play.

Now, it is true that HSPs are not born as rational thinkers because critical thinking is a skill one must practice and attain over a lifetime. HSPs, however, are better at spending more time in reflection on a problem and allowing the interplay between rational thought and creative thought, where alternatives and options are generated, to find a space before arriving at possible actions.

There is also much to be said for developing a keen sense of mindfulness about our internal processes so we do not fall down the rabbit hole of overthinking. If we are aware that we are better equipped to spend more time in reflection and the interplay between creative thinking and critical thinking, it is also reasonable to, at some point, begin to allow our intuition to rank our possible options and action plans. What’s the point of generating alternatives if we can never arrive at a decision? I do agree with the author on that point.

I do not agree on the implication that all “sensitive strivers” are chronic overthinkers or perfectionists. Many of us, in fact, do learn when good enough is good enough, simply as a matter of living in the world where imperfection is all around us. The point is to have our voice heard and to have it be valued. To do that, we need to really be able to “own” the way we process ideas, concepts, and problems in a deeper, more elaborate way and understand and appreciate that, in the end, it will come down to looking at all of the options that we have generated so carefully and choosing one, while knowing lesser options may have worked equally as well.

Time and practice, plus experience, will lead us to learning to trust our intuition to some extent but avoid the trap of going with gut feelings at all times over rational thought because they are very different processes. Rational thought uses logic and a set of universal standards to reason with that is entirely missing from intuition. HSPs especially need to develop as rational and creative thinkers because we do have a need for a broader “toolbox” when the deep thinking and reflection occur. The more tools we have, the better we will be able to work through their advantages versus disadvantages, and the more options we can produce, generate, and create.

I’m not so sure we should be admonished to “stop overthinking everything” so much as to think using a more developed tool kit, mixed with a fair amount of intuition as we move through the process. I have learned that most HSPs tend to not have had good mentoring early and lack meaningful ways to understand themselves, to practice self-care in the way that we really need to in order to be sustainable as people who experience life in a more intense way, and we particularly lack, as does most of the population, in the areas of creative thinking and critical thinking.

Build out your toolkit and your time spent thinking will be less about overthinking and more about productive thinking that generates innovative and novel options and alternatives.

drtracycooper.wordpress.com

Empowering the Sensitive Male Soul

Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person

Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career

https://hbr.org/…/how-to-stop-overthinking-everything…

My dear ICHS colleague, Candy Crawford, has a new book out with 52 entries spanning a year of sensitive living. Filled with raw, unbridled insights into what life is like for at least one highly sensitive person, Candy’s book reads like poetry in some places and deep, reflective narrative in others. We HSPs tend to prefer books written from head and heart and this one does not disappoint!

Candy is a licensed clinical social worker and helps the parents of highly sensitive children with strategies for supporting and empowering their young HSC. She also works with sensitive men and provides guidance and mentoring through workshops and seminars.

Please share!