Join me March 13th from Noon to 4pm, CST for the High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person’s Seminar!
This first of it’s kind event is sure to be educational, informative, and connecting as we come together in shared community to explore the intersection of sensation seeking and sensory processing sensitivity.
Registration info is available at EventBright:
Looking ahead to 2021, I am considering putting together a virtual zoom seminar for highly sensitive men AND women. If we were to hold such a seminar, what are the topics that you would most like to hear about? Bear in mind that we don’t cover therapy issues (there are therapists and psychologists already holding such events). Rather, we would cover issues of flourishing as HSPs and HSS/HSPs, broader views of creative thinking and doing, as well as perspectives on sensory processing sensitivity that are unique to my broader transdisciplinary background.
I am very interested in what’s missing in seminars for YOU! Let’s work together to move beyond thinking of sensory processing sensitivity as a pathology and focus on how we might flourish, build lives with greater meaning, and help each other feel more confident, competent and connected as HSPs and HSS/HSPs.
The highly sensitive brain needs rest. Taking in subtle cues, processing stimulation in a more elaborate way, and seeking connections between ideas, concepts, and experiences are all fatiguing for the highly sensitive person. One of the aspects we always advocate for quite strongly is the need for adequate sleep and rest for HSPs. It is normal for HSPs to need more sleep than for those who may be lower in sensitivity, which follows given that they spend less time expending energy on the things we HSPs are known for: deep thinking, critical and creative thinking, and meaning making.
Simply put, we HSPs are a variation on a survival strategy for the species. It is an advantage to have some percentage of the species who feel and think more deeply. Nature always varies its survival strategies within species and sometimes between species, as when one will provide an advantage to another, think of the relationship between bees and flowers.
Humans being able to survive in the often harsh environment of our ancestral past likely required a multiplicity of survival strategies, with Sensory Processing Sensitivity (the underlying personality trait or temperament in HSPs) only representing one variation. Obviously, SPS was and is a powerful strategy since it is still in the gene pool and about 1/5th of the population are on the higher end of sensitivity.
The sensitive brain in our modern world is beset with a non-stop train of stimulating images, video streams, and unnatural noise levels that we were never evolved to tolerate. It is no wonder so many of us prefer the peaceful quiet countryside or at least quiet. We need the time in nature to settle the brain and reset to a more natural baseline. We need the right amount of sleep that works for each of us. We need lives that stimulate us within our optional range of arousal and, rarely, go beyond, if we are to perform at our best and fulfill our often healthy developmental potential.
2020 certainly has proven to be overstimulating in many ways and many of us have simply unplugged and hunkered down to wait it out. Many of us already had lives where we telecommuted or worked for ourselves in some capacity. Many of us utilized the time to create new projects and endeavors, just as I would expect of HSPs and especially HSS/HSPs during stretches of open time.
Regardless of how you have used your time in 2020, we should all make rest the bedrock of everything else that we do. This is crucially important for HSPs.
Empowering the Sensitive Male Soul
Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career
Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person
We now have 15 registrants for our upcoming 2nd Highly Sensitive Men’s Seminar! This is a great start and we encourage you to consider attending this poignant and powerful event for HS men. Please note that we have a donate ticket option to accommodate those who wish to attend but need a lower price point. You can’t get any better than “set your own ticket price” 
In support of the upcoming 2nd Highly Sensitive Men’s Seminar on Dec. 5th, I offer my newest book titled Empowering The Sensitive Male Soul. Available in paperback, Ebook, and audio-book versions.
The human tendency to generalize is quite harmful to highly sensitive men and I seek to dispel some of the myths around sensitivity in ways that I feel many HS men will identify with better than in other books on the topic. My hope is this book provides you with a broader depth and breadth that opens your conceptualization of what it may mean to be highly sensitive.
Far from seeing sensory processing sensitivity as a pathology, I see it as an incredible strength to be understood, examined, contextualized, and ultimately applied and expressed in the world in confident ways that invite others into our experience of life.
Highly sensitive men, indeed, do come from both traumatic and non-traumatic backgrounds in early childhood with each playing significant roles in how confident they feel in venturing forth into the world.
Some HS men have felt a sense of shame at not identifying with the hyper-masculine culture that is so often promoted by our media, entertainment, and cultural values exemplified by our leaders.
Others have done quite well with reconciling their broader emotional range, high empathy and deep minds. Combine that with good hearts and an often compassionate nature that senses when others are hurting and instinctively knows what to do and you have what many HS men express in the world.
Join us for the 2nd highly sensitive men’s seminar focusing on meaningful work throughout the life course. Work that enlivens as well as enriches and expands human possibilities.
Here, Will Harper, director of Sensitive-The Untold Story, shares with us clips from the movie plus highlights from the 1st highly sensitive men’s seminar.
Registration info may be found at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-2nd-highly-sensitive-mens-…
Please share!
What does it mean to have two competing personality traits like sensory processing sensitivity and sensation seeking? Do they balance out or does one override the other? How can you learn to balance being a highly sensitive person and a high sensation seeker? This book is the only one of its kind and was written for just that reason: nothing existed for those of us who have both traits.
Some 30% of HSPs are also high in a trait known as sensation seeking. Sensation seeking is comprised of four aspects: thrill and adventure seeking, novelty and new experience seeking, boredom susceptibility, and disinhibition. Many HSPs tend to identify with novelty seeking and boredom susceptibility but not disinhibition or thrill seeking. That’s because sensation seeking is a general trait in the species and all of us are sensation seekers to some extent, just as sensitivity is thought of as a general trait with people existing along the range of sensitiveness.
Learn much more in my book, Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person.
If you’re mired in career issues you might want to read Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career for insights into how other highly sensitive people (HSPs) experience career. It is crucial that we understand how the four core D.O.E.S. aspects of sensory processing sensitivity influence our choice of career over time and that we have an understanding of how other people have experienced career.
Thrive is based on sound scientific study and the findings were extended through a large survey of 1,551 people. You will see statistics throughout the book on various questions and learn how other HSPs feel about certain issues. You will also encounter their stories of career struggle and triumph in the final chapter.
Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career should be one book in every HSP’s library that serves to fill in the blanks on career.
Great insights for recent graduates and job seekers in this COVID economy. There are quotes from me in there as well and, as usual, I take the broader, big picture view of finding resilience over time.
Dr. Tracy Cooper 