The Power of Letting Go: Lessons from the Tao

| Tracy Cooper Ph.D.

“There are also those who swim against the stream. These are the biggest energy wasters in life.” Many highly sensitive people swim against the stream as they feel resistance from their societies to who they are. The smarter strategy is to let go and stop swimming against the stream and trust that your natural traits will lead you somewhere.

It’s often the case that the more we seek to control, the less we end up controlling. If we refer to the Tao, the Chinese philosophy of letting go, we should not seek to be anything other than what we already are and trust that we, as a part of nature, are also part of the system of things that ebb and flow. Taoism advocates for “letting” go in ways that we HSPs can benefit from in very specific ways. For one, our natural tendency to process information and input deeply is a form of seeking to control. The reflective capacity can be paralyzing in some HSPs as they become too consumed by the what-ifs and never make it past the anxieties and fears to actually engage with meaningful experiences in life. The result can often be that some HSPs almost intentionally become less than they are capable of by not cultivating a philosophy of letting go.

To counter the natural deep-thinking that nature has gifted us with we need to practice not thinking as deeply and not fearing every possible what-if. This does not mean we do things that are imprudent or fail to ensure our safety or the safety of others, but we loosen up a bit on the over-analyzing and allow ourselves to have more experiences in life.

Taoism also teaches us to allow a natural space in relationships, rather than seek to control and resist. Often, what a partner needs is space, not control or solutions. The simplest thing in the world is to simply give someone space, as it entails no effort on our parts, nor does it cost us a thing, yet we feel compelled to solve every problem, absorb all the energies of a partner, and deplete our own psychic energies as a result. Instead, the Tao advises us to allow a space where emotions can cool, perspective can be gained, and where natural order is restored. It’s not always pleasant for sure! We want to help others but often we may end up confusing things further for the person when he should be left to resolve it on his own (perhaps he needs to practice letting go as well).

As we all endure this anxiety-laden time in our history, it is important to remember that we are all part of a natural order of things that are in greater harmony when we allow a space for things to unfold, trusting that in time all will be in balance again.

drtracycooper.wordpress.com

Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career

Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person

 

How Epidemics of the Past Changed the Way Americans Lived

| Tracy Cooper Ph.D.

The peak of this pandemic is likely weeks to months away for many of us in more rural states with less congested cities but already we see how ideas that seemed to be “unAmerican” like dispersing money to all adults to keep the economy afloat, extending health testing to all free of charge, and considering the utility of such “socialist” topics as universal health care, paid sick leave, and equal access to healthcare now seem to show their true merits.

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Just as in previous pandemics/epidemics the culture will change. We are still largely controlled by numerous special interests and self-serving politicians, which may always be the case, but culture shifts are inevitable and we each need to re-evaluate our positions on the role of technology, particularly medical technology that can benefit everyone. In the case of a pandemic, science eventually provides us with ways to mitigate a virus but cannot do for us what we have to do for ourselves: decide what kind of culture we will be. Are we okay with healthcare rationed as a privilege and not an expectation that everyone should benefit from scientific discoveries? Or does this pandemic show us that it’s better to keep everyone as healthy as possible and the way we do that is to not have people show up at emergency rooms already acutely ill because they were afraid of being ruined financially?

Proactive measures are always better than reactive measures and far less costly. Even the military understands this and takes care to feed its people relatively nutritious food, provide access to healthcare, and ensure people have what they need to do their jobs. Why should Americans be expected to go to work sick, full of anxiety about how they will pay their bills, or lethargic from lack of sleep and be expected to outperform other countries who have already solved many of these problems? It seems ridiculous that we make choices that are counterproductive to better health for all or that we fail to follow through with pandemic preparedness planning. True, this doesn’t happen often and that makes people complacent and oblivious to what it means to be ill with a novel virus but our culture needs to shift in ways that move beyond tribalism and non-cooperation between disagreeing segments of society.

If we HSPs should be able to do one thing well, it’s the ability to hold many viewpoints in suspension without subscribing to any one. Openness is a key aspect of our trait and the purpose of openness is to induct divergent inflows of ideas, possibilities, and options. Our ability to communicate the value of our greater openness is a challenge factor and only a minority of our total HSP population (over a billion people worldwide) seem to be able to truly grasp how to communicate well enough to influence the culture. In that regard, perhaps it is up to each one of us to decide for ourselves what we support, considering our greater openness, and what we will work to change in our culture.

Culture is an arbitrary set of norms, values, and beliefs that has no basis in right or wrong. Right or wrong is solely based on people choosing to subscribe to the notion that one thing or another is, in fact, right or wrong. But we are all active participants in culture every day and the choices we are free to make either maintain the status quo or change it. Sometimes the change is very gradual and we don’t notice it all at once; at other times, change is rapid and on us with urgency, as now when we see how people are suffering due to the economic deck being stacked against them no matter how hard they work, in many cases.

As this pandemic eventually peaks and wanes, as they all do, we have to think ahead to 100 years from now when people are looking back at how the coronvirus pandemic of 2020 shifted the culture in the US and around the world.

How should culture change for you? What differences do you see down the road? What changes are now evident in your belief system, if any? What are your HSP-inspired insights?

drtracycooper.wordpress.com

Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career

Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-epidemics-past-forced-americans-promote-health-ended-up-improving-life-this-country-180974555/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

 

High Sensation Seeking and the Highly Sensitive Person – You May Be Surprised!

| Tracy Cooper Ph.D.

Pleased to provide you with this podcast that I recently did for Patricia Young, of Unapologetically Sensitive. We discuss high sensation seeking, always a favorite topic.

Episode 64 Tracy Cooper

drtracycooper.wordpress.com

Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person

Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career

https://unapologeticallysensitive.com/episode-64/

Burnout Runs Deeper Than “Too Much Work”

| Tracy Cooper Ph.D.

The problem of burnout is a common one among highly sensitive people. One of the most necessary aspects of what we do that will make it worthwhile is meaningfulness. When work lacks that quality, we too often will fall into a rut of either alienating ourselves by tuning out (in effect, becoming robots) or suffer in a position we come hate for far too long.

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We know from Vantage Sensitivity, a well-researched theory that finds that we HSPs do far better in positive and supportive environments and far worse in negative and unsupportive ones, that the conditions we experience deeply effect how we feel, think, and function. This article’s focus on autonomy, mastery, and belonging is a simply a restating of Self Determination Theory’s autonomy, competence, and relatedness, the three components all people desire most. We HSPs are always on the leading edge of being effected by stimulation before others and experiencing that more deeply than less sensitive people.

Brad Stulberg’s discussion of obssessive passion versus harmonious passion is timely but is also the flow state of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi restated. For example, “harmonious passion is when an individual becomes completely absorbed in an activity because they love how the activity itself makes them feel” is autotelic and in line with Csikszentmihalyi’s flow experience. Csikszentmihalyi describes the flow state as a channel, rather like a river, with anxiety on one side of the river when over-challenged (skills do not match task) and boredom on the other side when the task is not challenging enough or we do not have control, immediate feedback, or the task is uninteresting.

Burnout is the intersection of boredom, lack of autonomy, lack of meaning, and a hyper awareness of a future orientation, when things will be better or at least one can leave the workplace. The flow state focuses us completely in the NOW, the present moment and dispels all anxiety and worry as the task at hand becomes absorbing and self-propelling.

We don’t necessarily become burned out because of too much work; rather, we burn out because the work lacks meaning, we have little control over how it is done, or the work itself is unchallenging. This isn’t to say that a repetitious task cannot be useful or that we cannot experience well-being from it. Indeed, we can use any repetitive task as a way to focus our attention on the here and now. The flow state can be raking leaves, digging a hole, or washing dishes. Burnout occurs when we have nothing but repetition.

Are you in a state of harmonious passion with you work? Do you experience the flow state often?

drtracycooper.wordpress.com

Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career

Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person

(both now available as audiobooks)

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/burnout-runs-deeper-than-too-much-work

Highly Sensitive Men’s Weekend!

| Tracy Cooper Ph.D.

Join us for this first-ever weekend for HS men at 1440 Multiversity March 13-15th!

Register at https://www.1440.org/programs/faculty-led-programs/personal-growth/self-discovery/a-weekend-for-highly-sensitive-men-2020

Highly sensitive men’s weekend at 1440 Multiversity!

| Tracy Cooper Ph.D.

Our highly sensitive men’s weekend at 1440 Multiversity, March 13-15th is now at 35 registrants!

The number continues to grow and we would like to invite all last minute HS men to join us! If you’ve been weighing whether it will be worth it please consider that we will create and hold a completely open and inviting space for all to be seen and heard. There will be lots of relating to other HS men, learning their experiences, and making friendships that can be transformative.

Join myself, Dr. Elaine Aron, and John Hughes for the first-ever HS men’s weekend!

faculty 1440 hs men

https://www.1440.org/programs/faculty-led-programs/personal-growth/self-discovery/a-weekend-for-highly-sensitive-men-2020

 

Kids Don’t Need to Stay ‘On Track’ to Succeed

| Tracy Cooper Ph.D.

The unexpected path to success: this notion seems to hold true for HSPs and non-HSPs alike. Few people “know” what they want to do after high school, though most kids are highly pressured to have a plan in place that is rock-solid and guaranteed to end in good results. In our modern world, where companies have zero loyalty to the employee, it is truly incumbent on each one of us to explore multiple avenues that we might take, conceive, develop, and grow side gigs while we are working, and make choices that will put us in a supportive and encouraging growth environment.

original

We know from Vantage Sensitivity that HSPs do far better when they are in a supportive environments and far worse when in unsupportive ones. That seems a given right? HSPs tend to serve as the vanguard for the human species and if something feels off to us it is probably off to less sensitive people too, who may just not be as aware of it yet as we are. I’ve interviewed many HSPs and HSS/HSPs over the years, and very few communicated to me a straight path leading directly from high school or young adulthood, to a great career that they loved. This is especially true for the high sensation seeking HSP, who may prize novelty and new experiences more than success or stability.

It’s a fact that your path will most likely take many twists and turns and that you will likely beat yourself up over the jobs you had to leave because they didn’t work out or because you don’t seem to fit in very well like others do. It’s time to just accept that inner critic as a fact of life and move on, while being self-aware of what is appropriate as far as what we may have done versus how the environment was unsuited to our needs as sensitive human beings. The inner critic can be a badgering bully but you can also tame it.

If you have children it is important to begin encouraging them to simply be who they are, if they’re sensitive, and not feel any stigma or sense of limit. Encourage their curiosity the most because curiosity can lead them far in this new world where opportunities are there for the curious and the persistent. But do not make the mistake of assuming that their trajectory will, or should, resemble yours. Let them make poor choices and fail so they can learn from what a mistake looks like.

We HSPs can easily become helicopter parents because we are very conscientious, even perfectionist, and we know how much it hurts to be a square peg in a world of round holes. Many of us do not want for our kids what we suffered with in finding a reasonable career but there may not be a better way. Some amount of mistakes and false starts seem to be the majority path to eventually finding a good fit.

How have your kids followed a squiggly path?

drtracycooper.wordpress.com

Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career

Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person

Article Link:

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/02/path-success-squiggly-line/606631/?fbclid=IwAR2kTmP2IS0DrbpK26LqN33fRCPaw6eSNqJ4f0ButBCi3dfLZ9liY1IgHtc

New HSPs and Entrepreneurship study!

| Tracy Cooper Ph.D.
Do you work for yourself? Do you own a small business or businesses? Have you found ways to have a career outside of working for others? I want to hear from you for my new book on HSPs and Entrepreneurship!
 
Participation in this study is completely confidential, meaning your name and other identifying information will not be used in any publications. Your part will simply consist of providing written answers to about a dozen questions about your experiences as a small businessperson/entrepreneur.
 
If you are interested, please send an email to tmcooperphd@gmail.com.

High Sensitive Men’s Weekend

| Tracy Cooper Ph.D.

I am happy to report we now have 29 HS men signed up for the upcoming weekend at 1440 Multiversity! This first-ever weekend for HS men promises to be quite an immersive experience, yet will also be empowering and enjoyable. 1440 has some incredible amenities to partake of in down times.

aweekendforhighlysensitivemen2020

Join us and please share!

drtracycooper.wordpress.com

Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career
Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person

Please click here for link to workshop.

https://www.1440.org/programs/faculty-led-programs/personal-growth/self-discovery/a-weekend-for-highly-sensitive-men-2020