Awaken Your Wise Woman: How Highly Sensitive People Can Find Their Voice

How Highly Sensitive People Can Find Their Voice

Oct 12, 2020

If you’re a highly sensitive person (HSP), chances are you have trouble finding your voice—and that can cause a lot of anxiety. In this episode of Woman Worriers, host Elizabeth Cush welcomes back psychotherapist April Snow, who talks about how you can learn to trust your voice, set healthy boundaries and speak up for your needs.

Quotes:

“When you’re highly sensitive, that sensation is loud.”
— April Snow

“We start to doubt ourselves. We start to silence that inner wisdom, that intuition.”
— April Snow

“Anxiety is a big marker that you’re living a lifestyle that’s not quite in alignment with your temperament.”
— April Snow

“Because of our level of empathy, if someone else is hurting, we’re hurting.”
— April Snow

“A lot of time when HSPs are anxious, it’s just because they’re doing too much.”
— April Snow

“Saying ‘No’ some of the time is actually preserving the relationship.”
— April Snow

EPISODE 128

Show Notes:

You pick up on things in your environment—things others don’t notice. You feel much more deeply than others do. When others can’t or won’t validate your perceptions and emotions, you begin to stop trusting yourself. That’s the plight of the highly sensitive person (HSP). In this episode of the Woman Worriers podcast, host Elizabeth Cush, of Progression Counseling in Annapolis, Md., and her guest April Snow, a San Francisco-based psychotherapist and highly sensitive person, delve deeper into what it means to be an HSP and an introvert, how being an HSP might make it more difficult to know and trust your voice, and how you can find your voice and start to learn to advocate for your needs in order to ease you anxiety.

Listen and learn:

The core characteristics of a highly sensitive person
Why being highly sensitive might lead you to doubt yourself and silence your voice
What it means to be an HSP and an introvert—and why it can feel exhausting and overwhelming
Why so many highly sensitive women experience anxiety
Why it’s important to set limits on how much you take on—and why it can be hard to do so
How empathy and guilt are related
The small lifestyle changes that can make the biggest difference in easing your anxiety
How to recognize what’s really making you anxious
Ways to explore boundary-setting and to identify different steps you could take to feel more comfortable
The power of the pause and the reality check
Three things you should think about before saying “yes” (or “no”)
Ways to get the time you need to make a decision that feels right
How to say “No” when saying “No” feels too hard—and why it’s OK to say “No”
How self-compassion work can help
The benefits you can experience when you treat yourself with care and compassion