HSPs, Responsibility, Conscientiousness... and Obligations

If you have ever completed Dr. Elaine Aron's "sensitivity self test," one of the items in the questionnaire reads "I am conscientious."

I suppose many people would like to think of themselves as conscientious, but HSPs seem to be especially so, sometimes to the point where it can start to feel like a burden, in some respects.

It is that burden aspect I want to touch on, today...

As part of ongoing self-awareness of what it means to be highly sensitive, we each have to learn where our potential "traps" exist. By traps, I mean the places where the attributes of our personality that feel natural to might end up causing us suffering in our engagement with the external world.

In looking back across my life, one of my "traps" has been my tendency to keep my promises and keep engaging in a certain activity even if it is no longer appreciated (or taken for granted), and it increasingly feels like a drag and obligation to keep going.

"Well, I promised I would... so I WILL keep  doing this, even though I wish I didn't have to!"

How often has that little voice spoken up, inside your head?

In time, I became aware that it is very easy for me to go from a place of happily volunteering to do something helpful — for another person, or an organization — to feeling like I have become trapped in something that now feels like an obligation... and offers me little of the joy I felt when I first got involved.

The "problem" is that there are many people in the greater world who discover that an HSP friend of theirs is super reliable and always does their best... something that can often be quite a rarity in our world!

And so, you might end up with a scenario like I have experienced a number of times, in which I was allegedly "temporary assistance" but because I have done an exemplary and efficient job — being "conscientious" — I seem to have become "permanented," without any conversation about it.

I volunteered to help out, not to take on a permanent obligation!

As I have aged, I have increasingly avoided responsibility, and tend to back away quietly, whenever someone needs help with some kind of project or problem. I do this because responsibility ends up feeling like an obligation pretty quickly, and in turn obligations soon enough leave me feeling overstimulated. 

In case you are wondering how and why... it's because the obligations feel frustrating, and frustration = overstimulation.

"But you used to be so nice and helpful!"

Sometimes I hear those words, and they definitely sting a bit! But then I also pause and consider the fact that when others classify me as "nice," what they are sometimes really saying is "you used to not have boundaries and I could walk all over you!"

It's no fun feeling like you are being used, and having healthy personal boundaries is an essential part of living a balanced life, as a highly sensitive person.

One of the better truisms I have heard along the way is this: "No is a complete sentence!"

Worth keeping in mind, as part of our self-awareness and setting of personal boundaries!

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I hope you enjoyed your visit here! HSP Notes has been published continuously since 2002, and I do this entirely as a "labor of love." However, if you feel that this site is of value to you, please consider becoming a "supporter" of HSP Notes, via my Patreon Art Account. Or support my creative endeavors by purchasing one of my hand painted stones — links in the right-hand column!

I have created a special $2 support level, being mindful that most HSPs are on a budget. Your contributions allow me the TIME to continue writing, rather than being forced to abandon the blog and use my writing time to pursue an additional outside job. Your consideration is greatly appreciated, and — as the idealist that I am — I believe the best way we can create a better world for all of us is to support each other's creative endeavors!

Life Feels "More Normal," but Will it EVER Be?

Midsummer has passed.

Were I back in Denmark, we would have had the annual bonfires on the beach to celebrate summer. Instead, I find myself sitting here, revisiting memories of the last time we were in Denmark.

It was in 2015, and things were "normal," then. Sometimes I wonder whether the pre-Covid world really was "normal?" 

Seems like life is slowly returning to some semblance of normalcy, even though I am not entirely sure what that even means. Restrictions are being lifted, and now travel to Denmark has become rather easier than it used to be, with the requirement to have valid "vaccine passports" having been dropped, at least in Denmark.

I bring up "normal" because it's a term we HSPs often find ourselves thinking about, although not in connection with Covid-19 and the world. What would it be like to be "normal," some of us wonder.

Over the years, this has sometimes become a heated discussion in some of the online forums, HSP meetups and retreats I have attended. I have never quite been able to get behind the whole idea that somehow "normal" is better than the way I am. I can recognize how normal might be more convenient in certain respects, but that isn't necessarily better.

Meanwhile, is humanity any better off, as a result of having had to pause and look at a greater threat... one that kept us locked in our homes (in many cases) for extended periods of time.

Will people remember any of the insights they might have gained, as a result of this involuntary introspection? Or will things — barring another severe outbreak — simply return to the way they were before Covid-19?

I was already a cautious type person before this all started, and now I am even more of a person who always thinks things through before taking a course of action. No impulsiveness here!

The feeling I am left with is that the entire idea of a return visit to Denmark doesn't feel as joyful as it once did, almost like the past 2 1/2 years or so cast a permanent shadow that no degree of superficial normalcy will be able to remove.

Thanks for stopping by!

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I hope you enjoyed your visit here! HSP Notes has been published continuously since 2002, and I do this entirely as a "labor of love." However, if you feel that this site is of value to you, please consider becoming a "supporter" of HSP Notes, via my Patreon Art Account. Or support my creative endeavors by purchasing one of my hand painted stones — links in the right-hand column!

I have created a special $2 support level, being mindful that most HSPs are on a budget. Your contributions allow me the TIME to continue writing, rather than being forced to abandon the blog and use my writing time to pursue an additional outside job. Your consideration is greatly appreciated, and — as the idealist that I am — I believe the best way we can create a better world for all of us is to support each other's creative endeavors!

HSP Living: Construction... and Destruction

When I was a child — long before anyone knew such a thing as "Being a Highly Sensitive Person" existed — I often found myself wondering at the inconsistencies of the world... and especially the inconsistencies in the people around me.

The inner conundrum — which is one I continue to puzzle over today, almost 50 years later — always was centered around the same core question:

"Why — for so many people — do anger, violence and DE-struction seem preferable over love, friendship and CON-struction?"

Now, I know a million psychological and "consciousness" platitudes that seem to let violence, anger and destructiveness off the hook by serving up a hot steaming dish of rationalizations for those who are "in pain" and "suffering" and so forth and so on.

Maybe there are some nuggets of truth in there, but these mostly feel like platitudes; clever sayings that allow some to sound "wise and superior" without actually addressing this troubling side of the human condition, head on. Meanwhile, we are actually enabling bad behavior by teaching that such action really does not have consequences. So why better yourself, if staying the same — however negative — always earns you a "hall pass?"

Some argue that we simply "can't help it" because it's human nature to behave in such fashions. But that suggests people aren't capable of making conscious choices about their behavior.

I bring these ideas into question because I have suffered and been in pain plenty, thank you... yet my response to these states (even in my highly UN-enlightened days) was definitely NOT "anger, violence and destruction." Don't get me wrong... I'm not arguing that we have a choice in experiencing these things, just that we have a choice in what we do with those experiences.

We have a choice to become personally accountable for our actions, rather than sliding into the "I can't help it, because _____" line of thinking.

But living consciously is also a lot of work, and some of it can be rather emotionally disturbing, as we uncover that we are perhaps not really the "nice people" we've built our self-image around.

It all starts with self-awareness, and a sincere desire to change for the better...

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I hope you enjoyed your visit here! HSP Notes has been published continuously since 2002, and I do this entirely as a "labor of love." However, if you feel that this site is of value to you, please consider becoming a "supporter" of HSP Notes, via my Patreon Art Account. Or support my creative endeavors by purchasing one of my hand painted stones — links in the right-hand column!

I have created a special $2 support level, being mindful that most HSPs are on a budget. Your contributions allow me the TIME to continue writing, rather than being forced to abandon the blog and use my writing time to pursue an additional outside job. Your consideration is greatly appreciated, and — as the idealist that I am — I believe the best way we can create a better world for all of us is to support each other's creative endeavors!

What do You Want to Write About Today?

One of the things I often struggle with is that I have far "too many" interests.

Maybe we should scratch that and instead say there are far too many things in life that are interesting. Just because something is interesting doesn't necessarily make them "an interest," just means something interesting enough that I want to find out more.

And that's how I often end up going off track and wasting time doing something other than what I'm supposed to be doing.

It is one of the sometimes challenging side effects of not only being an HSP, but being an HSP who is afflicted with that thing our modern society likes to call ADHD. Of course I'm not particularly afflicted with the "H" (Hyperactivity) part of ADHD, mostly I'm just chronically inattentive and daydreaming.

When it comes to the question of "what do I want to write about today," I don't pose it merely as a reflection of what I'm going to write on this blog but as a reflection of the fact that I have multiple blogs and websites that I could be writing something on.

But let's make it one level more complicated!

I can ask myself the question of what do I want to write about today, but there's also a greater question of whether I want to work on art today, or should I work on my stamp business today, or work on editing today, or might I end up working on something completely different today.

That's a different "side effect," namely the side effect of being independent and self-employed, rather than having a structured job that I need to go to at a specific time every day to do some specific kind of task.

I gave up having a structured job many years ago. On the balance I would say that I wouldn't trade in the life I now have for anything, but one of the benefits that having a regular job does offer is a kind of structure and that can be important if you are naturally inclined to be wildly unstructured in your approach to living.

And so, I come here asking myself the question what do I want to write about today? And what do I even want to do today?

Let me underscore for the record that this isn't necessarily an HSP issue, it's just a being alive issue in my world. Still, I am an HSP and this is a blog about life as an HSP so somehow there would be at least some peripheral relevance to my posting this.

Much as I hate to admit it, the only approach I have really found to effectively manage my tendency to be very scattered is to make lists and schedules.

Ironic that, given that I hate being constrained by rules and schedules! And yet? Here I am touting the benefits of precisely those things.

So what is this post really about?

Well, it's about the fact that we shouldn't wholesale reject any one thing just because we don't like what it suggests or represents... because ultimately it tends to turn out that there are parts of both things we like and things we don't like that become useful to us and parts of those same things that are not useful to us.

Yes, it sounds a bit convoluted, I know.

The challenge becomes a discern what's useful, and then to make the most of ways to maximize the benefit for our own purposes.

I don't claim to have any secrets to doing so! It's a constant work in progress… as is, I suppose, this entire experiment of living. 

And with that thought, I'm probably going to go somewhere else, and write something else!

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I hope you enjoyed your visit here! HSP Notes has been published continuously since 2002, and I do this entirely as a "labor of love." However, if you feel that this site is of value to you, please consider becoming a "supporter" of HSP Notes, via my Patreon Art Account. Or support my creative endeavors by purchasing one of my hand painted stones — links in the right-hand column!

I have created a special $2 support level, being mindful that most HSPs are on a budget. Your contributions allow me the TIME to continue writing, rather than being forced to abandon the blog and use my writing time to pursue an additional outside job. Your consideration is greatly appreciated, and — as the idealist that I am — I believe the best way we can create a better world for all of us is to support each other's creative endeavors!

HSP Life: Tired of Overstimulation

I understand why HSPs sometimes just shake their heads and say that they are "tired of being highly sensitive."

Don't get me wrong, I haven't suddenly had a change of heart and joined the ranks of "I hate being an HSP" supporters... it's just that I "get" how exhausting it can be to feel overstimulated all the time, or most of the time. 

Maybe it's just the fact that we are in the middle of the holidays that are causing me to feel this way... after all, this is the "loud and bright" part of the year. So do take what I say here with that perspective in mind.

We've had visitors, and we have had family, and we have been invited to various events, some of which we felt we "had to" go to because they were put on by organizations we are part of, and support.

Meanwhile, the New Year is immediately ahead, with more "celebrations" which — at least for me — presents more "opportunities" for overstimulation. 

There are two main things that have changed for me, over the years.

One, I regularly remind myself that these seasonal bouts of overstimulating activities are precisely that: Seasonal. There's an end in sight. Knowing that I will be able to take a well deserved rest at the end of all this is very helpful, like having a "goal" to work towards.

Two, I have changed the way my life is put together. That has been a slow and gradual process — one that began with simply realizing that I am not like other people... and that is OK! Sure, there will be some raised eyebrows and furrowed brows along the way, but so what? This is you, living your life... you're not living someone else's life!

Chances are that we cannot entirely eliminate overstimulation from our lives, but we can do our best to manage it in a way that helps us navigate being HSPs. 

Happy Holidays!