066b – more on being HSP

I mentioned a few posts ago that I’ve been learning more about the highly sensitive person trait lately. Today has been a bit of a gloomy day because of some of the things I read. Although in many ways this feels like a puzzle piece that had been missing for a long time from my landscape of self-understanding, it does come with its fair share of sad-ish realisations. 

  1. I will not be able to express all my ideas. 

    I think this hit harder because yesterday had been a very prolific day (from my standards) in terms of creative expression and I’d been feeling overjoyed and extremely enthusiastic about a lot of it. I did feel a little overstimulated already today morning, since I hadn’t caught enough sleep, but then I ended up reading the book I’ve been reading on HSPs which coincidentally also hit this point. That someone like me can feel overstimulated or over-aroused not just because of “intrusive thoughts” but also thoughts (and ideas) in general. And we need to be aware that we won’t be able to do justice to them all. 

  2. The balance between finding peace/calm and “satisfaction” might be a constant struggle. 

    If I’m someone who wants to work on, express and share a lot of my ideas, but can only operate on a lower productivity than the “majority” of the people around me, I’m probably going to find myself either a. a bit dissatisfied or b. regularly overstimulated. So, yeah— I suppose this is going to be a constant struggle. I might have to REALLY ask myself what’s important.

    In other words, sustained peace might also be a bit elusive. I imagine it’ll be a regular dance of arousal and calm as opposed to just staying calm for a whole day, for example. 

  3. I need to not use social media as a way to calm myself down. 

    This one isn’t sad, it makes sense actually, and I need to work on this anyway. I was checking Instagram a lot throughout the morning and even after waking up but by the afternoon, I felt completely depleted even though I didn’t really do anything exhausting or tiring, really. I’ve noticed that I end up feeling not very great if something important to me doesn’t get the response I expected. I’ve talked about this before, but this is my reminder. Definitely need to be cautious about this. 

  4. Paying attention to and not compromising on sleep will be of utmost importance. 

    I am susceptible to letting sleep suffer if I’m really enjoying certain activities (whether it’s hanging out with friends or really getting in the zone with something creative etc). However, I need to remember that that short-term gratification is NOT worth fucking up your entire next day. We’re pretty good at accepting that that’s true for things like work and partying (for example) but I need to remember it applies to almost everything. Except like really urgent situations. (Health-related, etc). 

Okay, this is all for now, I imagine I’ll be talking more about this regularly. Like I said earlier, bear with me! And if you’re HSP too, let me know! 

059a – values exploration (pt 1)

A while ago I discovered a values-exercise by the New Happy (which is a venture (??) I really admire) and I’ve been meaning to get to this for a few weeks now. Did a first iteration of the exercise but I’m not feeling fully settled with what I have. Want to explore this dissatisfaction through writing.

Here’s my top 10 values: 

  • Faith 
  • Courage
  • Learning 
  • Authenticity 
  • Choice 
  • Compassion 
  • Gratitude 
  • Kindness / Love (I’ve clubbed these because I think that’s okay) 
  • Health 

I was super confused about what should take the last spot but these were the ones I found appealing: Peace/Art/Balance/Nature/Enjoyment 

One that I’ve rejected (this didn’t even make it in my top-20) was Stability. But every time I have an anxious night or an anxious day I wonder if I should make it a value. So, okay, this is the first time I’ve had more of a medium-long-term “unstable” period in my life anyway. Which means that I don’t know whether Stability is a value I need (want) in my life or not. So, I suppose I can give myself more time ie 6-8 months to hopefully have an answer there. 

Currently, when I distilled my top-10 to top-5, I came up with this: 

  1. Authenticity (This is the only one I’m a 100% confident about) 
  2. Gratitude 
  3. Kindness / Love 
  4. Health  
  5. Learning 

This actually feels okay. Accepting that I don’t know enough about myself yet is also fine. Putting it in words, ie what it is exactly that I don’t know helps a lot too.  

There’s of course the research to keep in mind too, the resource mentions that research tells us that the values that are most likely to make us happy fall in the following categories: achievement, stimulation, self-direction and benevolence. Which means that if I want to trust the research only, I might not actually need “Stability” as a core value if “happiness” is what I want to maximise in life. 

What feels unsatisfactory so far is if these values are enough for me to have a life/lifestyle that’s exciting enough for me. The short answer is they can be. I can still pursue enjoyment, fun, excitement and all the jazz but just not at the cost of these things. Right? I think so. Let’s see. Feeling some blockers here. Like I’m listening to some “shoulds” as opposed to just what is. 

I think I’m also conflicted between wanting a “happy” life and an “easy” life. Because of my generalised anxiety and my experience with the lows in the past, maybe I’ve convinced myself I want an easy life. But the truth is (I think), I don’t think an easy life can necessarily be the happiest life. It might cause some dissatisfaction down the line. So, yeah this might be worth thinking about more. Where do I want to operate on the easy-difficult spectrum to maximise my position the happiness-sadness spectrum? (Ah, good one.)

Okay, enough to think about. Will continue this exploration another time!