Do you walk into a room and immediately feel what others are feeling—even when no one says a word?
You’re not imagining it—and you’re definitely not alone.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
1. How understanding your highly sensitive temperament instantly reduces anxiety
2. Why high sensitivity is not the same as weakness or drama
3. How the ability to “read a room” can create emotional overload and anxiety
Listen to understand your sensitivity and ease midlife anxiety—you’re worth it.
Links & Resources
Special thanks to Rebecca Hunter, MSW for guesting on Creating Midlife Calm
• Website: www.takeouttherapy.com
• Podcast: takeouttherapy.com
Learn more about high sensitivity & take her quizes from Dr. Elaine Aron, Ph.D.
• hsperson.com
Sensitive: The Untold Story
• Official Website: sensitivethemovie.com
• Watch on Amazon Prime Video
• Watch on YouTube
****
About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.
Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW (00:00):
In this episode, you'll discover how to
manage your high sensitivity andreduce your anxiety.
Welcome to Creating MidlifeCalm, a podcast dedicated to
empowering midlife minds toovercome anxiety, stop feeling
like crap and become morepresent with your family, all
while achieving greater successat work.
(00:21):
I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensedclinical social worker with over
48, 000 hours of therapysessions and 31 years of
experience teaching mentalwellness.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (00:31):
Welcome to the podcast.
Are you a highly sensitiveperson?
Maybe your partner is, orperhaps you're raising what Dr.
Becky Kennedy calls a deeplyfeeling kid, someone with a
beautifully attuned andresponsive nature.
In my 40 years as a therapist,I've seen how often high
sensitivity is misunderstood ormislabeled, but when it's
(00:53):
recognized and supported, thistemperament reveals remarkable
gifts like empathy, creativeinsight, and the ability to pick
up on what most of the otherpeople in the world miss.
Today I'm joined by RebeccaHunter, a therapist and host of
a great podcast called TakeoutTherapy.
She specializes in helpinghighly sensitive people, embrace
(01:15):
their sensitivity, not as aweakness, but as a superpower
that can really help themthrive.
By the end of today's episode,you'll discover what it means to
be a highly sensitive person,why your nervous system may
react more intensely to theworld around you, and how your
sensitivity can be yourstrength, especially in the
stress of midlife.
(01:36):
Rebecca, I am so excited to haveyou on this podcast, and I wanna
begin by asking you to introduceyourself to our listeners today.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (01:43):
Thank you so much for having me.
I really am excited to be hereand talk about a subject that
I'm pretty passionate about.
I work with people who areconsidered highly sensitive
people in my private practice, Ihave a lot of fun in my career
educating people about mentalhealth and the things that we
should have learned in middleschool that would've helped us
(02:05):
out today.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (02:06):
I wanna begin with the basics.
Can you explain to our listenerswhat it means when we say highly
sensitive person?
Rebecca Hunter MSW (02:14):
When we think of sensitive people, it's
a little bit cringey.
We think about that personthat's causing scenes and making
a big deal of everything, andthat's not at all what we're
talking about when we talk abouthighly sensitive people.
These people are magicallyperceptive.
(02:36):
The world is a lot and highlysensitive people.
See it all.
They feel it all.
They frankly smell it all.
They are people whose senses areso heightened that life is
overwhelming and they'reoftentimes really in tune
(03:00):
emotionally, which can be agift.
They can walk into a room.
They read the room, they knowwhat's up.
They also can tell whensomeone's not okay.
There is a level of perceptionwithin a highly sensitive person
that's really important tounderstand.
(03:22):
It's a lot of stimuli coming in.
It can be a really overwhelmingexperience.
It can be incredibly painful attimes to go through the world
and be able to really feelwhat's happening.
Highly sensitive people aredeeper people than most people
are comfortable with.
(03:42):
They don't often do small talk.
We know from the research that20% of the population, has this
specific.
Group of traits, it's abiological temperament.
It's not a problem except forthe whole thing I said about the
(04:02):
stigmatizing of the wordsensitive.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (04:05):
This is not just some hocus pocus or
words put together, this ishighly researched, it's been
around for three decades.
Can you explain what's going onin the highly sensitive person
that at times is confusing tothem because they easily can be
overwhelmed and at other timesis really life altering to them
(04:27):
because they can see what otherpeople can't see.
What's the biological basis forall of this?
Rebecca Hunter MSW (04:32):
This is where we have to love science
because we know so much morethan we used to about the brain.
There's two parts to theirbrain.
They're just more active, thanit is in other people.
It's the amygdala and it's theinsula.
The amygdala is what gets us allfired up.
It makes us really alert to ourenvironment and the insula
(04:56):
actually is the part of usthat's a little bit more
nuanced.
The part of the brain that.
Notices, emotional tone can pickup on subtle, cues, so those two
parts of the brain in thissubset of the population are
more active.
Which makes the highly sensitiveperson incredibly perceptive.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (05:19):
I often use the image that they, it's
almost like they wear caps thathave sensors on them and all of
that stimuli is coming in.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (05:28):
Yes.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (05:28):
That can lead to overwhelm.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (05:31):
Absolutely.
Because everything's connected.
Great.
You have a brain that fires morethan other people.
Awesome.
Except your brain is connectedto your nervous system, so you
also get a little bit morejacked up than other people.
The nervous system responds towhat's happening in the brain.
(05:52):
Highly sensitive people are verysensitive to all of the
absolutely nutty stimulation,that most of us can ignore.
They notice everything theysmell.
Better.
They hear better sometimes,depending on the situation,
imagine driving through lifewith the volume on high at
(06:15):
highly sensitive people can'tturn it down.
It's all the time.
And so they have to learn tofilter and they have to learn to
work with their brain and theirnervous system and the setup
that they have in order tonavigate this absolutely bananas
world that we're living in.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (06:34):
Your Also saying it's a five sensory
experience.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (06:39):
Yes.
One of the most healing aspectsof the work that we can do is to
teach people to pay attention totheir senses.
Forget what's happening in thebrain, just be with life in this
very directed way.
Actually that's quite a gift.
Highly sensitive people arereally good at being mindful.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (06:59):
Yes.
Oh, I can see that.
Talk a little bit about thepsychological aspect.
If someone is highly sensitive,how does their psychological
self unfold?
Rebecca Hunter MSW (07:10):
It's really hard to be a highly sensitive
person because.
When you go through the worldwith a lot of empathy, you tend
to give more of yourself toothers than you give to
yourself.
You try to make people happy, ifpeople are upset and you know
(07:32):
how to maybe improve it alittle, you're gonna work at
that, there goes your energy andyour emotional capacity, all of
yourself.
Oftentimes ends up in otherpeople caring for other people,
taking care of other people,being overly empathic with other
people, it just flat out leadsto burnout.
(07:55):
It leads to mental exhaustionand emotional exhaustion, and
these things hit.
About right now, midlife?
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (08:03):
Yes.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (08:03):
We're really talking about someone who cares
so much about other people andcan really feel into their
experience that unfortunatelythey tend to absorb some of it.
Not only are they walking aroundwith all of their own
perceptions and their ownsensitivity and their own
(08:23):
emotional load, they're alsopicking up.
Little bits from other people aswell.
What do you think about that?
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (08:31):
I often say with my clients that your
theme song is the question, isthat my energy or their energy.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (08:38):
I always tell people you put on a
backpack in the morning, right?
Some of your parents stuff is inthe backpack.
We can't ignore that.
Some of the things that havehappened to you in your life,
they get put in the backpack,they come with you wherever you
go.
But if you're going out in theworld and you're putting all
this other.
Stuff from other people in yourbackpack, that's too heavy, man.
You gotta put some stuff down.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (08:59):
That's a great image.
In your clinical work, what arethe common.
Ways that people present in theearly stages of understanding
this temperament of theirs,
Rebecca Hunter MSW (09:09):
I specialize in anxiety.
And that's what they presentwith.
Because anxiety is.
Basically a load that we'recarrying that we don't know what
it is, but it feels so heavy andit feels so awful.
I would say that's the numberone thing that people think
they're coming into therapy for.
(09:30):
Because you know as well as Ido, when people come in.
Their idea about what's going onisn't always the root of things,
right?
It's just what shows up in themirror for them every day.
It's burnout.
It's I can't anymore with youpeople.
It's resentment.
(09:51):
When we're not able to use ourfilter of what's getting put in
our bag, we start to get hackedoff at the people in our lives
and say why are you taking somuch?
Which then leads todisconnection that's the root of
why people come in, because theydon't feel connected to the
people in their life, and it'sreally painful.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (10:10):
Would you say HSPs tend to feel overly
connected to what's going oninside of them?
Rebecca Hunter MSW (10:16):
I think so, yeah.
And what's happening for others?
They are literally experiencingthe lives of other people.
You take a highly sensitiveperson who isn't super aware of
what's up with them, and givethem a teenager who's going
through some high school drama.
(10:37):
they will literally go through.
All of it with emotionally,physically in their nervous
system, their digestive system,like they're back in high
school.
It's incredibly stressful.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (10:50):
Yes.
I often joke with my HSP clientsand the two have become one.
It's learning how to get somespace, but it's really easy to
get overwhelmed.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (11:01):
Absolutely.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (11:02):
This is a podcast for people in midlife
and they are caring a lot.
From your clinical experiencetalk about why often HSPs feel
so burdened and burnt out inmidlife.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (11:18):
I think that.
Midlife is the reckoning, isn'tit?
It's when we have.
Just the most minute amount ofmind, space and mental capacity
to step back and go, what isgoing on here?
Everything's coming to a head inour midlife, right?
So when I think about midlife, Ithink about kids in a crucial
(11:42):
period of their lives, it'sabout education, it's about
their social lives, it's abouttheir careers, we're at this
point in our lives where.
This journey with our kids isending and remember graduation
week?
Oh my gosh.
It's like there's so much goingon, there's also a lot of in
midlife financial stuff thatcomes to a head and time
(12:05):
sensitive stressors, We'regetting to this point.
What are we gonna do now?
So all of that combined.
Makes this time of life kind ofa reckoning for all of us and
highly sensitive people becauseall the ways that they've been
dealing with their life all thistime, that's all sitting in that
(12:27):
backpack.
And it's now 150 pounds.
I also don't wanna skip overthe.
Colossal impact of perimenopauseand menopause on midlife women
because these hormonal shiftstotally amplifies all of the
sensitivities that highlysensitive people already have.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (12:52):
That's a really important point.
I did an episode midlife andhormones.
I think it's episode 140 andthat made me put a sign in my
office for all my clients tohave their Vitamin D checked.
One of my clients who's highlysensitive, her vitamin D was
incredibly low.
Yeah.
And it, It was a physiologicalissue that she was.
(13:14):
Interpreting through apsychological lens.
Because she has a lot on herplate, but she also
unconsciously helps herself tothings on other people's plates.
It's a lot to carry.
I'm glad you brought that up,because midlife really is a time
to try to check in with a doctorand get.
(13:35):
Your levels on all the importanthormones and vitamins because it
is a backpack that people arecarrying, even if they're not an
HSP.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (13:45):
I think you bring up a really important
point, people think there'ssomething wrong with them.
People think I should be able tohandle the life better than
this.
I'm not doing a good job atthis.
And it, that's not the wholestory.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (13:58):
One of the things is when people really
understand this temperament, andit's not a label, Almost within
a day, their self-criticism goesdown.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (14:08):
Yeah.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (14:09):
My HSP clients walk into my office and
they turn off, the overheadlight because it is too
stimulating for them.
Prior to knowing this.
They would be asking themselves,what's wrong with me?
Why is this light bothering me?
And they might say it to theirfriends and family members who
would be critical of them, ortags in clothes and then they're
(14:29):
like, oh no, if someone is adiabetic, they use insulin.
Nobody's saying that's acharacter issue.
I don't want people to thinkthat their temperament, is a
character issue.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (14:40):
Because they might think that they're not
capable, and that is not at allthe case, right?
We're all super capable, but wehave got to understand
ourselves.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (14:50):
Every week on my podcast I have an
inner challenge and my innerchallenge this week is in the
show notes.
I'm going to do the link toElaine Aaron's two tests, your
Self test if you're thinkingyou're highly sensitive, or her
quiz for children if you'reparenting, or a caregiver of
someone who is highly sensitive.
Because knowledge is power whenI work with teenagers now, who
(15:13):
are highly sensitive, it's awhole new game compared to
people who are starting tounderstand this in midlife.
The same thing for a parent tounderstand how to parent a
highly sensitive kid justdecreases meltdowns tenfold..
Rebecca Hunter MSW (15:29):
Doctor Becky is helping so much.
She's such a good resource.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (15:33):
I want our listeners to know Dr.
Becky and Elaine Aaron's arereally talking about the same
thing they're both incrediblyhelpful resources.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (15:41):
I'd also like to validate the listener by
saying.
If you're highly sensitive inmidlife, you were highly
sensitive as a kid.
And that is a really difficultexperience.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (15:52):
Yeah.
Today on the episode, we lookedat this really through a
biological lens.
I want you to understand what itmeans for your temperament.
But also that there's apsychological component that you
do look at the worlddifferently.
You understand and see a lotmore than other people do, and
sometimes that's overwhelming.
But if you learn to harness it,you learn to understand it, you
(16:16):
learn coping skills for it, thenyou really get to step into the
magic of this temperament.
Rebecca is going to join usagain on Thursday.
For a follow-up episode where wetalk about coping skills for the
highly sensitive person.
Thanks for listening, and we'llboth be back on Thursday with
creating midlife calm.
In this episode, you'll discover how to
manage your high sensitivity andreduce your anxiety.
Welcome to Creating MidlifeCalm, a podcast dedicated to
empowering midlife minds toovercome anxiety, stop feeling
like crap and become morepresent with your family, all
while achieving greater successat work.
(00:21):
I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensedclinical social worker with over
48, 000 hours of therapysessions and 31 years of
experience teaching mentalwellness.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (00:31):
Welcome to the podcast.
Are you a highly sensitiveperson?
Maybe your partner is, orperhaps you're raising what Dr.
Becky Kennedy calls a deeplyfeeling kid, someone with a
beautifully attuned andresponsive nature.
In my 40 years as a therapist,I've seen how often high
sensitivity is misunderstood ormislabeled, but when it's
(00:53):
recognized and supported, thistemperament reveals remarkable
gifts like empathy, creativeinsight, and the ability to pick
up on what most of the otherpeople in the world miss.
Today I'm joined by RebeccaHunter, a therapist and host of
a great podcast called TakeoutTherapy.
She specializes in helpinghighly sensitive people, embrace
(01:15):
their sensitivity, not as aweakness, but as a superpower
that can really help themthrive.
By the end of today's episode,you'll discover what it means to
be a highly sensitive person,why your nervous system may
react more intensely to theworld around you, and how your
sensitivity can be yourstrength, especially in the
stress of midlife.
(01:36):
Rebecca, I am so excited to haveyou on this podcast, and I wanna
begin by asking you to introduceyourself to our listeners today.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (01:43):
Thank you so much for having me.
I really am excited to be hereand talk about a subject that
I'm pretty passionate about.
I work with people who areconsidered highly sensitive
people in my private practice, Ihave a lot of fun in my career
educating people about mentalhealth and the things that we
should have learned in middleschool that would've helped us
(02:05):
out today.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (02:06):
I wanna begin with the basics.
Can you explain to our listenerswhat it means when we say highly
sensitive person?
Rebecca Hunter MSW (02:14):
When we think of sensitive people, it's
a little bit cringey.
We think about that personthat's causing scenes and making
a big deal of everything, andthat's not at all what we're
talking about when we talk abouthighly sensitive people.
These people are magicallyperceptive.
(02:36):
The world is a lot and highlysensitive people.
See it all.
They feel it all.
They frankly smell it all.
They are people whose senses areso heightened that life is
overwhelming and they'reoftentimes really in tune
(03:00):
emotionally, which can be agift.
They can walk into a room.
They read the room, they knowwhat's up.
They also can tell whensomeone's not okay.
There is a level of perceptionwithin a highly sensitive person
that's really important tounderstand.
(03:22):
It's a lot of stimuli coming in.
It can be a really overwhelmingexperience.
It can be incredibly painful attimes to go through the world
and be able to really feelwhat's happening.
Highly sensitive people aredeeper people than most people
are comfortable with.
(03:42):
They don't often do small talk.
We know from the research that20% of the population, has this
specific.
Group of traits, it's abiological temperament.
It's not a problem except forthe whole thing I said about the
(04:02):
stigmatizing of the wordsensitive.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (04:05):
This is not just some hocus pocus or
words put together, this ishighly researched, it's been
around for three decades.
Can you explain what's going onin the highly sensitive person
that at times is confusing tothem because they easily can be
overwhelmed and at other timesis really life altering to them
(04:27):
because they can see what otherpeople can't see.
What's the biological basis forall of this?
Rebecca Hunter MSW (04:32):
This is where we have to love science
because we know so much morethan we used to about the brain.
There's two parts to theirbrain.
They're just more active, thanit is in other people.
It's the amygdala and it's theinsula.
The amygdala is what gets us allfired up.
It makes us really alert to ourenvironment and the insula
(04:56):
actually is the part of usthat's a little bit more
nuanced.
The part of the brain that.
Notices, emotional tone can pickup on subtle, cues, so those two
parts of the brain in thissubset of the population are
more active.
Which makes the highly sensitiveperson incredibly perceptive.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (05:19):
I often use the image that they, it's
almost like they wear caps thathave sensors on them and all of
that stimuli is coming in.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (05:28):
Yes.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (05:28):
That can lead to overwhelm.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (05:31):
Absolutely.
Because everything's connected.
Great.
You have a brain that fires morethan other people.
Awesome.
Except your brain is connectedto your nervous system, so you
also get a little bit morejacked up than other people.
The nervous system responds towhat's happening in the brain.
(05:52):
Highly sensitive people are verysensitive to all of the
absolutely nutty stimulation,that most of us can ignore.
They notice everything theysmell.
Better.
They hear better sometimes,depending on the situation,
imagine driving through lifewith the volume on high at
(06:15):
highly sensitive people can'tturn it down.
It's all the time.
And so they have to learn tofilter and they have to learn to
work with their brain and theirnervous system and the setup
that they have in order tonavigate this absolutely bananas
world that we're living in.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (06:34):
Your Also saying it's a five sensory
experience.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (06:39):
Yes.
One of the most healing aspectsof the work that we can do is to
teach people to pay attention totheir senses.
Forget what's happening in thebrain, just be with life in this
very directed way.
Actually that's quite a gift.
Highly sensitive people arereally good at being mindful.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (06:59):
Yes.
Oh, I can see that.
Talk a little bit about thepsychological aspect.
If someone is highly sensitive,how does their psychological
self unfold?
Rebecca Hunter MSW (07:10):
It's really hard to be a highly sensitive
person because.
When you go through the worldwith a lot of empathy, you tend
to give more of yourself toothers than you give to
yourself.
You try to make people happy, ifpeople are upset and you know
(07:32):
how to maybe improve it alittle, you're gonna work at
that, there goes your energy andyour emotional capacity, all of
yourself.
Oftentimes ends up in otherpeople caring for other people,
taking care of other people,being overly empathic with other
people, it just flat out leadsto burnout.
(07:55):
It leads to mental exhaustionand emotional exhaustion, and
these things hit.
About right now, midlife?
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (08:03):
Yes.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (08:03):
We're really talking about someone who cares
so much about other people andcan really feel into their
experience that unfortunatelythey tend to absorb some of it.
Not only are they walking aroundwith all of their own
perceptions and their ownsensitivity and their own
(08:23):
emotional load, they're alsopicking up.
Little bits from other people aswell.
What do you think about that?
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (08:31):
I often say with my clients that your
theme song is the question, isthat my energy or their energy.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (08:38):
I always tell people you put on a
backpack in the morning, right?
Some of your parents stuff is inthe backpack.
We can't ignore that.
Some of the things that havehappened to you in your life,
they get put in the backpack,they come with you wherever you
go.
But if you're going out in theworld and you're putting all
this other.
Stuff from other people in yourbackpack, that's too heavy, man.
You gotta put some stuff down.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (08:59):
That's a great image.
In your clinical work, what arethe common.
Ways that people present in theearly stages of understanding
this temperament of theirs,
Rebecca Hunter MSW (09:09):
I specialize in anxiety.
And that's what they presentwith.
Because anxiety is.
Basically a load that we'recarrying that we don't know what
it is, but it feels so heavy andit feels so awful.
I would say that's the numberone thing that people think
they're coming into therapy for.
(09:30):
Because you know as well as Ido, when people come in.
Their idea about what's going onisn't always the root of things,
right?
It's just what shows up in themirror for them every day.
It's burnout.
It's I can't anymore with youpeople.
It's resentment.
(09:51):
When we're not able to use ourfilter of what's getting put in
our bag, we start to get hackedoff at the people in our lives
and say why are you taking somuch?
Which then leads todisconnection that's the root of
why people come in, because theydon't feel connected to the
people in their life, and it'sreally painful.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (10:10):
Would you say HSPs tend to feel overly
connected to what's going oninside of them?
Rebecca Hunter MSW (10:16):
I think so, yeah.
And what's happening for others?
They are literally experiencingthe lives of other people.
You take a highly sensitiveperson who isn't super aware of
what's up with them, and givethem a teenager who's going
through some high school drama.
(10:37):
they will literally go through.
All of it with emotionally,physically in their nervous
system, their digestive system,like they're back in high
school.
It's incredibly stressful.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (10:50):
Yes.
I often joke with my HSP clientsand the two have become one.
It's learning how to get somespace, but it's really easy to
get overwhelmed.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (11:01):
Absolutely.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (11:02):
This is a podcast for people in midlife
and they are caring a lot.
From your clinical experiencetalk about why often HSPs feel
so burdened and burnt out inmidlife.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (11:18):
I think that.
Midlife is the reckoning, isn'tit?
It's when we have.
Just the most minute amount ofmind, space and mental capacity
to step back and go, what isgoing on here?
Everything's coming to a head inour midlife, right?
So when I think about midlife, Ithink about kids in a crucial
(11:42):
period of their lives, it'sabout education, it's about
their social lives, it's abouttheir careers, we're at this
point in our lives where.
This journey with our kids isending and remember graduation
week?
Oh my gosh.
It's like there's so much goingon, there's also a lot of in
midlife financial stuff thatcomes to a head and time
(12:05):
sensitive stressors, We'regetting to this point.
What are we gonna do now?
So all of that combined.
Makes this time of life kind ofa reckoning for all of us and
highly sensitive people becauseall the ways that they've been
dealing with their life all thistime, that's all sitting in that
(12:27):
backpack.
And it's now 150 pounds.
I also don't wanna skip overthe.
Colossal impact of perimenopauseand menopause on midlife women
because these hormonal shiftstotally amplifies all of the
sensitivities that highlysensitive people already have.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (12:52):
That's a really important point.
I did an episode midlife andhormones.
I think it's episode 140 andthat made me put a sign in my
office for all my clients tohave their Vitamin D checked.
One of my clients who's highlysensitive, her vitamin D was
incredibly low.
Yeah.
And it, It was a physiologicalissue that she was.
(13:14):
Interpreting through apsychological lens.
Because she has a lot on herplate, but she also
unconsciously helps herself tothings on other people's plates.
It's a lot to carry.
I'm glad you brought that up,because midlife really is a time
to try to check in with a doctorand get.
(13:35):
Your levels on all the importanthormones and vitamins because it
is a backpack that people arecarrying, even if they're not an
HSP.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (13:45):
I think you bring up a really important
point, people think there'ssomething wrong with them.
People think I should be able tohandle the life better than
this.
I'm not doing a good job atthis.
And it, that's not the wholestory.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (13:58):
One of the things is when people really
understand this temperament, andit's not a label, Almost within
a day, their self-criticism goesdown.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (14:08):
Yeah.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (14:09):
My HSP clients walk into my office and
they turn off, the overheadlight because it is too
stimulating for them.
Prior to knowing this.
They would be asking themselves,what's wrong with me?
Why is this light bothering me?
And they might say it to theirfriends and family members who
would be critical of them, ortags in clothes and then they're
(14:29):
like, oh no, if someone is adiabetic, they use insulin.
Nobody's saying that's acharacter issue.
I don't want people to thinkthat their temperament, is a
character issue.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (14:40):
Because they might think that they're not
capable, and that is not at allthe case, right?
We're all super capable, but wehave got to understand
ourselves.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (14:50):
Every week on my podcast I have an
inner challenge and my innerchallenge this week is in the
show notes.
I'm going to do the link toElaine Aaron's two tests, your
Self test if you're thinkingyou're highly sensitive, or her
quiz for children if you'reparenting, or a caregiver of
someone who is highly sensitive.
Because knowledge is power whenI work with teenagers now, who
(15:13):
are highly sensitive, it's awhole new game compared to
people who are starting tounderstand this in midlife.
The same thing for a parent tounderstand how to parent a
highly sensitive kid justdecreases meltdowns tenfold..
Rebecca Hunter MSW (15:29):
Doctor Becky is helping so much.
She's such a good resource.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (15:33):
I want our listeners to know Dr.
Becky and Elaine Aaron's arereally talking about the same
thing they're both incrediblyhelpful resources.
Rebecca Hunter MSW (15:41):
I'd also like to validate the listener by
saying.
If you're highly sensitive inmidlife, you were highly
sensitive as a kid.
And that is a really difficultexperience.
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (15:52):
Yeah.
Today on the episode, we lookedat this really through a
biological lens.
I want you to understand what itmeans for your temperament.
But also that there's apsychological component that you
do look at the worlddifferently.
You understand and see a lotmore than other people do, and
sometimes that's overwhelming.
But if you learn to harness it,you learn to understand it, you
(16:16):
learn coping skills for it, thenyou really get to step into the
magic of this temperament.
Rebecca is going to join usagain on Thursday.
For a follow-up episode where wetalk about coping skills for the
highly sensitive person.
Thanks for listening, and we'llboth be back on Thursday with
creating midlife calm.
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