How to Connect with your Innate Gifts & Thrive as a Highly Sensitive Person

In this episode, we discuss how to connect with our innate gifts and thrive as Highly Sensitive People.

As a Transpersonal Coach, I’m passionate about embodied transformation and helping those of us who are highly sensitive go beyond our conditioning and reconnect with our core Self.

How do we go from knowing something intellectually to embodying it in the cells of our being? How do we live in alignment with the qualities of our innate essence – the truth of who we know ourselves to be?

My work has led me to develop the HSH Integrative Model for Embodied Transformation, which encompasses eight domains for helping HSP thrive and step into their authentic gifts. Mastery in the eight domains enables us to navigate emotional overwhelm and step into our authentic power. I share the eight domains in this podcast episode.

Jules De Vitto's Bio,  MAEd, MSc Certified Transpersonal Coach and Educator

Jules De Vitto has a BSc in Psychology, MA in Education and MSc in Transpersonal Psychology, Consciousness and Spirituality.

She is an accredited and certified Transpersonal Coach, Authentic-Self-Empowerment Facilitator, as well as an experienced teacher and educator. She works as a Transpersonal Coach trainer and tutor as part of the 1-year certificate in Transpersonal Coaching Psychology through Alef Trust.

 She is the founder of Highly Sensitive Humans — an online community that offers courses, coaching, articles and a podcast for Highly Sensitive People. She helps those who identify with the traits of high sensitivity to navigate emotional overwhelm, step into their authentic power and align with their true purpose in life.

​She is a published author who wrote 'Resilience: Navigating Loss in a Time of Crisis' which provides practical resources to cultivate greater resilience and find greater meaning and purpose through times of crisis. She has published her research in the peer-reviewed journal Consciousness, Spirituality & Transpersonal Psychology.

You can stay connected with Jules through...

Instagram
Facebook Group
Highly Sensitive Humans Website
1-1 coaching (book a 30-min free consultation)
The 8-Week Online Course 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome, I'm your host Jules DeVito, and you're listening to the Highly Sensitive Human Podcast, the show that offers an insight into the world of the highly sensitive person and helps those who identify with the traits of high sensitivity to feel more empowered and resilient without denying their authentic gifts.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

So, welcome to today's episode, and in today's episode of the podcast, I'm going to be talking about how we can connect with our innate gifts as highly sensitive people and how we can really thrive and live a more empowered life. As a transpersonal coach for highly sensitive people, I offer a lot of resources and tools so that we can experience greater fulfillment and well-being. And we all know just how important it is to embody and integrate these practices into our daily lives. And at the same time, what I found is that this intellectual awareness of these tools only scratches the surface of what's really possible when it comes to reaching our full potential. So I'm really passionate about embodied transformation and helping those of us who are highly sensitive to go beyond our conditioning and reconnect with our core self. So our core self is already healed, whole, and full of our innate potential. So it's only when we remember the truth of who we really are that we can actually embrace our authentic gifts and as a result feel more empowered. So what I found is that most of the struggles we face as highly sensitive people is a result of our pre-programmed beliefs that have been fed to us since we were children. And it's really important that we unpack these earlier life conditionings and understand that we're not what society has told us we are. We're not vulnerable, weak, or broken. We are in fact empowered and we have these traits and gifts which are crucial to our individual and collective well-being. These traits are really needed right now in positions of authority and in the leaders that we're looking up to. So having the right resources and tools to navigate our sensitivity is really important. And a lot of the tools I talk about are things like non-violent communication, self-compassion practices, learning how to set healthy boundaries. And these tools offer us the awareness, the insight, and a greater understanding of what our struggles and strengths are. For significant transformation to take place and to really step into our gifts, we have to learn how to embody and integrate these knowledge into our day-to-day lives and on all levels of our beings. This includes mind, body, spirit, and soul. So a question I've had for a long time is how do we go from knowing something intellectually to embodying it in the cells of our being? How do we live in alignment with the qualities of our soul essence and the truth of who we know ourselves to be? So what I found through my personal journey is that for a long time I could intellectualize, I knew on an intellectual level, the importance of self-compassion, the importance of setting healthy boundaries, the importance of speaking up for my truth, but I still continued to struggle with these practices. I still found myself talking about them, intellectualizing them, knowing them, but not embodying them. And it was only when I was able to actually embody these practices and trust in their value, trust in the value of sitting down every day and meditating or doing something for my self-care, that my that the shifts and the change actually began to take place. So there's this idea that trying to change our thoughts with the conscious mind alone is not enough. And so this traditional cognitive behavioral idea of replacing an old thought with a new one is outdated. So there is a common quote from Albert Einstein that we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. So when we decide that we want to change our pest programming, we're actually only using 5% of our conscious mind. So we can try to think differently or try to think positively, but we still have 95% of our programming going on in the subconscious. So this means that our conscious thoughts can be saying one thing, but the body, our subconscious, can be saying something completely different. So what's crucial here is that we not only think about the new beliefs, but we feel the energy and the emotion associated with those beliefs so we can embody and become that change. So I've been very inspired by the work of Joe Dispenser. Joe talks about feelings, uh feeling the emotions of the future person we want to become. I think what's really helpful here is to remember that the future person we want to become is the truth of who we already are. We're born with the qualities that we we dream of, and the potential we see in our future, the potential we see in other people, is often our own. It's already within us, it exists within us, untapped potential. So our untapped potential exists within our core, our core self. And our core self has often been layered by our wounds or it's been fractured and broken, leading us to become disconnected from our innate traits, our qualities and our gifts. And what can happen is that we start to mistake our wounds for our truth. And as a result of the stress hormone and our past conditioning, we can even become addicted to our wounding. So even if we know that our conditioned identity is limiting, letting go of what is familiar is often more terrifying than stepping into the unknown. So even if these behaviors, these thoughts and beliefs are destructive, when they're familiar, when they're comfortable, they're known. And this is the reason we can remain stuck in addictions or limiting uh habits and behaviors for so long. So there's so much potential in letting go of what is familiar. When we do this, cracks start to emerge and we enter spaces that exist in between and behind our wounded parts, our wounds, and we enter into this all-compassionate, accepting, loving energy that exists at our core and is connected to a unified field. And it's often from this place that we can become the witness to our wounded parts, and this is where deeper healing takes place. So our wounds actually hold a lot of potential for our growth and for our healing. And as Tony Robbins says, energy flows where attention goes. So the more we focus on gratitude, love, and abundance, the more we align with this energy, and as a result, we can manifest things in our lives which are congruent with the frequency of those emotions. And I know from experience this is the case, and at the same time, I'm a strong advocate for staying in relationship with our pain and trauma. So, what I mean by this is to not uh move away from it, to not deny it, to not reject it. It's really important that we allow space for all of our emotions and all spectrums of our reality to be there. We are human and we have a wide spectrum of emotions, and if we try to suppress these more challenging or difficult emotions, they'll only show up stronger with more intention and energy behind them. So it's my belief that our wounds are a portal, a gateway in which we can enter what is beyond the ego. And our ability to reframe who we are is not about moving away from our wounds, it's about moving through them. So when we go from the old self to our new self, there's this void, there's a place of uncertainty, and actually, this is the perfect place to create something new. So, in this space, we enter the quantum field, and this is what exists before the material realm manifests. When we enter the quantum field, and that means we're in resonance with it, we're in a state of flow, and we're in this state which is beyond space of space and time, and we have the potential to create our reality and go beyond the concept of linear time and our fixed identity. So you might have experienced this at certain points in your life. This sense of being in flow, being um having a lot of synchronicities occur, feeling that you're not having to uh force things to happen, things are just happening and they're that they're they're manifesting, they're manifesting as you think about them. And and as I've pointed out, this is really when we're in resonance with this energy, when we're in the flow, we're in flow with the universe, we're not fighting against it, we don't feel separate from it. And so being in this space also means that our mind, our body, and heart are in coherence. There is this alignment with ourselves in the quantum field, and this coherence is experienced as elevated emotions of joy, unconditional love, gratitude. So when you're feeling these emotions, you're in this coherent state. So one of the most the simplest and most effective ways of accessing this expansive and coherent state is through meditation and guided visualizations. So in the meditative state, our brain waves shift into a slower brainwave pattern of alpha. And this is also the imaginary state. So we move beyond our analytical system into our subconscious programming. So as well as this, our brain starts to unify, the right and left hemispheres synchronize, and the brain is in a holistic state. So we also experience brain and heart coherence, which means that we start to function better and there is more communication between the heart and the brain. So in this space, we can think beyond the limitations of the conditions of our environment. So our brain is constantly fluctuating between high and low brain wave frequencies, and these waves are measured in speed cycles per second, so these are known as Hertz. So when we're when we're alert and awake during the day, we're usually operating in this high frequency beta state, and in this state, um, it's very conducive for being focused, problem solving, using our cognitive thinking capacities, and then we can slip into a lower frequency, so the alpha state, where and this happens when we're meditating, which means we're generally more relaxed and receptive, and an even deeper state of relaxation and receptivity can occur in theta states, which often occur when we're in this liminal state just before we fall asleep. So when you're present to these altered and expensive states, you can actually change the neurological hardware in your brain. So, for example, when you visualize or rehearse that you've already done something in your mind, your brain doesn't know any difference from reality and the thought of it. So you don't need to wait for it to happen. You can instead feel the emotion of that experience in the present moment. So to embody significant change and transformation, take time each day to engage in meditation, and you can begin with a guided visualization to support your process. And if you're interested, I'm gonna drop a link in the show notes where you can access a guided visualization to help you with this process. So let's talk now about why this is so important as highly sensitive people and this power of visualization, using mindfulness, entering expansive states, altering the state of our brainwaves, connecting with the quantum field. It's it's only one aspect of many domains, many different practices we can use as highly sensitive people to really thrive and step into our power. So I want to talk a little bit more about sensitivity now and you know, some of the struggles that we can experience and to go back into a bit more detail in terms of the practices that we can use, and then you know, relating this to my earlier point of as actually learning how to embody these practices, how to integrate them into our day-to-day lives. So, research has shown that around one in five people are born into this world with the innate traits of high sensitivity, and it's also something which is found in over 100 other species. So, highly sensitive people have significant activations in areas of the brain which are associated with awareness, sensory integration, empathy, and intuition. So there is a lot of evidence, a lot of research and support behind the fact that there are these neurobiological explanations for sensitivity. And at the same time, high sensitivity is not a disorder, it's not a fixed set of traits, and we all know just how powerful our environment is in shaping our identity. So our early life experiences determine the expression of these traits, and studies have shown that approximately half of the expressed traits of high sensitivity result from environmental factors. So this means that a lot of the traits are a result of our environment. So the traits of sensitivity have many advantages. Sensitive people notice a degree of subtlety in our environment that other people don't. We have an ability to empathize, and we also have the ability to form deep connections with other people, and we're very intuitive. We can perceive threats before others have picked up on them, and this can be really helpful in terms of survival and when in positions of leadership. So the the gifts that come with sensitivity are invaluable for initiating change and transformation in the self, others, and the world as a whole. So research shows that when highly sensitive people are in nourishing environments, then we're more likely to thrive. But our depth of processing that highly sensitive people experience means that we can often become overstimulated. We're much more likely to struggle with mental, emotional, or physical exhaustion, especially when we're in environments that are not conducive to our traits. So when overwhelmed, we can struggle with having regular deep sleep, feeling fatigued, or experience brain fog. Other symptoms can also manifest as a real a result of sensory or emotional overwhelm. So in more extreme examples, or if we leave this unmanaged, then it can lead to symptoms of anxiety, depression, or other struggles. So this is really interesting because you know stress and anxiety and burnout are experienced by so many people around the world. And it's estimated that around 264 million adults around the globe experience anxiety. And unfortunately, the rates of depression are on the what on the rise. A large proportion of highly sensitive people likely fall into these statistics. So, with the right coping strategies in place, we don't need to keep struggling or get to a point of burnout. Instead, we can actually tap into our potential and the gifts. So, what I'm sharing here really is about the importance of us recognizing that our traits don't necessarily mean that we're anxious or stressed or depressed. Yes, our traits can lead to those symptoms, but if we manage them, if we have the right structures and framework in place, then we can actually thrive more than the average person. So this is really, really important information for us to know. And you know, part of my work as a coach is really about helping people to embody uh these this this intellectual knowledge, like I shared earlier. How do we embody these um gifts and traits that we have? How do we thrive? And so over the years, what I noticed is that many people were coming to me with the same struggles, and as a result, I developed an integrative model that we can use as a framework which covers eight domains, and when we work with these eight domains, we can begin to embody the skills and resources that we need to thrive as sensitive people. So, mastery in the eight domains enables us to navigate emotional overwhelm with greater ease and utilize our strengths in ways that are beneficial to our individual and collective well-being. So, I'm going to talk through these eight domains and talk about what we can do in each of these areas. So, the first one is mindfulness. So, using mindfulness to manage emotional overwhelm. So, mindfulness is the most fundamental tool we can use to navigate emotional overwhelm. When we learn to be present to each moment and observe our experiences without becoming consumed by them, then this awareness enables us to create space between our thoughts and pause before we immediately respond to triggers. So an embodied mindfulness practice can also anchor us in the body and ground us to the earth so we're not lost in overthinking, rumination, or analyzing. So the first core practice is mindfulness. The second one is all about setting healthy boundaries. So, as highly sensitive people, we can often struggle with feeling energetically and emotionally depleted. And this can be especially the case if you're an empath as well. So you might find other people are drawn to you because of your ability to listen and be a compassionate ear to others. And these are beautiful gifts, and it's essential to discern our boundaries so we know when we're doing too much and when we need to say no to commitments. So there's many practices we can do to learn how to discern and then set healthy boundaries. The third domain is all about reframing what it means to be sensitive. So when we believe that sensitivity is a weakness, that we are flawed or broken somehow, we're likely to remain stuck in this limited and false identity. And it's important to let go of these old beliefs and embody new ones that recognize the gifts and potential of our sensitive traits. When we do this, we're already on the path to living a more empowered life, and reframing who we are as highly sensitive people is about embodying our core self's energy and state in the here and now. So the next domain is all about self-compassion, self-compassion for reducing the over-arousal of our nervous system. So Paul Gilbert, a leading researcher in compassion, has highlighted the incredible benefits of compassion-focused practices. And these practices help us to manage stress, depression, anxiety, and other emotional challenges. And Paul Gilbert proposes that there are three systems that motivate human behavior: the threat, drive, and soothing system. So most of our psychological difficulties are caused by an over arousal of the threat and drive system and an under use of the soothing system. So self compassion practices aim to reduce the activation of the threat and drive system and increase. The activation of the soothing system, and this means we can increase the functioning of our immune system and reduce levels of anxiety and stress. The next domain is all about authentic communication and expression, and this is really important for a healthy relationship with ourself, with others, and the world. So many highly sensitive people value the qualities of peace and harmony, and we like being in situations that are calm, where there's balance, we can struggle with conflict or speaking up, often out of fear that we're going to disturb or fracture relationships. But as highly sensitive people, we need to connect with our voice and learn to express ourselves authentically. So one of the tools I draw on is non-violent communication, and this is developed by Marshall Rosenberg. So this four-step process helps us to communicate compassionately and authentically with others, and it also allows us to resolve conflicts because we can honestly express our feelings and needs whilst also empathetically listening to the feelings and needs of other people. The next domain is about living in alignment with our values. So our values reflect the things which are meaningful to us, how we want to exist in the world and be remembered by others. So everyone's core values are different, and our values can change over time as we move through life. When we connect with our core values, we can ask what's really important to us, what drives us. So being aware of our core values and using them to guide us will help us to live a more empowered and authentic life. So next we're moving really into the transpersonal spiritual domain. And the last two are about entering expansive and altered states of awareness, and then finally working with the shadow and integrating the shadow. So expansive and altered states of awareness mean that we can go beyond the limitation of our pre-programming and earlier life conditioning. We step beyond the ego and connect with a greater universal consciousness. Opening the scope of our awareness is a crucial practice for regulating our nervous system, gaining greater perspective and feeling a connection to a more spiritual dimension of reality. And we can understand the spiritual as awareness and connection to something greater than our individual selves. And this can be experienced in various ways. So this connection is so powerful for our transformation because it helps us to unlock our conditioning and pre-programming and embody the knowing that we are so much more than our conditioning, our limiting beliefs, all wounded parts. We have innate soul qualities which are a part of this universal consciousness. So lastly, shadow work. So Carl Jung first referred to the shadow as a part of ourselves that we have rejected, disowned, or denied. And we might not even know that certain emotions or behaviors exist or have the potential to exist within us because they're so deeply repressed. When we restrict our emotions in this way, we often project them onto others and the world around us. These qualities become external things we either judge, feel frightened of, or are irritated by in other people. So shadow work involves consciously engaging in practices to integrate and bring into consciousness the parts we might dislike or have disowned in the past. A huge part of our healing and transformation involves bringing awareness to the characteristics that we have suppressed or denied, and learning to be vulnerable enough to embrace these parts of ourselves to bring them to light. So before I discovered the mastery and implementation of these eight domains, I used to feel overwhelmed, burnt out, resistant to my traits of high sensitivity. I tried to suppress them. I internalized my struggle. I believed there was something wrong with me. So when I look back, I realize that for a long time I disconnected from my innate traits, my innate gifts, and I was suppressing my creative potential. And to be honest, I really wish I knew back then what I know now. So over the years, the journey I've been on has enabled me to develop and refine this model and what I now mentor and coach to others. So these eight domains work on the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels of our being. And I truly believe that positive and radical transformation can occur when we integrate embodied awareness and apply these tools and practices into our lives. So if you want to learn more about these practices, if you're curious, if you know that you need to learn how to embody boundaries, if you need to reframe your beliefs, if you're struggling with self-compassion, if you're not clear on what your values are, if you know you have parts of yourself that you're rejecting or denying, then I really encourage you to get in touch. I have this framework, this model, and an eight-week online course where we go into these core practices in detail, and we don't just talk about them, we learn how to embody them, we learn how to integrate them into our day-to-day lives. So I really hope this podcast episode today has been helpful for you, and please get in touch if you want to learn more, if you have any questions about these core practices that I'm sharing with you today.com where you can subscribe to the show and find out more about my upcoming workshops, my online eight-week course, and where I also offer one-to-one coaching for highly sensitive people.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

And if you found value in the show today, I'd really appreciate a rating. Or if you'd simply share this episode with your friends or other highly sensitive people that would help support this podcast.