September 2011 | effervescence

Monthly Archives: September 2011

hsp travel: with earplugs, and sea-bands, and stripey socks, too

Written on September 30, 2011 by Kylie in on being highly sensitive

I have a lot of experience with being a highly sensitive person. My whole life, really.

I have much less experience, however, with catering to my sensitive self. I’ve spent maybe 1% of my life doing that. Perhaps a bit more. Maybe less. Regardless of exact percentages, it’s still a very new practice.

Just a few days ago, I returned from sixteen days of travel. I was in Portland first, taking photos of Havi and Rallying at her space, The Playground. Then I had a spate of photo sessions with some other glorious folks. Afterward, I Amtrak-ed it up to Seattle for a dear friend’s wedding.

The trip was bookended by plane rides, of course. JFK to PDX, then SEA to JFK. I’ve taken tons of plane rides in my lifetime, and this is the first pair where I’ve felt somewhat in-control of the packing and preparing. The first time I’ve been able to accept that I have needs that are worth attending to, and then attended to them.

As a result of this acceptance and needs-attending, the first leg of the trip began differently than past ones. I’d been planning for this particular journey for nearly six months. I wanted to make sure I had several photo sessions booked way in advance, and I did. I needed to know that I’d be able to pay for the trip way ahead of time, and I accepted that, and it happened.

The month before traveling, I did a lot of preparing, too. Much of it I couldn’t have done alone. I get easily overwhelmed by travel and planning, and I’m lucky to have a partner who understands and assists. In the weeks leading up to the trip, I: went to get a new prescription and new glasses (vision! wow!); got a bridesmaid dress pressed; purchased tiny bottles for toiletries; rescheduled photo and coaching sessions to accommodate travel; did lots of things at work to prep for lots of time away; made lists; checked said lists twice; and more.

For some people, all this would be no big deal. For me, it was huge. Not only that I did these things in a somewhat calm manner, but that I allowed myself to prep for weeks, instead of last-minute, which would not have helped anything.

So I took weeks to get ready. I took Sea-Bands, and ear plugs, and socks, and a sweater-ey scarf, and a drape-ey scarf for the plane. I got cash out of the ATM so I could take a cab from the airport, knowing I wouldn’t want to deal with light rails and buses when my plane touched down at midnight.

Why am I sharing this with you? Why does it matter whether I took three hours or three days or three weeks to prepare for a trip?

Because I want you to know that it isn’t easy, or neat, to be a highly sensitive person and plan for travel and work and life. If you find packing your suitcase to be really stressful, I hear you. If you’ve ever hesitated to embark on a trip because you were afraid it would just take too much out of you, I find that thoroughly understandable. A good first step is identifying some of your needs, and slowly becoming more okay with learning to meet them.

What are your travel needs? And how have you begun to go about meeting them?

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big adoration for sensitive souls

Written on September 6, 2011 by Kylie in on being highly sensitive, on introversion and shyness

I’ve got big adoration for sensitive souls. I carry it around, a pea-sized pearl ready to burst forth at any moment (but most often shining when I’m coaching and photographing). I recognized all of this when I started reading The Introvert Advantage and realized my heroes are all the fictitious maybe-introverts the author lists in her second chapter. Let me demonstrate:

Amelie? Love that girl. Cunning, quiet. Full of salacious secrets; privy to the inside worlds of her unsuspecting neighbors.

Vianne from Chocolat, a headstrong, nomadic seductress who dances with Johnny Depp to a strummed guitar and turns a prudish town upside-down. With chocolate.

The two heroes of Notting Hill, one a nerdy reader up and down; the other a starlet who likes her privacy. (I attempt to fashion my most relaxing days after their tea-drinking, bath-taking, script-reading ways.)

And Piglet. Sweet, pink and little. With halting speech, a look of surprise, and a tendency to gesture mildly with those teeny hands. Piglet, I could just squooosh you!

In real life, some of the folks I treasure most dearly are the sensitives and the inward-focused:

A friend who knows the ins and outs of every medicinal herb there is, plus its antidote and what they all look like.

One dearie who’s brilliant and talented as they come, and has been known to blush when looked at by too many people at once.

And also the friend who looks you straight in the eye when he’s talking to you, and thinks about things like spirituality in ways that you were positive couldn’t be done by someone so young. Right?

There’s a lot of talk in the self-development/business/networking world (or maybe just the world at large) about how to overcome your introversion. How to toughen your skin. How to smash your fear of public speaking. While I value many of the resources that are offered to introverts and sensitives, and have benefited from some of them, I also believe that quieter folks are charming for what we are. I feel that our culture could benefit from bending to the needs of introverts (instead of always being the other way around).

You who are reading this: I wouldn’t trade your softly-spoken words for forced loudness. And those of you who have a gift for listening instead of talking make a stunning contribution. People want and need to be deeply listened to, and your ability to offer that makes you special.

Also, I’m unsure how I’d operate if I didn’t have Notting Hill to watch on rainy days when I’m feeling snuggly. (See what I’m saying? Quiet folks are important. They create compelling feel-good cinema. The end.)

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