Guest Article by Christine Magnussen

I just joined 2500+ fellow HSPs in a valuable and timely webinar broadcast and have to share it with you!  Tools to Help the Sensitive Thrive in a Chaotic World is one of the extraordinary free HSP masterclasses offered by HSP psychotherapist, Julie Bjelland. (Let me take a moment here to give tribute and appreciation to Julie Bjelland for the knowledge, generous authenticity, and high level of regard she offers HSPs in her classes, books, website, and community.

If you’re like me now, you feel bombarded by bad news — climate disasters, healthcare crises, and political upheaval. Our highly sensitive systems can get easily depleted. We are gaining weight, suffering digestive problems, and losing motivation, energy, and sleep. Our immune function is dropping due to stress, at a time when we need it the most. Why is this happening?  

Our brains are wired for negativity. Based on survival mechanisms, our brain pays most attention to what appears to be a threat. It addicts us to watching negative news to “stay vigilant.” HSPs can be especially sensitive to this. In these uncertain times, we may feel adrift without an anchor in the form of definitive science about vaccines or reliable climate predictions. Uncertainty can be harder on us than predictable bad news. We feel like orphans searching for our caregiving parents to assure us that “everything will be all right.”

Humans thrive on predictability. Our brains operate by recognizing something that reminds us of an earlier interaction, responding to it based on previous experience. What we are experiencing now is new but may stir familiar feelings of loss or trauma. Brain neuro transmitting stress hormones cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine are raging. Our sympathetic nervous system is on high alert.

Julie Bjelland throws us a life preserver in her HSP Sensitive Empowerment Community and online courses. Her self-paced Brain Training and other courses teach self-compassion tools to quell our anxiety. In these courses, we learn to “turn down the volume” of the external world and equip ourselves with these tools (and many more) to thrive :

• Focus on our own needs

• Spend time in silence

• Soak in Gratitude

• Establish a daily routine

• Practice loving self-talk

• Listen to your own intuition

• Breathe to release stress chemicals

HSPs often post in the private Sensitive Empowerment Community ways that sharing with each other normalizes our experiences. We feel supported and celebrated by one another in this diverse community.

Each of Julie Bjelland’s courses and podcasts are jam-packed with concrete, tangible tools. I urge you to gift yourself what Bjelland refers to as “fierce HSP self-care,” and explore these offerings. They will save your life!

HSP,  Christine Magnussen is a Master Certified Health Coach and Certified Sleep Coach who teaches the effects of attitude on health. Incorporating many of the tools she has learned from Bjelland’s HSP courses and the Sensitive Empowerment Community, Christine offers 1:1 customized coaching, especially for HSPs. Meet her at: YourVitalityCoach.com and enjoy her upbeat video at: youtube.com/watch?v=9vriN4Z_OXc