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Hello there! You can listen to this as an audio post,
or if you'd rather read it you can find all the text below the video 💫

Just a reminder: the 10% discount on the Stellar Sensitive Creatives 1:1 coaching programme
ends tomorrow, Friday 3rd of Feb. You can learn more about the programme here.​

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Hello lovely creative!

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Today I’m answering your questions which include:

'What can you tell co-workers to prep them for working with you? I tend to warn folks that I am a cry-baby. And I usually do cry at some point in every job.'

'I have so many different things that I want to do creatively, and I get really excited but then don't finish anything to the point of sharing it or making money from it. I am frightened of choosing the wrong thing, and then doing loads of work building a business only to realise I've made a mistake. How do I stop self-sabotaging like this?'

'I often feel really overwhelmed when I am asked to do lots of things of different projects in the same day. I find it difficult to juggle everything and concentrate especially when I get emails and messages interrupting me. How can I get better at managing this?'

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Thank you for such great questions and I hope you find the answers useful! You can listen to the audio recording here or find the full transcript below...

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(Transcript)

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Hello lovelies, Welcome back to day four of this mini series on reducing overwhelm as a highly sensitive creative.

Today we're going to be doing the Q&A. I haven't had a lot of questions, but they're really interesting questions. So I can't wait to dive in and come up with some answers or some ideas or some more useful questions in which to respond to your questions!

So the first one was:
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​’What can you tell coworkers to prep them for working with you, I tend to warn folks, I'm a crybaby, and I do usually cry at some point in every job.’

I really, really feel that person, I am also a very emotional person. And I am known to cry.

But I think it's important to observe that you are seeing your sensitivity as something that you have to in some way warn people around.

So I think it might be helpful to start seeing your sensitivity as something which also includes gifts and strengths.

To develop that we live in a society at the moment where if you don't fit into the neurotypical descriptions of how you experience things, or how you behave, you tend to feel that you're in some way a problem. That you need to explain yourself to others, or apologise in some way. Even if you're just asking for your needs to be met. And often they're really very, very reasonable needs.
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So this is cultural, we carry embedded shame through our adult lives about our sensitivity, because probably in childhood, we were taught being sensitive or expressing strong emotions through things like crying, was in some way needy, or demanding or manipulative. Or at least by doing it, we would make people feel uncomfortable, they wouldn't like us as much.

And obviously, there are lines in the sand around behaviour. So we know it's not okay to be aggressive or abusive to people, we all understand that.

But why is crying put in the kind of unacceptable bucket, I would ask? I think for a lot of us when we express emotion, we aren't actually asking for, or expecting anything other than to be witnessed and hopefully accepted by the people who are around.

And I think especially as a freelancer, we get taught, the only way anybody will ever employ us, even if we don't cause them any trouble ever. And what makes us a good fit to work with is that we don't ever seem to have needs or personal circumstances, in the long term, constantly kind of pressing your own needs so that you become professional and employable, I think can be very damaging. And I'll tell you a story about that in one minute.
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So as a reframe of this, the first step might be to try and spend some time writing or mind mapping:

What does your sensitivity bring to the work that you do?

What are the benefits that you are bringing to that working relationship? And what might be missing if you weren't there?

The next step might be to start with the question:

What do you actually feel comfortable telling people?

So I can't sit here and say, ‘Do this, do that; obviously, because I don't know what feels right to you. And I don't know what circumstance you're working in.

I think there is more acceptance of neurodiversity and emotional needs in the workplace at the moment than they used to be. But it still really depends on the kind of culture of your workplace or people that you're working with.

Because while it's empowering, to be able to stay at the beginning of a working relationship, ‘this is how I work best. And these are the ways that I care for my own well being.’ BTW I love that - I wish more of us felt able to do that.

But the reality is that this still needs to come from the other side too. There needs to be this inclusivity in the workplace and job opportunities and a sense that you are encouraged to share your needs for it to not feel like you're really putting your neck out I think it's still quite difficult to find that balance.

From my own perspective on this in my earlier career, particularly in my 20s I very much tried to hide my needs.

So they included having to think quite carefully before making decisions, wanting to be extra cautious around safety and people's well being and inclusivity and just knowing that I was doing the right thing, and nobody will be causing any possible harm, that things were being approached in the right way. And I maybe had such a lack of awareness about my own needs in terms of overstimulation that I didn't even consider them at that point in my life.

Um, so I was struggling, but I tried to be very cool. And pretend I was, like, easy with everything. People I working with were really lovely. And I didn't want them to think badly of me.

What that led to, was over time I just internalised all of these experiences. I became very anxious, I started to feel like the anxiety was leaking out of me, and everyone could tell that I was faking it. Over time, I became - what I would describe as -quite neurotic.

Don't worry! I'm not necessarily saying that that's going to happen to everyone who's highly sensitive, but I think that probably was the product of pushing myself into certain situations, not setting any boundaries, not being able to verbalise or ask for any of my needs. And basically taking on that suffering myself. And eventually I couldn't hold it all.

But in the pandemic, we’ve seen a similar dynamic occur around people who are COVID cautious. I would have put myself in that category, don't know if that seems really smug?

Basically, it took me a lot longer to be ready to do in person things I was really scared of giving people COVID. And I struggled with the kind of acceptance that that was life now, there was a lot of fear for me around doing the wrong thing. There still is.

So after making quite a few little excuses about why I couldn't attend meetings, or do jobs in person, I thought back to that time in my 20s. And I was just like, you know what, I'm just going to tell the truth.

Like - ‘I'm not ready, I have a history of anxiety, I need more time to fill, I can work face to face’.

And I felt guilty. I felt like even though I wasn't at high risk physically by forcing myself to work with people indoors, it would be having a negative impact on my mental health. And I'm just not really prepared to do that anymore.

So I would rather than look at an alternative way of working or a virtual option.

Things are quite different now. I mean, we're all evolving to adapt to this situation. But definitely in kind of 2021.

Although I felt it was very privileged, and I acknowledged the privilege of that position that I didn't have to go into work in a physical space.

It was also a lesson in learning for me to say, ‘this is actually essential for me to do to care for myself, so I can be productive, I can be creative, I can be myself’.

So why am I telling that story? I guess, as an example of a similar or kind of parallel situation where it's about speaking up on defining your needs and feeling that there might be judgement.

So, in response to the question, I hope that was useful to you, I hope that you can find a way to comfortably and safely share that, yes, you're a very emotional person, you feel things deeply, you have a lot of emotions.

And a) I don't think there's anything wrong with feeling emotions and b) what are the positivesof you being your amazing, beautiful self and your creativity? And how does that deep feeling, and that search for meaning come through in your work as a wonderful thing?

Thank you so much for your question!

Let's move on to question two.

So question two is:

‘I have so many things I want to do creatively, I get really excited, but then I don't finish anything to the point of sharing it, and very rarely make money from it. I'm frightened of choosing the wrong thing. Doing loads of work building a business, but only to realise I've made a mistake. How do I stop self sabotaging like this?’

Thank you so much for your question.

…And what do I want to say in response? There's a lot to answer in there.

But I think the first thing we'll start with is self sabotage.

So I actually looked up a definition of self-sabotage. So it said self-sabotage is defined as behaviour that undermines one's own existing or potential achievements.

And, as I'm sure you know, common behaviours that we now see as self-sabotage include perfectionism, procrastination, avoiding things.

If we actually look into the history of where the idea of self sabotage comes from, as a psychological concept, the earliest references I could find (in a very brief period of research, I'm not going to pretend I did a PhD on this, or that I'm a psychologist, I'm not a psychologist!) But all I could find in reference was that it was in sort of influenced by studies that Freud did in the late 1890s, into self destructive behaviour, and this idea that children who had very difficult upbringings, were more likely to become adults who engage in self destructive behaviour.

So yet again, I am not a psychologist, and this is not psychological advice. This is kind of looking at the history of psychology.

But my understanding is that self-sabotage, as we call it, are behaviours, which are coping mechanisms to try and deal with strong emotions that we weren't taught how to process in other ways.

So I do know that a lot of HSPs feel emotions very strongly. And obviously, our creativity is deeply connected to our sense of self. Plus, we live in a society that gives us a lot of mixed messages about how we should apply that creativity.

We feel we need to justify spending time on it by making money that we should probably not even try because we're going to fail? But if we do try somehow we're also being selfish by trying? There's just a big old mix of mess that is very confusing.

So I guess my point would be that the reason I try not at the moment to use the term self-sabotaging - and I'm always open to that changing and evolving - but at the moment, I feel like it implies that that is our fault, too.

So it's like we are causing all of our own struggles, and we're stopping ourselves from succeeding. And while I can see that, in some ways, this probably can be true, and perhaps these behaviours are connected to negative core beliefs that we might want to work on with a therapist… In terms of my role as a creativity coach, I think the first thing I would want to do is emphasise, actually, this is not all your fault.

You're not broken, or flawed, or just totally self-sabotaging, and preventing yourself from succeeding. You're just a person who is responding to the experiences that you're living through, you’re creative in a culture that is very confusing about how you're supported, what you're told you should and shouldn't do.

And so the first step might be to identify what the specific things - behaviours - around this all are.

So without getting stuck in shaming language like procrastinating or perfectionism or avoidance, a simple question might be:

What are the things that are happening?

As an example - are you uncomfortable doing something because it's making you feel intimidated or ashamed in some way, so you're not doing that thing?

Or are you getting distracted because you feel under pressure from other things, you know? That's not procrastination, that's responding to the fact that you have other pressures in other parts of your life.

And maybe you don't have the resources like time and energy that you need to do everything.

Obviously, the role of a coach is more to ask questions, and create a space for you to work through these things.

So what behaviours might be happening and what you feeling when those behaviours are happening?

What is it you're wanting to get done?

What is the intention for your creativity?

And if you aren't sure yet, what do you imagine that you could do with your creativity?

Or what do you long to work towards with your creativity?

And so I think the hope with this would be that it enables you to see where you want to go.

And we could look at practices or processes or creative approaches that might be beneficial for you making those steps.

To respond to another part of that question, when you talk about choosing things and the struggle to choose, I'd love to separate a bit open up a bit the different types of choosing.

So for example, there's choosing a creative identity, which is a big, intimidating, complex, multi layered choice.

And there's choosing the actions you're going to take to try and accomplish a task which are smaller choices, although sometimes they can feel pretty intimidating!

They're quite different.

And so first, I want to look at choosing a creative identity.

So yes, there may be situations where we avoid settling on or choosing a creative identity because we're scared of potentially failing. I acknowledge that I can be something that people experience and I have heard people say that.

However, I do think it's worth pointing out that we live in a culture which now values the specialist now values the expert, but in the past that wasn't the case.

So if you look at the work of Barbara Sher who wrote ‘Refuse To Choose’ and put forward the idea of ‘Scanners’, she gives examples like Leonardo da Vinci and Aristotle, who were these people who had many, many interests, and nobody really seemed to question that- they were embraced for their genius.

So then I might help you to think about, are you a Scanner?

Do you want to read Barbara Sher's book and see if that resonates with you?

Would you like to define yourself as a multi-passionate, creative or a multipotentialite likeEmilie Wapnick put forward?

Or do you desperately want to choose one thing, because you feel like there's a deeper calling inside you?

So we would need to have a conversation around that.

Elaine Aron does talk in ‘The Highly Sensitive Person’ book about this idea that HSPs are very intuitive people, often, and that makes making choices decision making quite difficult.

She talks about the way that highly sensitive people are very driven by meaning they have this sense of real purpose, in that they want to contribute to the world in some way.

And that can make it difficult to decide what is more important.

A lot of the time when we talk about choosing it’s presented to us in a way that like, we're just a bit fickle, and rubbish..and we want to have our cake and eat it and we can't choose.

But if you have several things that are incredibly important to you, it is difficult to choose - they all matter, so how do you decide which is more important?

She has a great example in the book of like, ‘Oh, I feel drawn to working with animals...but then there's so much human suffering in the world.'..’

And it's kind of back and forth that we can catch ourselves in because we feel called to play so many different roles.

So my identity as a multi-passionate creative took a lot of time for me to embrace. And I think in part it was because I was told I had to specialise, and that was the only way I would survive as an artist

I have a blog post I will link about how that did not work for me.

It took me a while to understand that one of my real skills is that I am interested in a lot of things I learn very, very quickly. And that I'm very good at synthesising different information, and sharing that with other people in a way that is accessible to them.

That's why I love to teach.

So when you look at it in that way, that refusal of mine to choose is actually very beneficial to my clients. And it's very beneficial to my students when I was teaching, because I had a lot of experience and skills and knowledge that I was able to give to people depending on what they needed.

So I think another part of that question is, there's a different aspect of this, which is being informed enough to make a decision.

There are so many different things that we have to learn as creatives who run a business, just so many moving parts, no matter what anybody says to you, it is not simple.

There are all these areas that might not be in your zone of competence as well like accounting or the technological side of things, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed.

It's not that you aren't intelligent enough to learn these things, or to work out the tech though. I have not spoken to a single person who I thought didn't have the capacity to learn these things and do them adequately.

It's just how do you choose where to find the information, perhaps that's what you need support. Or you need support in looking at different approaches, or support in accessing information.

You need some form of - perhaps - gentle accountability around seeing through actions that aren't very stimulating or interesting to you.

And maybe ultimately, if you really do hate it, you might need support in working out how to outsource tasks.

And so it isn't you not choosing, it's you struggling to identify where the choices are.

That's not you being difficult, it's you needing support.

So I'm not a specialist in productivity (though I hopefully do have a session plan for you later in the year with a business productivity expert called Mari Ryan, which is really exciting! )

But I do know that - if you want to develop your identity as a creative, you want to make work that is meaningful or connects with people, or you feel is kind of contributing in to the world as you would like - the important place to start is to understand yourself.

To understand what excites you. To understand what inspires you. To understand what bores you. To understand what intimidates you…so that you can then begin to support yourself in these different areas.

You can embrace the strengths of who you are, instead of focusing on your weaknesses - which is what we tend to do when we feel out of our depth with various things…often admin or tech or money based, in my experience from conversations.

And I believe with that kind of self-acceptance, you will naturally begin to make choices without even realising that you're making them!

You'll just be working, and doing things that don't feel like you're looking out on 1000 roads, and you don't know which to take, because you'll be taking actions that feel aligned with you.

And you'll develop a focus or focuses because they're informed by who you are, and they fit with who you are.

I hope that was useful. And I'd love to think more about itq There's so many things I'd love to talk about with you. But thank you so much for sharing that.

The last question is:

‘I often feel really overwhelmed when I'm asked to do lots of things on different projects in the same day. I find it difficult to juggle everything and concentrate, especially when I get emails and messages interrupting me. How can I get better at managing this?’

So similarly…similarly? Yes, I think similarly, is a word…

As in the first question, a really good starting point here seems to be to look at the cultural messages underneath this, which have made you feel that you're lacking in some way, because you can split your attention across loads of different tasks, people and demands.

A question I want to ask is - is that really lacking in you?

Or could it be that people have been making unreasonable expectations of you?

Maybe you're just being asked to do something - or things - that don't fit well, or work with your personality?

I think the next thing to think about is around how you could set boundaries within this relationship.

So for example, is there an expectation by the people you work with that you respond to every email or message instantly?

I know, sometimes that can be case, like, if that is your job is that you have to respond to emails or messages instantly? How does that feel make you feel? And if so I'd love to understand better, you know, what led you to wanting that job, or why you needed to take that job.

The other part of it could be that you feel you have to do that you have to respond as quickly as possible, because there's a fear somewhere that you're going to be perceived badly.

Like, I know, there are lots of pressures around this.

I remember being really horrified when I wasn't using email on my phone. And I think actually installed emails on my phone, because I realised that I was getting these jobs.

Someone I worked for would send out an email to six of us and say ‘I need someone to work on this, the first person who responds gets the job’.

And I just remember that shift of like, wow, that's the world we work in now. Like, if I want to keep getting freelance work, I have to have this app on my phone, and I have to check it constantly, or have notifications set up, so I'm not missing out on all the work - and it was a bit scary!
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It doesn't work that way with everybody, but there's definitely this shift towards ‘we can always be contacted’. And so therefore, potentially, we should always answer.

But we don't have to.

So if we were working together in a session, I might suggest that we explore what new options you can see around this.

So if you're not going to respond all the time. Is there something else you could do instead, for example, you would probably need to come up with this yourself, because I'm not going to put words into people's mouths…But as an example…because I'm talking to a microphone right now, could you let people know you only respond to emails that to specific points in the day?

Or could you ask that you can designate certain days for new projects and then other days in the week for focusing on projects that need completing?

So again, this is really about how the needs of sensitive people aren't really respected yet in the workplace and how the culture of most workplaces in conventional workplaces has never really been designed to meet our needs.

I think it is very much about what you feel comfortable doing, though, and the culture that you specifically work in.

So it's one of those things that we would need to discuss in more depth for me to understand because of course in some cases, if you ask for any changes to be made, that will be like a mark against your name.

And as much as I would love all of you to be free to find jobs where you are respected andvalued and treated like the absolutely amazing human that you are, I'm also not naive! And I know that we don't all have that privilege at the moment.

So I'd like to remind you, though, that unless you're in a very toxic workplace, you do still have some agency in this.

So you can give yourself the permission to think about how you work best, or to write down what boundaries might enable you to do your best work or to think about how you could operate to maintain your wellbeing, even if the people you work for are going to be wonderfully receptive.

This is an important step in you having a kind of…self-awareness about yourself as a creative, and acknowledging that you have choices, and that you matter.

So I think it can be really difficult for highly sensitive people to then request these changes to be made. Because a lot of highly sensitive creatives are people pleasers, probably because we've been told since we were children, by society, or individuals, that we're somehow inadequate, and so that creates low self esteem.

But you aren’t inadequate.

You are just a person who has their own needs and personality traits and quirks like every other person. You are no more or no less important as everyone else you work with.

Because you are also unique and invaluable.

I really hope that helps you to see that making some changes around how people communicate with you, and possibly how you structure your working time, is far from unreasonable.

It might even benefit other people - I don’t know if it;s an organisation. But there could be people there who need the same things, but they just don't know how to ask for them.

But thank you so much for asking that question, and giving me the opportunity to think about it and respond to it. I'm sending you lots of good wishes around it! And don't forget that you're super awesome.

So those are all my questions! I have somehow stretch that out to 30 minutes, which is very me.

But I hope that if you listen to this, there have been things that have touched in on you or challenges that you're experiencing, that there was something you found useful or could in some way apply.

And if you do have a question and you think ‘I really wish I'd asked it now!’, you can still message me and I'll be more than happy to reply through text.

For the next part of this series on reducing overwhelm as a highly sensitive creative, I'm going to be making a video, and the intention of that video is we're going to challenge some work cultures or beliefs around how we should work.

And we're going to look at what are the incredible gifts that you have as a highly sensitive creative person that are being overshadowed by outdated expectations or beliefs about how people should work or how entrepreneurs should behave.

And we're going to ask the question:

What would accepting yourself and celebrating who you are bring to you and your creative work?

So I really look forward to sharing that with you, and thank you so much

for listening! Bye bye!

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And if you would like 1:1 support to find a similar approach for you, then take a look at Stellar Sensitive Creatives which has 10% off until Friday 3rd February!

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Was this email useful to you? If so please help me to offer these resources to the HSP creatives who need them! It's easy, just share it with someone you know who might appreciate it. You can send them this email as a blogpost with the link https://www.eleanorchaney.com/on-creativity/part-4-answering-your-questions-around-creative-hsp-overwhelm-and-more​

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