Episode #11: The HSP Journey in Empathy and Quiet Leadership

How authenticity, empathy, and self-acceptance create lasting confidence for HSPs.

Welcome back to The Happy HSP Podcast. I’m your host Kimberly Marshall. If you’ve ever felt the pressure to shrink yourself to be liked, hide your emotions, or embrace a leadership style that felt inauthentic, this conversation is for you.

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Barbara Allen-Williams. She’s a therapist, a speaker on high sensitivity, and the author of The Little Book of HSP Wisdom. In this conversation, we talk about how HSPs can embrace authenticity and step into leadership roles with more ease, grace, and impact. We explore why empathy is the foundation for relationship-building, ways to honor our HSP needs, and how sensitivity can be a powerful asset in leadership and life.

It’s packed with lots of wisdom and encouragement that we can all take along with us in our daily lives. I hope you enjoy it!

Kim: Okay, Barbara. It is so good to see you. Thank you so much for joining me.

Barbara: You’re very welcome.

Kim: I cannot wait to dig into your journey and your work, but first I would love to hear about your own personal journey with high sensitivity and more importantly how you found out that you were highly sensitive and what that journey looked like for you.

Barbara: Okay, so it was fairly late in life really. I was already qualified as a therapist and working in an addiction center, and I noticed that there were a specific number of my clients who seemed to need different things to the others and behave differently, even medically behaved things were affecting them differently. So, I wondered who they were and one day I came across Elaine Aron’s book in a book shop, and it said The Highly Sensitive Person. And I thought, oh, that looks interesting.

So, I took that home to read and I thought, oh, those are the clients. Those are the clients that are very specific that I always work differently with. And so, I got very excited. Anyway, within about 18 months I kind of did that…what often happens with therapists is the more you work with clients, the more you learn about yourself…and discovered that I was highly sensitive as well, but I’d been doing what a lot of people I think do, which is I’d been interpreting it probably through the training I received as kind of more of a neurotic thing going on. And of course Elaine Aaron’s reframe helped a lot. And I realized then actually I think I’m one of those highly sensitive people.

So, my journey towards being more authentic started then rather than rejecting my sensitivity, I was trying to live it, which made a big difference to me. So that was the start of my journey, but it almost seems as though my clients started the journey before I did.

Kim: What made you, do you think it was a separation from the trait that you were seeing it in others, but it was harder to see it in yourself? Was it an acceptance thing for you?

Barbara: I think it was an interpretation, external interpretation of me to myself. So, for instance, if I had a more emotional response to something that other people were brushing off easily as a child, it’d say, don’t make a drama. And I would sort of feel like there was something wrong with me and I worked really hard to actually work with my emotions and to not respond as strongly to things. But of course you can’t disappear them, you just submerge what’s going on.

So, I think it was external messages that really I needed to work on a great deal and to actually let myself be more real. And the other bit was of course the deep processing. Quite a lot of HSPs I think get told, oh, you just think too much. And my mind was always thinking and wandering, questioning and so on. And so I’d kind of put that down to just having an overactive mind.

And I realize now that was actually my deep processing going on, which kind of leads to a natural curiosity about different things and then having a very deep set of values that were totally foundational for me and important. Whereas I think a lot of people that I knew, they didn’t really think about the values very much.

And so, I’d questioned myself about that. Is that normal? Is that okay for those things to matter so much. So yeah, it’s been an interesting journey reframing myself and my way of living, I suppose. But I don’t think it’s an unusual journey for sensitive people. I think maybe a lot of minorities, any kind of minority, you kind of suffer from the interpretation of the majority of your behavior because you’re different in some way and they’re trying to understand, but they can’t because they don’t experience the same thing.

So, I’m not unusual in terms of human beings. There are a lot of people who struggle with things that are far more difficult than being highly sensitive. But I think being different in general is quite a challenge for most human beings, but especially for sensitive people because we’re more affected by things than most people.

Kim: Yeah. Why do you think people tend to look at us that way as different or…

Barbara: I really think it’s because they don’t experience things the way that we do. So, it’s like a foreign land. And one of the things that I think we sometimes forget is that in order to evolve and survive, a lot of creatures would you say, have kind of got this safety mechanism where when something is new or different, they initially are cautious of it, and they will suspect that there might be some kind of threat there. And in our more civilized society, we don’t like to think of our responses as a response to threat, but that’s what it is.

We see something different. So, I think when people are different to highly sensitive people, they see you responding slightly differently, and they become slightly cautious of it. And if they are not responding the same way as you in the same situation, they worry. It just makes them want, they want to make you safe in their consciousness, so they want you to be the same.

So, for instance, if you are finding someone making a joke about someone who’s vulnerable, if you are finding that upsetting because your empathy is sort of for the victim of this kind of a joke and you are responding strongly about it, it may not matter so much to them because they just brush jokes off like water off the duck’s back. And so, they want you to change and be less sensitive, less responsive to it. They want you to see it their way, and if you don’t see it their way, then they want to step back a little bit.

So, I think they have a wish for you to conform to how things are for them because it makes them feel safer. Unfortunately, in that process, the sensitive person feels less safe because not only are we faced with being seen as different and people being cautious around us or seeming to judge us for our deep responses, but we might also be mirroring their suspicion of our own trait. We might actually worry about our own difference and try and separate ourselves from that. And that’s where you can start to lose who you are and what’s important to you.

That happens to all sorts of people when they’re confronted with caution or people wanting to keep separate. But in order for us to move closer, we have to be the ones I think that need even more empathy, even more compassion to understand someone else’s caution. And when they don’t understand us, they’re worried that something is wrong.

Kim: Wow. I love what you mentioned, and it just made me feel like when you were describing how people want us to make them feel safer and kind of conform to who they are, I felt like I wanted to shrink, and I think that’s a tendency for us to shrink and not make waves. But what really kind of struck me is you didn’t say that we needed to find more confidence, we needed more empathy.

Barbara: Yes, yes.

Kim: Explain that a little bit more.

Barbara: Yeah, because if you have more empathy and compassion, another person, you are stopping any competition for right and wrong for ranking, putting yourself up or them putting you down or vice versa.

That makes it safer to start with because you’re curious. You are empathic, you are compassionate, but most of all, you’ve stopped judging yourself as worthy of that fear in someone else. That’s what it is. A lot of it is mild fear responses. Sometimes it can be quite strong.

And so in order to, the interesting thing is you become more confident when you yourself are less afraid of your own trait because then you have room in your head and in your heart actually to create a space where you help someone to get to know you, to understand that you are safe, you are generous, you are aware, but they’re not in any danger. And I think because we often feel, I think as sensitive people, we’ve often felt a bit victimized in society because we’ve been judged probably a bit too harshly.

We have to step out of that role, if you see what I mean, to actually recognize our own power in the situation that someone who is powerful in a very specific way can feel a bit scary. And so, someone who’s very deep and has deep feelings can sometimes feel a little bit scary to someone whose world is more skating along the surface. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just that they’re meeting someone who’s a little bit different.

And also, people then worry about being judged themselves. I think I remember when I used to, I worked for 10 years in an addiction center and then moved on to do other things. But one of the things I learned very quickly if I was at a social gathering was not to say what I do for a living, because the first thing that would happen after I told them where I worked would be for them to tell me how they don’t drink too much or they don’t use drugs too much, or they don’t do this, and they don’t that because they would suddenly feel like I’m going to cast a microscope over them.

And so, when someone becomes aware of what really are the good things about being a sensitive person, I think there’s a little bit of that in there as well, that if someone feels next to a person who’s very moved by things, they can sometimes then worry that they’re not moved enough. And so, they want you to harden up because it actually makes them feel like you’re more like them.

And it’s very tempting to do so to make other people feel better. You used the word we shrink ourselves. And I think the same thing happens to children who are quite highly intelligent in schools, that they actually learn to quieten their intelligence. They try not to show that they’re good at anything. They try to hide it because the other children feel uncomfortable around it because school is quite a judgmental place.

And so, if you’re sensitive to how other people feel you can start, it’s often starts in school that you actually start to shrink yourself, your abilities. It’s part of compassion that you want other people to feel okay around you. It’s the core of diplomacy really. You look at people who are diplomats and things, the first thing they have to do is to make it comfortable for other people to be in the room with them. If people are comfortable with you, you can have a dialogue and go somewhere.

Kim: As you’re saying this, it makes me feel like one part of this is how to live authentically without being kind of like I’m better than you.

Barbara: Yes. And I think HSPs live with being judged a lot through their lives, or they haven’t maybe until recently that you are being judged and you are seen as one down because you can’t do things the way other people do, or well, you can, but maybe you get fed up with it and don’t want to anymore. But it’s a complex situation. But I think that sensitive people are born with the ability to read complex situations.

And what we need in a way is to let go of the habit of worrying about ourselves, which we’ve got into because we’ve got expectations that things are not going to go well, that someone’s going to judge us, or they don’t understand where we’re coming from despite the many explanations, we might try to give them. So, we actually, I think need to learn to stand back and recognize that we are okay as we are.

We’re not going to harm anybody, but it’s okay to stand up to your full height. And that doesn’t mean standing up the way that the majority stand up. It’s standing up like a sensitive person. Now that looks very different to how we see people trying to be strong and sensitive. I think in a lot of areas, they try to be super, super people or they try to, I’m going to go out and conquer this and do that just like everyone else. I’m going to show them.

And actually no, that’s how the majority operate. But how do sensitive people operate when they’re strong and when they’re sounding up to their full height? It’s different. It’s a quiet leadership in a way. And there’s the confidence then if you are quiet, but you are still a leader, that’s where confidence comes. And I think Jacinda Arden, the New Zealand Prime Minister, the she’s an ex-Prime minister now. She was very good at that. She was a sensitive person who quite incredibly ended up in a powerful position, not by seeking it, interestingly not by seeking it.

She definitely what I would call a reluctant leader, but somehow in what must have been quite a tiring situation, I think for her, she managed to stand up to her full height as a sensitive person and to demonstrate how to be a leader in a different way. And so for that reason, I admire her a lot. She put intelligence and compassion together very strongly and wouldn’t change.

Kim: I like that. Yes, something we need more of today.

Barabara: And I think if anything that is my message is that in order to be confident, we need to be ourselves, but we need to find out who we are. Not having someone else who’s not us tell us who we are, and then when we feel more confident, not to copy them exactly in how they achieve what they achieve, but to do it our own way. And this is something that Elaine Aaron, who started all of this process, absolutely wonderful human being.

The thing that she would often say is HSPs can do anything they want, but they need to do it their own way. And that is so, so true. But how do we know what our own way is if all we are looking to is the template of the other 80%? It’s a bit of a conundrum to start with because we haven’t got apart from Elaine Aaron’s books until they came out. We didn’t really know what the template was.

Kim: Can you share with me a little bit about how you found your authenticity and how you stepped into that as an HSP.

Barbara: I had to make a conscious decision to stop suffering my sensitivity, and I had to catch myself. And I think that’s something that is quite a hard thing for sensitive people to do initially, especially if we’ve been brainwashed about who we are. To recognize that your sensitivity is not something that you suffer. It’s not what’s wrong with you, it’s what is right with you. It’s so natural that over a hundred other species act like us innately.

So it, it’s a good thing for survival. It’s supposed to be there. And I think I had to change my mind about sensitivity within myself and catch the old stories that would come up, catch the things that would come up, like something very simple. It’s the evening you’ve had dinner, what time is bedtime? Well, my bedtime might be half past nine. If I’m living with someone who thinks half past 10 or 11 o’clock is normal, I might push myself to stay up because that’s what everybody does. Nobody goes to bed at half past nine in the evening. What’s wrong with you?

Kim: Right.

Barbara: But I had to, it would cause me suffering to do that, to delay going to bed. So, what I had to do was to value being authentic more than the kind of suffering that was caused by going along with what’s expected in the majority case. So, you give up the conflict within yourself with your own sensitivity. That’s what I had to do. I guess if I could put it in a phrase, it would be give up the conflict with your own sensitive self, stop behaving badly to yourself.

Kim: Yes. And almost like honoring your own needs. Honoring…

Barbara: Yes. Yeah, honoring your own needs, your own way of life. It doesn’t mean that you forget about what other people need. Of course. I mean, one of the main ways we contribute to the world is by meeting other people’s needs, isn’t it? We’re quite good at that. So, it’s not about giving that up, but it’s actually about counting your own needs as important as other people’s giving up that people pleasing stuff when it gets too out of kilter with balance. But I would say that was the challenge I had within myself is making friends with my sensitivity and not allowing myself to be fighting my sensitivity inside.

Kim: Yeah. So, your work has led you to actually work with Dr. Elaine Aron, is that correct?

Barbara: Yes. Only in the sense, I mean, I’m not a scientist or researcher, so I don’t have any involvement like that. But one of the things that I’ve done is I’ve attended some training so that I could be a speaker for high sensitivity. So, she got a group of us together and told us what she wanted us to know so that we could actually help with disseminating information.  

The other thing is I also attend HSP gathering retreats. These were co-founded with Elaine Aron and Jacqueline Strickland. And so, I sometimes volunteer and go along to those and help out. And so I kind of work with what they want to do there. So, I’m not like a colleague in any way. I wouldn’t say that, but I think I’ve been useful perhaps from time to time from the UK, European end as someone to get in touch with if someone locally needs information or is wanting to do something for HSPs and wants a bit of support, that kind of thing.

Kim: Right.

Barbara: Yeah.

Kim: And recently you came out with your book? Tell me a little bit about that.

Barbara: Yes, I’ve got a book here. Yes. I’ll just show it to you. It’s called The Little Book of HSP Wisdom. And I started out writing a different book about my favorite topic, which is the big picture of high sensitivity. So, I haven’t written that book yet.

But as I was trying to write this first book, I suddenly realized that there were a lot of smaller bits and pieces that didn’t need to be in the big book, but I wanted to be able to share my thoughts on some of these other things. So, they all started to put into a separate place. And that actually now has come out first. So, my first book is this, it’s called a little book because it’s not very long. It’s got about 32 chapters, and they’re not very long at all. They’re only about a page. I think the two pages is the most.

And they address common things that come up for sensitive people as they’re finding their authenticity, as they’re progressing towards maturity as a sensitive person taking their place. In a way these things come up for most people at some point, unless you’ve had a really, really good upbringing, society will have affected your view of yourself as a sensitive person. So, it’s to address all the different things that come up. And I created it because I wanted people to be able to just open the book at any chapter and just read what’s relevant for them on the day. So, it’s got lots and lots and lots of different topics, but you don’t have to read it from beginning to end. You can just pick about and take what you want and that kind of thing. So, a nice simple book to read. I hope. That’s

Kim: Wonderful. Well, I can’t wait to grab a copy. I’m really looking forward to it.

Barbara: Thank you. You’ll be welcome.

Kim: So, what are some of the things that you love about being highly sensitive and celebrate about the trait?

Barbara: I love my deep processing. I love the fact that I can look at something deeply and also take into account lots and lots of different factors. And I think that is what sensitive people bring to the rest of humanity really is this ability not only to think about, but a lot of things both in the past, the present and the future, but also lots of different opinions and needs. And then to be able to share that somehow, teach that to everybody else, make it simple for other people to take a complex situation and make it easier to understand for others.

That’s one of my favorite things about my sensitivity and part of what we have to offer will also be part of our individual personality as well. So, although we are genetically similar in some ways, every HSP will have a different type of personality as well. So, I just like my creativity and the complexity that I can draw on to help someone else as well as myself. Of course. Yeah.

Kim: What would you say you struggle with?

Barbara: I get tired. I think it’s partly I’ve got a physical thing, which also makes me tired. So sometimes I don’t know which it is, whether it’s my sensitivity, but I wear myself out with thinking I can get so interested in something that my mind doesn’t want to rest. I’m not a high-sensation seeker, but sometimes I think my thinking is high-sensation seeking even if the rest of me. So that can actually be quite tiring. So, I don’t think this is uncommon. I want to do more than I’ve got the energy to do.

And I think even if I was perfectly healthy, I would still struggle because I just get so excited by possibilities and things that we could do that would be helpful for someone and oh, that would be a great idea, let’s do that. And then you realize, actually, I haven’t got the time or the energy to do all of that. I need to pick something. And I find that very difficult because so many ideas are so appealing.

So, I would say I struggle, I struggle with that. And maybe at the same time I struggle when I’m upset emotionally. It takes a lot out of me. And I mean, I’ve learned over the years ways to express myself and things, but I think having intense emotions is tiring in itself. So yeah, I think probably that’s been a struggle, although I think probably a lot of people who know me, because in a lot of the jobs I’ve had, you need to be a calm head.

And so on the outside I’ve probably seen very calm, but actually then when I get home, it’s a different story and I need to let those emotions out. And I’ve had to firstly stop judging myself for having those feelings, stop judging myself for finding it tiring. And that’s been a struggle because I’ve kind of almost joined in the stories of the majority that you shouldn’t be like that. And that makes it worse. Not only struggling with it, you’re also struggling with the idea that you shouldn’t be struggling with it in the first place.

Kim: Thank you for sharing that. I feel like a lot of people need to hear that even professionals who have so much experience in this field such as yourself still need that reminder. Of course, you learn it and it’s perfect and you go with it.

Barbara:

Yeah. And we’re not perfect. We’ll make mistakes like everybody else. We’ll have good days and bad days because we’re human beings.

But you kind of learn as you begin to stop judging other people, you also stop judging yourself. And one of the most useful things I learned a long time ago was to forgive myself quicker when I make a mistake that’s been so helpful, I don’t waste half as much energy beating myself up about something I could have done better.

That’s already done. It’s already too late. And just to focus on what can I do in this moment rather than beating myself up about it later on? And I think that it’s usually born of something which most HSPs have, I think, which is a high level of conscientiousness that you really don’t want to make a mistake, particularly if someone else is going to be upset and because you feel it. You don’t just know in your mind that you did something wrong. So, it goes against your own values. You are also experiencing how someone else is feeling as a result of that so deeply. So, it’s more tiring. And I think that’s the thing I struggle with most is the various ways in which I can tire myself out.

Kim: I was just thinking about what you could have done should have. Yeah, I’m with you.

Barbara: Yeah, I mean, if any HSPs is listening to this, we all do it. We all do it, but we all get better at managing it. And eventually it gets to the stage where you can see something coming and you can catch yourself before you go into that. And that’s okay. That’s how we all learn. Practice makes perfect, doesn’t it? Except perfection never arrives.  

Kim: That awareness, that sense of awareness about…

Barbara: Yes, and having, I think that’s the part of HSPs as much as we are. We can be very self-aware. Taking steps to really become self-aware is a really important part of the job that you do for your tribe. We are kind of created to be that aware person. And so it’s good if we become good at that awareness of ourselves, of other people, and we kind of expect that we’re going to grow and change and that we don’t know everything already.

Kim: Right? Yes. That permission to explore and discover and keep curious.

Barbara: Yeah, it’s a sign of intelligence amongst the whole human population. Anyone who knows they don’t know everything, I would immediately listen more to them than I would to somebody who thinks they know it all.

Kim: Great point. I love that so much. So, what advice would you have for HSPs who may be struggling with happiness or finding meaning in their lives?

Barbara: Well, happiness and meaning. They can be together and they can be separate. I would say happiness, stop fighting with yourself and your own sensitivity. So, learn more about your traits so that you can accept it as it is and make the most of it because it’s so useful not just to you but to other people.

And then finding meaning is a very individual process, but it’s very rare to come across an HSP who will do anything unless it has meaning above something else. So, a lot of sensitive people, even if they earn a very good living doing what they do, it helps. It has meaning above the money. So, it’s about saying, well, if what does have meaning to me, what are my main values? And because those values are something that you can use them to screen what you are doing. And so, if there’s something that you want to do or that feels important to you, that probably has some meaning. So, you need to actually accept that and sort of say, well, this seems to be important. What is the meaning behind this? And often there are some values behind it. And if we’re not satisfied with something, it’s because those values are not expressed in that activity.

So, I mean, I suppose it’s unofficial kind of research listening to a lot of HSPs is that there are very common values that most sensitive people have, even if they’re very different in the type of work and everything that they do. And that is that their values are very, very important. I don’t just mean factual truth, I mean truth. The whole truth matters. And then kindness and fairness.

And if you come across an HSP who’s really cross, one of those three has just been compromised and they’re very upset about it. There’s very rarely I come across anyone for whom other values, sensitive people whom other values matter that much. Everything else seems to be secondary, but I think that might be because as sensitive people, we tend to hold the values for the tribe. We are the reminder of what really matters. And that’s why sometimes the way we feel about something completely differs to the majority.

That’s okay. I often think about HSPs having a voice. It’s often about planting seeds. You don’t plant a seed and expect that every seed is going to grow where you throw it, you throw it everywhere, and then it’ll grow where it will grow. So, if we are trying to give someone a sense of a meaning or a value that we have or something that we feel is important, we’re speaking on behalf of our sensitive role, but people might not straight away get it. They might disagree with us and tell us all the reasons why we’re wrong, but it doesn’t matter because you’ve already said it. You’ve planted a seed somewhere. And some of it will fall into the right place and people will remember.

So, I think it’s important to say what’s in your mind in a nice way when it feels like the right time in a nice way. You can be quiet about it. You can be adamant about it if you think that’s appropriate. But after that, let go of that because you’ve already done your job. I think we spread seeds. That’s a lot of the role I think, for sensitive people, and that has a lot of meaning for me. I think it’s disseminating information and then learning not to worry if it doesn’t fall on fertile ground every time, that’s not our job. The soil is not our job.

Kim: Let it take root.  

Barbara: Yes, it’ll take root if it’s going to, but if you don’t throw any seeds, nothing. Nothing will grow. Nothing.

Kim: So beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. That’s right.

Barbara: You’re very welcome. It’s nice to have an opportunity to say these things. Often things need to be said, and you don’t always find a space where it feels what people want to hear, but I think it’s an important thing for sensitive people to hear. Sensitive people are very important when they’re operating according to their genetic trait. They do a really important role, and we need more HSPs doing their role at the moment because I think things are out of balance. So

Kim: Yeah, I agree with you wholeheartedly. So where can people follow along with your journey?

Barbara: Well, I’ve got a website called Growing Unlimited that’s been around since the early 2000s. And so, anyone can contact me there or there’s information in my book if they look up The Little Book of HSP Wisdom at the back of the book, there’s my website and I also have a Facebook group that I’ve literally just launched this week, which is associated with the book. And so, anyone who’s read the book or got the book, you can join this Facebook group. It’s a little space to have discussions about anything in the book or anything that feels relevant to that journey towards maturity for a sensitive person.

So, it’s kind of just a space to talk about those things.

Kim: I’ll be joining.

Barbara: You’d be very welcome, Kimberly. That’d be lovely. Yeah, it’s lovely to have people along who think deeply about things and have that empathy and are on that path towards awareness. And some of us are further along than others, but we’re all going in the same direction and none of us have arrived because of course we never will. It’s lovely to have the company of other sensitive souls, isn’t it? Along the journey.

Kim: It truly is.

Barbara: Yeah.

Kim: Just gives you a peace about the trait and what it means to you and just it’s so nice to be able to share the experience.

Barbara: Yes, it is. We learn from each other. We learn from the other 80%, but we really do need the company of each other sometimes to reconfirm the meaning. The meaning of what we do.  

Kim: And I feel like there’s a strength that you don’t necessarily get from the other 80% that when you do meet with an HSP on that truthful way, truthful way that you can draw from that is just unlike any other experience I’ve had. It’s been incredible.

Barbara: It’s very special and quite surprising. People are constantly surprised when I go to the HSP gathering retreats. People are often surprised there how different it feels to be in a room full of other sensitive people. And one of the joys for me is that the conversations that get frustrating, it can get very frustrating with the other 80% where you can’t seem to take the conversation further because you are having to re-explain various aspects of where you are coming from.

When you are with a whole room full of sensitive people, the conversation goes where it was supposed to go, you can explore further because you don’t have to explain so much. It just moves forward and it’s such a lovely thing to experience and I often used to feel jealous of the other 80%. They seem to be very satisfied with their conversations and what they’re doing, and they get a lot out of them. And I used to feel I was missing out by not having other sensitive people. But of course, now there are more sensitive people to have these like we’re having now. It’s nice, isn’t it? There’s nothing that is hard to understand.

Kim: Yeah. It’s just kind of a flow and there’s just a general understanding and it’s almost a mirror in a way, but one that you can take deeper than you’re able to with others.

Barbara: Yeah, that depth of processing, it’s not odd or different, it’s just everybody’s deeply processing and it’s very nourishing. Very nourishing. Yeah.

Kim: Thank you so much for joining me today. It was an absolute pleasure.

Barbara: You’re very welcome. You’re very welcome. It’s been a pleasure. I’ve enjoyed it. So, thank you for the invitation.

I hope this conversation with Barbara has inspired you to weave more empathy and authenticity into your life on the daily.  

If you enjoyed this episode of The Happy HSP Podcast, I’d love if you could leave a review or share it with someone who may enjoy it. There are so many HSPs out there who can really benefit from more support and community, so it’s a great and easy way you can spread the love.

Also, if you have a story to share about your high sensitivity, I’m always looking for my next guest. You can reach out to me on Instagram at @happyhsppodcast or send me an email at kmarshall@happyhspcoaching.com. I’d love to hear from you and learn more about your journey.

Until next time. Take care!

About Barbara:

Barbara Allen-Williams founded Growing Unlimited Therapeutic Consultancy (2002) and the National Centre for High Sensitivity (2010-19). She is a retired integrative therapist, group worker, author and a therapeutic supervisor with 30 years of experience. She writes and speaks on the topic of high sensitivity as well as facilitates the empowerment of individual HSPs as a mentor 1-1. She also hosts groups and workshops nationally and internationally. She is a founding member of International Consultants in High Sensitivity and attended training with Elaine Aron PhD in San Francisco.

 Her book The Little Book of HSP Wisdom has just been published and is available in paperback and eBook formats at Amazon and Troubador, and in paperback at Waterstones and Blackwells. There is also a new Facebook page for the book where readers can discuss topics arising from the book (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1029004049279908).

Follow along on Barbara’s journey:

Website: www.growingunlimited.co.uk

Email: hspsensitive@icloud.com

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About Kimberly:

After 20 years in the publishing industry working for companies like Time Inc., Monster.com, and W. W. Norton, Kimberly Marshall left her corporate work to create a gentler and more nurturing career that better suited her as an HSP. After repeatedly struggling with burnout and low confidence in the workplace, she now helps HSPs create careers that bring them lots of purpose, meaning, and joy. With the Happy HSP Podcast, Kimberly hopes to shed more light on the reality of living with high sensitivity and inspire more HSPs to embrace their empathetic, generous, and loving natures.

• Hosted/produced by Kimberly Marshall

• Edited by Fonzie Try Media

• Artwork by Tara Corola