Episode #26: Rethinking Parenting, Education, and Society Through the HSP Lens

How sensitivity shapes childhood, transforms learning, and rewrites the future of how we raise and treat human beings.

Welcome back to The Happy HSP Podcast. I’m your host, Kimberly Marshall, and in this episode, I sit down with Amy Vasterling — public speaker, author, teacher, and intuitive — to explore how HSPs can transform parenting, education, and society. Amy shares her personal journey growing up as a highly sensitive child and the insights she’s gained raising highly sensitive children of her own. We also discuss the concept of expressive expansion, reframing the role of sensitivity to create systems that allow HSPs to pave the path to a thriving society that works for all.

I hope you enjoy it!

Kim: Amy, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s so good to meet and see you.

Amy: Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Kim: Yeah. So, my first question for you is about your own personal journey with high sensitivity. How did you find out you were highly sensitive and what did that journey look like for you?

Amy: Yeah, I had a health issue. I had chronic Lyme disease, and I had had it at this point about six years. And I was driving to a clinic that was about nine hours away for a two-week stay, which was really hard for me for a whole host of reasons. But I listened to Elaine Aron’s book on audio as I was driving and I could see myself in what she was saying, but it wasn’t until a few years later that I for some reason revisited content or something about high sensitivity. And I remember being on a Sunday and that Monday and Tuesday I felt as if, wow, it had to be very hard for my educators and my parents to understand this and deal with me. I mean, I don’t mean to sound bad there, but I mean really to deal with what was going on because I did show up differently.

But then on the next day, it turned, and I felt like why didn’t they try harder to see me and to meet me and to understand me because I was highly emotional. It felt like I was pushed into almost being more emotional because the needs were so unmet in that way of allowing the expression. And I really hit a skitch of depression of feeling like why did that land in feeling so misunderstood?

So, the beauty of it is I had this range of understanding almost people use the word gratitude a lot. I’m not into that too much, but this gratefulness of wow, I can really see how challenging I may be presented, but then also this other side of it and thinking back to first grade when the things that were done were actually really hard for me, it made it even harder and so curious. But now I see being highly sensitive, and I knew this a long time ago, I say from my work, what’s good for the highly sensitive is good for all people. And what’s good for all people is not good for the highly sensitive. And what I mean by that is to me, the highly sensitive person is the change maker. Because like me as a child, I was living in a position of seeing life very differently than others.

And because I could see the difference and maintain that my whole life, that was kind of painful, I would be able to change things because I could see how it could work for all people. And that to me is really powerful and highly sensitive.

Kim: So it’s almost like when you first found out you first had empathy, it sounds like for other people who had to, like you said, unquote deal with you, which is so normal for us because as we’re trying to figure out who we are and struggle, especially as children, we can feel like we’re acting out or maybe we’re doing the wrong thing and we’re feeling these big feelings. And like you said, if people don’t understand how to respond to that, it can make us feel like there’s something wrong. Was that your kind of experience?

Amy: Yeah, and I would just venture to say that a lot of highly sensitive people are altruists. And that makes it feel like my work is about this model, which is the control we assert to maintain or advance our place in the hierarchy. And my work is a little bit more complex than that, but as a basis. So, in a way that was the positioning is you either are right or wrong. And I think for me, I did feel like I don’t fit. I don’t belong. There’s not a place for me here. How do I convey who I am? And the beauty of it is that de-evolution over the course of my life allowed me to see something I don’t think others can see. So, then I wrote about that, right? And to me, there’s something invisible in our world that nobody sees, but we feel, and that’s where my work headed.

So, in a beautiful way, all those players in it that couldn’t understand me showed me something I needed to see so I could bring it out. But yeah, it was hard. I felt very alone as a child. And I had already, by the time I was seven and in first grade, had amassed quite a bit of abuse. I mean, that’s kind of a lot to say, but especially mentally and emotionally, there were some other things going on there too. So then by the time I was in school and I’m dealing with this environment that’s really like something’s wrong with her that that was a lot for me because I am sensitive, and I know myself well. Yeah.

Kim: I had a similar experience. I think you’re right. Even as kids, we know ourselves well and it’s like when our families say, oh, there’s something wrong with you. And my personal experience too, my family was taking me to doctors and trying to get me diagnosed with mental health issues. And thankfully by that time I knew, no, there’s something different about me, but there’s something wrong with me. But that can really inform who we are, and I don’t know our struggles, I guess.

Amy: Yeah, I believe so. And to me, because I work in this arena, but I say kids between five and seven and eight and nine years old, highly sensitive children, especially in today’s world, tend to break down at those points. And the five- to seven-year-olds are showing they can already preemptively see the system in which they’re going to be educated and they’re bucking that system because they learn differently.

And I’m not going to go into that, but I think to me there, there’s something exciting coming because that potential of how they learn can, I think, like I said, what’s good for the highly sensitive is good for all people. And then, sorry, just getting over a little cold. The eight- to nine-year-olds are seeing the social system change and they’re starting to recognize, okay, the girls and boys don’t play together anymore. They’re starting to see that preemptive the middle school age behaviors starting way before. And to me, that’s the beauty of the highly sensitive is they see the pattern in society much more deeply. And I think honestly, the highly sensitive are the protectors of society. We can get into that in a bit.

Kim: Share with me your concept. I find that really interesting and I’d love to hear your take on that, how you would describe it when you say that what’s good for the highly sensitive person is good for everyone, can you share what that means when you think about that?

Amy: Absolutely. Well, in my book I talk about the highly sensitive person, and I correlate us to elephants that we are the ones who protect society. And the way that we do it is like the elephants. I mean, if you’ve ever, I have had the advantage of being in a room with 60 people and 48 of them were highly sensitives, and it feels completely different.

Kim: Wow.

Amy: It’s the most calming experience. Yes. Yeah. So, there’s that, but the elephants, they don’t forget and all of these things, and they also keep the patterns. They can sense when something’s happening, say there’s an earthquake coming, or the water is rising. We are similar to that. And the elephants are built to trumpet for the animals that are in the trees and in the sky. They’re built to pound the earth to let the animals signal something’s wrong and they’ll follow those elephants to where they’re headed. But here’s the thing, for the highly sensitive, we’re the same way. We can see the preemptive pattern. We may have said, Hey, climate change is coming in the 1970s. I think Elaine Aaron actually said that.

And yet people won’t listen necessarily. And that’s a problem in humanity and something else, but that we are self-sacrificing, meaning if people had to get to high ground, we’d make a human chain and help them up and drown as a result, that sounds kind of gross. But we are built that way to support and protect. And I think that that’s sometimes in a society that is built on a world society that is built on you, be aggressive to succeed, we struggle in that because we can be taken advantage of.

I’m not saying that we are gullible, I’m saying that we have this altruistic nature. I’m going to say one more thing here is when I was younger, I read an article about in Japan, and I’ve not been able to find it since. When children are about nine years old, so third grade by American standards, they can see in them this high sensitivity and they actually pull them aside and start cultivating and working with it because in business, they recognize they have a natural propensity to be able to be in a room where negotiation is happening and read everyone so that they can make a very good choice, not necessarily that they’re hustling more what’s going to work for everybody to make it happen.

And to me, that’s it. We need to be recognizing this so that we can pull the power for the child and really help them rocket forward.

Kim: The difference in culture, the difference in when you see a child who’s reacting with a sensitive nature there, they’re taking them and developing that and saying, Hey, you have a gift, where here. It’s like, Hey, you need to toughen up. It’s a different method. It’s a different development.

Amy: I agree. But I think we don’t tell the child they have a gift. We simply let them explore it and have natural consequence with it, so they learn the ins and outs of it. A little example is both of my children are highly sensitive. I mean, what are the chances? Amazing, right? But one of my kids came home from taking a test and I said, oh, how’d the test go? And he was like, well, it didn’t go very well, but I got a D. And I said, oh, what do you feel about that? And he said, well, actually, I got the highest grade in the class. The teacher wrote the test really hard to what they had taught, but the child without being asked said, because they can fill in the pieces, the highly sensitive can fill in the pattern.

He said to me, it doesn’t matter, mom. Now I know how the teacher teaches and writes the test. So, I know that piece and I never have to worry about it. And now this kid is in really hard classes taking physics at a university and had a teacher who is awful because I think they’re trying to root out who can handle it and who can’t. And I said, I’m not a mom who would call, but this sounds like this could be really too much for students. And he said, mom, I got it figured out. You don’t need to call on my behalf. So, then it’s not worth calling. That is the maturity, the highly sensitive because they can bridge the gap. It isn’t that, oh gosh, that teacher’s mean or they didn’t do it, we don’t want to go there. We want the kid to fill it in and look at what my kid learned. He’ll be able to do that with a boss or a partner or other people. It’s like that applies to a lot of world scenarios. So, we want the kid to fill in the gift.

Not think that it’s a gift. This isn’t a gift, it’s a personality type. It’s simply an ability within us that is unique to see things that others can’t. But that doesn’t it special only unique?

Kim: Explain that.

Amy: Yeah. Well, I think our world is really set on you are special. And when we get stuck on that, we avoid what is the potential of our expansion of who we truly are. So, we’re like, well, I’m special. I shouldn’t have to do this. Or we start to get into these mindsets about how things should be and have expectations that don’t serve us when if we believe that we’re unique and we can do it our way, like my kiddo did, we start to see ourselves and only compare our world and our experience against ourselves.

Kim: Wow. What a perspective. So, it’s not that I’m gifted, I’m perfect, I’m awesome.

Amy: That’s right.

Kim: I’m unique and I have a different…you don’t say gift. What do you say? You say?

Amy: Well, I say it’s uniqueness and what we really want is the expansion of our uniqueness. Like my kiddo, that example he said didn’t look at it as an obstacle, but what is the pathway through? Oh, now I know this teacher teaches this way and now I know what the tests.

Kim: You’re saying he wasn’t like, I’m gifted. I know better. I know the teacher.

Amy: I got the highest grade in the class.

Kim: It’s like, wait, this is where I am in this particular thing. How do I figure out how to expand here?

Amy: How do I achieve what the teacher is teaching to what I’m showing is that way that it’s not, I mean, I’m not going to say wanted, but the way that I want to achieve in this class, I know the distance between. And that is what makes him unique because it’s his own. He’s competing against himself.

Kim: How did you come to this conclusion or vantage point would you say?

Amy: Well, it was super hard. I am a highly sensitive person and it’s not easy being that all the people walk.

Kim: It is not a cakewalk.

Amy: But part of it is, ever since I was young, I cared a lot. I have siblings that are quite a bit older than I am. And I mean, no offense, they’re very talented. I come from a really creative home, but they had opportunity that they were offered, and they’d say no to it, and they play smaller. And somehow it struck me, and I didn’t know why they would resist that. So, I started questioning, why don’t all people thrive? And then fast forward a bit, when I was parenting my children, I could see I didn’t want to parent the opposite of my parents, but I didn’t want to parent how my parents parented. And so, what do you do? And I quickly had two parenting, excuse me, methods come in.

But what happened for me is for two years when my kids were pretty little, I felt like I was breaking literally into two pieces. It was almost physical pain. It sounds very strange, but was for me, it was like a silent kind of hell. And out of that, it took about six more years and people would say to me, you’re a magic parent. And it’s because exactly what you’re saying, this gap between how we meet the child and what they fill in themselves, I unfurled so that I knew what to say to my children in a small sentence and they would be done with something they would understand. So, we had quite a mature relationship even though we just didn’t have to go there so much. So, through parenting, I learned a lot about how we interact and that we disserved children a lot. So, to give you a full picture here, a lot of the work that I do now is really in parenting adults to parent themselves so that they can parent their children.

Kim: Wow. Share with me what that process is like.

Amy: Yeah. Well, for us, because we’re coming out of what I say are the highest levels of narcissism, which became my eventual question is if one could collapse narcissism, curiously, how would one do so? And that’s what my book is the basis of it is written about. But I I’m sorry. No, my brain’s I go, woo, go it too. Yes, you ask me your question again.

Kim: You were saying that your work became parenting yourself first so you can be a better parent. And I am curious what that looks like. Where did that come from? What does that mean? How do you share that in your work? It sounds fascinating.  

Amy: Yeah, for a lot of women, particularly in generation X, we possibly were parenting our parents. I’m sure a lot of women in that generation would say, yeah, I can recognize that. And then we parented our children and now we’re recognizing we have to parent ourselves, which can be an extremely frustrating process because I mean, you want to use a swear word here. It’s like, I’ve done this and now why do I have to parent myself? So, a lot of it comes around that piece. And I mean, I’m going to back up a bit here, but years ago I asked myself, why does malevolence happen? Why do people do bad things? Kind of? And what eventually came was about three years later is people do it because they’re misunderstood, they’re displaced or misplaced. And then I started exploring what does that really mean? And all of it really hinges on misunderstood.

And in the US, in American parenting, we are misunderstanding our children. The highly sensitive child is misunderstood. I’m going to quick go there. I wasn’t going to, but now it’s there is the highly sensitive child, the ones that start bucking the system when they’re five to seven years old, they start becoming resistant. They may become depressed, they may become anxious and show these signs, something’s really off. We can let them have the control and say to them something like in kindergarten what interests you? The teacher asks the child, and the teacher may have already arranged that the librarian would be in cahoots in this situation. And the child says, well, I’m really interested in how trains work anything, horses. And the teacher says, why don’t you go to the library and have the librarian help you figure that out? And the difference with the highly sensitive is look at my kiddo.

He bridged the gap from one thing to another, but the highly sensitive. And this kiddo that I’m talking about did the same thing. The problem isn’t reading, the problem is figuring out about the trains. And the highly sensitive has a high adaptability to teach themselves to read without any effort. So, the child I’m talking about in my child at four and a half said, can I read two after lunch? And I’m like, okay. And they read fluidly without skipping. And it wasn’t a memorized text. It wasn’t something they read, and they read the word interrupted without missing a beat. They were four and a half because they didn’t look at the obstacle as not being able to read. They looked at my family values reading, and I want to be a part of that

Powerful. So, it’s not magic. There’s nothing, I didn’t do anything special for that child. It’s just the value was there in a way that the child is a connector and wanted that too. So, to me, the highly sensitive can set the tone for things like the future of how society structures itself based on those eight- and nine-year-olds, how the students that are highly sensitive lead. Because if you have a student that teaches themselves to read and it’s not set up as they’re special, but that’s their unique way of doing it, they become solid in knowing who they are and they become more quiet and less emotional, which for the highly sensitive is a boon. But then what happens is they become an example of something other students want. In truth, it’s the opposite of what perhaps the parents in my generation and maybe in yours, I think you’re a little bit younger than I am, did where they said, why aren’t you studious like your sister?

Or Why aren’t you clean like your brother or your cousin? Comparing what we’re doing is the opposite. And I’ll give a quick example. One of my kids, when they were little, we had a back hall that was super dark. And I said to both the kids, it keeps our home safe to put your shoes on the shelf when we return home. And they didn’t do it for about six weeks. And then one of the kids put their shoes on the shelf, and I said to that kid, I see a kid who knows how to keep their home safe. And the other kid was already, sorry down the hall, came running back and put their shoes on the shelf.

I had a coach that did this in high school and there was a skier that skied a lot faster on a race and in front of the whole team. It was totally fair and good. He said, I see a kid who really knows how to whatever, master a higher level fast or something. Well, I want to be like that. Yeah. The next race that we all skied, which we skied, we raced three times a week and we skied six. We all accelerated or moved our times to better times. We didn’t have more experience that we simply we wanted that he was saying. And that’s

Kim: What was,

Amy: What’s that?

Kim: How would you explain that?

Amy: Well, it’s that he pointed out her uniqueness. And, she knows herself in that moment, and he’s affirming that you know who you are, and we all want that. It’s not that you’re better than these other students. There was no competitive. And I wondered how did he do that? I could see what he was doing, but I couldn’t understand how it worked. And I’ve said in a meeting to one of my friends, he was leading meetings often, and I said, go in and say Jill really knew how to send an email that activated everybody and created an incredible result for the entire team. Then stand up and leave because then everybody lets it seat and your performers will perform at a higher level. And that’s in part how I raise my kids is how do I think in a way to trick the system of how my parents parented, which is shame-based. I mean, that’s how it was done. I’m not saying they were bad.

Kim: We’re all doing our best. And parenting is tough when you’re trying to manage your own self. I hear you.

Amy: It’s myopic. You’re exhausted. I mean, there’s a lot to it. It is people who aren’t parents, they’re better parents because they don’t have the pressure of raising a child who succeeds. It’s a big deal. So that to me, we’re shifting the system into one where we are, like I said, expressing what is unique. And in my book, I talk about two examples of people that stayed out of what I call the model their entire life. And interestingly, both of them brought something completely new to humanity and also interesting. They both would be considered disabled people by our world standards. And that’s amazing.

Kim: So, share with me, share with me real quick. You are a psychologist, correct? You do psychology.

Amy: No, I’m not. I did this all through observational work.

Kim: What is your profession? You say you work with children?

Amy: No, I don’t. I just simply, I am an intuitive, I mean really at the core of it and my background, I studied fine art and religion in college, and then I worked in human resources. But for many years I was raising my kids and I just simply worked with some clients intuitively, but I would observe what was going on for them, observe what was going on in my own home, observe what was going on in my community and in my friends’ lives. And I put the patterns together. And then I could see there’s this thing called the model that we could do all the spiritual work in the world, but if we aren’t moving out of the model, we won’t achieve this piece or what is to me the next step in our future, which is this expansive expression.

Kim: Expansive expression, and this model. So, in your book, share with me the concept of your book and how that fits in the model that you’re speaking.

Amy: Yeah. My book is called Know, KNOW. And then the subtitle is where the status quo ends and You come to life.

And I’ll go on to say beyond the definition of that model, which I’ll say it again here, maybe that will help, is that the model is the control that we assert to maintain or advance our place in the hierarchy. And then beyond that, the model really fuels the hierarchy using control by asserting that there are no consequences for some and for others, the consequences were or are far too high, and those who have no consequences, that really, they go unchecked, and yet they set the tone for society and that becomes the way things are or the status quo.

So, to me, my work is really about breaking down that hierarchy because hierarchies don’t truly serve us, even though people would disagree. But when you think about it, if you were in a room where there were an emergency situation with somebody that you loved in an er and the intern in the corner knows something that would change that situation rapidly, but they don’t say anything because the hierarchy is that the main doctor is the one who has the say, I would want that intern to step in and say something.

But the problem is in our world, they’d be like, oh, he’s trying to be the champion, or she’s trying to, there’d be all these labels instead of this expectancy of, gosh, that really helped us out. And that’s what my coach could see is he could see if you keep this harmony and there’s no hierarchy, everybody on the team will succeed. And that’s what happened.

Kim: So, when it comes to hierarchy and the way our society is fueled or run, what is your view on the way that it is now?

Amy: Well, this is hard. About 15 years ago, I realized everybody is in the model and that everybody then me included, is lying to themselves. So, I’ll have a lot of people say to me, I read your book and I’m happy I’m not in the model, and I think they’re not ready for my work right now at this beginning point. It takes a really curious person to see it and want it because people are still governed by expectations and by responsibility instead of expectancy and responsiveness to their life. And that holds us back from being in this expressive expansion that’s unique to us. I feel like there’s so much to say, but the results of my work, I think I should say this is natural equality, which floored me. I’m an altruist, and I thought if I could ask her something that would be what I would want.

And I was two years into writing the book, which took three years. I realized that’s the end point for, I mean, there are things beyond that in the pattern, but I don’t really care about those things as much as how I see that natural equality exists when we achieve it is really dynamic. And that’s why I say this expressive expansion that is unique to us. We will bring new things to earth. And it’s cute to say it’s within us. I’m not going to go there because the spiritual has made a bunch of things muddled by making it special.

And it’s not that the spiritual’s wrong, that could be a stepping point for people. But to me, in my work, we’re moving way beyond what is spiritual into a very different experience, I think rapidly in the coming future. And we can see it because we know that we’re at the highest levels of narcissistic behavior. In my work, I call it narcissistic social disordering. I don’t define it or know what the definition is psychologically. And I don’t bother myself with that because I’m trying to look at it. Well, I’m not trying. I am looking at it from a very different angle to see what’s the potential in it.

Kim: So, I’m curious, so narcissism you’re saying, is fueling a hierarchy that doesn’t serve us? Is what you’re thinking here?

Amy: Right? But the sticking point are two things. It’s really that there’s no consequence

For the people who are setting the tone for our world and are at the top. And the other piece there that has gotten them stuck is, to me, narcissistic social disordering is a needs-based problem. So that’s a big thing to think about. We’re not going to go there too deeply today, but in my work, if the people who are in this pendulum, which we all are, there’s a fixed-point model, which I’ll talk about in my second book. It’s not in the first book. I just am mild in the first book to enter us in. So, we’re not going to get overwhelmed.

But when we remove this pin from the fixed-point model, we are able to expand into this expression and uniqueness. But when we’re in the fixed-point model, we’re going to feel like we can’t create anything new. We can’t see that we are in this model, and we also will feel like life is speeding up and we can’t keep up. We’re rushing to get things done. And it’s like, oh, it’s happening faster and faster because the model is making it speed up faster and faster because it wants to, I think, blow apart, it can’t support anymore because we are at those outer levels of this narcissistic social disordering.

Kim: Right. And what is this expansion that you’re talking about, how would you describe this expansion, which is I’m guessing the goal of where we should be? Is that how you’re seeing this?

Amy: It is, but I think that we don’t even need to look at it as a goal, but as a personal curiosity of how like me, how do I collapse narcissism, how do I move into what is unique to me? And this expansive expression many of us are afraid to express. But really to me, what happens when we move into it is we are, well, we’re free of that model, so we’re on our own trajectory, but we know who we are. We’ve all met somebody who knows who they are. It particularly can be seen in maybe an older woman who just stands back and watches the chaos, but they’re completely calm because they already know what’s going to unfold and they’ve accepted it. They know who they are. That’s the operative word here or operative piece. So, to me, I don’t know if I want to go this far, but we’re moving into mirroring how you and I learned about the solar system was here’s the sun in the middle, and there are concentric circles on a fixed point outside of that sun, but that’s not really how it works.

And when I envisioned the second book, I saw this video of how the sun actually does do its thing. And I was like, that is parallel to what I see, which we are moving into what is quantum. But to me, we’re moving away from anything spiritual and into this extraordinary experience of our humanness. That’s why it’s not special. That to me is correlated to something that is spiritual, where the uniqueness is naturally in the human, and the sun actually is hurdling through the atmosphere at 70,000 mile or kilometers per hour, and the planet spiral around and move with it in its orbit. And the way that parallels what I saw for my work is that people would attract to us and detract from us, and there would be little conversation and we’d be very non-emotional about it. I could see that years ago, but I couldn’t understand how does that come about? But when we are in our uniqueness and we know who we are, we are in that space that people might say the law of attraction, we’re aligned in a way where things just come in and out and our life really can look like magic.

So, to me, that’s the outer playground of humanity in a really powerful way. And the other piece of it is, again, altruist, that not only are we naturally equal because we know what is and what isn’t for us very clearly, it has nothing to do with judgment anymore. We also are expressing on things that fill in the gaps where humanity has not been successful. So, it’s like everybody within us has this ability to share into the collective, which I think is kind of silly terminology in a way that solves all the, I’m going to use a bad word here, but crap that’s happening on earth.

And if we had been in this, I don’t think we were able to then because vulnerability was really frowned upon and suppressed. But it’s coming around for us that that piece allows us to, without knowing collaborate. And I think the future is education that is global so that this kid over here in China and this kid in the United States who are thinking on the same lines can connect and expand that into spaces we can’t even imagine imagined.

Kim: Right. So, you’re saying, and I get what you mean about tying spiritualism, collectiveness to I’m special, but what you’re saying is yes, there’s a certain order of things, yes, it’s energy, yes, but it’s natural. We all have this. It’s just who we are, strip away all of that. This is the narcissism, the fighting for resources. We all just, if we are just expanding in our own natural way, that will be the way of things. And there’s no need to fight or have hierarchies or…

Amy: That’s correct. But the piece that’s important there is there’s been a lot of built-up tension around, I mean, this is why I wouldn’t have said this, but having this conversation with you specifically is making it come about is that’s perhaps why the highly sensitive is so emotional, is we are carrying this discontent in our world society. And I’m not saying at all, we’re victims. Excuse me. Again, we’re victims of that, but we can feel it and if we can feel it, we’ll have to change it.

So then that is what we’re resolving is we’re healing by parenting ourselves. That for me, a lot of it stems around the inner child. What I say in my book is when we heal the inner child, we heal our shadow, and we can do that completely. And so, then if we have no shadow, we’re not triggered on these things. So, I’m not in the frame of reference of regulate. I’m like, no, let it blow. But maybe you do that behind the scenes with yourself. You’re like, Hey, hang on, I got to stop this conversation for a minute. You go and you have a tantrum in because we need to let it out. And the other piece is control, which in my book I talk about different ways that we posture in the model, and when we release that, we release ourselves from this ego that I think of it as Freud.

I don’t know much about Freud, but the negative, you’re being not a great person to what is the Greek, which is what I’m talking about, this expansive, expressive “I am.” And when we’re in that, that’s the knowing. I know who I am, and to me, the knowing is not, we can go really simple with it and say, as a baby, you knew when you were hungry and tired and you had a wet diaper, and then at one and a half years old or three years old or around there, your parent thought they knew you better and said to you when you cried, oh, you’re just hungry even though you had just pinched your finger.

So, when they’re not inquiring and allowing you to know for yourself and it gets paved over again and again and again. I know how to drive a car, logically our parents we think have more experience than we do, but nobody has more experience being you than you, and that’s left behind, and that is essential for the highly sensitive. That’s why highly sensitives get into this failure and struggle in our world is they know themselves and they have to be partnered with their knowing or they’re going to really be hurting inside.

Kim: What has your personal struggle been with high sensitivity?

Amy: Well, yeah, I think that I’m really tough and strong in a way where, and I also had this strong intuition inside of me to know things before they’d happen, and I think that those were ways that supported me in being highly sensitive. I think the hardship was when I was a child, I remember wishing I could be an adult so I could have governance over my life. I remember particularly my mother would, if I were upset, she’d almost fuel the fire to be egging me on to make me more upset. I recall as a young person crying a lot where I had the crying hiccups, and when I see kids out in the world, I’m in London, but I think it was at a grocery store, and I saw this mom dealing with a highly sensitive child, and I almost walked over and said, do you know your child’s highly sensitive? Do you know what that means? I see that often where I think they don’t get it, and I get that they don’t. But that probably is what is my greatest pain point, is seeing a child who is misunderstood because they are highly sensitive, and the parent isn’t getting it. And I often am like, I don’t know if I should say something.

Kim: Say something. Yeah. Yeah. That’s such a tough thing.

Amy: Yeah, the parents can be really like, I know my child and I get it, but the thing I’ll say is from all my work, the children come to teach us. We don’t come to teach the children. It’s not that way.  

Kim: Before life happens, and all those masks and layers are piled on. They’re just so much more at the simple part of their humanity.

Amy: But they also come stacked with our generational energy to remind us what we need to heal, and we don’t heed that. It’s not even on the radar in our social structure of how we think, and to me, that’s a massive problem because the parent is and the child is operating off of something that’s there to teach.

Kim: One of things from my childhood, it’s like my mom knew what was best for me when it could have been, what’s good for you? What are you thinking in this moment? You’re right.

Amy: What do you need?

Kim: What do you need?

Amy: Right? I said, narcissism is a needs-based problem or narcissistic social, so if we have that gone unmet or gone unheard, and it’s not like, oh, honey, what do you need? We don’t have to get into it and pretend like it’s a problem. We simply, what I say to kids is this, and this is great for the highly sensitive, is delay it by saying, do you know what you need? No, because it’s overwhelming or whatever’s going on doesn’t matter. You let me know when you know.

And then the parent walks away and the child, especially if they’re young, it’ll be about two minutes and they’ll be back and they’ll say, Hey, I need this. And they’re very deliberate in it, and it’s like, that’s good. They’ve got their moxie, they’re with themselves. They’re not in that confusion anymore, and we see that transition super-fast at a highly sensitive.

Kim: What do you love about being highly sensitive, and what would you celebrate?

Amy: Oh, it’s the pattern understanding. I would say if we said, what’s your brilliance? I’d be like the ability to see patterns, and that’s definitely a highly sensitive trait. I even am somebody who I’m so curious about the patterns that I would say, what does that mean and wait years to get the answer? And then I challenge it again to get a deeper answer yet. I think that that is definitely the powerful thing for me and understanding my children who are highly sensitive because I understand what it’s like to be that myself. Yeah.

Kim: Absolutely. Yeah. You have that perspective, and it sounds like you work with them to kind of bring out their needs and their wants and yeah.

Amy: Their autonomy, keeping them with their knowing of who they are, and they know I can see when they don’t know who they are, and I just tweak little things to see, testing the waters, and then they’ll come back and they’ll admit, I don’t, don’t know right now. And I’m like, well, as long as you know, don’t know, then you’re fine.

Kim: Yeah. It’s all awareness.

Amy: That’s right.

Kim: Yeah. Beautiful. What advice would you give highly sensitive people who may be struggling to find joy, meaning, or purpose in their lives? What would you say?

Amy: Just that I have a big hug for you because I get it. Life feels like a steep climb sometimes as a highly sensitive, and I guess the biggest thing I’d say is set down the definitions of things like you need to protect yourself or this is a hard thing In that way, it is, but there’s so much potential in it that I’d say keep pushing a bit to find your way through to where does that power reside within your ability and this experience of living this way? To me, you’re a huge asset. You can see what others can’t, and that pain point is the catalyst in a really powerful way. You’re the elephants, let’s shepherd the people the high ground together. Yeah.

Kim: Oh, Amy, that’s so beautiful. Can you share with people where they can find your book?

Amy: Yeah. The best places to head to my website, which is just my name, it’s Amy, a MY, Sterling. It’s a long one. Sorry, V as in Victor, A as in Amy, and then Sterling, S-T-E-R-L-I-N g.com. Amyvasterling.com, and find all the information there and where to buy the book

Kim: And where can people follow along on your journey?

Amy: Yeah. Well, I think the best place is YouTube. I’m really a speaker, but on my website too, I have a lot of podcast interviews and articles about my work, but I mean, I really didn’t know I was a writer. I knew I was a public speaker, but I have other books that I just coming out.

Kim: Good. That’s wonderful. We all need that, and I feel like we’re all called to different avenues and sometimes without knowing. So, thank you so much for the work that you’re doing, and thank you so much for joining me today. It was such a pleasure.

Amy: Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Thanks so much for listening in on my conversation with Amy. I hope it reminded you that what works for HSPs works for everyone, and we truly are at the forefront of a better and more altruistic society.

If you’re an HSP who’s struggling in your career and wondering how to build a gentler path with lots of purpose meaning and joy, that’s the work I do. You can visit happyhspcoaching.com to download your free career clarity guidebook and stress-less toolkit. And while you’re there don’t forget to sign up for a free career clarity breakthrough session with me. I’d love to hear from you and learn more about your career journey and help you plan your next steps!

And if this episode resonated with you, I’d love if you could share it with someone who could use these words or leave a review to help more HSPs find this show. It’s a quick and easy way to spread love for our fellow HSPs.

Until next time! Take care.

About Amy Vasterling:

Amy Cerny Vasterling is a future-focused public speaker, author, teacher, and intuitive sharing the importance of returning to your personal knowing. Her unique perspective honed over several decades reveals an invisible system, what people refer to as “narcissism” as a high-level social disordering. Like with any desire for change, something needs to displace the old.

In this case she has found it is our expression, which is often hampered by judgment, that leads to control. Amy observed the recurrence of people’s aim to tell others “I know better for you than you know for yourself” and realized this was a key to the full story of the insecurity behind it all. Amy believes humanity has a great future as we mature emotionally and leave something she calls The Model behind.

Now, she empowers individuals and communities to dynamically return to the truth of who they are so they can restore human connection, find where they truly belong, and fully live life.

Follow along on Amy’s journey:

Website: www.amyvasterling.com

YouTube: www.youtube.com/@AmyCernyVasterling

Instagram: www.instagram.com/amyvasterling/

 Let’s Connect:

🤍 Loved this episode? Share your biggest takeaway or follow us on Instagram @happyhsppodcast — we’d love to hear from you!

🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review to help more HSPs find this space: thehappyhsppodcast.buzzsprout.com

📩 Want to be a guest on the show? Reach out to Kimberly at: kmarshall@happyhspcoaching.com

📖 Learn about Kimberly’s work or grab your free Career Clarity Guidebook: happyhspcoaching.com

About Kimberly:

Kimberly Marshall is a career coach for highly sensitive people (HSPs) and host of The Happy HSP Podcast. After 20 years in the publishing industry working for companies like Time Inc., Monster.com, and W. W. Norton, she left her corporate career to pursue work that better suited her HSP needs. She now helps HSPs overcome burnout and low confidence in the workplace and create gentle and nurturing careers that bring them lots of purpose, meaning, and joy. 

Through her work and creative ventures, Kimberly hopes to shed more light on the reality of living with high sensitivity and inspire more HSPs to embrace their empathetic, loving, and gentle natures.

• Hosted/produced by Kimberly Marshall

• Edited by Fonzie Try Media

• Artwork by Tara Corola