Episode #14: The Power of Naming High Sensitivity for HSPs

How our understanding of the word “sensitivity” can transform disassociation from our trait into self-acceptance.

Welcome back to the Happy HSP Podcast, I’m your host Kimberly Marshall, and if you’ve ever found it difficult to accept your trait of high sensitivity, especially as it relates to being labeled with the word “sensitive,” then this episode is for you. Today, I’m joined by Nicola McDonald, she’s a writing coach and author who shares how she was able to shift from denying her sensitivity to embracing and loving it, wholeheartedly.

It’s packed with inspiration and understanding in and around themes of rejection and self-acceptance, with lots of encouragement and wisdom along the way. I hope you enjoy it!

Kim: Nicola, welcome, and thank you so much for joining me today. It’s really nice to see you.

Nicola: Oh, thank you for inviting me. I’m actually really excited. I’ve done some prep work.

Kim: Yes. So glad to hear it. Well, I can’t wait, so glad to hear you’ve prepared. For the first question, I really would love to get a sense of your journey as a highly sensitive person. So, I’d love to ask you how you found out you’re a highly sensitive person and what that journey looked like for you.

Nicola: Okay, so, I actually heard the term high sensitivity first from my sister, a psychologist, and that was probably just over a decade ago, but I actually dismissed it. I didn’t want to know because I heard “sensitive” and sensitive had kind of always been thrown around as a criticism as if it just explained my way of being or my emotional state. So, there was no conversation. It was just you’re sensitive, but actually got more invested when it came to my child at school so that they were having difficulty in the school environment. There was chaos in the classroom, bullying, and there was other behavior that he just couldn’t cope with.

So, he was struggling with the disruption, and all of this was kind of manifesting itself eventually as a physical overwhelm, so he would faint. So, yeah, and you can imagine when it happened first, we were kind of, oh, crikey, what’s going on here? So there were a lot of trips to hospital to try and find out what was going on. And eventually I had kind of another conversation with my sister about high sensitivity, got over myself about the word sensitive, and I went, oh, okay.

So, she told me about Dr. Elaine Aron’s books, and I bought The Highly Sensitive Person and The Highly Sensitive Child, but actually what I really, really wanted to do was have a conversation with somebody. So, this is a decade ago, and the only person I could find was Growing Unlimited, and that was Barbara Allen-Williams. So, I sent off an email and I asked for help and my husband and I, and he went and paid her a visit, and she did this beautiful report for us. But what struck me while I was sitting there and she obviously had a conversation with him and then had a conversation with us, what struck me was that she was describing me. I was all over it. I’d kind of opened the books, Dr. Elaine Aron, but I hadn’t really investigated too much. But literally once I got to page two on Dr. Elaine’s Aron book, I’m going, oh God, this is me. I’ve come here for him, but here’s me.

So eventually armed with the information, and when I eventually kind of got comfortable actually talking about high sensitivity and felt like I had authority to talk about high sensitivity, so the terminology was correct, I went to the school and I spoke to them about high sensitivity, and I also wrote an article for a newsletter, and they published it. So, the aim with the newsletter was to help other children who might be feeling the same way and also help parents that may not actually know that they’re highly sensitive, because obviously in society we live in a structure that’s just made up really for the 80%, not the kind of 20% that we are. And I think what was going on is there was a real, real strong sense of justice in my child, and he just couldn’t understand why bullies would get rewarded if they behaved within the next hour, that kind of thing. So, what this school also did was put in a card system, like a traffic light system. So, when that overwhelm was too much, he could lift whichever card he wanted, a red, yellow, or green.

But unfortunately, obviously that took care of the symptom. So, it was like putting a plaster on all over and over again. But actually, nothing changed. So, the interesting thing was that he came to us, and he said he wanted to move schools. Now, my experience of schools wasn’t great when I was younger. So, we were in Germany, my dad was in the Army, and when he left, he put us in German schools. So, I was nine years old then he would just move around constantly, so we’d literally be upended and gone. For me, the stability of school was really, really important for them.

He moved school and I did the same thing armed with obviously all of this information. I thought, well, at least I’ll let the school know how we got here and how we’ve made a midterm change. It’s not typical, but it was important. I came armed with, I literally had loads of books in my arms. I even took the report that Barbara had written for us, and I said, look, I just wanted to make you aware why we are here, how we got here, and I’m hoping that I can actually help schools to help other children. And she gave them straight back, no conversation, no nothing, just gave them straight back. Now, obviously, the more I learned, the more I thought, okay, this is okay.

So, what we ended up doing was actually working more with him so that he could manage it so that he could manage his environment, and he could move on and find a way through education. But it was a kind of really, really long road. I think for me, maybe seeing a little bit of what was going on with him and then feeling that sense of injustice as I grew up, because I didn’t have somebody to look out for me like that. Because when I was in school, I used to faint.

And nobody thought to question it. I’d had an accident, and everybody just assumed, “Oh, it’s from the accident.” But actually, what I understand now later on is that actually it was vasovagal fainting. So, your overwhelm has just gone woah, through the roof, and your body’s responded and it’s just gone. And that’s actually what was happening. And obviously it doesn’t happen today because the more information you get and the more learning you have, the better prepared you are. So, yeah, so, it started off with, “Oh, no, I’m not talking about sensitive,” to you, to going, oh my goodness, aren’t we amazing when we kind of work with so, going with our grain rather than against the grain? Yeah, it’s quite amazing. And nobody, I don’t think I’d ever felt so valid or validated rather, from other than when I was reading it. And of course, from there, my husband had come with us, and we’d gone onto the Highly Sensitive Person website and taken the tests and I mean, I literally almost ticked every single box on there.

My child was on there, and so was my husband on a lower scale, but, and I’m thinking, oh my gosh, I’m kind of high up here. So, it made me, I wonder whether partially it makes you more determined to validate yourself. I had been validated by reading this scientifically backed information and people’s stories, and obviously I spent a lot of time backwards and forwards with Barbara, not for my son necessarily anymore, because I wanted to sit in a community where people understand each other. So, I met a lot of HSPs. The interesting thing obviously is that while we do share does depth of processing, of stimulation, empathy and sensitivity, we are also very unique because we bring in our other innate traits and learned behavior. But yeah, that was lovely. It was kind of going from a “No” to a “Hell yes.”

Kim: I’d love to dig into that a little bit more.

Nicola: Yeah.

Kim: First, I have a quick question for you. What was the response when the school was like, I’m curious about that. Instead of saying, hey, we’re going to figure out how our programs can help your son to saying this is your responsibility. What was your thought on that?

Nicola: I think I’d got quite used to it because at the time, I’d met a lot of HSPs who also had children and also trying to educate. The interesting thing about education though is that if not a lot of people are talking about it, nobody really wants to know about it. And I mean, I don’t know for sure, but when I looked into the eyes of this particular teacher, and she’d obviously been teaching for a while, I wonder whether she actually presumed that I was telling her how to do her job, which is actually not what I was doing at all. My focus was on my child going to a new school, and we’d been through so much that I wanted to prepare them for what could happen.

Kim: Help him get a fresh new start.

Nicola: Yeah, but I mean, he wasn’t in there very long. It was barely a year he was there. So, he eventually moved on to another school. They got, well, we do got older, and it was secondary school then, so yeah.

Kim: I was curious because sometimes I wonder about that if it’s our responsibility to manage ourselves or share with us what our trait is like so other people can understand it, but maybe there’s a middle ground. I was just curious about your take on that because sometimes I wonder.

Nicola: I think the unfortunate thing was I wasn’t surprised at the reaction. I have a strong sense of justice like he does, but I wasn’t surprised and I’m thinking, well, where’s my energy best put? And my energy was best put in helping and in some ways, him moving school and being invested in that. So, when I moved school, I never had a choice, but he was invested in that choice, and somehow I think that kind of took pressure off him as well.

I mean, I’m not saying that life was just hunky dory and it went smoothly. That’s not the case. But first and foremost, as a parent and as parents, I felt like if I get this right, a bit like writing the article, if I get the terminology right, if I put it down on paper so that there is no gray area, this is just how it is, then somebody can learn from it. But people will only learn if they choose to learn probably for the same reason I went, “No, not interested,” when my sister mentioned it the very first time because of that one single, right. Yeah, that one single word. So, we don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t put myself in her head. All I had to do there was actually make sure that he was okay.

Kim: No, I think something a lot of us kind of face around the, I think there comes a point in some of our lives where we’re like, “Hey, do I say that I’m HSP? Do I try and explain it? Do I just keep it to myself?” And it just seems like something we tend to have to come against sometimes. Yeah.

Nicola: Isn’t it beautiful though, when you talk to people who are highly sensitive and you don’t actually even have to use the terminology, you just are.

Kim: It’s an automatic, yeah. It’s like an automatic, not even understanding, but recognition.

Nicola: I do have friends that are not highly sensitive, and occasionally I’ve tried to talk to them and it doesn’t come across or somehow what I’m trying to say. And I’ve used, and I’ve had the term hypersensitivity thrown back at me, and I’m just saying, no, I didn’t say that. Highly sensitive. So, I think I’ve just got to that stage now where I consider myself an empowered HSP. I mean, my learning didn’t stop from that day. It will never stop. There are more of us talking about high sensitivity. It’s out there.

There’s no longer, when I do a search or a search engine, there’s no longer just one person, which was Barbara. I mean, for me, she was kind of the glue that has brought so many of us together, and we’ve kind of all gone off and branched off and are actually now spreading the word ourselves. But for me, it started with Barbara, so, obviously Elaine, Aron’s books, but really with Barbara, because I could have a conversation, and I cried a lot. Oh my God.

Kim: It is, it’s empowering and it’s a special thing to understand just more about yourself and the things that we struggle with.

Nicola: Yeah. How did you find out?

Kim: Oh, gosh, that’s a long story. I had a troubled teenager part of my life. I struggled as a teenager and was searching for a lot of answers. But again, Dr. Elaine Aron’s book really opened up so many people’s eyes. So, Barbara, through her. and then you through Barbara, it’s just such a beautiful, just that butterfly effect that trickle down…where this person shares it you and how we all find out. And it’s this just beautiful web of sharing and self-discovery.

Nicola: Exactly.

Kim: It helps you say like, oh, that’s why helped me a lot.

Nicola: Yeah. And I suppose, I mean, I don’t use the term broken now, but I suppose initially you’re kind of thinking, what is it about me? Why do I feel this disconnect? And there’s actually nothing wrong with you. That’s the thing. And I think that’s what books do. If you can educate yourself, that’s what books do. They teach you that actually what you’re experiencing is extremely normal. And hey, it’s not only just for you, but look at all of this, the millions of people on this planet that feel exactly the same way inside. But obviously, like I said before, there are learned behaviors and there are other innate traits that come with it. But fundamentally, you don’t have to explain yourself to me, and I don’t have to explain myself to you other than it would make a dull podcast if I didn’t carry on talking about it.  

Kim: Exactly! So, you mentioned before that you had a lot of questions, and you were searching, and eventually it became this “Hell yes.” What was that like for you?

Nicola: Oh, it was just so, obviously I deeply, so, when I was nine, I picked up a pen because I had big, big emotions and I used to listen to, if you’ve read anything, I’ve probably bored tears now, but I used to listen to song lyrics, and those song lyrics kind of gave me permission to cry or to laugh or to dance. It was always, I needed permission to do it. So, what happened was I got to the age of nine when I say nine, because that’s when I can remember. It may have been before, but I can remember at about nine. And I used to just let go on Post-it notes, envelopes, anything that was around. I just write things and whether I was upset or whether I felt joy or whether I felt angry, even because girls aren’t supposed to feel angry, are we supposed to be quiet? And a lot of us as highly sensitive people have been taught to be quiet and just, well, that was us in general. Our family kids are seen, not heard, that kind of thing. So, we kind of started pushing all of these emotions down. So, at nine, I started spreading the words, and I’ve actually forgotten the question you asked me. Now I’ve just gone on off on a tangent.

Kim: No, the journey from questioning this and learning to that “Hell yes.” What was that for you?

Nicola: It was just amazing. It’s kind of, how do I best describe it? It’s kind of like when you see yourself on page after page, after page after page, and somebody tells you that actually there’s more of you here. And then you realize that actually the disconnect, for example, the disconnect I felt in a German school, I thought it was because I was an English girl in a German school, so, therefore I wasn’t quite fitting in. But actually, it was about not being true to self. It’s about that constant going through life and molding yourself and adapting and changing, almost kind of like a chameleon, but actually not that obvious, if you see what I mean. You’re trying to mold it. And then when somebody says to you, the reason you feel tired is because of this, and the reason you are so focused is because you are deeply processing, and the reason your brain never stops is because it’s part of your innate trait.

What you can do is actually you can meditate or find a way to calm your whole nervous system down. So, it is education and having the tools, I suppose, the tools to go, okay, when I feel like this, then I can do this. But actually, it also means that although I’m an introvert, I was also really shy as a child. I was afraid all the time. I felt like I was afraid all the time of making a mistake, that kind of thing. And then I’m going, I’m just standing up, shoulders back.

I’m all right. I’m okay. And if I want reassurance, then I’ve got a community like you, and I’ve got Barbara, and I’ve got the groups and I’ve got a wider circle of friends to show me that actually I’m okay. So, that was the thing. It’s not realizing that you need to be validated, but having been validated anyway, and then you just go on your merry way.

Kim: I love that so much. Not we need to be validated, but on a human level, that validation helps. It helps us accept ourselves. It helps us be more authentic.

Nicola: Yeah. Yeah. I think I wrote on one of my notes, it was like being given a permission slip and the permission said just be yourself. Everybody else is taken.

Kim: And then this led to your work. You work with HSPs now and you’re involved in this community. Can you share a little bit about that?

Nicola: Yeah, so, from there, so, what have I got here? So, I’ve put down here that gaining knowledge about the trait, which we just talked about was great, but it kind of changed other things. For me, I was IT manager. So, I was in IT for three decades and living in a corporate environment. So, what all of this stuff did for me was having understood why my environment was making me feel ill. I went and made changes because you can’t unlearn something you’ve just learned about yourself. So, if you understand what you needed to thrive, then you’d make changes towards thriving. But I had another incident there where I spoke to my manager. The company had one company had been shut down, and they’d moved me to another one. And in that company, they’d placed me in the middle of an open-plan office with no windows and just constant noise and these harsh overhead lighting. So, I just said to ’em, and I explained, again, trying to explain my nervous system and how it works, and actually I will be more responsive if you could move me, or you could ask if you could move me.

I’d only been there weeks. And he went, no, he said, not enough known about high sensitivity. So, the difference was that I then went and made the changes anyway. So, I moved myself to an office. It wasn’t quite quiet because it was air conditioned, so, you had the draining of air conditioning. But I sat outside the server room, I closed the door, and I switched the lights off and I could then produce. That’s what I wanted to do. I went to work to work, not to listen to gossip and all the noise around, I couldn’t switch off.

And then, yeah, so that was another environment. So, one of my things was could I go back into the environment eventually and actually teach them about high sensitivity? So, I carried on and I moved to a different office, which did have a window, and again, it was much, much better. But that company shut down as well. So, I had another two and a half years of it. And in that time, I reimagined what my life would look like.

Now, like I said, you can’t unlearn what you’ve just discovered about yourself. And I’m just thinking, so what if I did live a life that was more creative, more me? Obviously, I’d started writing at nine, so I knew that was in me. And the first thing I noticed in the environment, and I think highly sensitive people do this anyway, we just see so much.

The workforce was in trouble. It was breaking. I was constantly being told about and offloaded to. And I left there, and I went, do you know what? I think I want to be part of the solution because this is really painful. I can feel the pain. I could empathize with the pain. So I signed myself up to become a coach, and I thought, when I come back, I’m going to be a wellbeing coach for these people, or a redundancy coach as I put it. So, I got my qualification. At the same time, I got myself a coach, and I got Nina. So, Nina and I had met at Barbara’s, and I knew that if I ever needed anybody, Nina was the one. So, I called on her and I said, well, also, Nina, I want to write a book, but I’m not sure if I can. So, we dealt with that, and I wrote my first book in six months, and then my husband submitted it for publication.

I was too scared, still had that demon. And then after that, I wrote my second book, which I self-published. It was completely different to the first book. And then I got a phone call, actually it was at a retreat, and this lady approached me, Opal, and she asked if I could co-author a book about the history of ME CCFs with her. So, we researched 120 years of how people living with ME have been treated and how the science and research has changed or not since that time. And we put this booklet together, and I’ll tell you what, that was the hardest thing I’ve ever, ever had to do.

Kim: ME? What is ME?

Nicola: ME? So, it is myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome most people call it. So, yeah, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done because when you are going through that research, you are looking at real people’s lives. You’re watching films and documentaries about real people. So, that took me a year. And then what did I do then? Let me see. I have to try and remember. I’ve done so, much.

Kim: That’s amazing.

Nicola: So, yeah. So, actually, yes. One of the things I decided I wanted to do on the back of the schools not listening was I wanted to create a school for highly sensitive children.

The more I learned, the more I thought, well, what would it look like to have a school that could just care for these children and their needs? And I also understood that if we care for their needs, then everybody’s needs are taken care of because we know how to set up a beautiful environment, a sensory environment.

So, I looked into it, and unfortunately, I just could not think how I would get the finances, and I don’t think I had the why or wherefore to understand how I could get funding for it. So, I changed it. I decided, okay, what I’ll do first is I’ll trial this and I’ll do a HS retreat. So, children’s retreat COVID struck. I just thought, okay, so, there’s telling me here this is not going to work at this moment in time. So, COVID struck and I just because I can’t keep still or not do anything creatively, I started making candles and made masks and stuff like that.

And then I took them to market and realized that actually the market is saturated with candles, and my passion was still writing. This got me through COVID, but it wasn’t to get me through the rest of my life. And I’d also in that time, created a coaching journal. So, I went to market with my coaching journal and the candles and sold them and then put it down, and thank you very much. I then went to visit my sister in Australia and had an amazing three weeks, and I just felt so open and free. So, I came back and I created a podcast called Right Time Write Now. So, what it was telling stories about my visit, and also I interviewed people including Barbara and Nina actually, and I put stories and writing prompts at the end of it for people to write.

And I literally was having the best time enjoying this. But then I got a phone call from my brother, I’d been estranged from my dad for nine years, and he asked if he could check my brother lives abroad, if I could check on him, and eventually did to find that he had mixed dementia. So, overnight, I went from nine years of estrangement to caring for him, and that took up 18 months. But actually what that did, it prompted me to take my voice off the page because I’d had to deal with social services, obviously do things that I hadn’t. But in all that time also, I hadn’t reconciled why I’d actually left him in the first place. So, I found myself, I wrote 69 letters, 69 uncensored therapeutic letters. And I just dumped everything. Every single thing that I was going on, I dumped because nobody could help me, so I had to let it out somewhere.

So, I reverted back to the child of nine years old. That’s what she did. That’s what I did. And then last year, I kind of had this real feeling that I just wanted to take my voice off the page, but in me was still a little bit of a shy child. I’m definitely an introvert, but a shy child as well. So, obviously learned behavior, but I did it. And that speech was called the Introvert’s Paper Playground. So, I talked about the 69 letters and my relationship with my dad and the Introvert’s Paper Playground has now become the name of my online writing school, the Introvert’s Paper Playground, which I launched this month.

Kim: And is it something where other people do something similar where you write it all out and get it all out?

Nicola: Yeah. I’ve got, in September, I start whoever wants to sign up. I’ve got 15 spaces. So, you can start your journey to authoring. So, I call it from idea to manuscript. So, it’s a six months journey alongside me. So, I’ll be writing my next book as well, but that starts in September. But also, I’ve got the, because I know it works, expressive writing and free writing and writing prompts, and they’re actually quite therapeutic and cathartic. I’ve got those self-paced writing courses in there as well. But the really interesting thing was when you just don’t know what life is going to do for you. And I’d kind of resign myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be teaching children. I got a phone call and last Monday I actually taught 15- to 18-year-olds creative writing, and I just went, thank you, universe.

Kim: I love that so much.

Nicola: Yeah,

Kim: It reassures me too, because a lot of highly sensitive people, I think, follow so many different paths and meander in their careers, especially because we don’t know which direction to take. And I think that comes from a place of having a lot of interests and not knowing which one is going to be “the one.” So, I just love that journey. I feel like you tried on so, many different hats and then ended up here in a roundabout way.

Nicola: But the interesting thing was these were goals I set seven years ago. So, it’s taken me seven years to get here and what’s happened, and some people say to me, you’ve changed and it is not a derogatory, you’ve changed. It’s like, “Oh my God. It’s just like you’ve bloomed into yourself.” And that’s actually how I feel. I don’t feel afraid anymore. I don’t feel afraid to speak up. I’m okay with my voice. I don’t have all the answers, and I’m okay with that. I’m a recovering perfectionist.

Once you let that go, when you let go of that, then actually things will open up for you, because progress is better than perfectionism. So, yeah, I’m excited to see what comes my way. And what I’ve learned is that sometimes what comes your way isn’t exactly what you asked for, but it’s what you need. So, I think a lot of us are very spiritual as well. I mean, when we tune into our intuition and instincts, amazing things happen. But if you’re not really aware of your trait, then you might not be listening loudly enough. So, yeah, that’s how I feel. That’s been my experience anyway. So, I tune in now, and if my instinct is telling me not to do something or to do something, then I’m kind of guided by it. So, yeah.

Kim: So, leaning into that intuition and listening more.

Kim: What do you struggle with most?

Nicola: You actually said it earlier, you said that what we do is kind of go off because we’ve got so much going on in here.

Well, I love what I do. I mean, I absolutely love what I do. There’s not a day where I don’t write, it doesn’t mean I’m writing a story, it just means I’m writing an educational piece, or even just making notes here to remember to tell you all the things that have gone on in my mind. So, I find it really hard to switch off. And there’s times when my husband’s come home or he has actually been working in this office and come out and I’m still typing away, and he’s going, I think that’s enough now. And I’m just going, yeah, just one more minute. Literally, I’m going, what time is, it’s 10 o’clock, I better go to bed.

But that’s what I struggle with is, even though you love something, you still need to stop. You need to have a rest. And actually, I do know this because magic happens when your brain’s resting and when we go to sleep, so much is happening. So, it’s amazing. So, yeah, I struggle to put the brakes on. So, the thing about me is I’m also a high sensation seeker, so I love the term, I think it was the Living Adventurers coined the phrase is that you’ve got one foot on the pedal and the other on the brake, so you’re trying to marry these two traits as well. So, yeah, I would love if I could just have an off switch.

But I think that again, comes with finding the meditation. I suppose the best way for me is to watch a good film, watch a movie. It’s been a big thing in our house, a movie. So, if my son sits down and we sit down and watch a movie, then eventually I’ll stop the chatter and I’ll invest. But it takes a minute.

Kim: Something a little more mindless so.

Nicola: Can, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I actually watch, I mean, I don’t know if I should say this because I’m supposed to be an intelligent being, but I watch Home and Away. Do you get that over there?

Kim: No, no. What is it?

Nicola: Oh, it’s an Australian soap, if you like. And it’s home and away, and it’s so easy to watch. I mean, it’s mind numbing, but actually it’s my afternoon stop. So, in the afternoon, if I just want to feel nothing, I just tune in because there’s nothing to think about. It’s not like a crime film where I’m going, oh, I’ve worked this one out. I know exactly what’s going on, and I’m just waiting to be right. But with Home and Away and a soap opera.

Kim: Don’t have to think. You don’t have to figure anything out.

Nicola: No, exactly. So, yeah.

Kim: What’s your favorite thing about the high highly sensitive trait? What do you celebrate?

Nicola: Oh, I celebrate my depth of processing. I celebrate the sensitivity. I celebrate the fact that I have empathy. I just celebrate the fact that we’ve kind of been given this gift. Obviously, there’s the bits where we are so in tune with our environment that we can notice all these subtle changes. And it feels like you’re constantly on alert if you’re not careful. It’s, I feel like almost like a meerkat sometimes going, oh no, oh my gosh, what’s going on? I feel like that sometimes. But it’s how you kind of then channel it. It’s a bit like give an information. You can only give people information if they’re willing to receive it. I think if I was brave enough, maybe I’d step up into a different kind of leadership role, because I think the world really, really needs highly sensitive people in the political forum right now. But I’m not sure whether I personally would have the, that I wouldn’t feel the overwhelm of it. And what would that overwhelm look like? I’ve learned to actually protect myself. So, I can still stand up. I can still be bold. I can still be a leader, but could we as highly sensitive people do that? And I think we definitely can. I just don’t know whether I could, how about you?

Kim: It’s such a good question. It’s a difficult thing to come around to. I feel like I’m still in my personal journey of learning about myself and my limitations, and it’s very hard to put myself out there. So, I agree. I feel like we need more people standing up that are highly sensitive, but I don’t think I’m at that degree just yet. I have a lot of growth to do. But I’m part of the movement, part of spreading the word and awareness. I’m doing my part, just probably not in spotlight.

Nicola: Yeah. But that’s it. That’s all you have to do, isn’t it? You take care of that, which you can take care of. And I think we’re really good at that.

Kim: And I feel like I’m being part of it in some way, just not in a direct way. So, yeah, I’m good with that for now. I agree with you on that for sure. What do you have to share with people who may be struggling with their happiness as a highly sensitive person?

Nicola: So, my thoughts on this, were start with education. I mean, education is key. Now, I haven’t seen it so, much, but there is misinformation on high sensitivity out there. But obviously there’s a lot of, if you go to source, I mean, if you start with Elaine Aron, then you are going to find a good community around it. And like I said, it’s so much bigger now than when I started looking

And don’t look for external validation. I know I said validation of reading the books, but that’s a different, that was a kind of, oh, I’m okay, but don’t ask other people, just look inwards. So, go back to your instinct and your intuition, and you’ll be guided by it. In coaching, there was an exercise that we used to do. It was like, because one of the things you were saying is about purpose, and it was a sort of rocking chair exercise. So, you kind of imagine yourself at an age. You want to imagine yourself at, whether it’s in your 60s or 70s, and you sit on the rocking chair and a loved one says to you so, about what you do. So, if you’re struggling with purpose, maybe you sit on that rocking chair in a few years and say, actually, what do I want my legacy to be?

What am I going to tell that person, my loved one sitting here asking me what I did and work backwards from there? I think that your purpose could be as simple as writing a book. It could be writing an article. It could be just helping out your neighbor. It could be caring for somebody. Your purpose doesn’t have to be world changing. It could be somebody else’s life changing. It depends on where you are. I think a lot of highly sensitive people are in service that I know and are looking to make changes. A bit like you are with your podcast, you are actually spreading the word and actually looking at it from lots of people’s perspective as well. So, I don’t think your purpose has to be massive, and I don’t think you need to worry about it, but you could just ask yourself the question, so, at the age of 40, 50, 60, 70, what do I want to be saying about my life?

And then you have to make one step to go towards it, and it doesn’t have to be a massive step. So, when I do coaching, I look at small, medium, and long-term step. And if you think it’s taken me seven years to open a school, but in between, what are you going to do in between? So, yeah, it’s kind of take the pressure off, but just ask yourself a simple question. And the other one I like is, if nothing was holding you back, there were no obstacles whatsoever. What would you do if you can answer that question? Because I think we all know, but what we kind of tend to do is just see the obstacles. So, I’ve just told you there’s none, no obstacles. Anyway, it’s a straight line, almost down to that thing. What would you do? Yeah. Love

Kim: That question. It’s so hard to answer truthfully, too, I feel sometimes.

Nicola: Yes, it is, but you can be truthful to yourself.

Kim: But you’re right. Immediately the obstacles come up. I won’t make enough money.

Nicola: Exactly.

Kim: Retire. I won’t have all that stuff.  

Nicola: Fear. Fear of failure, fear of success come into it as well. So, there’s so much. But yeah, it’s about having the vision and then taking action to make it a reality. Without that action, you’re still going to be sitting there going, oh, what do I want to do?

Kim: Absolutely.

Nicola: How do I get there?

Kim: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Nicola: Oh, thank you. Thank you. I hope I didn’t go off on too many tangents. I tend to do that.

Kim: Wonderful. I think we all do. It’s highly sensitive people, to be honest. If people are and they’re listening, they’re probably going to understand that.

Nicola: Follow up. Yes. I nearly forgot that one. So, I’m on Instagram, and my Instagram handle is Nicola McDonald, creative Writing Coach. And it’s exactly the same for LinkedIn, but I think you’re going to put something, aren’t you in the

Kim: Yep. I’ll have all the details, show notes, and I’ll take care of that. But Your Honor, on LinkedIn and you have a website and all of that will be

Nicola: I have, yeah. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

Kim: Thank you so much for joining me. Take care.

Thank you so much for listening in on my conversation with Nicola. I hope it reminded you that your sensitivity is not a flaw — it’s a strength —and, furthermore, naming your sensitivity with lots of love and self-acceptance is a huge first step toward living your most authentic life.

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 need to hear these words.

Also, if you’d like to build a gentler career that works with your sensitivity and not against it, that’s the work I do. You can sign up for a free career clarity breakthrough session with me on my website at www.happyhspcocaching.com. I’d love to learn more about the challenges you’re experiencing and help you identify which steps you can take to find work with lots of purpose, meaning, and joy.

Until next time. Take care!

About Nicola McDonald:

Nicola McDonald is a creative writing coach, author, and founder of The Introverts Paper Playground, an online writing school designed for introverts, highly sensitive people, high sensation seekers, and creatives who need space to breathe and express themselves on the page.

Nicola uses writing as a tool for expression, escape, and emotional clarity, and she now coaches others to do the same. Whether she’s supporting creatives in finding their voice or bringing writing for wellbeing into the workplace, she’s passionate about using words to nurture sensitivity rather than suppress it.

 This September, Nicola is launching her six-month course, Authoring: From Idea to Manuscript, where she’ll guide up to 15 students inside The Introverts Paper Playground — all while writing her next book alongside them.

Follow along with Nicola’s journey:

Instagram: @nmcdonaldcreativewritingcoach

LinkedIn: Nicola McDonald – Creative Writing Coach 

Website: The Introverts Paper Playground

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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