Improving Mental Health and Saving Lives of Highly Sensitive People

This audio is a brief excerpt from HSP Podcast Episode 164: Saving HSP Lives and Improving Mental Health by therapist Julie Bjelland.

Show Notes include:

In a recent survey of 326 HSPs collected over five days between December 17-22, 2022:
over 90% of HSPs have had thoughts of suicide.
over 18% have attempted suicide
almost 33% use alcohol or drugs to numb emotional pain.

We can learn a lot from this survey on how to support and save HSP lives.
Things that were named that make it hard to cope:

Overwhelming and intense emotions
Sensory overload
Absorbing the suffering of others and the world
Feeling different and misunderstood
Not understanding how to support their sensitivity

In the survey, HSPs also identified three main areas that helped them cope, which we can use to help others. Within each of the three areas, I have resources.

Learning About the Trait of High Sensitivity
Self-Care the HSP Way
Supportive People 

Visit The HSP Podcast page for links to resources, and listen to full Episode 164: Saving HSP Lives and Improving Mental Health (46 min).

You will also find links to her articles, books, courses, The Sensitive Empowerment Community and other resources.

See more in related article How to Improve Mental Health and Save Lives of Highly Sensitive People.

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Transcript

A little bit about me, for anybody that's new to learning about who I am. 

I'm Julie Bjelland and I'm a psychotherapist that specializes in high sensitivity. I founded Sensitive Empowerment. I'm an author of The Empowered Highly Sensitive Person and some other books too. I have an online sensitive empowerment community; I'm the host of the HSP Podcast.

I am at the highest level of sensitivity -so this is where a lot of my drive comes from, because I was extremely challenged by sensitivity. So it's been really part of my mission to share, how do we live in this busy modern world as highly sensitive people with all of these challenges? 

So let's get to today's episode. And I'm so happy that we've got live attendance for this episode, because I think it's such an important one. And it's called Saving HSP lives and Improving Mental Health. 

And much of the what we're talking about today came from a survey that I did over five days between December 17 and 22nd of 2022. We had 326 HSPs take this survey, which is a great number for gathering statistics. 

And it's pretty shocking the statistics, I think. I mean, in a way, I think I knew that they were this high in terms of we've see that over 80 - excuse me - over 90% of HSPs have thoughts of suicide. 

That is a hugely high number. I really am almost not surprised, because whenever I see someone who has died by suicide, I maybe I watch a story about them, I can almost, so often see that this person is a highly sensitive person. I can tell just by watching an interview with someone in general if they are or not, because I've been working with HSP so long and often. 

And it's incredibly sad how much it there's so much to say about this, I was just saying this before we started recording that this is such a big subject. And I have felt enormous, an enormous calling to talk about this subject. 

Because I believe we're going to save lives today. I absolutely believe that. And I hope that everyone listening will share this with medical and mental health professionals, as well as other HSPs. 

Because we're going to talk about the statistics, we're going to talk about what we learned from this survey, and also areas that will help and resources that will support the needs of sensitive people all over the world. 

So as I said, we have over 90% have thoughts of suicide, over 18% have attempted suicide, who took the survey. Of course, we don't have statistics on those who died. And I I read through everybody's, everybody who took the survey, I read through this, and read your comments. 

And I heard so many stories of people who know somebody who died by suicide, and how much it impacted their entire lives and their families. 

And we're going to do something about that today. Because we're going to give support and information and it's going to be powerful. 

We also learned that almost 33% of HSPs reported using alcohol or drugs to try to numb emotional pain. And of course, we know that while it might numb in the moment, that leads to a lot of problems down the line. 

So we want to do something about it. We can learn a lot from this survey. 

So things that were named that made it hard to cope. These are the things that when we went through this survey details, we found that these were the areas that HSP said made it hard to cope - overwhelming and intense emotions, you know, raise our hands if we if we have those as HSPs we have that sensory overload. 

And we're going to talk more about that today to being over overloaded and overstimulated is a big problem, a big challenge for sensitive people, absorbing the suffering of others in the world. You know, that's something that's really challenging for us as sensitive people. 

And many of us have grown up feeling different and misunderstood. So many of us have received messages that something is wrong with sensitivity. 

So not only are we experiencing these big intense emotions, there's an overload, but we're also getting messages that there's something wrong with how we're experiencing the world. 

And imagine what that's doing to sensitive people all over the world. I know it impacted my life a lot. And why I even do the work that I do now. 

And also not understanding how to support their sensitivity. This is another one. And many of you who are podcast listeners have heard me say this, but I'll say it again, that there is not something wrong with sensitivity. 

It's just that the world is not set up for the levels of sensitivity that we have, which was is what makes it difficult and challenging. 

And let's move into three areas that help and recommended resources to support those needs. 

I also want to share a little bit of my own story. And maybe I'll put that in right now a little bit before we even move on to this. But the first time I had thoughts of suicide, I was 17. 

And I had almost died, I had a medical emergency happen. And that is when I experienced my first bout of severe depression, and suicidal thoughts. And I had about four different times in my life where I experienced those feelings. And some of them were so intense, that I would say that I've came close to dying. 

And it's incredible to me that I can be in the place that I am right now. And in those moments, and I know that those of you listening out there who have these thoughts, and know you might feel like you're alone in these thoughts, but you're not - so many HSPs, who took this survey said that people in their life would be surprised if they knew that they were having thoughts of suicide. 

And I think that's how a lot of people feel that. And that's one of the reasons why it's important for us to talk about it and to normalize our experiences with it. Because we need to remove the shame that comes with these, you know, comes with mental health issues that comes with depression that comes with suicidal thoughts, we need to remove the shame. 

And this is really the first time publicly, I'm talking about my experience. And I take it really seriously this conversation, this podcast, it took a lot for me to even come into this moment to be able to talk about it. Because it's it's scary to talk about, there's a lot of misunderstandings about like, you know, myths about if we talk about suicide, we're going to make people commit suicide or die by suicide. 

But that's not accurate. In fact, we need to talk about it. And that's how we're going to save lives. 

But in those moments of those really dark moments that I experienced at different points of my life, I really believed that things would not get better. And I know there's many podcast listeners right now who feel that way.

In those moments, I felt that it would not get better. I had believed the the darkness that that people would be better off without me that I was a burden that I could not talk about how I was actually feeling inside how broken I felt, how how horrible I felt. 

And it is amazing to me that we can move out of those spaces. And I want listeners who are in these dark places to know that it will get better. And it absolutely will get better. 

We have the support and the information that we need to make it get better. And I am living proof that it can get better. And I think that my entire work has been dedicated to supporting highly sensitive people because it really came out of my own struggles and my own challenges. 

And I started out with, you know, trying to learn how I could feel better how I could do the things I wanted to do in life, how I could raise a family, how I could have a career that helps people, how could I do all those things if I'm living in darkness. 

And so that's part of what I wanted to share with you today and how some of this came about and and also just really believing that together. We can save lives.

So the areas that we learned that help are three areas. 

The first one is learning about the trait of high sensitivity - that is something that is life changing because it helps you understand yourself. It helps you have compassion for your experiences, when you understand that there's a reason why you feel the way you do, you have brain differences that make you feel the way you do, that help that create some of the challenges. 

And also, like I was saying, we need to change some of the the mindset that we see around high sensitivity. That there you know, I remember thinking that high sensitivity was my worst feature my worst quality, and that I would change it in a second. And that was before I understood about the trait. And we talked about this a lot in the different podcast episodes. 

And I'm now in a place that I believe it's my greatest strength. And I want you all to reach those places, that high sensitivity is a strength. It is something that's needed in the world, it evolved for the survival of the population. 

And we just need to change how we are taking care of ourselves. 

And that moves into the second one, the self care the HSP way I call it because that is different than what you've probably been taught and it's different than what most people do. 

And the third one is having supportive people in your life whether that is in your friends and family, a therapist and communities like our Sensitive Empowerment Community, bringing in supportive people to your life. 

So let's go into a little bit more detail about why people need that learning about the trait of high sensitivity.