If you’re anywhere in the Denver or surrounding areas, you just witnessed a winter storm of historic proportions.
A “bomb cyclone” hit the Front Range yesterday, resulting in hurricane-level winds, thousands of folks left without power, numerous accidents and stranded vehicles. Additionally, Denver International Airportgrounded all flights yesterday, leaving over 4,000 people stranded at the airport. As I write this, runways are starting to open, but many major highways are still closed.
If you were to take a look around me at this very moment, you would see two crates of books, a pile of flattened cardboard boxes, a half-filled tote of towels and exercise gear, three empty suitcases, random toiletries strewn across the floor, and two paper bags of clothes patiently waiting to go to the thrift store.
If you aren’t familiar with the term “Highly Sensitive Person”, it refers to about 20% of the population that possess a unique sensory processing trait which allows them to pick up more on subtleties in the environment, resulting in deeper processing and often being easily overwhelmed with stimuli. Most people exist on a spectrum of sensitivity. (To learn more, you can visit this website: www.hsperson.com.)
Travel is an essential part of modern life. We travel to see far-off family and friends, renew ourselves, get away from the day-to-day grind, serve others, and see the world.
For a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), travel can be inherently overwhelming. New smells and sensations can be both exciting and alarming. Unfamiliar routines require extra processing or planning. Different cultural expectations create more emotional stress or material to process. Jet lag and time zones can mess up an HSPs sensitive internal clock. It’s enough to make an HSP want to resign themselves to never leaving their zip code.
If you aren’t familiar with the term “Highly Sensitive Person”, it refers to about 20% of the population that possess a unique sensory processing trait that allows them to pick up more on subtleties in the environment, resulting in deeper processing and often being easily overwhelmed with stimuli. (To learn more, you can visit this website:www.hsperson.com).
The infamous Santa Bed figurine. Photo Courtesy of Arianna Smith Counseling LLC.
Does anyone else feel like the world suddenly gets put into fast forward when the holidays start to come around? Come mid-November, I feel I am given a tremendous to-do list of holiday duties that are not even important to me.
1. Take advantage of Black Friday deals. 2. Find an ugly Christmas Sweater. 3. Watch ‘Love, Actually’ for the 30th time. 4. Learn how to make pumpkin rolls. 5. Realize that it’s now December and it’s too late to make pumpkin rolls. 6. Instead decide to learn how to make peppermint bark. 7. Get sucked into a Netflix abyss and spend the evening eating candy canes on the couch.
And it goes on.
While I have developed many ways to cope with overwhelm in most circumstances, the holidays can be a time that I run myself ragged. I find myself inundated with unrealistic expectations of myself and my time.
Quiet Moon Counseling 