Permission to Heal

Permission to Heal Episode #42 - A Conversation with Jenn Turnham about

August 25, 2021 Marci Brockmann Season 1 Episode 42
Permission to Heal
Permission to Heal Episode #42 - A Conversation with Jenn Turnham about
Show Notes Transcript

Jenn Turnham is on a mission to educate the world about the unique, brilliant, often misunderstood, very tiny sub-section of the population known as Highly Sensitive Extrovert Women (HSP-Es). She is also determined to unite all HSP-E Women out there and encourage them to see that they matter, they have a powerful voice that needs to be heard, and possess unique gifts that are in short supply in today’s world. 

 It’s time for HSP-E women everywhere to stop dimming their light and shine their brilliant empathetic lights bright. Jenn shares her passionate, quirky, eclectic personality through her blog, and in her Facebook Group for HSP-E women, Highly Sensitive Extroverts: Bright Sparks. 

With a strong background in applied psychology, Jenn has been using her knowledge, training, and experience in helping people use the power of their minds to overcome challenges since 2008. She now focuses on helping HSP-E women thrive in a world that currently doesn’t quite understand them. She does this by assisting them to own their uniqueness and see their sensitivity as their superpower.

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Welcome to permission to. I am Marci Brockman. I'm thrilled that you're here today. We have Jen Turnham a mindset coach from Australia. So it's 8:00 PM here in New York and 8:00 AM the next day where she is, which I find utterly. Fascinating. Welcome, Jen. Thank you so much for having me.

And as I like to say hello from the future.

Hello? From the future, from the future, she says the next day looks pretty good. So we're set. We're set. So how are you today? It's a Tuesday morning where you are and Monday night where I. I'm really good. Thank you. Yes. I don't think I told you, but at the moment, we're traveling around Western Australia in our caravan.

So we're experimenting with living on the road. So I obviously work from the caravan and my fiance. He does. We call it  in Australia. I don't know.  Many Americans have heard of it as fly in, fly out. So he works on a remote gas plant. And so he's going to continue to fly in and fly out while we're on the road.

And I just stay in the caravan park while he does his two weeks since at work. And then he comes home and we travel on to the next place. Wow. Pretty exciting. So far. Yeah. How is that working for you? Really good. Yes. Cause I think, and one of the main reasons it works is his roster is really good. So he's on a triple to four.

So he's on two weeks on two weeks off, two weeks on four weeks off. So in four weeks off, obviously we can do, we can do traveling. Yeah. Yeah. And I only work part time. So that means I can kind of fit it in around, around what we're doing. So yeah, so far so good. Loving it. Wow. So you're seeing different parts of Western Australia that you've never seen before.

Yes. Yeah. Some of the places we've been to already. So we're going back to, because before we did this, we used to do a lot of traveling in his time off anyway, but we always had obviously a time limit because you have to travel out and then travel back in order for him to go to work. So this is brilliant because we can just.

Keep going. So he just leaves me where we are, goes to work, comes back and meets me, and then we keep going. So we've revisited some of our favorite places, but we're also at the moment about to go into some, some new places that we haven't been to before. So, yeah. It's wonderful, sir. Are you in like a motor home or something that you're taking all your stuff with you from place to be.

Yes. Yeah. For those of you who are not doing so. So we call them caravans in Australia. But I think you guys, it's not a, it's not an RV or a motor home where like the cab is built into, like you drive the whole thing everywhere. It's one tow behind the car, which means that you can kind of set it up and then you can go and draw.

Elsewhere and go out and do day trips and stuff in the car. So that makes it a little bit easier because we set up the van and then that becomes our little home and then we can tight little trips around the town and explore and that sort of thing. So, yeah, it's really cool. So do you also maintain a permanent residence somewhere, somewhere else in Australia and you're just taking, you know, some subset of your stuff with you as you're tracking.

Yes. So we've got very minimal stuff because we used to travel in a tent just with the car and the tent. So we became very good at working out well, what is really necessary and what can, can you actually live without? So at the moment, we've got a place in just south of Perth in Western Australia, and we've got a house sitter.

Who's staying in there at the moment. So she. W she stayed with us a few times and looked after buddy the dog while we've gone to places where he can't come. And so she's become really trustworthy. And so she's just paying a hundred dollars, very minimal amount just to look after the place for us, which meant that we could leave all our furniture.

And all we did was kind of pack up all out. Kind of really personal stuff and put it in a locked room in the house. And so she can have the master bedroom and the own suite and everything like it's like, it's her place? So nice. That's this is for seven months while we experiment to see if it works. And then if we continue on, then we might have to look at what we do with the house.

We'll keep it. But it's whether we rent it out or sure. Why. That's very brave of you if they were a few names, but it's always been a dream of mine to live on the road and just be able to kind of go and say, oh, this place is great. Let's stop here shortly and stay for a while. Or if you don't really like it, you just stay overnight.

Like, it's just always been something I've really wanted to do. And even though we have to plan it a little bit more because I need internet for my business and we have to be in a relatively. Place with all the conveniences while, while Warren goes and does his two week stint at work, it's a little bit more planning than what my dream entailed, but it's still pretty close.

That's very cool. It's cool that you're able to manage that and still keep your jobs and your businesses and so on going. Yeah. I like that. And I think that's the advantage is because a lot of people in Australia do this when they've retired. Sure. So we're doing it a little bit earlier than, than that.

And I think keeping the business and his work going, enables us to like the money just keeps coming in, I suppose, which is usually the biggest challenge when you do

Yeah. My husband has this dream about, about getting an RV and doing that around the United.  Of course by the time we're retired and can actually do that. I'm not sure we're going to have if the energy, so we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Okay. So I usually begin the interviews with the six quick questions.

Gaps gives the audience the listeners and us a little chance to get to know each other better. So are you ready? I'm ready. Okay. Okay. What six words would you use to describe yourself? Okay. I'd say quirky, unique, passionate, compassionate, empathetic, and resilient. Excellent. I might use those same six words for myself.

What's your favorite way to spend a day? Well, like kind of doing it. My stays at the moment, which is, I was thinking that as I was answering the question, so I love being in nature and that's a. Big HSP thing as well. We're very connected to nature. So walking along the beach, sitting on the beach, reading, swimming beach or river.

So it doesn't matter as long as there's water that I can swim in it's particularly if it gets hot, I need to swim in order to, to cool down. But yeah, so they're my, that's my favorite things to do. And that's one of the reasons why I'm loving this trip so much because I get to do that more often than I would if I was sure.

Sure. Forgive my naivete here, but we're in the midst of summer in north America. So does that mean that Australia's in the mid, the middle of winter or no? Yes. These are the Southern right. Yes. And that's another reason why we wanted to do this is because neither of us really like winter. So you can say I'm in a, for those who are not watching this take toppers summer, top, the sun's shining.

It's going to be, I think 28 or 29 today. And that's because we've come so much further. In Australia. So we're starting to move into kind of more tropical climate. And that's exactly one of the reasons why we did the trip is so that we didn't have to put up with winter in Perth, but yes, it's technically winter here right now.

It just doesn't feel like it. I understand that., a musician named Amanda Palmer that I follow on the internet, she's quirky and weird to the nth degree. And I adore her and she's get the beginning of the quarantine a year and a half ago, she got stuck in New Zealand with her son. She was doing a musical tour and then the shutdown happened globally and she was stuck in New Zealand and couldn't leave.

And so she's been. On her Instagram and her Patrion feed. She's been telling us all about what it's been like to raise her kid. Cause he's starting public school in New Zealand. And so she's got pictures. She's married to Neil Gaiman, the. And so there's pictures of the three of them bundled in winter coats yesterday.

And I was confused for a second until I realized Southern hemisphere, different seasons. Yeah. And I suppose if, if you were going to get stuck somewhere New Zealand, isn't such a bad place to get stuck. And so go

and it's virtually COVID. Yes exactly. Like us here in Australia. Yeah. And I imagine it's a wonderful experience for his son as well, too, to kind of experience all those new things and different way of life and exactly. It's going to be sort of these four, I think. So it's going to be like a rude awakening going back to New York or London.

I don't know anyway enough about them. What's your favorite childhood memory? Well, interestingly, given what I'm doing now, it was camping. So my mom and dad,  funny that so camping with my mom and dad. Yeah. They had a very simple setup. So we had a station wagon. I'm not sure what you call those in America, but I put the seats down.

And so me and my brother used to that used to be our bed. You put the backseats down and we'd sleep in the back of that. And mom and dad had a, like a rooftop tent that would come off the top of the car and then that's where they would sleep. And it was by the beach. And yeah, we used to, there was one particular place where we used to go quite regularly.

Some of my best memories are just yeah. Doing the camping and exploring. That's cool. I like that. I like that. Oh, I'm hearing some wind. Is that on your end? It might be a car. Sorry. There's a one of the neighbors. It sounds like they're moving out of the character. Okay. As long as I know what it is, we're good.

All fine. It's all fine.  Let's get to number four. What's your favorite? This is, I had to think about this one. It's probably my mum's Nazee Goring now. My mum's. Well, So she shouldn't be nasi goreng he will, but she did. And I think, yeah, it's made all the more special now that I can't have it anymore because mum mum's no longer with us.

Sorry. Thank you. And her homemade self sourcing chocolate pudding or does it so that at, for our birthdays mum used to ask me and my brother, what's your FA what do you want for dinner? So on actual birthday, she would cook whatever we wanted. And I always asked for NAZA Goring.

Essentially it's fried rice, but it's it's a particular way of doing it. So we have it often when we go to Bali. So it's just a really got really nice flavoring. It's got some veggies through it. They usually crack an egg and put it on the top. So it fries a little bit. It's just really tasty. Tastes delicious if you do it well, don't do it.

Well, it's not so good. Not so good. It's just exercise like that point. Yeah, exactly. Nice. Okay. Number five. What one piece of advice would you like to give your younger self? I would like to tell young gen you are different to most people and that's okay. The sooner you can learn to embrace that and stand proud in your uniqueness.

The better off you are. Brava. Fabulous. Thank you. Absolutely. I think we spend way too much time, especially as women comparing ourselves against other people and sort of berating ourselves silent. Maybe not so silently for not being like other people, especially as adolescents. I think we all want to fit in rather than be comfortable embracing our weirdness.

Definitely. Yeah. And I think that's adolescence, as you say is probably the hardest time. Full of people like me. And as we now know you HSPs, which we'll get into that, we'll talk about. So yes, absolutely. But yeah, it's very difficult, Tom, because most of us grow up thinking that there's something wrong with us because we are different.

So I just. Would love to just embrace that young gen and say, but that's a good thing. Like it's good to be different. It's good to be unique. And I don't know if it would have made any difference at the time because you still got to fit in. You've still got to get through those teenage years, but yeah, that's, that's what I would love to impart to her.

If I had the opportunity be very cool. That would take a very big time shift. Hmm. Yes. Yes. Let me know if you ever learn how to do that one. I will. I will. I will. I really, if I had a super power, I would want teleportation forget the time thing. I just want to be at a different place on this planet just by thinking about it.

You know, that would be cool. That'd be, would be phenomenal. You could come visit Australia. I could, we could be sitting in your caravan right now. We could, yeah, that would be great. And then we could go to Paris for dinner or whatever, and you'd never need to pack because you could get wherever you wanted at a moment's notice.

So you'd never have to worry about the burden of carrying your luggage because. Now that's an added bonus. I had never thought of about teleportation. I love that you could just pop back to the caravan, get dressed for dinner, right? Paris go wherever you want. I forgot my bathing suit. I want to go swimming, pop back.

There we go. I love it. Psycho.

All right. Well, maybe this is the answer. Number six. What's the one thing you would most like to change about the world? We need teleportation somebody, please invent it or figure out how we can do it. Not quiet. That would be fun. My, my thing that I'd most like to change is a little more heavy and serious, I suppose.

But interestingly, when you were, when you asked me this question, If you'd asked me a couple of months ago, it's like, it's shifted basically. So a couple of months ago, I would have said the lack of care for the planet, which is our home shortly. And because I think that there's a lot of people out there who don't realize that the earth, the planet will survive the human race, that's going to die out.

Right. So I quite often, when I post stuff on Facebook and things like that, I, I always try and remind them, like, do it for your grandkids. Grandkids grandkids. It's not about recycling for you. It's about saving the planet for the future generations. So that's what I am still passionate about. But in the last couple of weeks, one of the things that's really concerned me is just how disconnected, insensitive, intolerant, and unaccepting we seem to have become and becoming more so by the minute, because the atrium that I'm seeing on Facebook at the moment for anyone's who's whose beliefs.

From their own is just really, really sad. And I just fear for the future. I do have it all sounds a bit doom and gloom. It is something that I am really concerned about, but I have this friend who kind of her face is giving me faith because she has faith. We're going to come full circle. We're going to come through this.

We're going to become more connected than ever. And I'm just using her faith to kind of prop me up at the moment when I have those moments of, of going what is happening to people. Like why is just obviously, you know, the issue I'm talking about. I don't really want to get into it, but it's just so divisive.

And I just don't understand what happened to, well, that's your choice. That's your choice. We have different beliefs. We have different opinions and yet people are hating on each other. For that. I see people saying if you went to, cause in Sydney, they had a, I think it was a lockdown down protest a couple of days ago.

And I've seen people saying if you went to the lockdown protest, get off my friends list, like just really extreme stuff. And I just think it's really sad that we seem to have lost that. We're all humans, we're all in this together and it's yeah, it's happening at the moment. And I don't know, what's caused it.

Because I had this feeling like I'm 53. So I was born in 68. I grew up in the seventies and eighties. And I have, I dunno if it's incorrect, but I I've had this perception that people could get along who had differing opinions. You know, you might vote one way. I might vote another, you might have your passion causes and I might have mine and maybe none of our stuff.

But we can have coffee together and live next door to one another and be fine. And I don't know whether that was my own naive Tay for being young and oblivious or if that was the truth. But it seems that in the last, I dunno, 10 years, ish, I don't think it's been longer somehow. Like you said, we're more divisive than we've ever been before.

And, and intolerant and inflexible and entrenched in our own opinion. And unless that's mirror back, we're very, very cavalier about dismissing those people from our lives. Even if they've been in our lives for decades. I, we have to, I I'm hoping it's a pendulum shift and that the metal it'll come back center at some point.

Yeah, me too. Cause I feels like we've lost because I think what you were saying was so true. People used to still be able to connect at a human to human level. Right. And that seems to be what's what's gone. It's we've it's like, we've forgotten that. Hang on this as another human in front of me, this is another human being.

Goals and dreams and desires and opinions that might be different to mine, but at the end of the day, we're all human. And that, that seems to be the piece that has been forgotten about, which has forgotten. We all have the same goal regardless of the color of our skin or the way we vote or opinions about global climate change.

Doesn't matter. We all want the same things for ourselves and our children. And I don't know how we've gotten to where we are, but I'm hopeful that conversations like these amongst others. We'll go towards bridging the gap between between us I'm hopeful fingers crossed. Yes, me too. I have faith that it's not all lost, but I have concerns at the moment.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So you've mentioned HSP several times, highly sensitive extroverts, highly sensitive people, right? HSP? Yes. Could you explain that for our. Make sure I understand it correctly. Sure. So, Hey HSP, it's an innate temperament. So you're either born a HSP or you're not the scientific name for it is sensory processing sensitivity.

I prefer HSP because if I say to you, I'm a hate HSP. This is, I have SPS, right? Like if I say I have SPS, it sounds like there's something wrong with me. Or as if I say I'm an HSP, I'm just a slightly different version of human than you are. It's just the Rams are tried. Yeah, exactly. So our brains are wired differently.

 And the, the thing is, as I said, we are born that way. So it's not as though you can become a hate HSP or you can. Develop out of it. You are, and you are not much to some people's disappointment, but that's part of why I'm here doing this is because I'm trying to show HSPs out there, that they are amazing.

And they have these wonderful strengths that the world really needs. So one of the reasons why HSP sometimes wish they weren't is because they are a minority. So it's about 15 to 20% of the population. I hate you. And here's where it gets interesting of those 15 to 20%. So about one in five people you meet will be at HSP.

Although those 15 or 20%. 70% of them are introverts. And when I described the traits of HSP, you you'll see that that makes more sense because the, the two traits are quite inline with each other, which means only 30% are extroverts. So HSP extroverts are a minority within a minority. And that equates to, so basically 30% of the 15 to 20% took me a while to figure out the maths, but I've memorized it.

Now. It works out around 6% of the population would be highly sensitive extroverts. Hello? So that one in 20. Yay. I love that. I love that. We're so unique and for the least. Massey. We figured out he's a highly sensitive extrovert, a quiz on her website, which I'm going to link to the show notes. And it only took a few minutes.

I answered a few questions and then her website emailed me back and it said, congratulations, you are an HSB extrovert. Ooh. I love meeting. I love meeting new HSP. X-rays were not new, but newly discovered APX habits. So we are a minority within a minority. So all HSPs not just HSP extroverts. Often thinking that there's something wrong with us and it's not that it's just, we're different.

Our brains are hardwired differently. So growing up as a minority, as any minority group can say, there are challenges that go with that because people don't understand you. You're different, you do things differently. And so it can be quite challenging, but the four main criteria of being a highchair. Is it's an acronym.

So it's D O E S does. And that stands for depth of processing, overstimulation, emotional responsiveness, reactivity, and empathy, and sensitive to subtle. So I'll give you the brief rundown of these, because I do have a discovery info session that people can check out if they want more info. XO D depth of processing is essentially our brains are on all the time.

So the term overthinker would definitely use to distract. Yeah. Then me. So what, so depth of processing, what that really means is, and everybody does. Depth of processing. So all human beings have depth of processing, but HSPs do it all the time. So the difference is let's say you're trying to remember a phone number.

Shallow processing or normal processing would just be repeating that phone number over and over again. Depth of processing would be looking for patterns, looking for meaning going, oh, I had a friend who had his phone number like that before. Oh yeah. That's actually a little bit like my birthday and then like just round and round and deeper and deeper and deeper.

Just numerous numbers. Exactly. All those little links and HSPs often describe it as we can go down a rabbit hole pretty easily. Cause we just keep going and going and going with our processing. So you can imagine that that's quite exhausting too, to be processing everything at such a deep level all the time.

Sure. So that's the depth of processing overstimulation, which we talked about briefly before we, before we jumped on basically our nervous system. He's more reactive. So things like crowds, noises, even long commutes, even, I remember going to a free conference type thing one day, and it was supposed to finish at five o'clock at seven o'clock.

We're still going, dying in the audience because it's just too much, like I've got to get out of here, right. Overstimulated. And what happens when we get overstimulated is we need to return. So we need to go back into our cave or our little safe place and, or just go to the bathroom and lock ourselves in there and just sit there for a while just to let our nervous system calm back down.

Yeah. So highly sensitives are prone to overstimulation, emotional responsiveness, reactivity, and empathy. Empathy is pretty obvious to most people so we can empathize with other people. And the science shows that it HSPs mirror neurons in their brain are more active than a non HSP. So a mirror neuron is essentially, if you watch somebody kicking a soccer ball, the same neurons fire in your brain as though your body is kicking that soccer ball.

So it's the same with emotions. And so the science shows that HSPs mirror neurons are more active, which means we can have greater empathy for other people. Too bad. I came, I had my body won't get the benefit of the exercise of the other person kicking them. Well, there is actually some science suggests that it does really?

Yes.

So they, they say that that whole visualization process is very powerful in terms of. Building up like muscle memory and all of that sort of stuff. I imagine that you probably has to go hand in hand with actually kicking a soccer ball as well. I don't know if he can become a brilliant soccer player just by visualizing kicking a ball.

It does add to the, to the skill and it does integrate. People's abilities. So that's, that's really interesting side note there, but the emotional responsiveness and reactivity, what that means is that our, our emotions are more pronounced than non HSPs. So if you imagine a little graph, that's demonstrating the ups and downs of the moods of the general population.

And then if you put a HSPs moods on it, the peaks and the troughs would be much greater. So our emotions are more pronounced, which you will see in a HSP extrovert more because we're more externally focused. So you're more likely to see it on our face. Whereas the HSP introverts, it would all be happening internally, but our moods are so a lot of HSPs have been considered for bipolar.

I'm sure some of them are potentially misdiagnosed. Having bipolar.  But they're not, it's just our reaction. I remember my dad telling me years ago, he said I really struggle. My dad's a very, very introvert. So on the spectrum, he's like one end of the, on the continuum, he's one end of them. Um, and he said, oh, I just really struggle with your emotions because my highs are really high, but my lows are pretty low too.

And so that's one of the things that also highly sensitive extroverts people respond to is our enthusiasm. And our excitement is contagious because it is so much more out there than a non HSP. And then the, or criteria is sensitive to subtleties. So we pick up on things that . Just don't even notice. So we're the ones who will say, oh, have you heard a haircut or you've changed your hair, hair color, or you've shaved off your beard, all those sorts of things.

Cause we notice those things. We also notice to the point where there's subtle changes in facial expression in tone of voice. So a lot of HSP. Well, one of the strengths of being an HSP is our intuition. And that's because our brain is taking in so much more and processing so much more, but then that's also one of the challenges.

Cause a lot of HSPs learn too. Or start to ignore their intuition and they go, nah, not that can't be right. So that, that kind of gut feeling like when you meet somebody, I've had lots of experiences where I've met someone and something just seems a little bit off. Yeah. We need to listen to that because that's our sense of subtleties picking up on something that we need to listen.

Yeah. I've met people even 30 seconds into knowing them and I'm all right. I can't even continue this and I find a way out. Yeah, it's just. In Congress doesn't fit. And I feel like their energy is just wrong for me. Yeah, exactly. And cause what you're probably picking up on is the incongruence in what they're saying versus their facial expressions and their tone of voice, all those little subtleties that are non HSP, it would just go over their head.

They just wouldn't even be aware of it. So that's also one of this all factory component as well. There have very few times in my life, but there've been a few people who my met who's. Body composition has an odor that I pick up that I find repair. Wow, that's really cool. And I don't, I've just not been able to be anywhere near them because my, I just can't and they don't smell.

They're not dirty. There's no BI thing. It's just a chemical pheromone, something that I'm able to pick up on. It's weird. That's actually really cool. And that would be part of the sensitive to subtleties of HSP. But I guess you're perhaps more aware of that or more developed in that area because I don't think I've never consciously known it's been that, but that would be a part of it for sure.

Weird, interesting. So that's the does criteria. So depth of processing, overstimulation, empathy, emotional responsiveness, reactivity, and sensitive to subtleties. So if you fit all of those, if you tick all of those boxes, you're HSP and, and knowing this, what does this do for us? Okay. Well, I think one of the, one of the best things about knowing it is because self understand.

Is quite often what comes before self-acceptance. So I think if we know these things about ourselves, it's like, I know for me it was the final piece of the puzzle. When I discovered I've always known I was an extrovert, but when I came across HSPs I went, oh my gosh. Oh, finally, everything makes sense.

Sure. And I think once we recognize that, particularly for HSPs because they think there's something wrong with them. Most of the time, knowing that it's a thing. To be an HSP, allows a lot of people to go, oh, okay. So I'm not weird. I'm not abnormal. There. Isn't something wrong with me. I'm just HSP and I'm different and that's okay.

So I think it kind of almost is the start of a healing journey for a lot of hi HSPs I agree. I agree. I was telling you before I I've taken the young Myers-Briggs personality inventory many times, and I always come out with an ENF J and the E is extrovert. And then as I've aged, you know, you start ruminating thinking about things over and over and over again.

And I was sort of having trouble reconciling the extrovert because I have these tendencies. Where I fear overwhelmed and I have to be by myself or I'm really looking forward to going to this party. And then I get there and a little while later, I either have to leave or hide in the kitchen or something or leave if I can, you know, if it's not at my house or like, if I'm out at a place, like you said, a convention or a public celebration of some sort, and I get to the point where.

It feels like they're too, there's too much emotion. There's too many things, too much noise, too much stimulation. And I started to think that maybe that meant that I really wasn't as extroverted as I fought. I dunno. I was just trying to make sense out of it myself. And then I came across your research and I thought, now this makes sense.

Yes, exactly. And what you described is so common for HSP extroverts because. What I, the way I like to describe HSP extroverts is we are walking contradictions because as you've just heard me describe the HSP trait, a lot of it is very similar to introvert. So it kind of makes sense that most HSPs are also introverts, but then when you add HSP, when you add extrovert to the HSP mix, things get really quite messy and contradictory.

And so what you describe is so common because hatred and I think what happens is as we get older, We get more in touch with what we want and what our needs are. Whereas when we're in our teenage years and in our twenties, we kind of go with the flow and we just push through that sort of stuff. Whereas as we get older, we start noticing, oh, well actually this concert, I love going to concerts, but I really need more downtime afterwards, then most people would.

And so that's basically, we're starting to honor our HSP side more because in HSP extra. It's basically the biggest challenge they have is finding the balance between cause extroverts are externally focused. They need people, they get edited G from external variety, stimulating environments. Okay. As we've just talked about overstimulation.

So what happens with HSP extroverts is the extrovert. So I goes, oh, I need to go out. I need to do this. I need some excitement. I need some variety. I need some people. I call it peopling extroverts. Goes peopling then HSP. So fate bullying, I need some peopling and then HS pay. So it goes no, not too much, too much.

And then it has to kind of short treat and recover because they become overstimulated. So it's this constant kind of push pull between our HSP side and our extrovert side. And that's why many of them. Before they discover HSP extrovert, they call themselves an introverted extrovert or an ambivert. So I reckon a lot of ambiverts or people who claim to be ambiverts because I don't believe it's a thing.

The research suggests it's not a thing, but I think a lot of them are HSP extroverts. It's that whole. As we've just described should have introverted tendencies, which is our HSP side needing respect and needing time. But then our extrovert side comes out and goes, no that's time to go people again. So that's, that's the ongoing battle that HSP extroverts.

Yeah. I want to be home. I want to be by myself, but don't leave me alone. I don't want to be by myself. Let's go out. No, I'm not sure there are people out there. That's a good thing. Maybe not like a constant. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And I think once you understand that it's easier to. Reconcile that too, because you can go, oh, okay.

My extrovert side needs some peopling and you can respect that and you can go out, but then instead of beating yourself up or feeling like there's something wrong with you because you can't cope with perhaps a whole night at the pub with your friends, you might only cope with a few hours, then you can just go, oh, well this is just my HSP side saying, come on.

Enough's enough. I need some time out. So it becomes a little bit easier to. Normalize it, I suppose, rather than thinker, because one of my clients, the biggest thing she struggled with is the whole comparison that you mentioned. Surely we grow up quite, quite often comparing ourselves. No, she's an extrovert.

She only recently discovered she was the HSP. Her constant battle was she's a makeup artist by trade. And so she was  maker. Exactly. And she loves, she loves seeing her clients and, and chatting with them, but then she couldn't understand why she couldn't then. Go home and do all the work that needed to be done as all the follow-up.

And it's because she needed the timeout from spending a day, chatting to clients and she was her biggest frustration was she would look at. Or watch other makeup artists who are extroverts and kind of be like, well, why can't I do that? Or why do I have these challenges? And she started again, to think that there was something wrong with her.

And so a big chunk of the work we did was getting her to understand the two sides, the contradictory sides of her personality, so that she could then respect both of them and also stop comparing herself to everybody else who is not like her. Cause. And I, one of the, one of the keys, I like one of the little phrases I like to say the HSP extroverts is comparison is the thief of joy.

So if we're constantly comparing, then we're never going to find joy because there's always somebody who's doing it, different, doing it better. We want to be like, whereas if we stop comparing and just respect who we are and what our challenges and limitations are we going to find much more peace and much more time?

I absolutely agree with you, you know? Yeah. I'm been working at entrepreneurship for quite a few years now trying to start an art business and get the podcast going. And I wrote a couple of books and I have a course that's out that like, you know, I'm just trying to like build a community and, and, and that I hear, you know, consistency will get you there over time.

Right. And I have trouble. I've had to reconcile that my consistency looks different than other people's consistency that I can't do it every day. I have to allow myself some whole entire days where all I do is retreat and then I can go back the next day and I can put the irons in the fire and, and work from morning till night.

And I'm fine. But I can't do too many days like that before I have to completely retreat again. And I have chosen to just not feel bad about it anymore because there was no point in feeling bad about it. That's just who I am. That's what my consistency looks like. Might be different than your consistency or someone else's consistency, but that doesn't matter.

You know exactly. And I think that's brilliant that you said I have chosen to not feel bad about it because I think there's so many, there's so much information out there. Like even where you learnt consistency is key. There's a lot of gurus out there, or people selling courses out there that this is the way to success.

And we're kind of bombarded with all this information. Then if you don't do this, you're a failure. If you're not consistent, you won't be successful. Or if you don't. Do an 80 hour week, your business is never going to take off. And so there's so much information that then makes us feel like failures. And I think it's so key, particularly for HSP extroverts, because we've got those competing priorities within us to learn what works for us.

And to, as you say, choose not to feel bad about it. And instead flip our thinking and kind of go, we respecting our needs are different to others. And we just do it differently. We still doing it, but we just doing it differently to other people and that's okay. Right. The only way it's going to work for me is if I do it in a way that's true to who I am and my chemical makeup, my neuro, whatever you want to call it, I'm not a scientist.

Is just what it is, you know? And so for anybody who's listening, The way you're doing your life. If it works for you, then hug yourself. Cause that's great. You found a way that works for you. Stop fighting yourself. You know, I mean, and I guarantee you, if you push and you do like what you were saying, consistency.

If I push myself to do this every single day and I don't respect my need for downtime and my need to recover, I guarantee you you're going to end up burnt out and then you can't do it anymore. It's not about. Wanting or not wanting it's you physically can't because you've beat yourself out. So that's also what I like to highlight to my clients.

And anybody listening to this is if you don't learn to respect and choose what works for you, right? You're going to end up not being able to do anything because your body will just kind of go into burnout, emotional crisis, and it will just shut down. And then you're pretty much left. Weeks and months of recovery during which time you're not going to be able to do much at all.

So that's kind of the alternative that I like to highlight is that you don't want, that you want to just be consistent for you. What works for you, as you say, is the key. And with the mind body connection, It's, it's impossible to ignore that. If you get yourself to that burnout level, your immune system is going to suffer and you could very well get sick, which is why I've had the suns infection for the last three weeks, because school ended.

I'm a public school teacher during the school year. School ended at the end of June, and I felt something brewing and I ignored it. International travel planned with my family and then a family wedding in Florida in the Southern part of the United States. And for three weeks we were traveling and I wasn't giving myself any downtime.

And I wound up on antibiotics again then, and still trying to get rid of this sickness, which is causing me to take much more downtime than high probably would have required. Had I been able to do this all along? Exactly prevention is better than cure as they say. And just what you said about travel.

That's another thing I wanted to mention that HSP extroverts often struggle, struggle with. We love traveling because our extrovert side loves variety and new experiences, but what do we often struggle with? Because our HSP side is very caring and very others focused. We worry too much about saying no or taking a break because we don't want to disappoint the people that we're with.

So one of the big lessons for HSP extroverts is learning to take that time out, as you say, as you're doing it rather than when it's too late. So it's okay to say I can't do that now. I need to go to bed for the afternoon and read a book or just lays by the pool. And in fact, one of my really good friends, her relationship just broke down or broke up.

Because he couldn't respect her needs. So in the beginning, cause she's she's HSP, but she's also got a chronic illness. So, and so do I, so I can relate to this, but basically she, in the honeymoon phase, obviously everybody's excited and they want to see each other all the time and they're going out doing all these things, but then as you settle into the relationship she started to then.

Become more aware of her body's physical limitations. And so she started to say, no, I can't do that. Or I can't do that. And then he essentially was very needy, obviously, because I couldn't cope with that. He couldn't cope with her saying, no, I won't come to Bunnings with you. You just head down the hardware store yourself.

And so she, and the relationship ended up breaking up. And she did, she said to me, when I spoke to her last time, she said, Jen, like, how does it work? You and Mara and my fiance, because I have a chronic illness as well, and I'm an HSP, so I need a lot more downtime. And I said, well, for starters, you need somebody who's independent enough to go and do their own thing.

So they're not relying on you to be there, to, to be there peopling because if you're there peopling, then you're in trouble. But it is just about, yeah. Respecting that if you don't take breaks next. The consequences are going to be worse. And it's about honoring that as an HSP because other people don't know what's happening within you.

So you can't rely on them to say, go take a break. You need to stand up for your own needs and say, I need to take a break. And as you say, if you'd done that on your trip a little bit more, you probably would have. Not got sick. And then it's also that internal battle because our extroverts I'd gets all excited and wants to go out to dinner and do all the social things.

And Shorty's really a constant battle that I battle. I think my relationship with my, my husband works as well as it does. And he hasn't taken your quiz, but based on his personality and how well I know him, my guess is that he's an ant HSP, but he's an introvert and he's. For the young Myers-Briggs thing, he's an inf J so the NFJ part is the same with us, but he's definitely an introvert.

And so I think that that makes us highly compatible because he's just as sensitive, I think. But. Needs his alone time and needs downtime and doesn't need the amount of peopling I need. So if we're going to go out and people it's going to be because of me most of the time, and then whenever we want to leave or not do anything, it's totally fine.

So it works out well. Yeah. I think for HSP extroverts, I think if you tried to be with somebody who is just an extrovert without the HSP, that would probably be the most challenging. Whereas if you're HSP extroverts, if you're with another HSP, who's an intern. Or an extrovert, any other HSP? I think you could potentially make it work.

There are obviously other, other shootings, like valleys lining up and things like that. But if we're just talking personality, but even just introverts, because Warren is an introvert, he's not an HSP. So he does struggle a little bit with understanding my sensitivity. But he respects it and he respects when I explain things to him.

But because he's an introvert similar to what you're saying, like, if I've had enough at a party, he's more than happy to head home as well. Whereas if you're with an extrovert, no. Yeah, exactly. That would be battle between you and them as well as the internal battle you've got going on. So, and in fact, their extroversion would potentially drag you along because your extrovert side would get caught up with the exercise.

And you're probably going to end up more burnt out quicker if you're not strong enough to respect that kind of HSP side of you. So respect your HSP. Yes. That's key. It's our superpower, right? It is. Yes. Excellent. Excellent. So you have a free HSP info session available on your website? Yes. So I'll, I'll give you the link in the show notes.

Yeah. So that'll all be in, in the show notes and you have a Facebook group. Yes. For HSPE. Yes. Yep. So the info session is kind of more detail about what we've just gone through. So more detail about the does criteria, the differences between introverts and extroverts, the strengths of HSP extroverts, and the main challenges of HSP extroverts, and some tips to overcome.

So that's all in the info session, which is free and it's kind of on demand. You don't have. Book a webinar time and then wait for that women to sign up whenever they watch it. And the, my free group have got all my stuff, 1100 HSP extrovert women in there, and they're amazing bunch of women. And one of the things that I've learned through doing this work is one of the best things I hate GSP extrovert woman can do is hang out with other HSP extrovert women, because I get so much feedback from the ladies that.

I finally find a place where I feel like I belong. People understand me. I don't have to explain myself because we're different. And so a lot of us go through our lives, feeling rough to explain ourselves. And they just love that. There's that, that sense of community and sense of just acceptance because we're all on the same page.

So if you are listening to this and you think you might be HSP extrovert, I'd love to have you join the group. Excellent. So I'll put the links to all of that down below. So if you're listening to this or you're watching it on YouTube, just scroll down and all the links will be there. Excellent. Well, this has been lovely, Jen, this has just been such a nice conversation and thank you for the glimpse into Tuesday.

Hey, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to be on somebody else's podcast, but particularly if they're HSB extrovert, then I always have so much fun. So thank you for having. Thank you very much. You're welcome. It's been lovely.