11: Emerging Into Your True Self as a Sensitive Person
With Jen Berlingo, LPC, ATR
Have you put yourself aside for years? In this episode, I talk with Jen Berlingo, LPC, ATR about tuning back into your inner calling and…
• Emerging in midlife and unmasking to be your full self again
• Looking inward to identify what needs to change
• Navigating big life changes and taking one small step forward at a time
• Turning your ear back inward to listen to your inner yearnings and reclaiming your true nature
• Assessing whether your lifestyle supports your sensitive nervous system
• Learning to assert your preferences in a world that’s not built for HSPs
• Stop abandoning yourself and people pleasing to make others comfortable
Jen (she/her) is a midlife coach, a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Nationally Registered Art Therapist, and a master-level Reiki practitioner. After two decades of midwifing hundreds of women through life’s major transitions and experiencing her own passage through a fiery midlife portal where she more fully stepped into her queer identity, she was inspired to write Midlife Emergence to accompany other women in traversing their midlife journeys. Upon its publication, Midlife Emergence reached #1 in several Amazon categories, including midlife management, divorce, LGBTQ+ memoirs, LGBTQ+ parenting and families, adulthood and aging, and self-help. Jen is also a visual artist who not only created the painting on the cover of her book, but also makes custom pieces for collectors worldwide and exhibits her fluid, abstract art locally in her beloved town of Boulder, Colorado.
Keep in touch with Jen:
• Website: https://jenberlingo.com
• Substack: https://jenberlingo.substack.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenberlingo
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenberlingotherapy
• Etsy Shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/artsorceress
Additional Resources:
• Get support when undergoing profound transitions like midlife, divorce, or coming out later in life. Learn more + sign up for a free discovery call with Jen at https://jenberlingo.com/coaching
• Midlife Emergence Book: https://jenberlingo.com/book
• 100 Day Project: https://www.the100dayproject.org/
• Weighted Blankets: https://www.mosaicweightedblankets.com/
• Loop Ear Plugs: https://us.loopearplugs.com/
• The Electricity of Every Living Thing: A Woman's Walk in the Wild to Find Her Way Home by Katherine May: https://bookshop.org/a/63892/9781612199603
• The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self by Martha Beck: https://bookshop.org/a/63892/9781984881502
Thanks for listening!
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This episode is for educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for treatment with a mental health or medical professional. Some links are affiliate links. You are under no obligation to purchase any book, product or service. I am not responsible for the quality or satisfaction of any purchase.
Episode Transcript
Jen Berlingo: 0:00
I was looking at my life and looking at the paths not taken and wanting to feel that sense of no regret. Later I felt this urgency to have everything I've had to offer and to do it in a way that was gentle, especially in being highly sensitive. How do I look inside and find out what needs to change and what I want to express?
April Snow: 0:30
Welcome to Sensitive Stories, the podcast for the people who live with hearts and eyes wide open. I'm your host, psychotherapist and author, april Snow. I invite you to join me as I deep dive into rich conversations with fellow highly sensitive people that will inspire you to live a more fulfilling life as an HSP without all the overwhelm. In this episode, I talk with Jen Berlingo about turning your ear back inward to listen to your inner yearnings and emerging as your true nature, learning to assert your preferences in a world that's not built for HSPs, and navigating big life changes and taking one small step forward at a time.
April Snow: 1:14
Jen is a midlife coach, a licensed professional counselor, a registered art therapist, a visual artist and a master level Reiki practitioner in Boulder, colorado. After two decades of midwifing hundreds of women through life's major transitions and experiencing her own passage through a midlife portal where she more fully stepped into her queer identity, she was inspired to write Midlife Emergence to accompany other women in traversing their midlife journeys, for more HSP resources and to see behind the scenes video from the podcast. Join me on Instagram, tiktok or YouTube at Sensitive Strengths or sign up for my email list. Links are in the show notes and at sensitivestoriescom. And just a reminder that this episode is for educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for treatment with a mental health or medical professional. Let's dive in, okay.
Jen Berlingo: 2:34
So, jen, could you start off by telling us how and when you discovered that you're a highly sensitive person. Yeah, I suppose it was when I was a child. I was pretty contemplative from a young age and empathic and tender, and I have memories of a few instances that I could track back to now that I have the language for being an HSP, but I didn't at the time. But I remember seeing the Muppet movie in the theater. When it came out I was four years old and I remember bursting into tears at a couple different parts and my mom was so confused. And one part was when Kermit was just alone and talking to himself about a promise that he had made to his friends and to himself and not wanting to let any of them down, and he was just like walking off into this darkness. It like touched me so much and also feeling moved by Gonzo singing I'm going to go back there someday. I felt like those lyrics were like reminding me of this, like larger knowing that I couldn't really explain and I couldn't explain to my mom why I was crying and I felt pretty alone in those feelings, whether or not that was true at the time. And I remember when I was six years old I was in my grandparents' living room where they had their Christmas tree up and tears were just streaming down my face and I was just like reckoning with the fact that they wouldn't be here someday for Christmas, so they wouldn't be there anymore and then Christmas would go on without them. And I remember I like had this, knowing that I needed to clean my face up before I went back into the kitchen to join the rest of my family, so they wouldn't really know I was crying because I didn't know how to explain like the tenderness that was happening at that age and I was just always like wanting to write and make art alone in my room as a kid.
Jen Berlingo: 4:08
I still do, I'm still the same person, but I was called too sensitive or shy by my dad, which as if that was like an insult. It was more used in a pejorative way at the time, but I just didn't really speak up as a kid to say things that in the environment were harsh, that the lights in the grocery store felt too bright or the volume of ads on the TV were like movie premieres, were like too loud or overwhelming, or that the chemical perfume that they spray on you when you go to the department store was like making me dizzy, like making me dizzy, and then as a teenager I just felt yeah, I remember just tears welling up in my eyes, like when I'd smell rain in the fall or feel that like hollow. There's like a hollow drumming sort of feeling. When the sound of fireworks go off, it would get my belly and would make me tear up. So I don't know, I always just felt permeable in some way.
Jen Berlingo: 5:05
I still do. When I go to the doctor or dentist, I always get reflection of like how I'm more sensitive than most of the patients and they always seem really surprised and some practitioners are even shaming about it, in the sense of I remember getting acupuncture one time and when I get acupuncture I can feel the energy really coursing through my body really so strongly and I remember one of them saying, like how did you have a baby when you can't even handle this tiny needle? So yeah, it comes through in a lot of ways, like the physical and environmental stuff and the empathic, tenderness pieces.
April Snow: 5:40
Yeah, he uses a lot of great words, permeable, which I've never thought about, but it's so true I use the word spongy. We take in everything so much, and even from such a young age, at the age of four or six, and having these big, deep existential feelings and experiences that you can't really put words to and there's not always another person around to help you understand it more deeply and thoroughly. How do you make sense of that as h4, h6, especially if you're hearing those messages of you're too sensitive, get over it, all those measures that we hear as little sensitive beings. It's a challenge to make to understand yourself. And how do I take up space in this sensitive body?
Jen Berlingo: 6:25
understand yourself, and how do? I take up space in this sensitive body. Yeah, yeah, it's hard. You don't feel met or seen in it, or maybe you're seen in it, but it's not normalized or validated necessarily. Yeah, it seemed like they were having different experiences of it or could really handle more input or stimulus than I was comfortable with.
April Snow: 6:42
And there's this great quote in your book, midlife Emergence. I read it and I wanted to ask you about it and it relates to what you're just saying. As these experiences throughout your early life as a sensitive person, you said as a child I always felt like I was a lot emotionally and I wasn't sure how or if my heart could ever expand to include all that I cared about. Just love that, because there is so much where I feel so passionately about and so aware of. And you said, over the years I have learned how to carry all that I take in that permeability. I'm curious since then, when you were a younger person, realizing there's something different about you to now and having language for it and maybe hopefully having community around it, what has shifted with your relationship to your sensitive parts since then?
Jen Berlingo: 7:28
I feel like I'm more able to see them as a gift, and even just in the last few years coming to that, I think I came to it slowly over time.
Jen Berlingo: 7:35
But I don't really feel like I could be an effective coach or therapist or healer without my sensitive nature, once I actually learned how to take care of myself while being of service to another.
Jen Berlingo: 7:46
Yeah, I was fortunate enough, I got my graduate degree at Naropa University, which is like a Buddhist oriented school where mindfulness meditation is about a third of the counseling curriculum or so, and so the therapist's identity and the care of the therapist's self were hugely emphasized in my program, and I eventually, once I got out of school, realized that not all therapists were trained in that way, and I felt really lucky that was happening. So I started to facilitate a guided, self-paced online program called the Soul Space Series, where I help other helpers who maybe didn't get those messages or skills in that sort of self-compassion, so they could tune into their needs, whether or not they're highly sensitive. It's just always been a big part of my work, and I feel like it also serves me as an artist and as a writer, because I just try to communicate or convey my own really acute perceptions through this. Like highly impressionable lens that I have, I like to think of it as like seeing the world through almost like a slightly fevered brain, even though I know that's not the science behind it.
Jen Berlingo: 8:52
But it just feels like things are more vivid, like the colors are more seeping and lights are more sparkling and my ears can be pierced with like subtle sounds more, and my heart is more porous. So it's, I feel, like describing, whether it's in words, through my writing, or in images, through my art, through painting. I feel like it's a gift that allows me the level of self-expression and authenticity that I want to be I don't know modeling and inviting more of in the world.
April Snow: 9:26
Yeah, I love that you're supporting yourself but also other healers, therapists, artists, because we're well suited for that work. But it is also a lot to process and move through your nervous system, your body, energetically, emotionally. I'm curious. It sounds like self expression is a really important part of your own personal process. I'm wondering if you could speak to how that supports you as a sensitive person. You talked about being permeable, porous, having this. I love that, this fever, dream of experience of the world. I wonder if it's connected to that and that processing or for something else.
Jen Berlingo: 10:02
Yeah, I think self-expression for me is I don't know. It feels like a medicine.
Jen Berlingo: 10:07
It's like I'm giving myself something that I didn't fully get to have as a kid, where I felt like I had to mask a lot of my actual feelings, thoughts, sensitivities in some way, and now I'm more trying to communicate that through various channels a lot, and I like to do that so that it can invite other people into doing that as well. Like when you see someone expressing their truth or flying their freak flag or just really being raw and honest about their experience of being a human being on earth, at this time it's ah, I can say that weird thing or whatever like I, I feel it's so freeing, it's been so freeing for me to see other people do that and I want to do that as well, and it's like reciprocally healing.
April Snow: 10:56
I feel like yeah, there's a lot of healing and taking that mask off and allowing our sensitivity to fully come through and all the different layers and experiences that allows us to have connecting to emotion and creativity and intuition and and it can be really hard to do a lot of these conversations I've had people have mentioned that there's a vulnerability in that. Yeah, taking that mask off, is that something you've?
Jen Berlingo: 11:21
experienced as well, oh, definitely, especially in publishing my book. That was supremely vulnerable and anxiety provoking for me I lost a lot of sleep but ultimately rewarding, and all of the ways. I just described as well as just cathartic for me to process my own story around that and. But yeah, the vulnerability hangover is real.
April Snow: 11:44
It definitely felt like that and still does sometimes, for sure, yeah, yeah, having written a book myself, it is probably the most vulnerable I've ever been. You know, taking just this labor of love and all this personal expression and putting it out for someone else to interact with and somewhat judge. And putting it out for someone else right to interact with and somewhat judge, and hopefully it helps someone. But it is very. It's a hard process the I think, the creative part of it, the writing, the, the processing, the absorbing, is so suitable, so it's close. But then when you it's ready to put it out into the world, it's a completely different experience and one that I think stops a lot of sensitive people from living their truth. I know that's a big part of your book. Right Is connecting to what you're yearning for, what your purpose is at any stage of life, and you've called it midlife emergence. I'm wondering if you could say a little bit more about what that means for you.
Jen Berlingo: 12:43
Sure, yeah. So in psychology or developmental psych, midlife is said to be like 40 to 65. And the stereotypical midlife crisis usually centered the male experience and I felt like the sports car and all of those things that we hear about. But I don't feel like it has to be a crisis or an emergency. So I flipped the word emergency into emergence, because it's defined as the process of coming into view or becoming exposed after being previously concealed. So it's an unmasking in itself and just like a truth telling or an exposing of something maybe that others weren't able to see before.
Jen Berlingo: 13:18
I reframe it that way because it's like this time of life where we can muster the courage or our challenge to actually shed some of the earlier conditioning that we might've had in the first act of life. And when I entered midlife or entered my forties which is like the decade I think of as like a liminal space between the first and second act of life it felt like I was in this sort of waiting room where I still am I'm 48, where I have this opportunity to architect the next act in the way that I would like it to be. So in doing that, it really was like I was unveiling within me what had been previously unseen. Yeah, it feels like more of an emergence of my authentic self and, just like I said, like shedding the social, familial, cultural conditioning that I'd been living into.
April Snow: 14:09
I think a lot of HSPs have that experience where, because we're deep processors, we need more time to reflect and get comfortable being ourselves, because of the need to mask and the need to shield away from those two sensitive messages that we often find ourselves later on in life 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond even stepping into our true selves what we wanted to do all along. Finally, we feel like, okay, I'm ready, now it's coming across your book. It feels like a big permission and just a relief. I would say it's not too late. Yeah Right, because I hear so many sensitive people who they really want to make a big shift, whether it's work or relationships, or it's how they live their lives, how they express themselves, and you can unveil at any time. Yeah, yeah.
April Snow: 15:02
I'm curious was there what brought you to that midlife emergence point in your own life? How did you?
Jen Berlingo: 15:10
and that's a big question. It is. It's a good question. I was inside with that sensitive little four-year-old wanting to just write stories in my room.
Jen Berlingo: 15:17
I was like I want to be an author and an illustrator one day. That was my dream. So it was really like that all coming true. And no, I'm not an illustrator, but I'm an artist and I did do the cover of my book. So it was really like that all coming true. And no, I'm not an illustrator, but I'm an artist and I did do the cover of my book. But how it came to be, those were the seeds. Yeah, it felt like I wanted to express while I was going through the process. That was really nonlinear and really messy and emergent. It felt risky and emergent in a way of writing it from the middle, from where I was, not when it was like tied up in a bow at the end of this process.
Jen Berlingo: 15:50
So as I entered my 40s and I was looking at my life and looking at the paths not taken and wanting to feel like that sense of no regret later, I felt like this quickening and this urgency, in a way to bring the juice out of, like, everything I've had to offer and to do it in a way that was gentle, just especially in being highly sensitive. I knew I couldn't just like set my life on fire or blow it up, as a lot of people use those sort of things. I was like, okay, what's slow burn, what's burning? How do I look inside and find out what it is that truly needs to be, what needs to change and what I want to express? So I started writing it, actually without knowing I was writing a book. I was doing the 100 day project on Instagram I think I'm in my ninth or 10th year of it now, but my theme that year I called it 100 Days of Midlife Emergence, and every day I shared like a snippet of truth from this place where I was coming out later in life.
Jen Berlingo: 16:53
I was working through the idea of open marriage that my ex-husband and I were experimenting with having my first queer relationship, all sorts of pieces of that all the way through, like separation and divorce. So I was like giving these little things also like the changes in my career. A lot of things were changing all at once for me. A few people commented on those. A lot of people did and that resonated with them. Or I would get DMs saying, oh my gosh, me too, thanks for saying this out loud. And a few people were like this should be a book. Me too, thanks for saying this out loud. And a few people were like this should be a book and I thought, oh my gosh, maybe this is that book I've been meaning that I was meant to write.
Jen Berlingo: 17:32
So, even though it felt like my most vulnerable personal stuff, I knew that the places where we feel most alone and maybe the most shame or vulnerability, are really where we connect most deeply, and that's what I'm interested in doing in this life. So I was like what better pursuit then?
April Snow: 17:49
Yeah, so to put it in a book, because you're right that we are often going through these, this process alone, especially sensitive people. We're often feeling so different, so disconnected from what we see other, most other people going through the pace or the lifestyle or just how we're moving from day to day. So important to get these stories out and to put it on the page. And thankfully, you know to you, you listen to that urgent call inside of yourself. So I'm going to take the risk to put my story out there, because we have yes, we have books on sensitivity, but for me, I want more personal stories.
Jen Berlingo: 18:28
Me too.
April Snow: 18:29
Yeah, what does it actually look like? How can I get there? And I love how you use the word slow burn, because even when there's that urgent call, we don't have to deny our sensitivity. We can still ease in, take a gentle approach, so it can be both.
Jen Berlingo: 18:48
Yeah, for me it had to be Like I couldn't ignore the burning, but I also needed to do it in a way that kept me feeling relatively safe or even while experimenting with things, kind of letting go of the safe, familiar path toward what was more mysterious and unknown. It feels there can be a gentle process in doing that, which I invite the reader into in the book. I also like to read personal stories. I read memoirs and I read like personal growth books, and so mine is a combination of the two actually. So I invite the reader into their own process while telling my story, and everyone's process is so different I know from my clients it's not linear, but there are these themes that seem universal, and that's what I was hoping to speak to.
April Snow: 19:34
It's true, it's not usually linear, yet we still continue to move forward. When you said universal themes, I'm wondering could you speak to that a little bit more? What were you noticing Could?
Jen Berlingo: 19:43
you speak to that a little bit more. What were you noticing? Yeah, sure, I feel like I guess there are steps that I went through that I see other people going through before. I wrote it during and after of what do you like? How do you turn inward to listen to your inner voice? And then what's the next right step after that? Is it to tell one safe person? Is it to maybe that person's a therapist or coach? Maybe that person's a therapist or a coach, maybe it's your best friend or your partner.
Jen Berlingo: 20:08
And then, like themes around looking at early childhood conditioning and then reclaiming some things, overturning those, welcoming. The mystery is a theme. Each chapter I have 13 chapters that have different 13 themes identifying your why, like why would you want to be doing this and how can that ripple out? Maybe to people who observe you and your children, if you're a caregiver parent? Yeah, and really just, I outline a whole bunch of them, but what I'm saying is it's not 13 steps to getting through your midlife hammer, it's so. Not, it doesn't go in that order all the time, but yeah, I've just.
April Snow: 20:43
It's something I've seen happen with so many of the women I work with you're noticing, there are overlapping themes, although a lot of times they can happen in different orders or at different paces. Do you remember what the first step you took was once you recognize, okay, this calling needs to be answered?
Jen Berlingo: 21:02
do you remember?
April Snow: 21:02
what you did first.
Jen Berlingo: 21:04
I told my ex-husband you did, yeah, you disclosed it right.
April Snow: 21:08
You mentioned that you're thinking about who you can tell, and that was where you started.
Jen Berlingo: 21:12
For me, it was really needing to share that with one other trusted, loving person in my life and, yeah, I'm someone who likes one-on-one connection and I need to feel that and seen and like what I'm going through. So that felt like a natural step for me as a next step and then to have a partner in it who could help me work through that and myself and help me process it verbally and even though, of course, he was impacted quite a bit from it, there's hope, I think, in telling the truth and, yeah, being able to connect on a deep level and know each other even more through that. So that was my first step and it's different for others. I think sometimes, too, they might not choose that. They might choose. I'm going to journal about it for a while. I'm going to join a group. I'm going to hire a therapist or whatever that might be. Yeah, I'm going to hire a therapist or whatever that might be yeah.
April Snow: 22:06
Yeah. There are a lot of different steps and there's something about sharing your truth, being seen, it being validated, being able to express it, and that could be with a therapist, it could be with a friend or a partner. There's just something about it that's so powerful and it allowed it to come out into the world for you and let it be real.
Jen Berlingo: 22:25
Yeah, it helps it be more concrete to see it externalized or hear it externalized or coming out of my mouth. I'm like, okay, this actually has like traction now and it felt relieving in the sense of not carrying it alone, and also, okay, something needs to happen, something needs to move, really not wanting to be stagnant and stale and just stay in this homeostasis that I don't know felt wrote like what I was supposed to have been.
April Snow: 22:52
Yeah, what you were supposed to have been, and so you're breaking that down. You talked also in your book about coming from I'm just paraphrasing here, but I think coming from a long line of women who sacrificed. Yes, I have a quote here which I just loved. Coming from a long line of women who sacrificed, I have a quote here which I just loved. Coming from a long line of women who are givers until they're empty, which I think a lot of HSPs will relate to. I definitely do. Giving it all away first, putting self last. All the time, he said, we learn to be needed, not to need. We learn to be wanted, not to want. How did you step out of that to listen to this call to say my needs are important enough to listen to?
Jen Berlingo: 23:31
Yeah, I was conditioned to not rock the boat like whether that was just in my DNA or the water I was swimming in with statements like being a good girl or like this idea that a quiet baby is a good baby, I realized once I had my kid. It was like, oh, are they a good baby? It was like good, meaning quiet and sleeps, and it was like a compliment of my family when someone said, oh, she always puts others before herself. She's so selfless, like selfless, like without self, as if that's a virtue. So I learned that some of the things I was feeling would be like inconvenient or disruptive. So I learned that some of the things I was feeling would be like inconvenient or disruptive and I didn't want to be those things, which is a brilliant survival strategy when you're dependent on caregivers.
Jen Berlingo: 24:14
I learned to tolerate a world that was loud and harsh and beautiful and heartbreaking and all of those things, and powered through those, even when I felt uncomfortable. And, yeah, I felt. Yeah, I think the world wasn't made really to accommodate the what is it? 15 to 30 percent or some?
Jen Berlingo: 24:32
like somewhere in there of us, yeah so how I guess I started to find myself again in that, or to listen internally. Yeah, I feel like there are a couple levels to that question, like one is the more inward one, like the desires that I had and tuning back into what do I want, what do I need. I feel like I was born receptive to those things we all are like in our wildness right, and then we're domesticated or unwilded and we tune the mouth and we're acculturated into that status quo. And then in midlife there felt like there was a rewilding or remembering or reclaiming of my true nature. So I had to relearn to hear that inner voice, like whether it was whispering or shouting, and then, yeah, knowing that it shouts through bodily symptoms sometimes, which is a piece of my story that I talked about in my book as well.
Jen Berlingo: 25:25
Yeah, and I talk about how to like, how I turned my ear inward to listen and I bring the reader through their own self-inquiry exercises, like art and journaling and personal ritual, to begin to tune into what their desires are. Then, and I think the other level of your question it's more about like the environment of that, like my therapist asked me a few months ago I think it was actually six months ago or so now does your lifestyle support your sensitive system, and I think about that every day. So I think the other piece of it is like how I'm learning to do that is to honor these, I guess, more delicate parts of myself that are just so receptive to every freaking thing, and just respecting the fact that the nervous systems of HSPs are more sensitive to the stimuli in our environment. Right now I feel like I'm trying to strike a balance between tolerating discomforts, like when it's necessary, and with also asking for what I need around my sensitivity so I don't become overstimulated or grouchy.
April Snow: 26:26
Like my girlfriend.
Jen Berlingo: 26:27
She's really accepting of the fact that I keep my house so dimly lit with like incandescent lights and I can't have LED bulbs and there are lampshades and my teenager wears headphones when they need loud music during the early evening hours, because that's when I am blown out. I use my weighted blanket, I have those loop earplugs, things to help me tune out and not spin out when I'm in a loud space or like at a live concert. So and I think like validation, like I enjoy consuming things that feel validating. Catherine May's book the Electricity of Everything was such a beautiful read for me, like really resonating with how she eventually in midlife was received an autism diagnosis around her sensitivities and I still have a lot of question marks about that.
Jen Berlingo: 27:14
I don't know, like that spectrum and where this is, or if and then like podcasts like this and there are a few sub stacks that I like. So I think that like little tweaks like that and advocating for my needs in both of those ways are a big relief for me, and just learning to assert my preferences, at least in my own home, because we all need like a sanctuary and when we go out into the world it's not built for us. Yeah, it feels like doing that where I can and then stepping out of my comfort zone too to stretch and grow Cause I think grow because I think that I think that there are definite places to do that and I've done a lot of that, but I don't think we have to in the sense of having it be like tolerating what's harsh or loud on our soft systems yeah, finding that balance of comfort and edginess, right, yeah, where there's growth, but also you're supporting your nervous system, your need for a slower pace for processing all of that, and I love that.
April Snow: 28:14
Can you assert your preferences at least at home? Right, it might be a little safer. And I'm also always telling my wife we need to turn off the overhead lights.
Jen Berlingo: 28:25
Yeah, I actually. I always have it off and it's them and if I go out and come back and my girlfriend's been here by herself. She'll have the overhead lights on, She'll have sports center blasting.
April Snow: 28:35
I call it the young man show.
Jen Berlingo: 28:37
I'm like not athletic or sporty in any way, but she'll be like on the computer, multitasking, texting, listening to sports center overhead lights and I'm like, oh, she's like, oh, hi, sorry, which, like she needs to be able to have that environment too. But it's a funny like juxtaposition to how I am when I'm here. I'm like, oh, a candle, and the volume's really low exactly, it's almost dark for me yeah me too, me too.
April Snow: 29:08
Yeah, just having that, yeah, I just think of home as sanctuary and just having that space you can come home to and just fully take off the mask or fully let your nervous system unwind. Yeah, and I really appreciate that. You said having these practices, these rituals that help you come back to self, to tune in. What do I need? Because it's probably not a question you've had a lot of experience asking yourself. I'm saying that to the general view in our HSB community. We're not, we're really conditioned to, you know, just assimilate to other people's needs. We're shape shifters, in a sense chameleons. And then you do. You get to a point where you can't tolerate it anymore. A lot of times I had that. I was like, okay, I need to live in a different way. Yeah, yeah, as I've gotten into my 40s, now it is a lot easier it is.
Jen Berlingo: 30:00
It is. There's something about this time of life. I think that it makes total sense and developmentally and you know psychology, of having this individuation process again or a second adolescent sort of a situation of like, really individuating from social and cultural messaging and tuning back into the self. And then when we do that and we find out I do have an inner compass and maybe even someone like me. Or I feel like I've been in therapy my whole adult life. I've become a therapist, I've been doing self-inquiry work and personal growth work for decades and still was abandoning myself in favor of making other people comfortable or for me seeming like to be assimilating in social environments so that maybe I wouldn't be as anxious or weird. Yeah it's. I got to a point where it's like why would I do that to myself?
Jen Berlingo: 30:52
Or why be that around others, like it could actually free them up as well.
April Snow: 30:57
That's a good point. I think the assumptions were taking care of others, making them more comfortable, more safe. But what are we actually doing when we mask?
Jen Berlingo: 31:07
Yeah, I think we're playing into normie mainstream culture and making it so that everyone needs to assemble it where it feels like it's the opposite direction that I would like to be going at least making space for all sorts of differences really so key to coexisting on this planet, and in a way that isn't going to make everyone internalize everything and have it come out sideways, physically or emotionally, mental, health, wise Like if we could all actually be ourselves and our true selves and then we could actually know each other more deeply.
April Snow: 31:40
So there's so much that becomes available when we're more authentic. There's, I feel like there's this more opportunity for available when we're more authentic. There's, I feel like there's this more opportunity for deep connection and seeing each other, experiencing each other, and then we often we also get to have those sensitive gifts that we talked about come through. Yeah, it's such a. It just really hurts me that we're covering up so much all of our beautiful intuition and creativity and emotionality and insights that we bring to up so much. All of our beautiful intuition and creativity and emotionality and insights that we bring to the world that are so needed. We think we have to assimilate and be like everyone else, but yet it's such a sacrifice we're not just us for everybody. Right, you said we need that difference. It's so important.
Jen Berlingo: 32:19
Yeah, and I love the quote by Glennon Doyle where she says there's no such thing as one way liberation, and I feel like that's what modeling that does. It's like in freeing myself, it helps other people free themselves too. And not just me, but like when I see someone else doing that, it helps me feel more liberated.
April Snow: 32:37
It's true, it gives safety or permission for that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So we have both been in therapy, we're both therapists, yeah. But I'm just curious for maybe someone who's just beginning to set down that tendency to self-sacrifice, who's just starting to maybe want feel that urge to reconnect with self, how do you start to find yourself again? How do you start to tune in you? How do you start to tune in? You talked about tuning back and listening to yourself. Where do you start to reconnect with your needs? Oh, yeah, and that's a big question.
Jen Berlingo: 33:15
It is. It's the whole beginning of my book, but I think I would just say, myself included.
Jen Berlingo: 33:21
Like me, most of my clients are recovering good girls and former people pleasers who've done all the right things and met the expectations of the life we all should want and then still come up feeling unsatisfied in midlife. And I feel like there's a time when the stakes feel really high. It could feel disruptive to change things when you're settled into a career, mortgage, child, taking care of elders, all of the things that come with the stage, and but we don't really have the models or roadmaps or cheerleaders that help us to unfurl into this more expansive, aligned way of being in the world. And that's what tempts us to stay in our safe, sleepy, stagnant habits, because it's really difficult to face that inner voice that might wonder is this all there is? Or to admit to yourself that you might want a different kind of life. That is scary. I think change is scary to people, but so is staying the same when it isn't feeling full or congruent with what's inside.
Jen Berlingo: 34:25
Yeah, I do think we all have a unique gift to bring to the world and in midlife we have that like achy yearning that we sometimes can't name, and I think that is because, like we talked about, we haven't been taught to name it or look at what is it that we want. But I think that in that mess like of not knowing, it really can't be, that mess like of not knowing, it really can't be harmful necessarily to at least get to know yourself and not at least look inside and admit to yourself. Like I saw this meme that was like above all else, don't lie to yourself, or something like that, and it was like, oh my gosh, like that can't be harmful to at least tell yourself the truth, at least. Starting there, I have this exercise at the end of the first chapter of my book about writing what it is you'd want to say.
Jen Berlingo: 35:10
I remember writing, go a level deeper and write that and then like end of it is really one of my favorite prompts what aren't you saying? Still Write that, and so it's like you can, and just knowing that you don't even need to have an audience for it. But just what aren't you saying, what aren't you expressing? And that's usually what wants to be unleashed in midlife. So I think that I guess just staying the same day after day and swallowing your truth and authenticity to make everyone else feel better presumably, but probably not isn't the way to go necessarily. Yeah, I don't feel like it's ever too late. I think it's like right on time to do that at this stage of life. It makes me think of this poem by Laura Weaver that I love. At the end she says something like you've not missed the boat, you are the boat. Like some people are like, oh, I've done all of this stuff. Like I, it's too late for me to change all of that, but you are the boat.
April Snow: 36:02
You are the boat, exactly. I love that, and it's a good reminder that you don't have to disrupt everything, at least not right away. It's a good reminder, just as you did. You talked about how you that slow burn. You eased in with one step at a time, telling your husband and then slowly unfurling more and more. Yeah, that's the pace that you can go at. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. I'm staying in this completely or I'm completely disrupting my whole entire life and all my relationships and my work. What if you just started listening to yourself? I love that. And then, slowly, you get to that deeper question of okay, what am I still not sitting with? Is there more to see? Is there something that's unmet in you that feels really important to listen to? But it's one step at a time, otherwise it's very overwhelming. We'll never start. You don't have to start at the end.
Jen Berlingo: 36:59
No, and you can't, because you can't know what is on the other side of that mystery. It's really just creating the path with your feet, as they're walking is the only way you can't really know, like, what's at the end of that path. Yeah, and just being present to each moment and checking back in, is this still the way? I love how Martha Beck in.
April Snow: 37:18
The.
Jen Berlingo: 37:18
Way of Integrity talks about I think it's in that book, it might be in an earlier one where she says move toward what's warm and I use that as a barometer a lot of the time for me if I'm trying to make a decision and it's almost like muscle testing. But you can feel like what would feel warm, what's warmer about this situation. And my heart wants to go there. That just feels so valuable at every juncture.
April Snow: 37:41
Yeah, what a great check-in question. A barometer what's warm or is it still warm?
Jen Berlingo: 37:47
Yeah.
April Snow: 37:48
Take a step forward. Does it feel right here? Do I need to take a different step, or am I ready to move forward, or pause and really honor the ebb of this.
Jen Berlingo: 37:58
Okay, I need to just be still for a minute and hurl into a ball with my cat Exactly Get under the weighted blanket yeah that's where I go.
April Snow: 38:09
It's true, Me too Could not live without my weighted blanket. Me too. That's such a good reminder that, especially for an HSP, take a step, pause, digest, process and then what do I want to do for my next step? That's it. If anything, that's it. If someone's out there thinking, but it's too late. You are such a great example of you can change your life at any time. You can listen to those inner yearnings one step at a time. Be your authentic self, set down that good girl mentality, that perfectionist. But if what? If someone's saying no, it's too late, I can't follow this calling inside of me. What would you say? You are the boat you are the boat.
Jen Berlingo: 38:51
You can't exactly yeah, I feel like a reminder I feel like it's never too late. In my work I'm, you know, I work with people of all ages and I have a couple clients who are in their 60s, even late 60s, which is outside of the developmental psych thing of business midlife, but it's also who's to say really, that's just wherever you find yourself, when you awaken to there's more. What is it? I want more truth and grit and depth and meaning and passion or whatever it is. For that person, then what would leave you with no regrets? Go get that like how can we do that?
Jen Berlingo: 39:25
What is a way to do that that's manageable and sustainable and doesn't necessarily shirk the responsibilities you've taken on? Because I think that's what people mean when they say it's too late. I've already been this person, this dependable person to all of these people in this specific way, for this long. I can't abandon all of that right now and in doing so, like engaging in a self-abandonment that might feel or be more unconscious. So I think that, yeah, it's just to be able to honor the self and that we change, just like everything in nature, and I hope I don't butcher it, but I'm thinking about my favorite poet, andrea Gibson. It talks about how like being able to love someone is like asking them who are you now, and who are you now and who are you now, over and over.
Jen Berlingo: 40:16
And obviously they say it was much better words than I just did.
Jen Berlingo: 40:21
But I think about that a lot, because allowing the people we love to really be new every day and to be curious about them who are you, almost as though they're a stranger and then being able to do that for yourself yeah, I think I think about that. When I think about it's too late, it's for what? Like literally everything in nature changes. Everything is temporary and it's our attachment to this, to like states that we get into, that keeps us from flowing and shifting and being flexible.
April Snow: 40:52
In that I love that question who are you now? Because we're always growing right. That's why I love therapy work, because it's like we're always growing. There's always something new to learn about us or something to reclaim within ourselves.
April Snow: 41:05
yeah, and I love working with folks who are in their 60s and beyond, where you see that and that connection back to their young self as it's coming back online is so incredible to watch and it's not too late at any point. And also I love giving other people permission to pivot and grow and shift just as you, hopefully you are to yourself. Yeah, it's so beautiful and it doesn't have to be grandiose. It could be one small little shift where you allow your space to be more of you.
Jen Berlingo: 41:37
It can be just really day-to-day preferences that you're asserting turning on a lamp rather than an overhead light.
Jen Berlingo: 41:43
Exactly, or it can be what do I really want to eat for lunch? And then listening in what's a craving and then following a craving or following envy I use that as a compass. Sometimes it's such a useful emotion. I think it's like watching what others might have, and not a way of coveting that or taking it, but more in a way of if I feel that rise up in me, I'm like, oh, that's pointing me to what I really desire. Oh, that's how I know. So yeah, they're just different ways of doing it that are like one degree return toward, like more and more of yourself.
Jen Berlingo: 42:17
They don't have to be huge earth-shattering things, although my 40s have included a lot of those myself, but in a slow enough way for me.
April Snow: 42:27
Yeah, you made big changes over time and I love that. It doesn't have to be earth shattering, it can just be one step forward, great, yeah, yes, beautiful Jen, I just want to thank you so much for this conversation, for sharing part of your story. I hope folks will dive more into it in the book Midlife Emergence. I'll include the link to that in the show notes and your social media links. How else can folks connect and work with you?
Jen Berlingo: 42:55
Yeah, my website's really the hub for all of my offerings. It's just my name, Jen Berlingocom. It's in the show notes. Yeah, my book is through. There. You can find my book and it's um available wherever you want to buy books, and on amazon they also have the audiobook version, which was important for me to create because I like to listen to book a lot of the time.
Jen Berlingo: 43:16
I also write weekly on substack. Yeah, so every monday I come out with a new post with topics like this and just more um, updated things that I'm thinking about different midlife sort of topics and sensitivity and queerness and all sorts of good things. So there's a link to that there as well. Yeah, and I do one-on-one coaching. I do group coaching programs. I have the self-paced online programs of different varieties and I'm on social media. I hang out on Instagram the most. I post there at least every day, and my handle is just my name, jen Berlingo. And yeah, there's a bunch of other stuff too. I have an Etsy shop where I sell my Oracle deck that I've been selling for the last seven years. It's also very gentle and soft.
Jen Berlingo: 43:59
It's like intuitive watercolor deck and yeah, so anyway. I hope that people will reach out and I'm open.
April Snow: 44:07
I love that folks can go through and see your journey week to week and find some resources as they navigate their own journey as well. As we're saying, it's so helpful to have examples and supports as you go through this process, so thank you for that. I'll include links to all of that in the show notes.
Jen Berlingo: 44:26
Thank you so much, April. Thanks for having me here.
April Snow: 44:28
This was really wonderful. It's so nice to talk with you.
Jen Berlingo: 44:30
I know same.
April Snow: 44:39
Thanks so much for joining me and Jen for today's conversation. What I hope you'll remember is that it's never too late to reconnect with yourself, listen to your inner calling and slowly begin to honor your needs as a highly sensitive person. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the Sensitive Stories podcast so you don't miss our upcoming conversations. Reviews and ratings are also helpful and appreciated For behind-the-scenes content and more HSP resources. You can sign up for my email list or follow Sensitive Strengths on Instagram, tiktok and YouTube. Check out the show notes or sensitivestoriescom for all the resources from today's episode. Thanks for listening.
