30: Express Your Big Emotions Out Loud
With Sarita Fichtner, Children’s Book Author
Did you learn to repress your emotions as a kid or are you figuring out how to support the big emotions of your HSP kiddo? In this episode, I talk with Sarita Fichtner about the importance of expressing your emotions from an early age and:
• Long-term effects of being labeled “too sensitive” or “lazy” as a young HSP
• The profound impact of discovering your sensitivity on your mental health
• What’s possible when you set boundaries and support your sensitivity
• Dancing between bliss and survival mode as an HSP parent
Sarita is the children's book author of "Pop Out Loud". She struggled deeply with poor mental health from a young age, until her late twenties when she discovered the term "highly sensitive person". Sarita was then able to shift her circumstances from feeling defeated to feeling empowered, and build a life that thrives on a highly sensitive nervous system. "Pop Out Loud, First Day of School" is her debut book of the series which embraces emotions and honors sensitivity.
Keep in touch with Sarita:
• Website: http://www.saritaimagined.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saritaimagined
Resources Mentioned:
• Pop Out Loud children’s book: http://www.saritaimagined.com
• The Highly Sensitive Person by Dr. Elaine Aron: https://bookshop.org/a/63892/9780553062182
• Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza: https://bookshop.org/a/63892/9781401938093
• The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein: https://bookshop.org/a/63892/9781401946555
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
Sarita Fichtner: 0:00
I broke down in tears just from the feeling of being seen, because for the first time I was like, okay, I'm heard, I'm seen, and I hadn't really had that.
April Snow: 0:18
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 Sarita Fitchner about the impact of discovering your sensitivity on your mental health, dancing between bliss and survival mode as an HSP parent, and the importance of being able to express your emotions and tend to your sensitivity from an early age.
April Snow: 0:59
Sarita is the children's book author of Pop Out Loud. She struggled deeply with poor mental health from a young age until her late 20s, when she discovered the term highly sensitive person. Sarita was then able to shift her circumstances from feeling defeated to feeling empowered and build a life that thrives on a highly sensitive nervous system. Pop Out Loud First Day of School is her debut book of the series, which embraces emotions and honors sensitivity. 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, sarita. Can you start off by telling us your HSP discovery story? How on you realize I'm a highly sensitive person?
Sarita Fichtner: 2:20
Yes, I was 32 years old and that was only four years ago, which sounds crazy to me because there have been so many profound shifts in my life since that moment that it really feels like lifetimes away.
Sarita Fichtner: 2:38
And I was one year into motherhood and I had been experiencing a cycle of anxiety and depression pretty much for the majority of my life. But it was just so consuming and there is no room for that in motherhood. And I was at quite a low point and I just knew I needed real help. In the past, doctors and therapists had not worked at all for me. So I turned to Google and for the first time I searched for self-help books, and I don't remember exactly what I typed into the search bar, but it was nothing to do with sensitivity. Luckily, the highly sensitive person by Dr Elaine Aron came up and I just remember reading the reviews and it was like looking at a snapshot of a network of like-minded people with shared similar stories, if not identical experiences to me, and that feeling of thinking that you were alone in something forever and then realizing you never were like that was just groundbreaking for me.
April Snow: 3:55
That really hits me deep, like yeah, thinking this is just me, I'm alone, there's something different about me, and then realizing no, there's community, there's other people like me, is so profound.
Sarita Fichtner: 4:07
So profound, and I didn't realize the importance of community either until considering myself a highly sensitive person.
April Snow: 4:15
Yeah, we don't right, we don't realize. I mean, until I was actually in a room with a bunch of other HSPs, I didn't realize how different I could feel, like oh, these are people that are moving at my pace. We're seeing the world through the similar lens that I do. It's really life-changing. I can't even describe what it feels like. That's really important to have people who look like you, who see things like you do. Yeah.
Sarita Fichtner: 4:43
Absolutely.
April Snow: 4:45
Yeah, which is, I imagine, one of the reasons you wrote your book, which we'll get to in a bit. You mentioned you were at a point where doctors, therapists, were not helping me, which is true, right. A lot of times most people in those professions unfortunately don't know about the trait because it's a newer researched trait within the past 30 years, so it's not in the training programs. I talk to therapists about this all the time. So what were you finding when you were trying to work on your anxiety and your depression?
Sarita Fichtner: 5:16
There was a few key times that stand out. So I think from probably age six I was noticeably like different maybe, you know, shy and introverted, but a little more kind of extremely yeah, different in that area. And so my parents, like they wanted to help. They didn't know exactly how, there was no resources. I was going to elementary school in the 90s so I remember they had the school counselor pull me out of class one day and I was so young and everyone was staring at me and I don't think I said one word to her and so like nothing came of that. And then actually later in high school I was struggling with a very specific situation and my mom wanted to help and she went to our family doctor and our family doctor referred to me as being a lazy princess.
Sarita Fichtner: 6:20
And that was, yeah, that was. I'm still kind of processing that now. But you start to just dismiss things, as you know authority figures and doctors do, and you believe what they say. And then my last kind of hope, or my last attempt, was in probably about 10 years or eight years after that, sometime in my early to mid-20s, and I went to a different family doctor and I had been struggling with holding a job at that time and I was explaining to her that I couldn't work.
Sarita Fichtner: 6:59
But I could see her trying to connect the dots and I was this seemingly healthy, social, vibrant person in front of her saying, oh, I can't work, I can't go to work in the morning, and she didn't even have a conversation with me.
Sarita Fichtner: 7:14
But she handed me a questionnaire that was like 10 questions and I remember them being quite generalized questions like do you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning or are you pulling away from social engagements? And I wanted to write yes, but or no. But because it was too situational what I was experiencing to fit into a box and I ended up checking enough of the questions to get a referral to a psychologist, and that was the first time I was able to sit down with a psychologist and I had high hopes. But it was just the same sort of process. It felt a little robotic, she didn't really understand the depths of what I was saying and so nothing came from that either and I just kind of gave up altogether. And ultimately books were the real winner for me. And then, from when I read the Highly Sensitive Person, I went right away looking up a highly sensitive, specific therapist and I worked with her and immediately, within like five sessions, she had transformed my whole world.
April Snow: 8:26
So yeah, it's not amazing. So many HSPs have gone through this experience where you're put into this box or put down this path of, oh, it's depression, it's anxiety, it is, but, as you said, it's a yes or no. But it's not that simple. There's more to the story here going on, and when we don't include sensitivity in the conversation, we never feel relief because nothing changes at the root. I'm so excited to hear that in five sessions because I've seen this myself Clients come in and they're feeling stuck, they can't work, they're very depressed and when I bring in the sensitivity piece, things shift quickly. And that's how we are as sensitive people, we have that ability. We really soak up the support. What was happening in those five sessions? That was different. If you're open to sharing.
Sarita Fichtner: 9:17
Yeah, well, we went so slowly and first of all, like I just remember in the intro, we did a quick 30 minute consult to start and I broke down in tears just from the feeling of being seen, because for the first time I was like, okay, I'm heard, I'm seen, and I hadn't really had that from. I guess, yeah, like an authority figure, as I said before, and so there is just a sense of a different level of connection to start with. And then from there she went through. Like I was almost like okay, is this too slow?
Sarita Fichtner: 9:59
Because we really broke down every like emotion on a cellular level. I started to discover where in my body I was feeling different types of emotion and then I started to feel how that would shift to a different emotion and that it could actually shift faster than I thought. But just honoring the feelings and allowing them to exist, yeah, it was just something I'd never been given the space or allowed myself to kind of hold like that. So, yeah, it felt really new and I think that's why it was so transformative it felt really new and I think that's why it was so transformative.
April Snow: 10:46
You went from that kind of generalized robotic environment relationship to we are spending time with every little detail. Yeah, what a difference that is.
Sarita Fichtner: 11:08
It is such a difference like sometimes it sounds almost like cliche or you can't really understand, like the depth of the magnitude of the change that can occur when you take time to slow down and listen and feel your emotions physically. But oh my gosh, it really just yeah, it makes all of the difference.
April Snow: 11:23
It's incredible just to be seen, to be able to be with your experience in a depthful, meaningful way. I'm just sitting with what you were told early in your life, which is this lazy princess label that got put on you, which is so inaccurate and so harmful. We get those labels put on us all the time and they're so sticky.
Sarita Fichtner: 11:44
So sticky yep.
April Snow: 11:45
So sticky and they really inform how we think about ourselves. So I'm curious how did you, after having those experiences throughout your life, how did you start to embrace your sensitivity, if you have?
Sarita Fichtner: 11:59
Definitely I really have embraced it so much since learning about it, but I don't think that happened until like four years ago. So I went through so much from elementary school through my 20s of just like torment and it really took me the self-discovery and learning about what it means to be highly sensitive to start embracing it and then I never looked back every single day since then. I have leaned into it so hard and I have completely transformed my life and built a life around a highly sensitive nervous system and it's just the best feeling. I'm so grateful to be highly sensitive nervous system and it's just the best feeling. I'm so grateful to be highly sensitive and to know what it is.
April Snow: 12:51
Oh, that's so beautiful. Yeah, it's like, once you learn about it, it's like, oh, so exciting, isn't it? Yeah, it's like, oh, let's just dive in here and learn everything we can. So life sounds drastically different after For sure. Yes, if we could get a little bit more specific. So for listeners that are figuring out for themselves, is there any type of mindset or practice that's really been kind of an anchor for you in that process of embracing sensitivity?
Sarita Fichtner: 13:20
I think nothing super specific, but I am very committed to consistency, so I will surround myself with online and offline with sensitive people, sensitive people I look up to, also friends. I'm usually attracted to spending time with people who are sensitive and highly sensitive, so that kind of comes naturally to me. But also just listening to podcasts like yours, like the Sensitive Story podcast, and following people like you online has just done wonders for me as well. And continuing to buy books with the growth mindset of that genre and just more on sensitivity in general, really just immersing myself in it.
April Snow: 14:11
Yeah, it's so important, and I just think about folks who maybe don't have people in their life that are open or accepting of sensitivity, but at least then finding that community wherever you can, whether it's on the page or on social media.
Sarita Fichtner: 14:33
Definitely, and my you know my real life community I feel like is quite small, but just because it's just a few key people who get me on that level, like it's the most fulfilling feeling. I think you were just talking about quality over quantity.
April Snow: 14:43
Yes, always, and always.
Sarita Fichtner: 14:45
you can apply that to every aspect, and definitely when it comes to your social circle as well. And yeah, also seeing sensitivity in my children has just been the greatest way for me to embrace it, because I automatically love that within myself and I want to continue to foster it in them and in me.
April Snow: 15:04
And yeah, oh, I love that. Just the just thinking about how they're going to have such a different experience relating to that part of themselves Exactly. That's really beautiful. That's the best feeling. Yeah, it's so healing, and you get to hopefully parent your inner child as you're parenting. Oh yeah, big time. Yeah. So could we speak, cause you mentioned you know, which a lot of people do when they're become parents. They go through that process. Sensitivity, I think, shows up in a different way. It's more intense being pregnant or just going through the living experience of being a parent. So could you talk more about what that's been like becoming a highly sensitive parent?
Sarita Fichtner: 15:44
Yes, I will be very honest. Being a highly sensitive parent is a constant dance between bliss and survival mode. Every morning I wake up unsure like genuinely unsure of how I am going to make it through the day, and every evening I am on a cloud of gratitude and disbelief of my beautiful life with these humans. And if someone were to get real with me about the lack of time to recharge, the lack of personal space, the constant overstimulation I mean, my kids are one and four right now, so that's what it is and if someone were to get real with me about those aspects, I don't know how I would have felt about becoming a parent in the first place. But it is the most beautiful blessing that I didn't know, and I don't think you can ever truly explain that to somebody who hasn't gone through it. But for one, I feel like I love my children more than anybody loves anybody in the whole world. And then, secondly, my children were the catalyst of me shifting my circumstances from feeling defeated to feeling empowered as a highly sensitive person.
April Snow: 17:05
Can you say more about that? I'm curious yeah.
Sarita Fichtner: 17:08
I mean I mentioned anxiety and depression and kind of like a cycle of that in the past, and so I would say that lasted for about 20 years and then it got a little better, but there were still ebbs and flows and so once I reached motherhood I just knew there was no more room for those kinds of lows in my life.
Sarita Fichtner: 17:32
And so that's when I started kind of my movement in self-development and ultimately that led me to creating so many boundaries and feeling validated in creating my boundaries. But it wasn't an external validation, it was all just me internally feeling good about the way I started to take charge and live my life, because I knew to be a good parent, I had to put myself first in that sense. I had to put myself first in that sense. And I'm so lucky because my husband, he has been there through it all and he knows my sensitivity inside and out and I was able to work with him and we made so many changes. I mean, we've moved to a different town. I'm thriving right now and it's because of my kids town. I'm thriving right now and it's because of my kids and that led me to the root of quitting my day job and becoming a children's book author and the inspiration from that is 100% my children. So it's a great feeling and it just feels very full circle.
April Snow: 18:43
And just highlighting what is possible. When we make those adjustments for ourselves, when we get really serious about these are my boundaries, these are my limits. This is what's important to me. I've seen this happen a lot with HSPs. I'm not a parent myself, but I've witnessed when you become a parent you're able to step up for yourself in a new way because you know you want to be the best for your kids.
Sarita Fichtner: 19:04
Exactly, yeah, so important and it's so interesting how, creating boundaries for yourself that sounds like you're putting up fences or it sounds limiting, but honestly it opened so many possibilities and doors for me and it opened so much space for authentic parts of the world that were meant to come into my life, authentic parts of the world that were meant to come into my life and it just feels so fulfilling, parenting my own children while I feel like my cup is full and so, yeah, it's a good place to be in mentally and also just to like look back at the anxiety and depression that I experienced before. I mean, it was so situational and it was very much around group settings like the classroom, school work, birthday parties and extracurricular activities like sports. And now, looking back, I feel like that anxiety and depression was not innate in me and it was the result of me existing as an HSP in environments that had next to no support for highly sensitive nervous systems and I was not socially conditioned to support my own highly sensitive nervous system.
April Snow: 20:28
Right, we're expected to be in these environments that are loud, they're fast, they're overstimulating. And then we think, oh, there's something wrong with me, but it's really. It's just. Your nervous system is overwhelmed and if we can spend less time in those places, you know, keep it contained or not at all, so much more becomes available as you are living.
Sarita Fichtner: 20:49
Yeah, no exactly.
Sarita Fichtner: 20:50
And I mean it's funny because that does bring up another tricky part about parenting protecting your own boundaries and not imposing them onto your children, and so, as I mentioned, I love my boundaries so much, but I often do consciously break them down for the sake of my kids. However, I am constantly assessing situations, and if I ever get the feeling that something is going to drain me to the point where I can't be a good mom, then it's an automatic no for me. But otherwise I'm just. You know, I will break down my boundaries if it's going to benefit my kids, and then that just results in me needing much more time to recharge and having less of it to do so. But somehow it ends up working, or at least here I am getting through somehow.
April Snow: 21:49
You are, and it sounds like you're opening up so much more to not only survive parenting, but also then to, at the end of the day, sit with. Look at all the good things that happened. Yes, what's different here? Yes, yes. So in this process of you kind of discovering your sensitivity, changing your life to be more supportive, being able to show up for your kids, for yourself, in that process has come a book, and I'm curious to hear more. If you could tell us what the book is about.
Sarita Fichtner: 22:20
Yes, of course. My book is a children's book called Pop Out Loud First Day of School and it is about embracing emotions and honoring sensitivity and the main character is a colonel who pops into a popcorn when he experiences big feelings. I just feel like children are going through so many big transitions and the book takes place on the first day of school. Obviously that's a huge transition, but even day to day our kids are experiencing so much growth and transitions and they need to feel safe in self-expression and they should not have to earn that sense of safety. That should be their right and when they can feel safe in self-expression, I believe they can feel safe in authentic creation and ultimately, creating is what makes the world go round.
Sarita Fichtner: 23:16
And when they have that sense of confidence and self-worth and self-love when they are creating, they aren't going to be faced with the mental health issues that so many people and so many adults are now struggling with. So I think the book has a big, beautiful message, but it's also a really vibrant and fun read it is.
April Snow: 23:43
I've been privileged to see some of the early illustrations and get a sense of the book and it is fun. It's got a deep message around accepting ourselves emotionally, being able to express but, yeah, it's also fun, which is a perfect, I think, marriage for kids. You're right that we need that message early in life so we can have that foundation of, okay, I can accept myself, I can also express my emotion. And, yeah, because kids are going through so much every single stage. There's so much happening and we think about the bigger transitions, like starting a new school year or having a birthday, whatever it is, but there's all these minute transitions, especially for sensitive kiddos, that we just sweep under the rug and we don't recognize the impact on kids.
Sarita Fichtner: 24:28
Absolutely, and all of their changes are happening so fast. So it can be easy to, yeah, exactly, sweep under the rug or just dismiss something as you know them acting out. But there is so much to get out of each and every emotion and when you allow yourself to sit with it and feel it and talk about it, it will bubble over and then you can get back to your neutral state.
April Snow: 24:57
Yeah, that's so true, Because when we allow ourselves to feel our emotions, then we can let them go instead of fighting with them, especially as sensitive people. When our emotions are big and when you're a little kid, you have no idea what's happening. You can't make sense of these emotions.
Sarita Fichtner: 25:13
You need to be able to express them Exactly and just giving children the right tools from the start, in those early years, I think, will have a positive impact on mental health universally, because so many of us didn't grow up with that at all and people are struggling and so many people probably don't even realize that it's their repressed emotions that are causing physical ailments and holding them back in certain ways, and so there's no bigger gift than being able to live as your most authentic self.
April Snow: 25:51
I think Especially from the start. I just think about what would have been possible without needing to undo so much messaging and repressed emotion.
Sarita Fichtner: 26:01
Yeah, it's a lot of work.
April Snow: 26:03
It's a lot of work, a lot of therapy, a lot of self-exploration. Yeah, I'm just curious for yourself, because you had that experience in therapy. But what if you would have had that experience at age five or six, or even in high school? What would have been different?
Sarita Fichtner: 26:20
I know, I know. But now I'm glad that I went through it all just so I can raise my kids with all of that experience and knowledge.
April Snow: 26:29
It's true, right, you get to gift them that different experience and see them grow up in such a different way. I'm not sure if you want to talk about this at all, but I'm curious how you support your own kids in being with their emotions, what that might look like.
Sarita Fichtner: 26:43
We just constantly talk about them and I just use relatability and I approach them with curiosity instead of judgment and I think I try to buy a lot of books on emotions which are really fun, but yeah, there's not like too too many out there yet, and so I'm happy to add mine to our shelf soon and it's fun. We do it in a lighthearted way and even when there are big emotions, I still make it like a casual kind of setting to discuss them and we don't make it a big deal and like I cry a lot and I don't really hide that from my kids at all, because I think it is to me it feels like the most healthy release physically. I think it is to me it feels like the most healthy release physically and it's nice to see my almost five-year-old not afraid of emotion and I hope that becomes such a norm for him.
April Snow: 27:44
You're not only. I love it, you're modeling emotional expression, which kids really need. They don't know what to do with emotion. They need to borrow from parents and just being curious, right? We don't have to be afraid of emotion. We don't have to push it away.
Sarita Fichtner: 28:03
We don't have to demonize it. We can just be with it. Yeah, just be with it. And it sounds so simple, but I guess it can be so difficult to sit with certain feelings. But you can do it. You can do hard things like that. Anybody can. We are ultimately like designed that way and dismissing them feels easier in the moment, but once you get the hang of learning how to really feel, it is just so beneficial.
April Snow: 28:27
I think a lot of HSPs. We can be scared of our big emotions, but I think if we're able to kind of break them down more into bite-sized pieces, being with them every day I think is really important. So has it gotten easier for you to sit with emotion more recently versus earlier in life, since you're regularly expressing?
Sarita Fichtner: 28:51
I think so, since you're regularly expressing, I think so. I mean, I was always the sort of HSP who was very explosive in emotions, and I still feel like I am. But now just recognizing that, oh hello, like you have big feelings and they're here, I just allow them to exist and instead of me thinking, oh my gosh, I'm going to feel this way now for the next however many days, weeks, months or years, I'm like, oh, it's here and it's going to pass through, and I would definitely, I think without knowing, try to fight it more. In the past and now, I mean, sometimes I'll roll my eyes at feeling a certain feeling, but I, for the most part, am very welcoming of them all.
April Snow: 29:39
Yes, it just reminded me of that. Pop out loud from the book, right?
Sarita Fichtner: 29:43
There you go. Yes, let the emotions out. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
April Snow: 29:49
Yeah, I love it. I'm curious what was the moment where you realized, okay, I'm going to write this book. What was that inspiration point?
Sarita Fichtner: 29:57
That was really interesting because it was a couple years of self-development and rewiring the brain and I really truly believe that we can do anything we want if we, you know, set our mind to it. And even when I was going through really, really dark struggles that were related to kind of career driven purpose and just trying to find my way in the work and career world, I always had this light that I held on to, and it wasn't really the light at the end of the tunnel because my tunnel was so dark, but it was just a light that I knew that existed. I think because of being highly sensitive when I was younger and having such a supportive family, I got to experience passion and love and excitement and adventure on such a rich level, and so I knew this sort of feeling was out there and I just became, with all the self-development and growth mindset books that I had gotten into, I became determined to include that feeling and that light in my everyday, because life is short and like, why wouldn't I? And so I sat with myself for a bit when I was on maternity leave with my youngest and I was like if I could do anything just like I believe my children can. If I could do anything in the world and there was no rules and no judgment, and if money wasn't a factor, what would I do? And it was just so clear just becoming a children's book author.
Sarita Fichtner: 31:45
That's what I used to do when I was little. I was always writing, I was always creating stories, I was writing songs. I was always writing, I was always creating stories. I was writing songs, loved reading children's books. When I got into my childcare job and then becoming a mom, that's my favorite part of the day is just reading books. And so it was such a clear answer. But what's interesting is I wanted to write a book that was playful and goofy and have no message at all. And then I sat down and it was as if this book was just waiting to be written and it just came out of me and it made so much sense and there was tears flowing as I was writing it and I mean it's not a long story and it's got so many fun elements to it. But I was just so touched because what was coming out made so much sense for me, for my experiences and for, honestly, what the world needs right now.
April Snow: 32:43
Mm-hmm, I love it. The book is also a quality over quantity approach, right, it's like-.
Sarita Fichtner: 32:48
Absolutely.
April Snow: 32:50
It has an important message, but it's also digestible at the same time.
Sarita Fichtner: 32:54
Yep, exactly and same, with kind of how I decided to do that. I mean, I feel like I just knew I should quit my day job instead of trying to handle both at once. And now I have this space where to an outside world it might seem like I'm doing less, but I'm able to pour my heart into it. And now, because I have the space to do that, I just feel so much goodness that I'm attracting I love it.
April Snow: 33:25
It's like, yeah, when we can follow that internal impulse to do what's meaningful, there can be so much more impact than if you try to force yourself into a box, like well, I should be working in this way at this type of job. But it's like well, if we can slow down and do what we're called to do. Now. This book is going to touch so many kids, and just think about how that's going to ripple out throughout not just their lives, but everyone that they come in contact with.
Sarita Fichtner: 33:51
I know that's so special when I think of it that way.
April Snow: 33:55
And.
Sarita Fichtner: 33:55
I think you're right. You're so right that slowing down is just a major key.
April Snow: 34:03
Yes, someone else said to me slow down to speed up. When you do less, you actually do more, and it's so true.
Sarita Fichtner: 34:11
So true.
April Snow: 34:13
Yes, and it's just a beautiful reminder that we have a lot to give as HSPs, and if we can just kind of quiet the noise of what everyone else is telling us to do and redirect ourself back inward, that a lot is possible.
Sarita Fichtner: 34:29
Exactly, it is so true, but I do understand why it's not easy for everyone just to kind of pick up and slow down, and also people probably don't understand what slowing down actually means. Like it sounds very simple and it's something you might just kind of brush over, but there's so much truth to it.
April Snow: 34:49
Right, it seems simple, but it's also really profound and sure. There was parts of my life where that wouldn't have been an option. It wasn't an option on the table, but I always wonder how can we do that in small ways with what's available?
Sarita Fichtner: 35:03
Exactly, exactly. You can take small, small steps to kind of making that become an option one day.
April Snow: 35:11
Exactly. Yeah, I don't know if anything comes to mind, but you've mentioned that there's certain books that have been really profound for you in your process, one of them being the Highly Sensitive Person book by Dr Elaine Aron. I'm just curious if any other books, one or two other books off the top of your head that you can name for listeners.
Sarita Fichtner: 35:28
Yes, absolutely so. The other one I bought when I found the Highly Sensitive Person was Breaking the Habit of being Yourself by Dr Joe Dispenza, and he's got a number of books that are all great but that one kind of gives very specific steps to really rewiring your brain. And then I also love anything by Gabby Bernstein. She has some great gems about just very inspirational but very real about changing your life and self-help, and yeah, those would be my major recommendations.
April Snow: 36:09
Yeah, Thank you for sharing that. I'm sure folks are curious what's been impactful in your journey? I'm wondering, Sarita, if there was a message you could leave us with for HSPs that are listening. What would it be?
Sarita Fichtner: 36:22
I would say, to continue to learn as much about the trait as possible being highly sensitive. Being highly sensitive is such a flex, it is our time in the world and it is a strength, and it's 100 possible to design a life that thrives off of a highly sensitive nervous system absolutely.
April Snow: 36:47
Thank you so much. It absolutely is. You are, thankfully for all of us, an example of that.
Sarita Fichtner: 36:55
Thank you yeah it feels good to be here and I just you know if anybody is struggling or going through something that I went through or anything resonated. I would love to connect and I know it's not easy when you don't understand the trait.
April Snow: 37:14
It's true. It's such a big missing piece of how you experience everything your relationships, your internal experience, work, I mean every part of your life. Yeah, so I'll be sure to share your website and your social media in the show notes. Where can listeners find the book?
Sarita Fichtner: 37:39
Pop Out Loud. Pop Out Loud is available worldwide and you can find all of your options for purchasing at my website, which is www.saritaimagined.com.
April Snow: 37:52
Thanks so much for joining me and Sarita for today's conversation. What I hope you remember is that you can honor your sensitivity in small ways, with what's available, and that expressing your emotions is not only valid but frees up energy to focus on what's important to you. If you have a sensitive little one in your life or you're nurturing your own inner child, pick up Sarita's new book Pop Out Loud. You can find the link in the show notes 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 you.
