36: Embracing Your Sensitive Awareness
With William Allen, Author
Have you felt embarrassed by your sensitivity? In this episode, I talk with William Allen about the journey of learning to understand and embrace being an HSP as well as:
• Moving from living inauthentically to accepting your sensitivity
• The challenges faced by HSP men such as lack of community and models of sensitive masculinity
• Practicing portable self-care such as meditation, breathing, and connection with nature to recover from overwhelm more quickly
• Finding more resilience as an HSP with the 3Es: Educate, Embrace, Evangelize
William is an author with a writer’s heart and researcher’s mind. After getting a degree in Psychology with an eye on doing psychology research, he recalibrated for a career in Information Technology. He retired early from his corporate job to start his Hypno-coaching and neurofeedback brain training business, BrainPilots, in Bend, Oregon. In late 2016, he began his blog, The Sensitive Man, about his experiences, as a highly sensitive man. The blog became the genesis of his first book, Confessions of a Sensitive Man. His new book, On Being a Sensitive Man, is the follow up book, which focuses on how to live in the world as a sensitive man. He feels that HSP males need to take their keen insights and intuition and make them public. He would like to shed more light on highly sensitive males and the much-needed role they need to take in our society.
Keep in touch with William:
• Website: http://www.thesensitiveman.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zallenw
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesensitiveman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wrallen
Resources Mentioned:
• Online HSP Men’s Group: https://www.thesensitiveman.com/hsp-mens-group.html
• Confessions of a Sensitive Man by William Allen: https://bookshop.org/a/63892/9781098325169
• On Being a Sensitive Man: Success Strategies for Harnessing Your Highly Sensing Nature by William Allen: https://bookshop.org/a/63892/9781667817439
• The Highly Sensitive Person by Dr. Elaine Aron: https://bookshop.org/a/63892/9780553062182
• Research on High Sensitivity: https://sensitivityresearch.com
• Sensitive: The Untold Story documentary: https://sensitivethemovie.com
• Sensitive Men Rising documentary: https://sensitivemenrising.org
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
William Allen: 0:00
We need all types. We do need those people on lower end of sensitivity that may take more risk, the people that push things forward, and our society tends to praise those people and reward them very, very well. But what's really cool about what's going on now in the world, and especially with more awareness about high sensitivity, is we're starting to recognize our gifts and what the world needs from us, and especially right now.
April Snow: 0:34
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 William Allen about the complex journey of embracing your high sensitivity, the challenges faced by HSP men, and acknowledging your natural resilience and awareness. William is an author with a writer's heart and researcher's mind.
April Snow: 1:15
After getting a degree in psychology with an eye on doing research, he recalibrated for a career in information technology After retiring early from his corporate job. He then started a hypno-coaching and neurofeedback brain training business in Bend, oregon. Then, in late 2016, he began his blog, the Sensitive man, about his experiences as a highly sensitive man. The blog became the genesis of his first book, confessions of a Sensitive man. His newest book, on being a Sensitive man, focuses on how to live in the world, and he feels that HSP males need to take their keen insights and intuition and make them public.
April Snow: 1:56
He would like to shed more light on highly sensitive males and the much-needed role they need to take in our society, 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. Bill, can you start off by telling us your HSP discovery story, how and when you realized that you're a highly sensitive person.
William Allen: 2:56
Oh sure, absolutely. It's actually kind of an evolution, as I had noted. As a highly sensitive person, because you know how aware we are of things and how we interact with our environment, I knew from childhood there was something different about me. Of course, I heard over and over again many times well, you know, you're too sensitive and you're too emotional and you too handle criticism too poorly. So I started getting sort of socialized to this idea, to the term sensitive, as a child, although it wasn't in the best of lights. And I grew up, you know, went through my adulthood, early adulthood, college experiences, having a family and work, career and everything else, and I didn't know that this was a trait until about 2005. I was probably about 50, 55 years old when I found out about it as a trait. It's something you know. You know that you're different that way, but a lot of times you get a little too judgmental with yourself because it doesn't sort of fit into the norm.
William Allen: 4:01
But Douglas Eby had a newsletter. I really got drawn to him because he was a psychologist and was also involved in some way in the film industry and I thought those are two great combinations and he had suggested at that time to read a book about high sensitivity, which was Elaine's book on her first book. So I picked up the book and I read it and you know I went through it and it was like everything was me Yep, that's me, that's me, that's me. But you know, at the end of the day April it was hard for me to get my head and heart wrapped around the idea of being a sensitive man. It just all those years of conditioning and being told this, that and the other about sensitivity or my emotionality or any of the traits that we have that are associated with sensitivity was a bad thing. So I acknowledged it, but I didn't embrace it and I didn't accept it.
William Allen: 4:59
It took me almost 10 years after that, after I had retired from my career, to sit down and start blogging about high sensitivity, and so it was in that process of writing and researching and I was asking questions that I didn't see anybody else writing about. They were about highly sensitive men, they were about circumstances that highly sensitive men would be in and so forth and so on, and that was my initial self-education about the trait and that was the thing that got me to the point where I put my arms around it and said I'm okay with this, this is who I am and the rest is history, as they say. I wrote two books about it and the rest is history, as they say. I wrote two books about it and that was in and of itself a great self-discovery on what the trait was, but that's kind of how I came about. It was a long way long journey, but it's taken me to where I am today.
April Snow: 5:58
It's amazing what you're sharing resonates so much, and I've heard other stories that are similar, where we know there's something different about us early on in life just by how people respond to our emotions, our experience, or how our experience is so different. But it's different than knowing. This is a trait. This is something specific that a lot of people go through. You said it took you about 10 years to embrace it. That's from 2005 to 2015.
William Allen: 6:23
Yes.
April Snow: 6:24
Wow, okay, it's a long journey, isn't it to accept it? That's from 2005 to 2015. Yes, wow, okay, it's a long journey, isn't it to accept? It, especially when you've been told it's a negative, it's a deficit, especially as a highly sensitive man.
William Allen: 6:33
Yeah, and I would never tell anybody that I was highly sensitive. I wouldn't just start a conversation about it. I was a little bit embarrassed, like I said, because of the past training that I had gotten in, socialization that I'd gotten as a child and I grew up in a very conservative part of the country in the South. This is the way men are supposed to behave and they don't do these things and those are feminine things and you don't want to go there. So it was going against that indoctrination that, you know, was something I finally just was able to challenge in my own head and I'm glad I did.
April Snow: 7:09
Yeah, it has to be so counterintuitive to go against what you've been told, almost like going against your own survival or your own acceptance at that deep level of this is how men are supposed to be. This is what's acceptable, and then needing to rewrite that it must have been incredibly difficult.
William Allen: 7:25
It was challenging, I'll put it that way, but the idea was that you're absolutely right. When you start to realize you're living inauthentically and to me, because, as a highly sensitive person, I think we put a lot of emphasis on meaning and purpose in life and when you start to realize you're walking a path that's not you and to start opening the door and liberating yourself to being who you really are, that's one of the greatest, I think, gifts of enlightenment for yourself that any person can have, and I was really glad to be able to do that.
April Snow: 8:00
Yeah, it's so important. We often aren't living authentically. We're putting ourselves in a box, we're denying parts of ourselves, we're cutting off our emotions as much as we can. I'm curious when you started to embrace the trait? What started to shift in your life, if there's anything you can point to.
William Allen: 8:17
I think. Well, first of all I was on a path of self acceptance that was really hard for me up to that point is to start accepting who I was. But then I started realizing about the traits themselves, the fact that I had compared myself over the years, especially at work, about how I process things differently than other people do. I process emotions differently, I tend to be more empathetic, you know like highly sensitive people are, and so learning about this as a trait, and there were behaviors that I had gone through in my life because I wasn't living authentically, I was doing things that were counterproductive to me and I started to realize why.
William Allen: 9:00
After I'd gone through this and after I had read Elaine's books and especially her great blogs that she has and writing about them myself you know you always hear from therapists. You should write things down, you should journal, you should do. Doing a blog is very much doing a journal, but doing it publicly and that process itself, being able to question things, being able to research things and get answers to questions. I had explained a lot of my life, so it was a self-awareness thing more than anything else. I began to appreciate some of the things that I had done in the past that I had questioned, but now I knew why, and that was very important.
April Snow: 9:41
Yeah, having that context is everything important. Yeah, having that context is everything. It really does shift like, oh, this, I'm not living in alignment with who I am, with my temperament. Could you say more? We talked, we've kind of danced around it, but I would love to go deeper into the unique experiences or challenges of being highly sensitive in a man. I know that there's a lot of pressure to be tough, to be stoic, to not be so impacted. I'm wondering what have you seen with yourself or with your coaching clients around that experience?
William Allen: 10:13
Well, one of the things I've written a blog recently and I think it's one you caught onto. It was about diversity within the community of highly sensitive people, and when I was writing at the beginning, I was writing from my experience and generalizing to all highly sensitive people. And when I was writing at the beginning I was writing from my experience and generalizing to all highly sensitive men. What I've learned over time is we have a great diversity of people even within that little narrow slither of highly sensitive men versus highly sensitive people in general. So I try to be careful not to generalize too much. But I have seen, especially with my men's group and working with men, highly sensitive men, certain things that I think are challenging for us. Particularly challenging One again is living up to that masculine hype, that masculine template that culture has embedded on all men, not just highly sensitive men, embedded on all men, not just highly sensitive men. And I think in many ways it is problematic for men period, because the expectation is that we deny a lot of our humanity in being men. So, for highly sensitive men, if I were to go up and ask a highly sensitive man or a group of highly sensitive men, are you concerned about your masculinity. I think the interpretation very often would be well, not really, but I don't match up to what other men are supposed to be or what the cultural norm is. But they don't sit there and say, well, I don't feel masculine enough, I don't feel like a man inside. Well, this is kind of the rub, right. Personally you don't feel that way, but when you compare yourself to others, you compare yourself to the norm. That's where it becomes problematic and I think it's difficult for highly sensitive men very often to talk about that, that disconnect, that the idea that society says you have to be unemotional, you have to be stoic, you have to know everything, you can't ever have a problem and you can't ask for help. It's not cool to be nurturing, it's not cool to be empathetic. You need to be kind of this cold and calculated logical creature like a machine and of course, again, it denies humanity. So that's probably one of the biggest things that in my experience with working with highly sensitive men that comes up.
William Allen: 12:30
Okay, it's a thing that comes up quite a bit. Another thing is and this is really something I've noticed with the men's group is that there is a longing for a sense of community with other men who are highly sensitive. I think a lot of these guys have lived, like I did, very much alone, with our sort of secreting away, the idea that we're highly sensitive people and so they're looking for other men to say is your experience like mine, what do we have in common? That kind of thing? So it's that sense of isolation and lack of community. I think that becomes kind of a challenge with a lot of men. I've got some points written down.
April Snow: 13:09
Oh, great yes.
William Allen: 13:10
Yeah, I don't know about this, but I think finally, if I was thinking big three kind of things is they don't really have a foundation with which to work, like I did for most of my adult life. Elaine didn't write her book until the mid-90s. By that time I was already 40 years old, so I had gone through all this time of my life where I had nothing to go on. You know, I had friends that were highly sensitive, but neither one of us knew that we were a group of friends, that we were sensitive, that there was a personality trait for this, a temperament trait. So I think that's another big challenge for a lot of highly sensitive men. They don't know that there's a community out there and they don't know that there's education that they can receive in learning about what the tool is to help them deal with some of the other challenges that come up.
April Snow: 14:02
Right, living completely in the dark, you said boxed in. Being a man is so. It just as you're describing it. You know not being able to feel, not being able to have a need, always having to be tough and know the answer to everything. It seems so suffocating and limiting and so not having a space to express, to connect. It's really difficult as a human.
William Allen: 14:24
And you know April. This is something that affects, as I said before, all men, right.
April Snow: 14:30
Right.
William Allen: 14:32
In fact, I'm writing a blog today. In fact, we're talking about the fact that this impacts especially the sensitivity part of it. It's not just the HSPs, but it's those. If you look at it sort of as a bell curve, probably 50% of men have a tendency towards high sensitivity or tendency towards sensitivity, those guys are impacted as well, but not only that all men. The expectations we put on our young boys who are just learning about life and learning about being human, their emotions and their feelings and things like that, they immediately get quashed when they're young.
William Allen: 15:10
And they say don't cry, don't be like a girl, as if being like a girl would be the worst thing you could possibly be right? So that's something that men carry with them, whether you're sensitive or not. Is this expectation that you're supposed to be this robot and we can't do it?
April Snow: 15:29
No, because you're not a robot. You're a living, breathing human with emotion, and I appreciate that you're seeing that all men suffer with this. All men are put in this box or put under these just awful expectations, these rigid expectations. And I want to go back to something you said earlier, which was when a sensitive man checks in with themselves, usually it seems like they're okay with their masculinity as it is. But when you put it into the context of the bigger picture that's when it becomes the comparison is the problem like why not? I'm not matching up to what I'm supposed to be. But if we just look at them internally, it's okay. Everything feels the way it should be.
William Allen: 16:08
You know, I think for the most part they look at themselves and they say, yes, I'm a man.
April Snow: 16:12
I'm okay with that. There's no question.
William Allen: 16:14
There's no check. But when you say, am I a man in the world? That's when it changes, because it goes outside of self and it's externalized and they have to do like we all do at some point in our lives. We compare ourselves to other people, the group that we're in, and this idea that they're not measuring up because they don't necessarily like all the things that we call a traditional male would like or what other men might like, and you look at your behaviors in the context of the world where you maybe openly show emotion more, you're moved more by things you express empathy and nurturing. And then there's those things like the way we process information slower, more thoughtfully, more deeply.
William Allen: 17:07
And if you're in a corporate environment, like I was and I was a manager in an IT environment for a major bank the ability to quickly process and make decisions is something that is prized and taking the approach that I did, which is my natural approach, would be to thoughtfully go through data, weigh up things and alternatives before trying to regurgitate some kind of a solution. That was difficult for me and it also made me feel like you know you're not working logically like other men do and that kind of stuff, because I did rely a lot of times on my intuition to come up with solutions and so forth, and then finally being able to sense things that other people miss. They get really frustrating with you when you go yeah, but look at this, did you not see that? So, yeah, if you throw the entire package out, you take it outside of self and you go out into the world, it can be a bit challenging at times to think, okay, do I measure up? What am I then, if I'm not like them and I'm not like this ideal?
April Snow: 18:03
Right, do I measure up? That's a big, big question. How do you grapple with that? As a highly sensitive man, I'm just thinking about what do you need? How do we support you? Because the world as of right now isn't changing much?
William Allen: 18:18
I mean it's changing, but you're still up against that masculine ideal I think the number one thing is to shift your attention, and shift your as an individual, as a highly sensitive man. You would shift your attention to realizing that you are different and that it's okay to be different, right? One of the great things I think Elaine has done over the years is emphasize this is not a disorder. Okay, it's not a problem. It's not a problem. You know, it is actually and I love the way she put this as an evolutionary quality to this that nature's baked this into the population, not only of us, but 100 other animal species, that this is normal and we need this and it's an important survival characteristic. And once you start assimilating that information, then you realize, okay, I am different, but it's okay.
William Allen: 19:08
And then the comparisons start to fall away and you start to realize that you're not a freak of nature, but you are carefully been placed by nature into the human population because of your thoughtfulness, because of your observational skills, because of the way you think and, I think, most importantly, because of your empathy and ability to see other people and live in other people's worlds, so that you can identify and they can identify with you. So it's a shift. It's like you know, I always think of it like this Carlos Castaneda wrote the books with Don Juan. There was a part in one of the books where Don Juan wrapped him right on the back of the shoulder and right at the shoulder blades and it was such a blow that it shifted his attention. That's what it was for and that's, kind of metaphorically, what we have to do, not only as HSP men but as HSPs period, to make that shift jump that lets us change the kind of paradigm and way we view ourselves.
April Snow: 20:11
Which is exactly what you've done yourself, going from sensitivity as a deficit to sensitivity as something to be accepted. I don't know if we need to celebrate it, but we at least can accept it as normal, as purposeful, as useful. I just think about you being at work processing that data. I think just be a perfect person to do that right. You're bringing your strong depth of processing, but you're also bringing your intuition and your emotionality, which is perfect for making important, complicated decisions.
William Allen: 20:41
Yes, and I think it engages all aspects of your humanity when you do that. We're often taught as men, but as a culture because we have, unfortunately, and I hope it's shifting is this heavily masculine way of running society and it discounts emotion, it discounts intuition and empathy and those things that highly sensitive people bring to the plate, and I'm hoping that we get more and more of our highly sensitive people, both male and female, to start recognizing that, but particularly men, because I think we can be good, excellent role models for other men to utilize those things.
April Snow: 21:24
Absolutely Highly sensitive men can be amazing emotional leaders. Also, as you're talking, I'm thinking we need to redefine masculinity in general to make more space, because you can be masculine and intuitive, masculine and emotional, masculine and nurturing, and we want men to be more whole humans.
William Allen: 21:42
Yes, absolutely, and I think that's a very key point is that we embrace our entire humanity. We have emotions for reasons, and I'm not discounting emotional regulation, I'm not discounting being able to be resilient with our emotions, and so forth. Sometimes they can overwhelm us, but the idea is to suppress or discount them or not even acknowledge them. To me, that's wrong. We're built in with these things for a purpose, and to deny our being able to have the emotion is not only wrong, but it's not healthy.
April Snow: 22:21
It's not healthy, and when we deny our emotions, that's a straight path to dysregulation honestly. Yes, right when we start to repress and they come out sideways in anger or other behaviors that don't feel aligned with who we are. So being able to feel our emotions, as you're saying, not to a point of them being out of control or completely taking us over, but just having them be present because they do serve a purpose, they're useful, absolutely.
April Snow: 22:48
Mm-hmm, having them be present because they do serve a purpose, they're useful Absolutely. Can you speak to other ways that sensitivity is maybe been an asset, one that you've come to accept, maybe looking back and realize, oh, that actually was a gift or was useful in my life, even if I didn't recognize it at the time?
William Allen: 23:04
Yeah, going back to my corporate days, it is actually kind of a STEM field, and in STEM you focus on scientific observation and being impartial and looking at the data and that kind of thing. And when you're talking about programming which a lot of my staff were programmers there's a way to do it, there's a way not to do it. It either works or it doesn't work. It's kind of binary that way, and so people tend to treat each other in those kinds of terms. It's very objective, it's not very emotional, it's right or wrong, whatever. And what I felt like I brought to the table as a manager was I cared about the people I cared about when they went home at night. A lot of my staff at the time this was way before COVID were working from home. It was an option that was made available to them, which was really good, but I tried to be very cognizant of them working way beyond the normal hours and trying to edify them by helping them get the training they needed and all that kind of stuff. So when I left Wells Fargo and I retired, I got so many felt messages from staff who said you know, you treated me like a human being, you cared about me and that was so important to me. That was kind of a validation that doing that was a good thing, that was a positive thing, and I think my sensitivity shone through doing that. I was a people manager. They weren't just numbers to me and they weren't just workers to extract more hours out of. They were human beings and I think that was one of the things that I saw that as an absolute bonus. But you know what, april, I think the greatest thing that I think of the gift of high sensitivity, if you look at the four main characteristics that Elaine has brought up the does model, depth of processing overwhelm happens to happen to us overstimulation emotionality and empathy. And then, of course, sensing the subtle.
William Allen: 25:08
The output to all of those things and I think this is something that's very important is what I call sensitive awareness. It can be called environmental awareness, emotional awareness, whatever you want to call it. I call it sensitive awareness because it relies on our sensitive processing powers, and what that does is it makes two things really that are important to come out of that. One is it makes us aware of how our environment impacts us. So we know when something's not working. We know when something's not working well and it's not good for us. We also know when it is good and when things should be encouraged and it's not good for us. We also know when it is good and when things should be encouraged.
William Allen: 25:51
But the other thing that I think a lot of people miss on this is it also makes us aware of our impact on other people. That makes us aware there's so many people that walk through life you know we use this term narcissist, maybe a little too much in our society, but the point is they're not aware of what they're doing to other people and a lot of people go through life never paying attention to that Highly sensitive people, I think, have that in complete reverse. We are very much aware. If I say something that hurts your feelings, I feel it, I know it right away, and that's what that sensitive awareness does.
April Snow: 26:39
Right away, and that's what that sensitive awareness does and I think that is by far, in a way, the greatest gift If you were to our impact on others, what others need, how to make this whole thing work and just going back to that, the evolutionary purpose of our trait we're noticing, we're making sure everyone's okay. We need that. We need the people that are just going to dive in too, but we need us that are going to hang back and like how's everyone doing? How am I, how can I be a positive influence? Which is exactly what you did at work, maybe without even knowing it, just being yourself.
William Allen: 27:13
Absolutely, absolutely, and that's important. A point you made just a second ago is that we need all types. We do need those people. Let's say, if it's a bell curve, the people on the lower end of sensitivity. Well, there are people that may take more risk, they may take more impulsive action, but in many ways, they're the people that push culture forward. They push things forward, and our society tends to praise those people and reward them very, very well. But what's really cool about what's going on now in the world, and especially with more awareness about high sensitivity, is the other end of the curve is just as important as the curve that goes out and takes the chances and takes the risk. Now, I realize there are some high sensation-seeking, sensitive people. That's fine too, but what I'm talking about is there's that balance right that we need to have to keep the ship upright, and I think that's where we're starting to recognize our gifts and what the world needs from us, and especially right now.
April Snow: 28:16
Absolutely Right. We're realizing that it's a collaborative effort. We need each other. Yes, it's not all just the kind of risk takers extroverted like hyper extroverted people who are out there jumping right in. We need that balance from the sensitive people as well.
William Allen: 28:33
Absolutely yeah absolutely. And I think as more people find out, more people come online. If you will come on board with the trait and recognize it, you'll start to see some movement there, and I'm seeing it now and sensing it now, and we just need to keep educating our peeps, right.
April Snow: 28:51
That's right, that's really it. Just letting folks know that this is real. This is important. It's naturally occurring and so this next generation or next few generations can grow up knowing about it, not feeling different or ostracized or repressing their sensitivity, but using it as a gift or as a tool.
William Allen: 29:16
Yeah, and I kind of like to look at it that way too. I know a lot of people say it's a superpower and all that, and there is a gift to this. There is a giftedness to this.
April Snow: 29:26
Right.
William Allen: 29:26
But if you look at it in the whole context of things, like we're talking about the bell curve, that we're all in this together, we all need each other, that it's just a way that nature has said I'm going to take a certain percentage of people and they're going to be the risk takers, and another certain percent that are going to be the thoughtful, cautious advisors and counselors that are going to be the thoughtful, cautious advisors and counselors spiritual people to a lot of extent, to offer that balance, and I think that's how I look at it.
April Snow: 29:54
It's just a natural thing. That's it. It's it and I have kind of pulled away from that superpower label because I do want to emphasize that that this is just what we personally bring to the table, and then we're balanced out by the folks who aren't born with the highly sensitive trait. So let's just normalize that.
William Allen: 30:10
Exactly. This is what.
April Snow: 30:11
I bring, this is what you bring. We're all working together.
William Allen: 30:14
Exactly. I totally think that's a perfect way of putting it.
April Snow: 30:17
Yeah, so, as we're able to step up and use these abilities, how do we keep the overwhelm at bay, or how do you personally keep that at bay so you can show up with your thoughtfulness and your creativity and your empathy and your intuitiveness?
William Allen: 30:35
Yeah, that's a great question because it weighs on just about every highly sensitive person. I know. How do I deal with my overwhelm, how do I deal with overstimulation? The thing about it is and something I learned before right after I left corporate, I started my own business in Bend. It started off as a hypnosis business. It was kind of what I call hypno-coaching. I was helping people with things. It wasn't therapy and I never tried to pretend to be a therapist, because that's not my strength or it certainly wasn't what I was certified to do, tend to be a therapist because that's not my strength or it certainly wasn't what I was certified to do. But I used hypnosis as a way to help people calm down and relax, to de-stress, and I had some great tools I used. It was a lot of fun I love working with people.
William Allen: 31:16
But I then branched out into doing neurofeedback brain training and I found a really good tool from some other people that I had worked with before and what it did essentially is using neurofeedback to help train the brain to become more resilient. And what was so cool about this tool? It didn't require a lot of neurofeedback. Stuff requires an interactive. You know, you do this and it moves a thing, and then you this is none of that. It was basically put on the headphones Let me put the sensors on your scalp and the software and your brain interacted and I just backed away. And the thing that was nice about it is it let the brain react and do things on its own in its own time. So it wasn't like I was forcing more alpha in the temporal area and more of this in the occipital and all that. It was the brain working with signals from the software that was tracking what the brain working with signals from the software that was tracking what the brain was doing. Complicated sounding, but it was really quite simple. I did it on myself and what I found is that I was more resilient. I could be in a situation where I'm in traffic and everybody has an experience with this unless you don't drive is that you're caught in a traffic jam, somebody cuts you off. You have a natural reaction to be angry, whatever. I found that my brain wouldn't go there. It was like a memory that said you need to be angry and my brain was not allowing that to happen. So the upshot of all this and why I'm telling this is because it taught my brain resiliency, recovery time. So I don't think there's any way we're ever going to get rid of overstimulation and overwhelm for highly sensitive people.
William Allen: 33:00
But the important thing is how quickly do you bounce back, how do you get back to your normal homeostatic state that you're feeling at peace and calm, and so forth? And so there's lots of ways of doing it. You know there are brain training techniques. They don't have to be used with a software or electronics or anything like that Meditation, breathing exercises I was just thinking about Andrew Wells, I think it's 478 or whatever is the countdown?
William Allen: 33:28
Simple, easy, portable. You carry it with you everywhere you go. Learn a meditation technique. And there's nature. Go out and walk in nature, go, take an hour walk, be by yourself, let yourself calm down, and as you're doing that, you're also training your brain. This is how to get back to where we were, this is how we want to get back, and over time you start building the resiliency.
William Allen: 33:51
And so I think that's the key word we're not going to get rid of overwhelm, we're not going to get rid of overstimulation, but how do we deal with it? When we get there, how long does it take us to come back? And so that should be. In my opinion, that should be the kind of the emphasis that we should be looking at. And a million different ways to skin that cat, but the simplest, easiest ones are learning things like meditation, breathing exercises and going out in nature. And there's benefits in going out in nature, obviously, but the Japanese do what they call forest bathing. There's a Japanese term for it, I can't remember what it is, but trees emit a certain chemical that we breathe in and absorb when we're around them, and it does affect our state of mind. So it's not just being around green stuff, it's also about being out, where nature's interacting with us as well.
April Snow: 34:47
Exactly Taking a more active role in the process. I think a lot of times HSPs assume I'm just overwhelmed, I'm stuck in this state, I can't do anything about it. But, as you're saying, doing something about it. Take yourself out on a walk in the woods or at a park where you can be around some trees, do some mindful breathing and, as you're saying, there's so many different practices. Find what works for you.
William Allen: 35:11
Yes, absolutely.
April Snow: 35:13
Every HSP is unique. It's not a one size fits all. That's the beauty, though, that we can lean into whatever makes us feel more relaxed and helps us recover because we are resilient. I always think about that. Just think about all that we experience and take in, and yet we still keep going.
William Allen: 35:29
That's right, we're going to bounce back anyway and I guess the thing of it, the dread or stimulation, is how long am I going to be down?
April Snow: 35:37
Right.
William Allen: 35:37
How am I going to? You know, and there's nothing wrong with taking the time you need. But the point is, if the idea is that you want to be able to recover quickly, and forward thinking into the idea that next time I hit a stimulation overwhelmed moment, maybe my overstimulation won't be as great as it was before Right and I can recover quickly. So that's kind of the way I look at it.
April Snow: 36:02
Yeah, can I have a different experience? Right, just as you did with anger when you're stuck in traffic, we can have a different experience. We can, I'm not sure, disarm those alarm bells.
William Allen: 36:14
Yes, yes.
April Snow: 36:14
Yes, if we are taking care of ourselves. Yeah, thank you for that.
William Allen: 36:19
It's always a good reminder to hear that we're not stuck in the difficult parts of being sensitive, you know, and I think that's what a lot of highly sensitive, especially what I consider the newbies that are coming on board. I just found out about it no-transcript.
April Snow: 36:59
Before we realize this is a trait and it's just a matter of making some adjustments.
William Allen: 37:06
Yes.
April Snow: 37:06
Yeah, that's it. Well, I want to carve out some time to talk about your books, because you've written two books for highly sensitive men Confessions of a Sensitive man and On being a Sensitive man and you share with me that you're also working on a novel, which is very exciting. Can you speak to what inspired you to do this? I know you talked a little bit about blogging, but what led you to then think I need to write these books?
William Allen: 37:30
Well, actually I think the preface to the first book I wrote. I think it was not an exact quote, but I wrote this book from my older self to my younger self, sharing my experience. The first book was an experiential book. It was about my experiences of being a highly sensitive man, and I've had lots of men write to me and say you know, you captured exactly what I was feeling or what I was doing, and that's a thing that I think there's great value in writing these experiential books, because there's great books out there about being highly sensitive. There's great books out there about being highly sensitive men, and very often they're come from a psychological point of view, which is important that we understand that part of it. But it's also nice to have sort of a layman like myself come in and write a book about.
William Allen: 38:23
This was my life, this is what it was like, and so the inspiration essentially was I wanted to put all that information that I had accumulated and, in using some of the blog articles and reworking them for the book, to be able to share those experience with other men, and I think that's very important. That's a sort of reaching out, offering up some community to these men that they may never have had before in their lives. The second book was written basically as okay, here's all the things I learned, right, and I put it in a book on being a sensitive man and how to cope and deal with the challenges and so forth that I had experienced throughout the course of my life. So one is sort of telling you okay, this is how I got here and this is the other one is how I dealt with getting there. So that was a great experience and I loved writing those books. It was just wonderful.
April Snow: 39:15
It's like you're being that template that you needed.
William Allen: 39:18
Absolutely, absolutely.
April Snow: 39:20
Yeah, and we need that lived experience to show up on the page. It's what we do need to learn about the traits we can understand and we can justify living differently. However, we also need to hear the stories and have a sense of community on the page. Yeah, absolutely yeah.
William Allen: 39:35
Absolutely, absolutely, and that's kind of the science is very important. It is for somebody like me. I really love to read the books that Elaine's done and some of the other people the psychologists that are out there and always follow the studies that they're doing out of Michael Pluess and others who are working on doing this research. But you're right, the other metaphor I used in the beginning of the book was it's the old guy sitting around the campfire sharing stories with the younger people, right? And that's kind of how I looked at the book from a metaphorical standpoint too.
April Snow: 40:14
And what a gift to have those stories. We need those.
William Allen: 40:16
Yes, yes, right, I agree.
April Snow: 40:19
Yeah, and I'm curious if you're open to sharing. What is this next novel about? You're veering into the world of fiction this time.
William Allen: 40:29
Well, I've kind of sat back and I thought I was going to write another book on what we talked about earlier defining masculinity, how can we make masculinity more inclusive and I may still write something like that. There's quite a few good books about that now that are coming out. Gives you the freedom to go wherever you want to go. You're not restricted by science or whatever. You can just take off and drift away and write what you want, and this story idea has been with me for like, oh, 10 years.
William Allen: 41:01
I've been wanting to write something along this line and it really is a hero's journey about a highly sensitive man, although the book itself is not about high sensitivity per se.
William Allen: 41:14
On a journey of self-discovery, he has some exciting events at the beginning of the book that gets him launched on this journey where he just walks away from a life that's disappointed him and he goes on this journey. And on this journey he meets seven or eight wise women, and these women become his muses and they all teach him something about himself, about the spiritual nature of life, and he's confronted with and presented with all these unique ways of doing things, and it's part of that evolution of his growth. The upthrust of all this is he becomes his authentic self, he learns how to be who he truly is, and it's been a. I just finished the first draft about a month and a half. I'm starting the second draft now. It's been just this marvelous, wonderful experience of just allowing it to flow out of me and I I'm just looking forward to getting it published and getting it out there. I think it's a book for, could be for highly sensitive men, but I think it's a book for everybody. There's something in there for everyone, male, female and so forth.
April Snow: 42:26
It's so relatable Just hearing this journey of you know, finding yourself and being allowing yourself to be inspired and kind of pull down those walls and come back to self. I mean that's such an important story.
William Allen: 42:39
Yes.
April Snow: 42:41
And cherry on top that it happens to be someone who's highly sensitive.
William Allen: 42:44
Exactly, and he's learning to come to grips with that too, as he's going through that, you know, through his journey, very similar experiences to what I went through. Of course, that makes it relatable for me.
April Snow: 42:55
I was wondering yeah.
William Allen: 42:56
Yeah, it is a little autobiographical. I think the character is a little bit like me, but I'm trying to make him his own person and I'm just. I'm looking forward to getting this out. It's been so much fun writing it.
April Snow: 43:10
Oh, I bet. I'm curious. I know you started writing blogs after you discovered sensitivity or the trait. Were you always a writer, or is this something that's later in life?
William Allen: 43:21
A long time ago, when I first moved out to LA back in the late seventies, I wanted to be a screenwriter and I had written screenplays and stuff like that Actually got an agent in Hollywood. I thought, oh, this is great, my career's taken off. But I wrote a screenplay that was so uniquely different. It was something that would have been very difficult to make and maybe a little bit ahead of its time in terms of the technology at the time, and I got caught up in having a family, living a life, working at work, to have to support the family and I drifted away from writing screenplays. But it's always been a part of me and I've always been told Bill, you're a good writer, you should write, and it was one of those things. I had to convince myself over the years that I could do this and it would be well received. I've been very blessed that I had a lot of compliments about the way the books were written.
April Snow: 44:16
Oh, absolutely.
William Allen: 44:17
So it's encouraged me. So if you want to keep me writing, folks, you've got to give me some compliments and feed the ego a little bit.
April Snow: 44:25
That's right, always love doing it.
William Allen: 44:28
Always love using words and that kind of thing.
April Snow: 44:30
It's such a great way of for me at least processing. It's a catharsis of understanding myself but also making sense of what I'm absorbing from the rest of the world also. Yeah, I'm sure you don't have a published date yet, but do you have any sense of when this book might come out into the world next year, in two years?
William Allen: 44:49
It's all. You know. The publishing industry is so different now than it's ever been. They're very much more selective about what they're picking and things like that. I had a friend tell me you know, I've written books about high sensitivity. And he says why don't you write something that's going to sell at a mass level? And I thought, wait a minute. Just you know, there's a lot of highly sensitive people out there, that's right.
William Allen: 45:11
But so I wanted to write something like this novel and have a broader appeal but still yield to those concepts that I think are important to highly sensitive people and to people generally. So I'm hoping to have it wrapped up sometime first quarter next year and hopefully get it pitched to an agent and see if I can't get somebody to take it on forward to a publisher.
April Snow: 45:35
Beautiful. Yeah, I mean what you're telling. The story is universal. It will be especially important to HSPs, but it will touch everyone. Everyone's been on that journey of finding self and, yeah, going on that journey it's important.
William Allen: 45:49
Absolutely, absolutely. So, I hope some people, when they're reading, can vicariously live through this and maybe set out on their own personal journeys to find themselves.
April Snow: 45:56
Yeah, absolutely Well, bill. If you could leave us with one message for HSPs, what would that be?
William Allen: 46:04
Well, I always leave with one thing that I always tell highly sensitive people. First of all, let me just say this it's all going to be okay. It will all be okay, even though if you feel like you're overwhelmed, it's too much to handle. It'll be okay, and the way it'll be okay is what I call the three E's. First of all and most importantly, educate yourself. Learn about the trait. There is so much more stuff that's out there now, published and online, than there was even just six or seven years ago, and it's growing kind of exponentially. So there's lots of books. And just on the horizon here, the movie that Will Harper and Tracy Cooper have released Sensitive and Rising will hopefully be out in distribution soon, so be looking for that. But they also had done Sensitive and so forth, so there's a body of films that you can look at as well, and one more coming on the way.
William Allen: 46:59
But do educate yourself about the trait, understand what it is, because a lot of times you're dealing with just the chatter in your head. You don't realize that there's some normalcy to this as well. Secondly, once you educate yourself, embrace the trait. It took me 10 years to do it, but however long it takes you to do it, get to a point where you can wrap your arms around it and embrace the trait and say I'm okay being this person.
William Allen: 47:26
And once you've done that, finally, the final E is evangelize. We need to get out and let people know about the trait. Final E is evangelize. We need to get out and let people know about the trait. We need to teach our young people, we need to teach our families, our co-workers. We need to teach the world about it. Whether you do it at an international level or whether you do it at a community level, it doesn't matter. Get out there and start letting people know about it. And when you do that, you're owning the trait and you're displaying the trait to people and you'll feel a lot more confident about yourself when you do that.
April Snow: 47:59
Thank you for that. I love that Three E's Educate, embrace, evangelize. First learning about it for yourself, working on that acceptance. And I appreciate you saying let it take as long as it'll take. It's a process of reframing and relearning. And then, yeah, share it with others. There could be other HSPs in your life, or at the very least, so people understand you and you can show up how you need to.
William Allen: 48:22
Absolutely, absolutely.
April Snow: 48:25
Well, this has been a lovely conversation, as always. Thank you. I always love connecting with you.
William Allen: 48:30
And same here, April.
April Snow: 48:32
I always love talking to you and I really appreciate you having me on Of course, and I'll be sure to share all your resources in the show notes, your website, your social media, your several books, and then also so grateful that you offer an online men's group, and I'm wondering, before we go, if you could just tell listeners a little bit about what that looks like, your online group.
William Allen: 48:51
Yeah, it's an international group and I don't charge anything. There's no paywall to get in. I was very emphatic about doing that. Not that there's anything wrong with people who do that, it's just that I thought it was really important that men have no reservations about joining because of cost or anything like that. You can get connected with that group on my website. There is a tab, the HSP men's group, and you register there.
William Allen: 49:16
Now we've evolved the group a little bit. It initially started out as just one big group but it got to the point where we're having 20, 30 people on. It was not good for intimate conversations or that kind of thing. We still have what we call the big tent meeting and that's usually for people coming in to try it out and see if they like it. But what we've done is we've made smaller groups, pod groups that are regional. You know different places, so you're in the same time zone. It's easier to meet your schedule and it's autonomous. It's run by a facilitator, volunteer facilitator, and you run the meeting the way you want to run it. But the point is that you get to meet people and talk and build that community. So there's two options there and I encourage anybody that's interested to reach out and get involved with it.
April Snow: 50:04
I love that the big tent group and then you can connect with folks locally. That's what Elaine always did in her retreats and gatherings you get to break off and actually connect with people locally. It's so important.
William Allen: 50:15
Yeah, and I think it kind of works well for a lot of HSPs who would rather have a small, intimate group that have a huge group where there's lots of people and they may be a little intimidated.
April Snow: 50:26
Absolutely. Yeah, it can be easier to show up in a smaller group and it's not like it. Thanks so much for joining me and William for today's conversation. What I hope you'll take away is that you're not doomed to feel overwhelmed as an HSP. Your sensitivity is a normal trait, it's not a deficit, and masculinity can include emotion, intuition, nurturing and softness. If you're a highly sensitive man looking for community and support, be sure to check out William's online HSP men's group and his books. You can find more information in the show notes or go to thesensitivemancom. 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 HSB 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.
