Category: Blog

The Box

Are You In or Out?

I have been thinking A LOT about how different, or what is seen as different, is interpreted as deficient or disordered in some way. Highly Sensitive Children are intense (different than the majority) and thus ‘extra’ to parent, but, in many cases, they are diagnosed because of it due to a lack of understanding. (That is not to say that diagnosis is not real in some cases.) This really concerns me as, on some level, society is saying that different = disordered. But, don’t we actually need different, out-of-the-box ideas for healthy progress?

I am going to stop there and let some creative disrupters that definitely lived outside of that box have the floor. 

For an amazing summary, look up Apple’s “Think Different” commercial from 20+ years ago.

Greta Thunberg

“Being different is a gift. It makes me see things from outside the box. I don’t easily fall for lies, I can see through things. If I would’ve been like everyone else, I wouldn’t have started this school strike for instance.” BBC interview

Albert Einstein

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Bill Gates 

Articles and movie “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates” highlight specifically  how his brain works differently

Maya Angelou

“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”

Temple Grandin

“When I was young, I thought everybody thought like me. I am learning more and more that minds can be different, and how they solve problems.” VCU Speech

Stephen Hawking

Renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist that studied black holes, while living with ALS for over 40 years

Richard Branson

Champions disruptive leadership and openly talks about how his dyslexia made him feel different while growing up

Marie Curie 

Pushed the envelope by even attending university and then developed a novel idea regarding “radioactivity” as she dubbed

Malala Yousafzai 

Stood up even though she felt fear all of the time. “You must have the confidence to say that this thing is going wrong, and we must raise our voice. At that time, I wanted to live my life as I want.” ABCNews 

Steve Jobs 

Thrived after dropping out of college AND being fired from his own company

“Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” Commencement

Frida Kahlo 

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too.”

Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Proposed a project that combined hypertext and the internet. The end result was the World Wide Web we know and rely on today.

Kacey Musgraves

“I remember being repelled by some of the stylistic norms that were expected around then for a female in country music – subject matters, style choices, things I didn’t find myself being inspired by. I was thinking, I’m not going to do this if that’s how it is.” The Guardian

Martin Luther King

Refused to accept the way things were and led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s. His “I Have a Dream” speech was a defining moment of the civil rights movement and among the most iconic speeches in American history.

Stephen King

American author with millions of copies sold. Interviews cite that he felt like an outsider growing up.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

One of only nine female students during her time at Harvard and championed a better legal foundation of women’s equality. “She Persisted”

Is Blue Your Color?

 After coming up with Bright Blue Seeds, I asked a good friend for feedback on the name and she remarked that she wasn’t sure about the “Blue” as it conjures up a feeling of sadness, that it might be too ambiguous. As I thought about the feelings around color and specifically blue, the more I realized how it fit as Highly Sensitive people are sometimes a walking paradox – very, very complex beings who experience the world in bright colorful ways.

Colors do affect our emotions and perceptions.  Color theory acknowledges that we associate the cool primary color blue with sadness but it is broadly used to represent calmness, peace, and dependability (for an interesting full description see here). I know when I picture a calming scene it involves blue sky and clear ocean.

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way; things I had no words for.”

Georgia O’Keefe

Bursting with empathy
I’m feeling everything
The weight of the world on my shoulders
Hope my tears don’t freak you out
They’re just kinda coming out
It’s the music in me and all of the colors

“Mother” by Kacey Musgraves

 

Through the naming process, I had really focused on “Blue” as it relates to water – the calming, ever-changing, unique substance. Leonardo daVinci reflected “As the blood veins originate in that pool and spread all over the human body, so likewise the ocean sea fills the body of the earth with infinite springs of water.” Water is necessary for life – all living organisms are predominantly made of water, including human beings.

It is the only substance that exists in all three states naturally. It has delicate crystals (seen when frozen),yet has one of the strongest surface tensions of liquids. It is a powerful solvent, yet easily changed and moved by outside stimuli. It can be a strong force (iceberg, waves, mills), yet gently be sipped by a flower (against gravity!).  

So, just as we need water to thrive, we need Highly Sensitive People – the deep thinkers, creators, compassionate souls that grow into inventors, artists, and helpers of the world. We need these beings to bloom to balance the other personality types.

I read posts regularly of parents trying to parent these amazing children and I empathize as I’ve experienced the storm as well as the rainbow that they offer. As they grow into themselves, the range of intense emotions inside those bodies often create raging waves. When the focus is on this dark side of blue, sensitive children feel that negative energy and in the rush of jobs, school, and activities, their nervous system gets overloaded and behavior problems emerge. This, of course, creates more stress on families, and an unhealthy cycle begins; we label them as deficient in some way because they are not able to absorb it all without their cup of tolerance overflowing.

No one is good at everything – so why do we expect that HSC/HSP’s can see the world in full color and organize it all in neat little boxes? Through kind, gentle guidance, HSC’s begin to understand their unique power and learn how to ride the waves of struggle.

Interesting Reads

What is Water?

Color Psychology

Blue Mind

All Our Waves Are Water

 

 

What Kind of Blue are You?

Wow! That’s Bright!

So now we have the seed building blocks, let’s talk “Bright“….

Whether it’s a physical object or referring to the future, the adjective conveys something that stands out and usually has a positive connotation.  

  • “a bright and curious child”
  • “a bright and sunny day”
  • “a bright spot in my life”
  • “a bright and airy room”
  • “shine bright!”
  • “the future is bright”

As I was writing this, my thoughts went to music again and so I did a search (which is funny because I am not the music fanatic in my family). I had to stop myself after 15 minutes because I could spend an hour reading articles and watching videos about what it means when a song, headphones or a piano is described as bright, warm, or dark.  In general terms, tones on the higher frequency are considered “bright” and are more lively, intense, and sharp. 

Lively.

Intense.

Sharp.

I had to laugh out loud when I read that description. Bright Blue Seeds was named after much reflection, but I didn’t even consider the musical meaning but, boy, does that fit.  In music, just as in living beings (sensory processing sensitivity is a trait seen in all animals), brightness is a difference that isn’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It exists on a scale and, depending on each situation, bright, brighter, or brightest may be the better fit.  If you have not heard the term “overexcitabilities”, a quick search is an eye-opening task and think of how your child fits into the descriptions of each type.

At their core, Highly Sensitive People are intelligent, conscientious, intuitive, and compassionate folks who tend to have a strong idealistic moral compass.  They are out-of-the-box creative thinkers.

In fact, look through any publication of ‘Skills That Employers Need’ and emotional intelligence, empathy, creativity, and critical thinking consistently show up. Look familiar? HSP gifts are the exact skills society needs. While on this journey, I came across “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink. Pink makes the case that “We are moving from an economy and a society built on the logical, linear, computerlike capabilities of the Information Age to an economy and a society built on the inventive, empathic, big-picture capabilities of what’s rising in its place, the Conceptual Age.” The “high concept and high touch” world he discusses is one that HSP’s are designed to thrive in (as long as we don’t overwhelm them and then label them as deficient, but I digress.). 

Needless to say, our systems haven’t yet caught up with this viewpoint and our bright, sensitive children are floundering in school.  I’ll save a more in-depth discussion for later, but imagine you are feeling everything going on around you, both sensory and emotional, and you have a worldly view of what’s important. It would be very difficult, to say the least, to pay attention to someone talking about a worksheet. This is all besides the fact that the more rational prefrontal cortex part of the brain does not mature until sometime in our 20’s. The grades on the report card don’t accurately reflect their brightness. 

What does “bright” mean to you? Is it the same or different than “smart”, “gifted”, “intelligent”, “special”?

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