Vibrant Days….
Flourishing with Sensory Processing Sensitivity
February 2016
Workshop: Thriving as a Highly Sensitive Person
Ted Zeff, Ph.D. and Candy Crawford, L.C.S.W. will present valuable, new information to help HSPs thrive in our over-stimulating world.
Candy Crawford’s talk is “HSP’s in Relationships: The Arduous, The Agonizing, and The Amazing”
Dr. Ted Zeff’s talk is “Thriving as an HSP.” He will discuss methods to calm the senses when over-stimulated, the best diet and exercise for HSPs, coping with stress at work and how to create a new stress-free job. There will be a question and answer period where you will be able to ask any personal questions about thriving as an HSP.
Workshop Details:
When: Saturday, April 9th, 2016 from 10am to 1pm
Where: Loretto Center 1600 Somerset Lane, Wheaton, IL
Cost: $55 (cash or check)
To Register:
- There are a limited number of spaces available at the workshop. To guarantee a space, please email Ted Zeff at tedzeff108@gmail.com with your name, email address, home address and phone number.
- One you have received your email reservation, you will be registered for the workshop.
- Please let us know 3 days in advance if you will not be able to attend the workshop so that people on the waiting list will be able to attend.
- Snacks, coffee and tea will be provided!
Candy Crawford L.C.S.W. has a private practice in Wheaton specializing in high sensitivity. Candy lives with her husband and two sensitive teenage daughters and a “variety of pets.” She loves reading, music and being outside whenever possible.
Ted Zeff, Ph.D is the author of The Highly Sensitive Person’s Survival Guide, The Highly Sensitive Person’s Companion, The Strong Sensitive Boy, and The Power of Sensitivity. Elaine Aron, Ph.D., author of The Highly Sensitive Person, has written the foreward to his books. Dr. Zeff’s books have sold more than 75,000 copies and have been translated into 7 languages. He has more than 25 years experience counseling sensitive children and adults.
Dr. Zeff currently teaches workshops and consults internationally on coping strategies for highly sensitive children and adults. He has given presentations in Denmark, Holland, Norway, Israel, and throughout the United States. He has been interviewed about the trait of high sensitivity in the media, such as NBC TV, PBS radio, Psychology Today and the Huffington Post (which received 1.2 million likes).
Relate
I recall learning about tectonic plate shifts. It’s profound. Plates deep in the earth shift causing everything above to crumble, move, and find a new location. Last month I attended two memorial services two weeks in a row. I stood before family and friends in both services attempting to share how the love and involvement two women had in my life caused “tectonic plate shifts,” much from their love causing my emergence. The tricky part is that it wasn’t all glory and praise coming from my lips but an honest disclosure where one had loved me to the best of her ability yet gaps she could not control had done immeasurable damage. (ok I didn’t get that specific but you all can take what you want from this). The brilliant and cosmic piece to this is that by these two deaths occurring close together I was able to realize how one experience of love birthed not only me and my sensitivity but the wounds that presented from that imperfect love were amplified by the dynamic exchanges from the other bond. Can you say tectonic?
Further on. Further in. The piece I want to highlight is what happened in the second “service.” It was a day I wish every single sensitive soul could experience. Forty of us gathered in a home. The day was spent engaging all five of our senses to the fullest degree. The adult son shared, “The number one thing I will remember about my Mom is to engage all five of my senses and in the most beautiful way!” So we listened to her favorite music, ate and drank her favorite fare and gazed at things she found beautiful like trees, flowers, art, children, the ocean, and faces of those she loved. We read aloud her letters which were articulate, eloquent and poetic. (She was a high school English teacher) We inhaled her green pea soup and chunky vegetable stew. My favorite time came when her daughter announced the next portion of the day would be open sharing. We shared stories, lessons and laughter about this wondrous human being who had entered and planted her love deep within us calling us to discover our truest selves and granting us a taste of unconditional love. I couldn’t believe how many of us cried and continued to cry. There were men and boys who cried. There were back rubs, hands being held and long hugs. Suddenly it dawned on me: this is so beautiful! This is sensitivity! Human beings being fully human, complicated, creative, unpretentious, feeling deeply, expressing themselves and together.
Watch/Listen
Participate
Woman interrupted: misdiagnosis and medication of sensitivity and giftedness – By Cat Robson
What makes creative and highly sensitive people accept, and even welcome, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder or other mental illness?
Are psychiatrists equipped to recognize and support creativity, high sensitivity and giftedness?
Who determines where creative intensity ends and mental illness begins?
Do medications put our creativity and sensitivity at risk?
Over a year and a half ago, I asked myself these questions as I began a journey back to a drug-free life after years on anti-depressants and other medications.
Misdiagnosis and medications
A few years ago I began seeing a well-meaning psychiatric Nurse Practitioner who monitored my anti-depressants. At the time, I’d been on various antidepressants for about 14 years.
Out of the frying pan…
Problem solved?
Who am I really?
Drug free
Finding support
The narrowing of normal
“I have been thinking a good deal about normality lately. It’s a concern in the medical world. The complaint is that doctors are abusing [their] privilege, to define the normal.
Ordinary sadness, critics say, has been engulfed by depression. Boyishness stands in the shadow of attention deficits. Social phobia has engineered a hostile takeover of shyness.”
Anatomy of an Epidemic
Another author whose work has illuminated my own road to better mental health is journalist Robert Whitaker. In his Huffington Post article, Anatomy Of An Epidemic’: Could Psychiatric Drugs Be Fueling A Mental Illness Epidemic?, he takes a look at psychiatry’s track record:
“The number of adults, ages 18 to 65, on the federal disability rolls due to mental illness jumped from 1.25 million in 1987 to four million in 2007. Roughly one in every 45 working-age adults is now on government disability due to mental illness.This epidemic has now struck our nation’s children, too. The number of children who receive a federal payment because of a severe mental illness rose from 16,200 in 1987 to 561,569 in 2007, a 35-fold increase.I wrote Anatomy of an Epidemic to investigate this epidemic, and this pursuit necessarily raises a very uncomfortable question. Although we, as a society, believe that psychiatric medications have “revolutionized” the treatment of mental illness, the disability numbers suggest a very different possibility. Could our drug-based paradigm of care, for some unforeseen reason, be fueling this epidemic?This does not mean that antipsychotics don’t have a place in psychiatry’s toolbox. But it does mean that psychiatry’s use of these drugs needs to be rethought, and fortunately, a model of care pioneered by a Finnish group in western Lapland provides us with an example of the benefit that can come from doing so.Twenty years ago, they began using antipsychotics in a selective, cautious manner, and today the long-term outcomes of their first-episode psychotic patients are astonishingly good. At the end of five years, 85{59f60c537d2e599ed690a67c103d9265f11cc7a0cf2bd0efbc3e3c577f8a61ac} of their patients are either working or back in school, and only 20{59f60c537d2e599ed690a67c103d9265f11cc7a0cf2bd0efbc3e3c577f8a61ac} are taking antipsychotics.”
Ponder
We Clasp the Hands
We clasp the hands of those that go before us,
And the hands of those who come after us.
We enter the little circle of each other’s arms
And the larger circle of lovers,
Whose hands are joined in a dance,
And the larger circle of all creatures,
Passing in and out of life,
Who move also in a dance,
To a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it
Except in fragments.
-Wendell Berry
In this together,
Candy