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If you're a highly sensitive person, you must contend with the fact that 80 percent of the
people around you are not. If you conform to their style and rebel against or ignore your
sensitivity, you will suffer. Overarousal is the Achilles' heel of highly sensitive persons
(HSPs), so you need to be expert at avoiding, surviving, and recovering from it. Following
are some ideas for relieving overarousal and giving yourself the rest or time alone you
need. To many people these recommendations may seem excessive; for HSPs they're
essential.
* Spend eight to ten hours in bed each day, sleeping or not, and set aside two hours of
additional downtime to meditate, contemplate, or putter, and one hour for exercise
outdoors.
* Take one day a week off completely -- no errands, no working at home.
* Take the equivalent of one month off each year. It's preferable to scatter the time
throughout the year.
* Meditate daily.
* Practice abdominal breathing. Take a normal but slow breath in through your nose, then
breathe slowly out through your mouth as if you were blowing out a candle. This
automatically makes your next breath come from the abdomen.
The point is not to breathe
out through your mouth all the time, but to do this occasionally to re-establish abdominal
breathing for a quick calming down.
* Create a secure, pleasing place in your house for meditation, prayer, reading, and other
kinds of private time. Make it beautiful but simple. Bring in flowers, a candle, incense, or
essential oils to give it a soothing scent. Buy a piece of silk or a blanket of
natural materials that you can wrap around yourself or sit on. Take your favorite tea or other
drink to sip there. Please all of your senses.
* Keep a journal to encourage reflection and a broader perspective on what you are doing
with your time.
* Always keep a protein snack with you -- perhaps string cheese, a hard-boiled egg, a
protein bar, a can of tuna, some nuts. Being overaroused can deplete your blood sugar, and
low blood sugar leads to being more easily overaroused.
* Keep earplugs with you to use when you are exposed to loud noise.
* Spend time regularly with animals and plants, and near water or forests.
--Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person's Workbook
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