[LISA LEWIS] The Am I Ok? Podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Faith Fringes, the Holistic Counseling Podcast, and Beta Male Revolution, go to the website, www.practiceofthepractice.com/network. Welcome to the Am I Ok? Podcast, where you will discover that being highly sensitive is something to embrace and it’s actually a gift you bring to the world. We will learn together how to take ownership of your high sensitivity, so you can make positive changes in your life, in the lives of others, and it’s totally okay to feel this way. I’m your host, Lisa Lewis. I’m so glad you’re here for the journey. Today on the Am I Ok? Podcast, my special expert guest is Dr. Jadzia Jagiellowicz, who will be talking to us about physical wellness with high sensitivity. Dr. Jadzia earned her Ph.D. under the supervision of Elaine Aron. She has been conducting scientific research, including brain and genetic research on highly sensitive persons for the last 16 years. With a previous career as a medical writer, she has a special interest in highly sensitive persons and functional integrative medicine. She provides consulting and education for highly sensitive persons based on her extensive knowledge of the research, her previous experience in consulting and her lived experience as extremely highly sensitive person. She offers web based and phone consultations to clients work worldwide. Her areas especially include helping highly sensitive persons regulate their negative emotions, the connection between childhood environment and adult highly sensitive person and highly sensitive person wellness. Jadzia is a contributing author of the Highly Sensitive Brain, a recent handbook summarizing current research on highly sensitive persons. She’s an expert advisor to the Charity Vantage, which advocates for highly sensitive people and to international consultants in high sensitivity. You also may have seen her interviewed in the document, Sensitive: The Untold Story, or in Oprah Magazine. Welcome to the podcast Jadzia. [JADZIA JAGIELLOWICZ] Thank you so much, Lisa, for inviting me. I’m very much looking forward to it. [LISA] You’re very welcome. I didn’t ask you before we got started here, but I usually, I like to ask my guests, and I know you say you’ve lived in experience as a highly sensitive person and if it’s okay with you, if you wouldn’t mind sharing a little bit about your story. [DR. JADZIA] No, not at all. I didn’t know I was highly sensitive until, I guess I was working on my undergrad degree and I had taken a course where the professor had supplied me with some reading material and it turned out to be Elaine Aaron’s very first study on high sensitivity and I read the article and I was just enthralled because I could check off all the characteristics of high sensitivity and suddenly everything made sense, things like people saying to me, “Oh, you get upset over nothing. You think too much.” All those things that highly sensitive people have heard over through their lives. Then over time I think as my life got busier. I noticed that I also developed or became more aware of some of the physical sensitivities, sort of loud noises bother me, having to do things too quickly. When I moved to Long Island to do my PhD I had some classes in New York city and just having all the people coming at me on the subway and on the streets. That was a lot as well to deal with. But fortunately I had that background to refer to, so I didn’t, I was going crazy. I just realized that I was a typical, highly sensitive person. [LISA] And do you most, I’m just curious, do most highly sensitive persons feel like they’re going crazy? [DR. JADZIA] Oh, I think it really depends on how high a level of high sensitivity the person has, like what do they score on HSP scale. The difference between a highly sensitive person, somebody who scores just at the border of high sensitivity, like at 13 on the scale on the Elaine Aron site, the www.hsperson.com site, the difference between that and the most highly sensitive score is the same as the difference between somebody who’s not sensitive at all and a highly sensitive person. So there’s a huge range of high sensitivities. So some people definitely, everybody I think gets judged a little bit or looked at a little bit by the rest of the world as being a little bit different or a little bit off or eccentric, but some people are quite different than the rest of the people they interact with. So I do sometimes get clients that are concerned that there’s something terribly wrong with them and it’s generally just as far as they’re just highly sensitive. [LISA] Yes. And that right there, I feel like their gift too that they are highly sensitive. [DR. JADZIA] That’s correct. I’ll be talking about that a little bit in the presentation. [LISA] So what type of health problems could highly sensitive persons be more susceptible to and why? [DR. JADZIA] Well, one of the things that sort of the scientific research has found is that highly sensitive people report more health problems. Now, the interesting thing is that we don’t know whether that’s just because they are more sensitive to all sorts of bodily sensations or whether that’s because they actually have more health problems. Like if you’re more sensitive to something you’re going to notice it’s like the Canary and the coal mine and somebody else might not notice it. So things that they report are back pain, diarrhea, sore throat, racing heart, heartburn, sort of regular bodily sensations that could be something or could be nothing. It could be just a sensation that they’re feeling more than someone else, but they’re definitely bothered by these things. And they are reporting that they feel them. So now 16% of the value of the scores of two questionnaires that measured these kinds of physical symptoms and sensations, 16% of the value of those scores could be explained by being sensitive. So there is statistical technique used called correlation, and it just shows that two things are related, but we don’t know if one thing caused the other. Like I said, we don’t know if it’s the fact that highly sensitive people are getting more of these symptoms and sensations, or could it be just that because they notice them more, they have them to the same extent that other people do, but they’re noticing more so they’re reporting them more. They also, in that same study, those scientists were able to predict, and that’s also another statistical technique, but if they knew that someone was an HSP, then they could predict 16% of the difference between the highest physical symptom score and the lowest physical symptom score on one of the questionnaires and 18% of that difference on the other questionnaire. So basically being an HSP explained 16% to 18% of the physical symptoms. [LISA] Okay. Why are they more susceptible to health problems? [DR. JADZIA] Well, this is really an interesting, a whole very interesting area. And recently there have been two other types of illnesses or diseases that are being associated with being an HSP and that some immune system diseases and diabetes. Now, the reason that it appears that HSPs may also be more susceptible to physical symptoms and bodily, some diseases. One of the reasons is sort of an imbalance in something called the HPA access. I know that’s been in the, on the internet a lot recently, and basically the HPA access is responsible for, it’s called the hypothalamic pituitary access and it’s responsible for hormonal function. So it’s responsible for the balance of the hormones in your body. So between the hypothalamus and the pituitary, they produce this whole cascade of hormones that stimulate the adrenal glands, which are located on top of your kidneys. And as the adrenal glands produce adrenaline and they also produce another hormone that people may have heard of called cortisol. Adrenal adrenaline is the hormone that is sort of the fight or flight response, if it’s an acute danger. But cortisol is responsible for fight or flight response, if there’s an ongoing danger. So cortisol basically controls the energy balance in the organs and it prepares them for flight or fight. Now in 2014 scientists did a study in highly sensitive rats and what they found was that they had higher cortisol levels. In rats it’s called corticosteroid, but it’s the same thing, basically as cortisol. So they had higher corticosteroid levels when they were just resting. They weren’t doing anything, they were just sort of hanging out. So even at their baseline these HSP rats had more corticosteroid, which is not a good thing. They also had a higher sensitivity to this ACTH, which is a hormone that stimulates this corticosteroid production in the adrenal glands. So basically the takeaway message is that based on these animal studies of HSP rats, they’re thinking that cortisol could be secreted more easily and maybe even in response to less stress in human HSPs. And that there’s more cortisol in their system, even when they’re just resting, when they’re not doing anything. So the next part is that glucose metabolism is also affected in highly sensitive people, or we think that it could be affected in highly sensitive people. We know that they’re very sensitive to spikes and dips in blood sugar, and that they’re very affected by being hungry. They told us that back in 1997 in a survey that Elaine did. Now in 2011 there was a really cool genetic study and they found alterations in genes that are related to dopamine. It’s a system of neurotensin genes, but they’re basically a kind dopamine gene and in one of these genes called Neurolysin that’s related to blood sugar or glucose metabolism. So interestingly there are also more HSPs among adolescent Type 1 diabetics than there are in the general population. So if you look at diabetics that are adolescents, there are more HSPs there. There are about between 20 and 30 HSPs in the general population and there was more than that percentage of the diabetics. So it kind of brings us to believe that maybe this Neurolysin might be related to Type 1 diabetes as well. Now there’s another process that Neurolysin is implicated in and that’s pain control. And we know that HSPs report that they’re more sensitive to pain. We’ve also found that HSPs and people having fibromyalgia, which is a disease, it’s a chronic disease and it’s characterized by pain, muscle pain, fatigue, memory loss, sort of the brain fog and the people who have fibromyalgia as well as HSPs both have the specific form of serotonin gene called a short allele. Now this also has been in the press a lot over the last probably 20 years. So there’s this serotonin transporter gene and part of that gene controls how much serotonin ends up being available for use by the nerve cells and the body. And as I’ve said before, serotonin kind of, it’s responsible for a lot of things in the body, but it kind of calms down the system. So it regulates pain, it regulates how full you feel, it regulates sexual function, but overall it sort of has more of a calming effect if you have more serotonin. So HSPs and people having fibromyalgia, their serotonin system isn’t working as well. And what happens is that there’s less serotonin being available for use by nerve cells. So we think that these alterations, the short allele may underlie the pain sensitivity, both in fibromyalgia and in HSPs. [LISA] Wow. This is just fascinating. This is incredible, this research. [DR. JADZIA] Yes, it’s very, very cool stuff. What we have to remember with the genetic research is that one gene and one alteration in one gene is not going to make a huge difference. However, what happens is that one gene or an alteration in one gene can then work together with alterations in other genes to affect a number of different functions. And oftentimes we have a, in this highly sensitive brain book, we talk a little bit about this, that oftentimes if you look at the genes that are different in highly sensitive people there are quite a few genes that are different in highly sensitive people than in people who aren’t highly sensitive. And when you have those genes working together, they can make a difference in the functioning. So this one serotonin transporter gene, this short allele may not be the be all and end all. But when it’s taken in conjunction with other genes, it really can have quite a lot of effects. [LISA] And the is this information, would this be helpful for someone who is experiencing fibromyalgia or diabetes when they go to their healthcare provider? [DR. JADZIA] Well, I think it would be helpful for the person themselves to understand the process. There is often a lag between information that comes out in research and information that gets to a healthcare provider. And the other thing is like we’ve seen with COVID science is always changing. So there are some studies that, there are a lot of studies that say that this serotonin transporter gene, short allele is associated with high sensitivity and then some of the functions that go along with it like the pain, the diabetes. But I don’t think that your family doctor would be in a position yet where people have had a chance to review everything and say, yes, definitely if you’re a highly sensitive person, you’re going to develop diabetes or you’re necessarily going to be in more pain. Where I’m headed with all of this is kind of knowing these things, knowing that you might have a predisposition to some blood sugar, metabolism differences, or to pain differences. It will give you an idea as to some things to watch out for when you’re doing self-care or some things to say, okay that pain may just be sort of a normal warning that I’m getting from my highly sensitive system. It might not necessarily mean that there’s anything horribly wrong with me. It’s just that my system is processing pain signals more than other people’s systems. Does that make sense? [LISA] It does make sense. Yes, and just having that education for yourself. [DR. JADZIA] Yes. So you’re not getting all upset about it but at the same time, if you know that there could be a, you know you’re not getting all upset about the pain, but at the same time, if you know that you might be predisposed to blood sugar issues, then you could be careful as to how much sugar you ingest and sort of when you eat various things and that kind of thing. [LISA] Yes. Good idea. Dr. Jadzia are highly sensitive persons, more susceptible to burnout? [DR. JADZIA] Yes, they are. We have a few studies that indicate that they are, but first of all I’d like to quote the WHO, the World Health Organization definition of burnout. What they say is that burnout are feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job, the feeling sort of cynical about your job and reduced professional efficacy. And I think if anybody has been in that position of burnout, they definitely can identify with these symptoms. So what the studies have shown us is that HSPs, being an NHSP was associated with needing more recovery time from work and associated with less ability to regulate negative emotions. There was a survey done in 2019 from over a thousand employees who had been in their job for about 20 years. The higher the job demands got the more the HSPs were emotionally exhausted. Now on the positive side one of the characteristics of being an HSP was positively as associated with helping people more. If somebody was a highly sensitive person, they would help other employees more. And the findings of that survey also are in line with another study that showed that there was an association between being an HSP and overall work stress, and as well as work displeasure, and then this need for recovery, which are characteristics of burnout stage of the stress process. [LISA] I’m just wondering, as people feel burnout, they tend to feel like they need to like leave their job or find another job. It’s not more about, it’s more about that than like an, oh, maybe I need to do some more self-care or do something different for myself. [DR. JADZIA] Yes. It’s very, very interesting. And I think with HSPs because we process emotions so intensely that it often seems like a black and white, you know I have to leave this job because everything’s going wrong and there’s nothing I can do about it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. [LISA] And how can highly sensitive persons avoid burnout? [DR. JADZIA] Well, I think what you mentioned was very helpful, the fact that highly sensitive people can work on themselves and trying to see how they can better regulate themselves within that job. Now, if they’re not able to do that, if there’s just too big a mismatch, then there always is the possibility of leaving that job. HSPs often do quite well as entrepreneurs. I’m not going to go into that anymore because that’s a little bit removed from the physical wellness that we’re talking about but some of the things that HSPs can do to avoid burnout, one of the things is to increase your own self-efficacy. There have been a lot of studies showing that people who feel efficacious, and by that, I mean, like they have the power or the ability to get things done, not always by themselves, but through other people. They have some kind of sway over things, some kind of control. They have much less stress than people who don’t have control. For example, in hospitals, the physicians reported less stress than the nurses, because the nurses had a lot of responsibility, but they didn’t have much authority whereas the doctors had the authority to get things done or to ask other people to get things done. So some of the ways of increasing your self-efficacy are things like learning how to say no to work demands that you’re not able to take on, learning how to negotiate, learning how to prioritize. And some of that, highly sensitive people are very detail oriented and that’s just genetic. They notice more details, but because they notice more details, they try to make everything that they’re doing very detailed and so other people call them perfectionist. So they don’t have to do things to that level of detail because oftentimes their boss or their audience doesn’t require it. So I think there’s a nice little saying, is it better to get something done or to do it perfectly, but not get it done at all? So it’s basically looking at what their audience needs and saying, how much do I need to do to give these people what they need, and then don’t do one iota more. Just give them just what they need, even if it doesn’t feel like it’s completed, because people are generally working for an audience, not for themselves. And the audience has very different expectations than the HSPs do yes. [LISA] Yes, and HSPs can set the bar so high, not only for themselves, but for other people they work with and then no one else can reach that. And I thin — [DR. JADZIA] Well, that’s true too. Yes, so it could cause more difficulties with relationships at work, which could also cause burnout. [LISA] So it’s taking that, learning how to say no, which can be hard for HSPs and learning how to say, just being okay with saying no, and that’s okay. [DR. JADZIA] That’s right. [LISA] And that takes time. [DR. JADZIA] It does. It takes time and it takes consistent practice. [LISA] And HSPs are so willing to give so much of their time because they care and they need to take care of themselves too, which comes to my next question, what are the best self-care techniques for highly sensitive persons? [DR. JADZIA] Well, I like to say whichever technique works. It’s sort of a little bit tongue in cheek because I think it’s, there’s sort of two types of techniques. One technique is to decrease the overwhelm in your body and then there’s the technique of regulating your emotions. Now decreasing the overwhelming your body, that’s a bottom up technique and then regulating your emotions is a top down because your brain is working. Now when you decrease the overwhelm in your body you can do that in two ways. You can prevent the overwhelm in the first place, so find a quiet place to work, take a walk in the park or you can calm that overwhelm once you are overwhelmed by doing various body work type modalities. I think both are important. Now which technique will help the quickest, I think also depends on where you score on the HSP scale score and the different aspects of your personality. So much of what I’ve noticed since I’ve been working individually with highly sensitive individuals, with highly sensitive persons is the fact that they really are different. There’s a real spectrum between someone who scores at 13 and somebody who scores at almost 27. I’m very, very high on the high sensitivity scale and so I really notice a lot of these things. So one of the things that I’m putting together now, and I think it should be available by the time this podcast comes out is sort of a wellness assessment. It’s looking at where you stand on your high sensitivity score and on some other personality scores and also where you stand on some of the factors that make up high sensitivity and how that affects your wellness and how you can then take care of yourself. So for example, emotion regulation, as I talked about before, that’s a top down sort of a brain technique. And that’s good for analytical people. Then there are other people who are much more practical and they might be more comfortable at least starting out with the body work, with filling their body sensations. Now there are also people who’ve things. And I’m not talking here about complex PTSD, although that might factor into it, but specific acute instances of posttraumatic stress disorder where they’ve witnessed a murder or been raped or something like this, where people simply disassociate from their bodily sensations. So those kinds of people, they may not be able to begin with the body work because they’re not aware of their body. One of the things that is done in these traumatic situations is before you can even do any body work, you have to start with identifying the bodily situations or sort of observe them. There’s things like a body thermometer, you know, are you starting to get, is your face starting to get flushed? Does that mean you’re angry or things like that? So just to recap, sort of there’s this top down which involves emotional regulation generally, by talking back to your emotions, like we discussed in the section on avoiding burnout saying I don’t have to do things perfectly, excuse myself for not being perfect. Other people don’t expect as much of me as I expect of myself. And then there’s the bottom up, so trying to determine what your bodily sensations are first, because if you can regulate those, your brain is really interpreting those sensations and telling you that there’s danger. So if you don’t have those sensations, your brain can’t interpret them. So you can like I said, start with these observations and then you can go on to more of the, there’s all sorts of different types of body work, meditation, mindfulness, like being in the present moment, which I think in positive psychology is kind of called flow. So if you’re in that flow state you could do a mindfulness walk or just sitting and noticing what’s around, mindful eating, exercise. But I would state that the exercise should be just focused on the physical sensations, not on performance. So even if you’re playing tennis, it’s not based on, am I winning, what’s the score, but it’s based on the feeling of hitting that ball on the sweet spot. So it’s really sort of focused on your body, on the physical sensations while doing that exercise. Some examples of that are Tai-Chi, yoga, or like I said, any exercise where you’re just literally doing it for the pure joy of doing it. There are breathing exercises, all sorts of various bodily techniques. I didn’t say anything yet about this the prevention. And I think that’s important because that’s something that if we think ahead we can do. And a lot of it is really like preparing your children so that they don’t get too excited when you’re taking them out somewhere or taking them shopping. So try and think about it. What I always try and get clients to do is to think about, and often they can use these apps like the fitness trackers and stuff, because some of the trackers have an app on them, which allows you to focus on the heart rate variability. That will tell you whether you’re able to recover from stress. And it’s a very, very measure of how stressed you are. So look at how stressed you are before you decide to do your groceries tonight. So plan ahead. Do those sorts of things when you’re not stressed or get someone else to do it for you, if you’re always stressed or get them delivered. One of my academic colleagues used to say, just throw money at it. It won’t work for everybody, but if you have the money and you can throw it at it and hire someone or get a system like a computerized system or an automatic system to do it, then you won’t need somebody to mow your lawn. Also pick the places you go to. I mean, there’s even an app now that helps people find quiet restaurants. So look at those sorts of things and just decrease a sensory overload, figure out what you can and cannot handle on any certain day, and then stick to the things that are within your, I guess your comfort level. [LISA] So what I hear is like really just taking a look at yourself overall and see what’s working, what’s not working. And I know there could be so much things at one time that you want to change and like I always work with my clients, just take one step at a time. It can get too overwhelming. And I also think, the breath is something that we can take with us everywhere. And I love one of my mentors has the saying, I love to use it all the time, “I release my stress through my breath.” So I use that myself. I use that with my clients. This is our reminder. Even if you’re dry in the car at a stop light, stop sign, just check in with yourself and see if you are breathing. [DR. JADZIA] Yes. Because you’re not always aware if you are or not. [LISA] Yes. Our breath could be very short in our throat or in our chest and not really doing that deep breathing that really relaxes us. Are highly sensitive persons better at practicing self-care than non highly sensitive persons? That’s sort of a yes or no answer. The good news is that generally any sort of intervention, so whether that’s some mental health care or bodily modality for self-care, those generally work better for HSPs than non HSPs, just because HSPs are so affected by whatever environment they’re in. So if they put themselves in a good environment, that good environment is going to affect them more than a non HSP so that’s the good news. Are they better at practicing self-care? The yes part, yes, they are, comes from them being more conscientious. So we have evidence that they will attend doctor’s appointments, get regular, physical checkups more often than non HSPs. Many of them are quite cautious, so they won’t necessarily want to take in too much alcohol or take recreational drugs. They also don’t ignore these physical warnings. I mean, there’s so many bodily sensations that they’re processing all the time but they don’t generally ignore them. They’ll go to the doctor and follow them up. Now they’re also often more open, which makes them able to look at sort of alternative therapies, exploring other things that might be good for them. They’ll also more research about self-care, so they’re more prepared to do the self-care and will know more about the process. Now, the no part comes, like with most things, when highly sensitive people are overwhelmed then all these good things seem to shut down. So that’s when these bodily sensations, all of a sudden, it’s hard to distinguish between a minor bodily sensation and a sign of imminent breakdowns. So sometimes just the fear itself gets in the way. Also when they’re overwhelmed, some of them can use alcohol or drugs to escape. It’s probably not their first choice to be doing, but when overwhelmed all bets are off. So that’s like I said, its kind of a yes under good circumstances and a no when the level of overwhelm clicks in, but the good news is that any sort of intervention that they commit to is going to be better for them than a non HSP. [LISA] Oh, that’s wonderful. And then if there’s a non HSP they could reach out to an HSP if they want to get some suggestions, what works. [DR. JADZIA] Yes, yes, yes, because HSPs have often done all the research. [LISA] On all of these things. That’s right. Okay, my last question, Dr. Jadzia, what is the most important thing you want listeners to know? [DR. JADZIA] Well, I think that it’s important to, I like this thing about the spectrum of HSPs. I have been writing more about that in my blogs. I think that if you’re an HSP, you’re going to differ from other HSPs depending on whether you’re also a high sensation seeker, depending on other personality characteristics, depending on the factors, you know, there are a number of factors that contribute to being an HSP, so sort of how you score on those factors. And that those scores are going influence, I thinks the kinds of and wellness and self-care things. I think that will be helpful for you. And also they will influence the kinds of wellness behaviors you do. So for example, someone who’s a high sensation seeker and a high HSP, because high sensation seeking makes you approach new and novel things and a high HSP makes you avoid new and novel things. So they’re constantly yo-yoing back and forth. So that can bring its own set of challenges. So I think it’s important to look at the whole to try and figure out what might be best for you with respect to the various wellness modalities and your own personal self care. [LISA] Okay, wonderful. And where can listeners get in touch with you? [DR. JADZIA] On my website, which is www.highlysensitivesocietycom or through my email, which is drjadzia@mail.com, so J-A-D-Z-I-A@mail.com, so not Gmail, just mail. [LISA] Thank you so much. And I’m looking forward to seeing your wellness book that you’re putting on. [DR. JADZIA] Yes, the wellness assessment. It’s going to be a service that I’ll be offering, because I really noticed such a difference between my clients and such a difference in what seemed to work for them as well. [LISA] And thank you for just really kind of just dissecting the different areas of high sensitivity, like just on the spectrum. Made that really clear for our listeners. [DR. JADZIA] Oh, I’m really glad and I really appreciate the opportunity to discuss this area. I think it is sort of a new field right now. So I’m glad that you are interested in having me chat about it and I’m really looking forward to seeing the podcast once it comes out. [LISA] Okay. Well, thank you Dr. Jadzia. [DR. JADZIA] Thank you. [LISA] Thank you for listening today at Am I Ok? Podcast. If you are loving the show, please rate, review and subscribe to it on your favorite podcast platform. Also, if you’d like to learn how to manage situations as a highly sensitive person, discover your unique gift as a highly sensitive person, and learn how to be comfortable in your own skin, I offer a free eight-week email course called Highly Sensitive People. Just go to amiokpodcast.com to sign up. In addition, I love hearing from my listeners, drop me an email to let me know what is on your mind. You can reach me at lisa@amiokpodcast.com. 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