Are you a highly sensitive dating person trying out the dating world? How can you navigate meeting new people while being yourself without feeling overwhelmed? What can you do to bring about your ideal partner?
In this podcast episode, Lisa Lewis speaks about dating while sensitive and how to find love when the dating world overwhelms you with Dr. Christina McMahon.
MEET CHRISTINA MCMAHON
Christina McMahon, Ph.D., is a love coach and certified somatic counselor. Over the past six years, she has helped hundreds of conscious singles remove inner barriers to love and step into the love life they desire and deserve. She is one of the leading love and relationship teachers on the Insight Timer meditation app, where her meditations and audio courses have received nearly a million plays. Christina does one-on-one video coaching with singles all over the globe. She is also a two-time speaker at the Mindfulness Expo in Anaheim, CA, where she leads workshops on conscious relationships with her husband, Darrin Kagele, LMFT.
Visit Christina McMahon’s website and connect on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
FREEBIE: Free Dating Guide for Lasting Love
IN THIS PODCAST:
- The inner prep
- The outer steps
- Be clear on your ideal partner
- Cultivate what you want from others in yourself first
- Dating tips
The inner prep
I’ve come to think about the journey to love as inner prep and then outer steps, right? And then there’s a third phase of kind of staying the course.
Dr. McMahon
Get in touch with what our inner core love wound is. This involves your patterns in relationships and dating, what your pain points are, and then being willing to trace these back to where they might have come from due to your early relationships.
- What patterns were established from these moments?
- What role did you perhaps take on from what you witnessed or from what happened?
- Are you maybe telling yourself a false story that is keeping you stuck?
This is where the highly sensitive dater can really hit the ground running [because they are good at introspection] and the good news is also that I believe that inner prep is 90% of getting to love … if you can get that piece down and bring enough healing to your core love wound, then you are making yourself truly ready and available for love.
Dr. McMahon
The outer steps
This can be a place where HSP can feel a little stuck because they are sometimes better at working out their inner world than the outer one.
There are a few mindset shifts that you can try before starting this to help you succeed down the line, such as;
- Give yourself a break by acknowledging that your HSP trait can make interacting with others more challenging than it is for different people
- Giving yourself a small pep talk whenever needed by knowing that anyone can find love, no matter your degree of sensitivity
- As an HSP, your sensitivity can sometimes make you take things personally. In dating, don’t do this so often because sometimes things happen and they have nothing to do with you
The more you can look at disappointment as part of the process and not a disruption of the process, the easier it’s going to go for you because every disappointment brings an opportunity to go back and do that inner healing.
Dr. McMahon
Be clear on your ideal partner
When you are in this phase of your dating journey, get clear on the person that you would like to date. Who would be your ideal partner, in every way?
Get clear on who this person is then it doesn’t just become about dating for common interests or attraction, but about who makes you feel like you are developing on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level.
Spiritual to me meant someone dedicated to personal growth … so I added a few keywords to it so I would have a sense of what [that] means.
Dr. McMahon
You can even think about whether you would like to date another HSP or even a non-HSP. There are advantages and challenges to each one, so do some thinking about what is negotiable for you and what is important to you to help you frame it out.
Cultivate what you want from others in yourself first
Nurture the seeds! If you want to date someone confident, but you struggle with confidence yourself, look at other areas in your life where you do feel confident and spread those seeds.
Develop and grow what you do have, and see where you can sprinkle those seeds into the other areas of your life that you would like them to be in as well.
To build confidence in dating, or in any aspect of the dating journey, practice some meditation and visualization to bring those ideas into your mind and body peacefully, getting you used to them, and making them seem more normal and therefore more real.
Try doing a mini visualization first. Close your eyes for five seconds, go inward, and remember feeling the energy of your future partner, and when you open your eyes, you might feel a little more confident, comfortable, and then you can make that eye contact or smile and open up and see if that opens up a conversation.
Dr. McMahon
Dating tips
- Open the channels to love: be on different dating app platforms not to haul in the numbers, but to increase the potentiality that you would connect with that right fit person for you
- Don’t hide behind a mask of what you think people will like: be honest and clear about what you are looking for. It will repel some people, but that’s good because they wouldn’t have been good fits for you in the first place
- Go where your ideal partner is: spend time in the places where you imagine your ideal partner might me
- Be kind first to be kind to others: be kind to yourself in this process because it does take time. Remember to focus on generating feelings of love and safety within yourself as well instead of desperately wanting to outsource them to others.
- Be able to offer and receive love for yourself! Try it, plant it into your body through visualization and meditation, and let it settle.
RESOURCES MENTIONED AND USEFUL LINKS
BOOK | Harville Hendrix – Getting the Love You Want
BOOK | Elaine N. Aron – The Highly Sensitive Person in Love: Understanding and Managing Relationships When the World Overwhelms You
Visit Christina McMahon’s website and connect on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
How to Start Your Own Online Business and Become a Digital Nomad with Austin and Monica | Ep 89
Practice of the Practice Network
Rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Audible/Amazon, and Spotify.
CONNECT WITH ME
Email me: lisa@amiokpodcast.com
ABOUT THE AM I OK? PODCAST
So you’ve been told that you’re “too sensitive” and perhaps you replay situations in your head. Wondering if you said something wrong? You’re like a sponge, taking in every word, reading all situations. Internalizing different energies, but you’re not sure what to do with all of this information. You’re also not the only one asking yourself, “am I ok?” Lisa Lewis is here to tell you, “It’s totally ok to feel this way.”
Join Lisa, a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, as she hosts her, Am I Ok? Podcast. With over 20 years of education, training, and life experience, she specializes in helping individuals with issues related to being an empath and a highly sensitive person.
Society, and possibly your own experiences, may have turned your thinking of yourself as being a highly sensitive person into something negative. Yet, in reality, it is something that you can – and should – take ownership of. It’s the sixth sense to fully embrace, which you can harness to make positive changes in your life and in the lives of others.
This may all sound somewhat abstract, but on the Am I Ok? Podcast, Lisa shares practical tips and advice you can easily apply to your own life. Lisa has worked with adults from various backgrounds and different kinds of empaths, and she’s excited to help you better connect with yourself. Are you ready to start your journey?