28. The joy of big feelings
Sarah Filman being too dramatic during a sketch comedy show. Photo credit: Marko Vucetic
I first met Sarah through Claire Shorall, the Co-founder and CEO of Topknot (and former Team Joy guest author). Over the last 6 months, Sarah has become a dear virtual friend, co-collaborator on our coaching businesses, and sympathetic ear to navigating the world with really big feelings.
Our stories have a lot of resonance; years working in corporate roles struggling with balancing our ambitions and burn out; resulting gut issues, and now a shared mission of rebuilding our lives with more integrity, joy, and health. It’s been meeting people like Sarah along my journey that makes building a business without a co-founder more manageable. It is my pleasure to share her words and hard earned wisdom on sensitivity with you on this Sunday.
🙁 Separating my insides from my outsides
I’ve always had big feelings about things other people clearly thought were small things. The terror of not knowing where to store my winter boots in my first grade classroom led me to beg my mom to let me walk to the bus stop in my sneakers after a blizzard had just come through. Being encouraged to stay another 30 minutes at a gathering I am ready to leave makes me feel like I have spontaneously combusted into a thousand suns. Not being able to find an ingredient in a new grocery store makes me want to curl up in the fetal position and have my hair gently stroked as tears softly fall out of my eyes.
"I never knew that about you!" say my closest and dearest friends when I share these examples and more.
Ah yes, person who I love very much, that's because I learned early on in life that when you think things are big that the collective thinks are small, they label you too sensitive, irrationally anxious, and definitely "no fun." And who wants to be friends with someone like that? She sounds positively unlovable. So began the decades-long process of unconsciously separating my insides from my outsides. Inside, I was often scared, sad, anxious and overwhelmed. But on the outside, I was doing my very finest performance of a befriendable, lovable, put together person. Another thing I felt on the inside but didn't know how to name? Shame for how weak I felt. Why can't I handle things that other people handle with ease? What's wrong with me? The shame burned extra hot when the anxiety and overwhelm would inevitably bubble to the outside and be exposed to air. "I'm sorry for being me" I implicitly prefaced every sentence with, "but I'm worried about…"
By now you may be hoping I found a good therapist, because this is just an incredibly painful way to move through the world. And yes, I did. I've been incredibly fortunate to be able to work with my therapist, Susan, who has been a fixture in my adult life. She's been there for the huge moments, like the death of my sister, marriage, divorce, and quitting a dream job that turned into a nightmare. She's helped me detangle what I can control from what I can't, get perspective on some of my most challenging relationships, and take what other people say less personally. I can't satisfyingly capture the impact of this relationship in words alone, but suffice it to say I am incredibly proud of the work I have done with her support, and now move through the world with less anxiety and more trust in myself.
🏷 The label of a highly sensitive person
This year I learned more about the trait of Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS), which gets more commonly referred to as being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). HSPs make up about 15-20% of the population, and our brains and nervous systems are actually wired to be more sensitive to physical, emotional, or social stimuli. That means our thresholds for getting overstimulated and overwhelmed are lower than the majority of the population. SPS isn't something that gets diagnosed -- it's a trait and there's a self-test developed by Dr Elaine Aron that can help you self-identify. Labels can be oppressive, they can be freeing, or they can be both. I know that when I got the results of my self-test, the HSP label felt like a cozy hug -- comforting, supportive, and less lonely.
The HSP label was a transformational reframe for me. It was a permission slip to work with my sensitivity rather than work against it. It was time to stop thinking about it (and therefore myself) as something to fix. It's incredible how a mindset shift or newly embraced identity can transform the quality of your life without actually taking any concrete action. It's seeing the same world through a new lens.
Sarah sniffs sea smells with the adventure-hungry Ginger. Photo credit: Hong Chau
My biggest example is this: I had started taking improv classes a few years prior from that belief that there was something fundamentally broken about me. Specifically, when I was put on the spot to answer anything at work in front of more than one other person, including questions I already knew the answers to, I went blank and get light-headed.
I figured that improv, where you are constantly put on the spot to say things with no preparation, would be the bootcamp-esque experience I needed. Practicing and performing improv did indeed help me get more comfortable with ambiguity, getting put on the spot, and making mistakes. It's brilliant at that, and I feel so passionate about the potential of improv to support personal development that I built a whole coaching and facilitation business around it. But it wasn't until I took this step to more truly embrace and understand my sensitivity that the improv went from something fundamentally stressful to something genuinely joyful. An opportunity for authentic creative expression of my insides rather than a place where I performed as someone I was not. And improv is all about building with what other people say or do – by being really attuned to the subtleties of people’s expressions and energy, I can spot opportunities for PURE COMEDIC GOLD that others might overlook.
💚 Embracing my sensitivity
Beyond the mindset shift, I continue to take concrete actions to be more self-loving around my sensitivity. I pulled back on doing the late night improv shows that start at 9:30pm so that I can maintain a more regular sleep schedule. When I can feel that my body is overstimulated, I have a growing basket of sensory goodies like noise-canceling headphones, eye masks, a hammock chair, a weighted blanket, and an ocean-simulating light projector. I now get excited to experiment with these tools and see how my body responds; rather than seeing the fact that I have these tools as needy or excessive. I declare at the start of hanging out with people that I probably only have about an hour and a half or so before I'll be ready to go. When I go to the grocery store, I leave time to slowly walk down every single aisle.
Perhaps most importantly, I've been more freely sharing my experience and feelings with my friends and family. Each time I do this I can feel myself slowly stitching together my insides and my outsides. Sometimes I get in my head about it and feel like I'm confessing to being disingenuous or fake in the past. But here again I'm trying to be self-compassionate and take my cue from them -- all parts of me are lovable, including the part that didn't feel safe to be seen.
The journey ahead is about continuing to find ways to honor my sensitivity. Sometimes that will look like saying no and respecting the boundaries my body declares even when it’s uncomfortable, and sometimes that will look like letting my insides playfully spill out into the world. Recently, it’s looked like cartoon sketches and sketch comedy, like this one about the time my therapist told me our work seemed like it was wrapping up. For both myself and my fellow sensitive souls, I’d encourage us to hold the questions:
💜 How can we take these often heavy and overwhelming inner experiences and process them in a way that is more playful and more compassionate?
💜 What hidden treasures do we expose to the world when we do share our experiences?
If you’d like to explore these questions together in a supportive space, let’s play with the possibilities together! I offer (free) 45-minute playdates that are fun, connective, and help you gently stitch your insides together with your outsides. Schedule a playdate
P.S. If you would like more behind the scenes content on this post and to stay up to date with Team Joy, please go follow Team Joy Coaching on instagram.
CONTACT INFO
Sarah Filman is a leadership coach, team development facilitator, and improv performer. She is the founder of Playful Perspectives, with a mission to help leaders and their teams connect, create, and thrive by dissolving the work/play divide.
An experienced people leader and technical product manager, Sarah has brought structure, strategy, heart, and humor to engineering and education teams for over fourteen years. She is passionate about helping mission-driven people find their authentic leadership style so they can lead teams, projects, and their lives with confidence and joy. Additional areas of coaching focus include navigating complex work relationships, transitioning into management from technical roles, and finding wellness at work.
A highly-sensitive introvert with a penchant for puns and forest bathing in the Pacific Northwest, Sarah loves to nerd out about marine invertebrates, board games, and comedy.
Connect with Sarah via email at sarah@playfulperspectives.com, LinkedIn, or Instagram
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