Frontiers Friday #103. Sensitivity (Part III) ⭕
FF101: Sensitivity (Part III)
I just read the news based in Canada Eastern Health: Nearly 45 per cent vacancy rate in psychology positions after a "mass exodus" of psychologists.
The reasons? Long waitlists, a lack of autonomy, respect for the psychology discipline, and low pay.
One neuropsychologist said,
"I felt as though my role was now becoming unethical because I was leaving people on wait lists for three to four years because I couldn't physically get to them just because of the demand."
"A lot of times it was, 'Do your best,' or, 'You need to learn how to manage your caseload better.' So a lot of, kind of, gaslighting, essentially, is what we were getting from management."
Some time back I wrote Caring for Those Who Care and The Future of Our Work Isn’t Robots. It’s Caring Humans.
Layers of care is required. A community of care for those in need, and those we do the caring needs to be part of our ecology. Too many mental health professionals I know are wounded by the experience of working in public sectors that undervalue, underappreciate, dehumanise and even shift blame unto the people who are doing their very best, day in day out.
*Note: Hat tip to Grace for sharing this article.
In this final Part III on Highly Sensitive Person's, there's some useful lectures series by Elaine Aron as well as some unsettled (at least for me) distinctions between HSP and ASD.
In case you missed the first two parts on Sensitivity, here it is:
Plus, in this week's Therapy Tip of the Week (TTW), I cover grounds on the topic of why it's important to listen to the seasonality of our lives, and how you can use this idea to help our clients.
🎁 New Video from Frontiers: Therapy Tip of the Week: There is Reason to Understand Seasons
Understanding the current season you are in helps you figure out where you are at, in order to know where you need to go. Appreciating the seasonality of your inner and outer life provides you a navigational guide as to where you need to nurture your nature.
In this video, I provide a way to open a conversational doorway about this with your clients, so as to provide focus and directionality of the therapeutic endeavour. A clinical example is provided.
(Read the FPD blogpost for more on this)
Note: Any personally identifiable information in clinical examples used are changed, in order to protect their confidentiality and privacy.
📽 Watch Elaine Aron's Three-Part Talk on High Sensitivity
Elaine Aron - A Talk on High Sensitivity Part 1 of 3: Research
Elaine Aron - A Talk on High Sensitivity Part 2 of 3: Life
Elaine Aron - A Talk on High Sensitivity Part 3 - Complete Q&A
The Q&A segment has got some interesting questions e.g., What happens if a HSP is in a relationship with a narcissist?
Key Graf:
- Easy for the HSP priestly advisor to be with the warrior narcissist
- Painful for the HSP
- Painful for the narcissist when the HSP discovers her superpower.
👓 Read: Sorry, Elaine Aron, but you could be wrong about HSP and Female Autism
Last year, I spent time doing some 'just-in-time learning' regarding females on the spectrum as I was working with some clients that struck me as both highly sensitive and have some autistic traits.
I was puzzled by the overlaps with high-functioning autism and HSP. I couldn't quite reconcile the differences, and found more overlaps.
In this opinion piece, the author does a good job in exploring this issue.
She cites that Aron's HSP the "checklists for women on the spectrum (see here and here) overlap on every single one of the 27 HSP checklist items."More from the Medium blogpost,
"Autistic females tend to process social information more accurately than men on the spectrum, or at least they can become quite adept at navigating social situations, so again Aron is describing an outdated or classical male presentation of autism, and failing to address the full autism spectrum.
And as Tony Attwood, one of the world’s foremost autism experts, explains (after describing the top two ways that children with Asperger syndrome respond in social situations):
There’s a third group that’s not in the diagnostic criteria, which is how the girls [with Asperger syndrome] cope. … What she does Me observe, analyze, and imitate — to fake it till you make it. She has a mask, a facade, that makes her highly successful in what she does [socially]…
This imitation is not done to purposely dupe or deceive, but is done as a means of fitting in. And since the girl begins this behaviour at a very young age, long before she is ever aware of autism or of the distinction between “neurodiverse” and “neurotypical,” she may assume that this is what all children must do to fit in."Unfortunately, the FAQ on Elaine Aron's page regarding Autism has been taken down, and you'd have to go by what this author cites.
If you are aware of any research in regarding the distinctions between HSP and ASD, please drop me an email.
🎧 Listen: Conversation with Elaine Aron and Alanis Morrissette
If you didn't get to watch the documentary Sensitive, this is good podcast episode to listen to, hosted by the singer Alanis Morrissette.
⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
Go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Let everything happen to you:
beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Nearby is the country they call life.
~ Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke.
Reflection:
Don't be too quick to give a label, a category, or a name to the human condition.
First, take it all in.
BIG HUGS TO NEW PEOPLE WHO ARE AT THEIR FRONTIER!
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