The last time I talked about highly sensitive people, I briefly touched on
how we may develop some strong patterns. And then in the long run, after you've
repeated your self-taught ways of control again and again, you've developed
strong patterns that are difficult to break. And then it's usually in your
adult years you realize that these patterns aren't working for you,
so you seek professional help to get your freedom back and learn better ways
to deal with your challenges. What is it about being highly sensitive that makes
us more at risk of developing these maladaptive patterns that are difficult
to break and how can we work on overcoming these patterns? That's what
I'm going to be talking about in this video.
Hey, you guys. My name is Daniel and my wife and I love helping people with
their mental health. If you're into understanding and working on your mental
health too, make sure to subscribe to our channel.
All right! Well, let's get right into today's topic. When you feel chilly and
you shiver or you touch something sharp and you pull away or you hear something
loud and you cover your ears, your nervous system is essentially picking up
a stimulus and then you respond. This whole thing around stimulus and response
actually happens so much in our lives even beyond these basic physiological
reactions: when you feel sad, you might go to sleep; when you feel bored, you might
escape into something stimulating; when you feel down about yourself worth, you
might overwork yourself to create your own worth; and when you notice all the
things that could go wrong, you might agree with the idea that "I'm
not going to be okay." However it is that you choose to respond, your brain makes a
connection between the original stimulus and the resulting response and it makes
that connection through what's called a neural pathway. Now, in the beginning, when
you first respond in a certain way to a given stimulus, that neural pathway may
be pretty weak and flexible. At this stage, it may feel like you've still got
some control over all the different ways that you could respond. But the more you
access the same neural pathway again and again, that neural pathway becomes
stronger and stronger until it becomes something like a neural superhighway. At
this stage it may feel like you've got no control over how you respond because
your response happens so automatically. That's when you're dealing with habitual
thought patterns, compulsions, addictions, and if you've got a whole set of these
that negatively affect your life and personality, then you're dealing with
disorders. Highly sensitive people are more at risk of developing these
patterns for two main reasons. Number one: we feel discomfort more
intensely, so that often comes with a greater sense of urgency and pressure to
find a way - any way - to just put an end to our discomfort. In other words, it's more
difficult for us to wait or delay our gratification to find a better long-term
solution. And number two: because we often experience everything in extremes, it's
more challenging for us to do things in moderation. At times, we can get a bit
obsessive, right? So, what if you feel stuck with all of these patterns that
aren't doing you any good? Can you free yourself from these patterns? It's not
going to be quick and easy, but, yes, you definitely can and I've done it myself
and neuroplasticity says you can do it too.
After you've identified the patterns in your life that you don't want to be
ruled by, you'll have to begin the long and hard process of creating, nurturing,
and strengthening other neural pathways, building healthier patterns, all while no
longer accessing your problematic ones. This for sure will feel unnatural at
first, but you've got to keep at it. Now, let's say for a good chunk of time
you've been able to refrain from accessing your problematic neural
pathways. Do these neural pathways then magically disappear? I mean, I do believe
in miracles... but in most cases, no, they stay with you for the rest of your life.
They just become dormant. These dormant neural pathways are sleeping giants that
can be reawakened at full force if you access them again, even a little bit. But
stressful times makes it extra challenging to do the right thing that
many of us revert back to our old ways and feel stuck all over again. This is
called a relapse. So many people are unsuccessful when it comes to overcoming
their maladaptive patterns because, without even being aware of it, they keep
on relapsing again and again and again. And after so many unsuccessful attempts,
they lose hope and start to believe that they're stuck with being ruled by all of
these patterns for the rest of their life. But that's not true. You've just got
to get better at relapse prevention. Eventually, I'll make a video providing
some practical strategies for relapse prevention, but for this video, I'm just
introducing the concept. First, you're going to want to create some safe
boundaries for yourself from the avoidable things that just aren't worth
keeping in your life that cause you to relapse. For example, a lot of recovered
alcoholics don't even take a sip of alcohol because they know that's all it
takes for them to relapse. Just like that, you may need to refrain from even
having a sip of whatever your unwanted pattern might be. And it might take you
many repeat attempts at tightening up your boundaries before you develop
boundaries that really work for you in the long run.
Now, when I say avoidable things that aren't worth keeping in your life, I'm
not talking about things like other people getting upset, other people having
different opinions, or uncomfortable things that your nervous system picks up
on. These kinds of things are just normal parts of life that you can't expect to
block out all the time in order to keep yourself from reacting poorly. Think
about it. If you never let yourself face these things, how are you going to expect
them to be less overwhelming for you the next time they come up. You'll be left
equally incapable and easily triggered every time because you didn't put in the
work of increasing your tolerance for these things that stress you out.
So, as uncomfortable as it is, exposing yourself to the things that stress you
out is also a part of relapse prevention. And lastly, it really helps to work
through all of this with an understanding community that believes in
you. Thanks for watching. Now that I've laid out what I feel is a lot of the
foundation, in future videos you can expect me and my wife to go more into
specific mental health challenges and talk about how to overcome them. And if
you found this video helpful, make sure to give it a like. And don't forget to
subscribe to our channel for more videos on mental health. See you next time. Bye.