Happy Easter to all of those celebrating 🙂

A text message from a good friend the other day (thanks Ara!) brought me back to the way I used to spend Easter weekend as a teen and young adult: in a retreat at a convent called El Palancar.

La Pascua del Palancar was a retreat for young people organized by Franciscan brothers from the Betica province, from Holy Thursday until Easter Sunday. The main theme was obviously religious, as it happened with most spiritual events back then, but there was more to it: it was a wonderful opportunity to switch off from the noise and haste of daily life (even if mobile phones didn´t exist yet!) and get more deeply connected to Life, Nature, our travel companions, and ultimately ourselves.

Now that I think of it, these were probably my first steps along the path of self-discovery and personal development.

During the three and a half days of the event, most of the activities were done in company, either in one big group or divided into smaller groups. But there was one, on the Saturday afternoon, which was different: they called it the desertand it was a time slot of about two hours for which they encouraged us to find a quiet place for contemplation and personal reflection. You can imagine how challenging that could be for some of the teenagers: two hours on their own, without talking to anybody!

I remember I always climbed up the rocks on the side of the hill, up to a place very similar to the one in the photo: from there I could see the convent down in the distance, surrounded by the characteristic landscape of Extremadura in the springtime. I was carrying a notebook, a pen, and a piece of paper with a few questions as a guide. But apart from that, nothing.

Silence. Nature. Time and space to allow everything I had inside to come out.

I loved that feeling.

And up there, in that little corner of the world, the two hours would go by, breathing, thinking, writing... Then at some point I would start hearing voices down in the distance, maybe also the strings of a guitar, and I would realize it was almost time to return to the world. I felt like Saint Peter in that passage from the Bible about the transfiguration, when he says to Jesus: Lord, it is good for us to be here, let´s put up a shelter, and Jesus explains that they can´t stay in contemplation at the top of the mountain, they need to go down again and continue with their mission on the ground.

Sometimes we get so sucked into this world we live in, that we lose contact with what matters most to us. But if every now and then we take a break to go up the mountain, then we will listen to our inner voice again, and it will guide us to get back on track. It´s been many years since I last went to El Palancar, and my "mountain" these days sometimes takes the shape of a beach, but the idea is the same: a little bit of time, solitude and silence, and the answer appears.

What about you? When was the last time you listened to your inner voice? And what would it say to you today, if you stopped to listen?

I recently read somewhere (sorry, I don´t remember where exactly) that in order to keep healthy relationships, you need to have uncomfortable conversations every once in a while. This applies to all kinds of relationships.

It makes sense, right? Disagreements and conflict are inherent to human beings, and it´s the way we manage them that makes the difference.

But, what happens when you´re so afraid of conflict that you try to avoid it at all costs?

Hello, my name is Bea, and I´m a conflict avoider.

I´ve spent many years tiptoeing through life in order not to bother anyone, not to create conflict. Many years acting as if certain problems did not exist, in the hope that they would sort themselves out.

So, you can imagine what happens, right? They DON´T sort themselves out, even though sometimes it looks like they do. To really solve a problem you have to bring it out into the light, you have to talk about it, otherwise the discomfort stays there, under the surface, until the day it inevitably comes out again.

So, what can we do then? Three things come to mind:

• Accept conflict as something natural: we each have our own needs, opinions and ways to do things, which sometimes clash with those of other people.

• Not take it personally: one thing that helps a lot is focusing on the problem itself, instead of what we perceive that the other person “is doing to us”.

• Find a good way to communicate, so that we can convey our needs and wants to the other person, and listen to theirs, in a respectful and non-violent way.

When my daughters were small, I used to play for them a song in Spanish by Miliki, the lyrics translate to something like “Talking is how people understand each other, and that way everything works better…” Nowadays I still sing it to them sometimes, and also to myself, as a reminder that none of us are mind readers, and that issues need to be talked about.

And you? Do you also avoid conflict? What uncomfortable conversation have you been trying to avoid?

Do you consider yourself to be a sensitive person?

I´ve been asking myself that question for a few days now… I don´t think I ever thought of it before.

They say that you learn something new every day, and the other day I learned, through a friend and colleague from my master´s degree (thanks Idoia!) that approximately 20% of the world population are estimated to be something denominated highly sensitive persons, or HSPs.

The nervous system of a highly sensitive person is more evolved than the average, which causes their brain to receive a much higher amount of sensory information. This is not an illness or a psychological disorder, it´s simply a personality trait. And like any other aspect of personality, becoming aware of it is really useful in order to understand ourselves better, in this case realizing that some people live their emotions in a different, and much more intense, way than others.

According to Dr. Elaine Aron, who coined the term HSP (translated into Spanish as personas altamente sensibles, or PAS), there are four basic characteristics that highly sensitive people manifest:

• Depth of processing (profundidad de pensamiento) - they have a tendency to process the information they receive very deeply and intensely, which leads them to spend a lot of time reflecting on things and going over them.
• Overstimulation (sobreestimulación) - given that they receive so many sensorial stimuli, they can get to the point of overstimulation, or sensitive saturation, especially when they have to process a lot of information in a short period of time.
• Emotional reactivity (reactividad emocional) - they live their emotions in a much more intense way, both the pleasant and the unpleasant ones, and they also have a great ability for empathy, being able to feel what others around them are feeling.
• Sensing the subtle (sensibilidad a las sutilezas) - their heightened sensitivity allows them to detect subtle changes that others may miss, such as small changes in the environment, or in other people´s moods.

On top of these four central characteristics, there are a number of complementary ones that many HSPs identify themselves with, and some of them are really interesting. I´m not going to list them all here, so as not to make this post too long; if this topic has piqued your curiosity (as it did mine), I encourage you to continue to investigate.

But there´s one particular aspect that I think is important to highlight here: many HSPs often get the feeling that they don´t fit in, that they´re the “the odd one out”, and they´re not going to be able to find others they can truly connect with… More often than not, their extra dose of sensitivity comes together with an extra dose of suffering, due to not understanding what´s happening to them, or why they´re different.

This is why I thought it was worth contributing to spreading the word on this topic. Because of that, and also because every time I read another article or watch another TED talk on HSPs, I find even more things that resonate with me 🙂

So, going back to the original question…

Do you consider yourself to be a sensitive person?