Ep 17 | Building Physical Resilience as a Sensitive Woman:An Invitation for Women in Their 20s | Highly Sensitive Series
Welcome to Rise & Realign: Conversations for the Sensitive Soul. I’m Melissa, and this space is for those of us who feel deeply, love fiercely, and sense the world in ways that are hard to explain but impossible to ignore. Here we honor your sensitivity as a strength, not something to fix.
In today’s episode, I’m referencing the Highly Sensitive Series blog articles that I wrote. There are nine parts — three that cover the mind, three that address the body, and three that address the spirit. Today is part six, the third in the body series. It’s called *Building Physical Resilience as a Sensitive Woman*. You’re always invited to read the blog in its entirety on my website at realignwithmelissa.com/blog. You can even search the categories for Highly Sensitive Series to bring up all nine parts.
Talking about building physical resilience as a sensitive woman is really important because traditional approaches often involve pushing limits and powering through. Many coaches and trainers don’t have an understanding or awareness that roughly 20 to 30% of the population have this high sensitivity trait. It’s important to understand that sensitivity is a survival strategy. It’s innate, normal, and invisible. This is also why the “pushing through” approach often backfires for highly sensitive people.
It’s so important to understand what makes you unique and different as a sensitive woman, and why your path to resilience calls for honoring your natural way and that depth of processing. Think of resilience as a river, not a wall that we’re trying to climb. A river has tremendous strength. It flows around obstacles instead of crashing through them. It knows when to rush and when to pool. It knows when to deepen and when to spread wide. This is the kind of resilience that best suits your sensitive system.
You’re always invited to read the blog, where you can see the research that’s cited. In this particular one, I talk about the brain imaging studies by Dr. Bianca Acevedo that demonstrate highly sensitive people show increased activation in areas responsible for deep processing and awareness. This points to how sensitivity itself is a form of strength. You’ve heard me call it a sensory intelligence.
I’m here continually speaking about the sensory processing sensitivity trait because it is normal, yet invisible. You do have a more finely tuned nervous system. Your neuroanatomy is just a little bit different. Even though 20 to 30% of us have this trait, we’re still all unique. Really understanding it helps you understand your own journey, your own challenges, and how to listen and trust yourself more easily, more readily, and more deeply. This depth of processing is a depth of caring. It’s a depth of what you feel and what you think about. Your natural rhythm is just different than the roughly 70 to 80% of the population who do not have this innate survival strategy.
It’s important to understand that when we’re in healthy environments, when we’re supported and listened to, then as a sensitive individual you have the ability to really excel. You have great capacity. You’re high-functioning. Maybe you have big dreams and big aspirations, and a lot of generosity of heart. I certainly see this in all of the women I have the privilege of supporting. But you need to understand that the emotional intensities you feel, the emotional processing, and the mental processing all use energy from the body. That’s not always talked about. That’s why I return here each week to continue to raise awareness so that you can tune into your unique needs and honor yourself. Because you matter. Your needs matter.
I’m so grateful that Elaine Aron and others, like Dr. Bianca Acevedo, have been researching this high sensitivity trait. If you’re not already aware, there are documentaries as well, and of course Dr. Elaine Aron has written several books for the highly sensitive person.
Today, though, I really wanted to touch on something that has been coming up for me. I don’t know if I’ve talked about my professional roles much on this podcast, but I have been a licensed independent clinical social worker since the mid to late 90s. My career began providing individual therapy and play therapy for individuals who have experienced trauma, substance abuse, and adolescence. After providing family therapy, couples therapy, and individual therapy, I always come back to the fact that when I work one-on-one with someone, there’s so much depth that gets revealed through the highly sensitive individuals I work with.
My career over the past 30 years has really evolved to see the importance of supporting highly sensitive women specifically. I would say in the last couple of years that just became really clear to me. This trait is equal between males and females, and I absolutely have highly sensitive males in my life. I really appreciate those experiences and what they bring into my life as well. But again, as a woman who didn’t always know about this trait — the research came out in the early 90s — I navigated my 20s and 30s without any knowledge of it. I learned about it once I was in my 40s.
What I really love and feel so privileged about is the women who have come to work with me. I have a very holistic approach. One psychotherapist is not the same as another. We all have our own training and our own ways of offering that type of service. I’ve certainly referred to myself as a holistic psychotherapist so that it’s really clear that I’m going to look at somebody’s wholeness — how their mind is operating, how their body is being cared for, what the communication from the body is, and also that spirit, that fire within them that lights them up and moves them forward toward what they feel most interested in and called to do.
I’ve also had the wonderful opportunity of hosting different types of groups throughout my whole career. At 19, I was hosting groups in locked psychiatric hospitals, supporting individuals who were really navigating some very difficult challenges. I just wanted to talk today about the power of highly sensitive individuals coming together with other highly sensitive individuals. Whether that’s through your own personal network — you have friends or colleagues who get you and who you can talk about these deeper nuances of your experience with — or if you don’t have that, I just want you to know that I am someone who’s here with a very specific focus to support other highly sensitive women.
I’ve actually been receiving some ideas that I immediately felt clear about and have initiated. So I wanted to really speak directly to you if you are in your early to mid 20s, or just anywhere in your 20s, and you’re listening to this. I really want to speak directly to you for a moment because I’ve reflected on my own journey in my 20s and not knowing about being a highly sensitive individual and just how I felt. I didn’t meet another sensitive friend until I was 25, and she has become my lifetime best friend.
I know that in our 20s, this is where many sensitive women are trying to prove that they can keep up — whether you’ve graduated from a bachelor’s degree or you’re in or graduating from a master’s program, whether you’re building a career, navigating relationships, questioning your body, or just finding what suits you, your direction, where you feel most alive and authentically you. I know that can be challenging when we don’t understand the emotional ups and downs or why people may say, “Oh, just go to the gym and work out if you don’t feel good. That’ll get your juices flowing.” That can work for some of us and it can work for some time, but it’s not the go-to fix as a highly sensitive individual. It really is about getting to know your sensitivity and your strength and honoring your rhythm.
For the beautiful, highly sensitive women I’ve had the opportunity to support in their 20s, I just love your curiosities, your openness, and your ability to question how you were raised and how that aligns with who you are and what you want. And that depth of caring — how much you appreciate what you did receive from your parents and your awareness of what you didn’t receive that you really needed.
I just want to remind you, no matter what age you are, there’s nothing wrong with you for having a more finely tuned nervous system. It’s about understanding that you have a different rhythm, and it’s important to be true to you. Trust me, I’ve been there. When I just pushed through and added more onto my plate, it just made it so much more difficult.
I’m really wanting to support women in their 20s — sensitive and strong women in their 20s — so that you have a safe space. A space that you can come to once a month for some support, some safety, some slowing down, connecting with yourself, with your heart, with what’s being called from within you. A space where you get some distance from the chaos of the external world and expectations. So that you have a place to come and connect with other highly sensitive women in their 20s and with a highly sensitive guide — myself — who has walked the path of being a highly sensitive woman in her 20s and navigated relationships and career and colleges and professors’ expectations and just not feeling understood or heard.
It’s so important that as highly sensitive women, we come together to share the space, share the depth that you have with other sensitive women who will appreciate it so deeply because of that depth, and to just create a space where you can feel yourself. You can express your emotions without apologies. You can feel what you need to feel and know that you’re in a safe space.
It’s really been an honor to see how many women in their 20s have already been resonating with this podcast. The universe has brought me synchronistic experiences that help me know that this is the time to offer it. I’m introducing — well, I just introduced it over the weekend — it’s called *Sensitive and Strong: The Re-Align Circle for Women in Their 20s*. It’s small and intimate. It’s a monthly gathering on the first Tuesday of the month, so the first one begins Tuesday, March 3rd at 5:30 p.m. Pacific. I currently have one beautiful sensitive woman who has signed up, and again, you’re invited. There is a 30-day window that you can experience and see how it resonates for you. There is a community space as well, which is off social media, and that’s open for however you want to use it to get to know each other — the other 20-year-old sensitive women in there.
It’s really a space to understand your nervous system, to build resilience, to practice breath, boundaries, and rhythm. It’s a space to be strong without hardening, without pushing through, without trying to live up to what you might see others doing. It’s really a way for you to return to you. I want to be clear, this is not therapy. It’s not a performance space. It’s a rhythm-restoring circle. Especially if you’ve ever felt like you’re too much or not enough at the same time, this is for you.
I know it’s coming up quickly, but if it resonates for you, trust that. You can join and get a feel for it. You can ask questions. This really is a living space. I bring a lot of love and compassion because I’ve walked the path and I have supported countless individuals in my 30 years. This is something I’m really passionate about. I really appreciate the strength and the resiliency and the capacity within sensitive women, and when they come together, it’s just beautiful. It’s so loving and supportive. It’s just an extension of each of us bringing that depth of caring, that love and light that is within us all. We get to bring it together to support each other. I’m there as a mentor, not as a therapist diagnosing or trying to treat symptoms. This is a space for you to keep returning to you and to receive the education around what it means to be a highly sensitive person. My integrative mental health and quantum biology health approach is just part of who I am at this point in time. I feel it’s very much like the ancestral wisdom that I’ve been living and navigating, and I’ve just been so blessed to connect with mentors who have specialized in the integrative mental health and quantum biology health arenas.
Because believe me, I know as highly sensitive women, there’s curiosity. There’s definitely this high awareness and high intelligence. So I know there are a lot of topics that can come up in a circle with other 20-year-old sensitive and strong women. I’m just excited to invite you to join, to bring your unique gifts and talents and curiosities. The inner world of sensitive individuals is so complex and nuanced, and there are infinite possibilities of where our conversations could go, how I can support you in being present with what’s coming up for you, and also empowering you to see what else is possible — to believe in yourself, to believe in your dreams, to believe in that spark within you. We want to nurture that. We want to be nurturing to ourselves and to each other.
You’re invited to visit my website, realignwithmelissa.com, and you can click on the offerings page and that’s where you’ll see Sensitive and Strong: The Re-Align Circle for Women in Their 20s. One of you has said yes and it will just continue to grow at the perfect right timing and pace as more and more hear this invitation and know that the space is created for you.
I have to say, I am so honored to not only have a daughter in her 20s who I’ve learned so much from — mother and daughter relationships can bring their own complexities, and we can certainly talk about that in this circle as well — and I have a daughter-in-law in her 20s. Knowing that I didn’t understand this high sensitivity trait when I was in my 20s and how helpful that would have been, and to now be, 20 to 30 years later, and the environments that you as 20-year-olds are now navigating has even more things — we’re talking Wi-Fi, electromagnetic fields. Remember, as highly sensitive individuals, we’re not only taking in the external. You’re not just taking in more visual stimuli or more auditory stimuli. You’re also taking in the invisible — the frequencies that are coming. That’s when we talk about some call it being an empath. But again, there are different languages that mean different things.
So I’ll just stay with the fact that your generation is exposed to even more than mine was. That’s why it is so essential that if you are a highly sensitive woman, you understand how to care for your nervous system and how to understand why some things may feel more difficult or challenging for you than others. You are in a minority, but again, it’s not to say there’s something wrong. This is not an identity or a label that needs to say “doom.” That doesn’t feel good to me. To me, it’s a sensory intelligence that I’m tuning into, that I’m learning to understand the communication of so that I best take care of me. It’s so important that we understand the relationship that we have with ourself is the number one relationship to focus on. That relationship with your inner dynamics — how your mind is operating, how your body is communicating, what your spirit is calling you forward toward. This is all the inner communication that we’re not necessarily raised to tune into. It’s often, let’s look outward. Let’s do all these things, X, Y, Z. I certainly felt like I had achieved the American dream, but I didn’t have the relationship that I have with myself. I was so much looking outward and reaching the milestones that I needed to reach, and it was just constant bracing of what’s next and just trying so hard to do everything correct. Because that sensory processing allows you to think about what you just experienced and how you can use that information to make a decision in the future that sets you up for even more success. This depth of processing can get us burned out if we don’t understand it and reel it back in.
This is my invitation to you. If you’re in your 20s, and if you are someone who knows another highly sensitive woman in her 20s and you think she would benefit, please do share this episode with her. Or if you go to my website and you have the link to sign up, again, there is a 30-day period for you just to get a feel, to see if it resonates for you, if it’s the right timing or the right place.
As a reminder, we are here together to rise, reclaim, remember. Where the heart leads, the body remembers, and the soul awakens.
Before we close, I invite you to return to your breath. A nice, slow inhale through your nose. A nice, slow exhale out your mouth. And just pursing your lips like you’re blowing out a candle, nice and slow. It signals to your nervous system: You’re safe, you can relax. And again, continue at your own pace and rhythm. Just remember as you’re inhaling through your nose, you are hydrating your body — so essential for there to be flow. And exhaling out your mouth, releasing, relaxing, letting go.
So continue to return to your breath, your body, to what feels true for you right now. There’s nothing you need to fix. Just notice what’s here. You are invited to join me at any of the offerings. It would be my pleasure to support you.
Take good care of you. Much love and light.
For the full written exploration that complements this conversation, visit the companion blog post: Highly Sensitive Series: Building Physical Resilience as a Sensitive Woman https://www.realignwithmelissa.com/blog/highly-sensitive-series-building-physical-resilience-as-a-sensitive-woman
