Gentle Living for Highly Sensitive People with Becky Corbett

May 25, 2022

In Podcast Episode 17, Gentle Living for Highly Sensitive People, I chat with Gentle Living Nurse, Becky Corbett about what it means to be a highly sensitive person (HSP) and Becky’s gentle living framework that provides support for HSPs.

Welcome to Episode 17 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Gentle Living for Highly Sensitive People.

I’m joined by Becky Corbett, aka The Gentle Living Nurse, a holistic nurse and coach for highly sensitive souls.

We chat about what it means to be a highly sensitive person (HSP) and Becky’s gentle living framework and podcast that provides support for HSPs. Becky also shares insights on burnout and impacts on health care workers in recent times and how people can nurture and prioritise their own well-being as they care for others.

You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

In this episode, we chat about:

Becky’s background as a nurse and challenges faced
Shifting to a path of gentle living
Being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)
Strengths and challenges of being highly sensitive
How to balance your nervous system
High sensitivity and other personality preferences
Experiencing burnout and making change
Signs of burnout
Being a holistic nurse
Impacts on health care workers in covid times
Social media options as a highly sensitive person

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 17 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 25th of May as I record this.

I’m excited to have Becky Corbett join us for the podcast today.

Becky Corbett (aka The Gentle Living Nurse) is a holistic nurse and coach for the highly sensitive soul based in sunny Brisbane, Australia. The Gentle Living framework was birthed as a result of Becky’s personal healing journey of anxiety and navigating the world as a highly sensitive person (HSP).

Becky now supports other HSPs to create their own Gentle Living journey to nurture the nervous system, through combining elements of evidence-based science, spirituality and intuition. Her mission is to support as many HSPs as possible to connect with their sensitivity gifts to flourish and thrive!

Becky and I connected via social media and I have had the pleasure of chatting with Becky on The Gentle Living Podcast. So it was wonderful to connect again and focus on Becky’s very important work in the world. We chat about what it means to be a highly sensitive person (HSP) and Becky’s gentle living framework and podcast that provide support for HSPs. Becky also shares insights on burnout and impacts on health care workers especially and how people can nurture and prioritise their own well-being as they care for others.

Enjoy listening to this insightful and inspiring conversation and take some time to check out Becky’s fabulous framework and podcast.

So let’s head into the interview with the lovely Becky.

Transcript of interview with Becky Corbett

Terri Connellan: Hello, Becky. And welcome to the Create Your Story podcast.

Becky Corbett: Hello, Terri, it’s such an honor to be here. Thank you for having me on your podcast and congratulations on launching your podcast as well.

Terri Connellan: Oh, thank you so much. It was great to be on your podcast a little while ago, share our podcasting journeys and stories together.

Thanks for your connection across our work in the world, especially as it relates to personality, sensitivity and living our best life. And we’ve connected online around our work, so it’s great to chat further on this today. So can you tell people a little bit about you, a brief overview about your background, how you got to be where you are and the work you do.

Becky Corbett: Absolutely. Well, first up I’m very excited to be here because I’ve been following your work for a long time. Well before I even created my own business, so yeah, this is exciting. To give a bit of background about me, so I am a registered nurse, I’ve been nursing for about 12 years now, more recently in the mental health space. I’ve always had a fascination with the human mind and the body and what makes us tick and always searching for those deep answers to deep questions.

And through my nursing career, I’ve always felt as though something were missing. And I actually resonate a lot with what you say in your book Wholehearted about feeling half-hearted about what you might be doing and not feeling that sense of complete fulfilment. Like something’s missing, it’s sort of partly there, but it’s also partly missing. So yeah, through my nursing career, I always felt that something was missing. I don’t know. There’s probably listeners who work as nurses or doctors or health care workers and in the hospital system. It’s very directive. It’s very much, you tell patients what to do. You’re the expert, they’re not the experts. You have all the knowledge and the information. There’s a big hierarchy. The politics of the whole system, bullying is a really big problem as well. And so I experienced burnout quite a number of times through the hospital system and to deal with this, I really just pushed through because there’s this real culture in the healthcare system about we’re the people taking care of people.

So we have to push through and keep going. And so, yeah, I had lots of unhealthy habits as a lot of nurses do. So sugar, caffeine, bad foods, not exercising enough because I was always so tired. Alcohol is a big one for nurses as well. Just blowing off some steam with a few drinks because, it’s the quickest way to de stress. And anyhow, I eventually left the hospital system all together. I found it wasn’t serving me. I was really burnt out. I wasn’t really serving the people as best as I could do. Just wasn’t thriving in that sort of a culture.

So that led me down the path of gentle living, which is my business today. So I call myself the Gentle Living Nurse. And so somewhere along that path, I really reconnected with myself and my unique traits as not only being an introvert, but also as a highly sensitive person. And I understood that the root of all this anxiety and overwhelm and panic I was feeling sometimes was because my nervous system was so out of balance and I was just doing all the wrong things and seeking for the wrong answers.

So when I turned to the path of gentle living, which is all about gently exploring your nervous system health and taking care of yourself that led me to more fulfillment and that led me to the path of wanting to support people, to, nurture their gifts as a highly sensitive person, which is what I’m excited to speak more about today.

Terri Connellan: Well, thank you. Thanks so much for sharing about your journey from that sense of not feeling fulfilled in your work to moving through, to finding a path that takes those areas that you feel passionate about into new spaces and in new ways, and also growing your own self knowledge in that process.

So thanks for sharing about your journey and I love too that your focus now is on the nervous system and health and living holistically and living gently. So look forward to exploring that with you today. So your work focuses on the highly sensitive person, HSP, which you identify as, so how did you identify this in yourself and how might others also know they are highly sensitive?

Becky Corbett: Yes. So my work around the highly sensitive person, it evolved as wonderful things do. So when I first created my journey of gentle living, probably around the end of 2018, where I was really taking care of my nervous system and doing the things to nurture myself again and address the overwhelming anxiety that I’ve been experiencing for such a long time.

Through that process, yes, I had always identified as being quite an anxious person. I’d always been quite an anxious child. I suppose I didn’t really realize it at the time, but I look back and I think I was quite shy. I was quite anxious. I was quite withdrawal and at times, and there was never really an aha moment, I suppose, where I realized that I was a highly sensitive person.

It was just looking back in hindsight, I think. Oh yes, there were all these signs that, okay, this makes sense. I am highly sensitive. So as I was walking my path of gentle living to restore my nervous system, I realized that I wanted to empower and support other people to go through the healing that I had gone through and three things it and the stress and the burnout.

And through that, I learned a little bit more about the highly sensitive person. So I don’t know how I came across it. I don’t know whether it was 10 years ago, could have been earlier. Five years ago. I’m not quite sure, but it just all came to make sense. And a lot of people that I speak to who didn’t realize that they were highly sensitive and then I introduced them to the work of being a highly sensitive person, they sort of have the same, aha, yeah, that sounds like me.

So a lot of the research around being a highly sensitive person was pioneered by Dr. Elaine Aron, who is a therapist and scientist based in the United States and high sensitivity is a trait which is actually held by about 20% of the population.

So it’s much like hair or eye color. It’s not actually a disorder. It’s not a weakness. It’s nothing that’s wrong with you. Not any more than say having brown hair or blue eyes is a disorder. And it’s also not necessarily synonymous with being shy or introverted. In fact, there’s a strong correlation between being a highly sensitive person and being an introvert, but there are certainly highly sensitive extroverts as well. I think it’s around 30% of highly sensitive people are actually extroverts as well.

So to break it down for people that haven’t heard of the highly sensitive person, what it is, they’ll have no idea, the highly sensitive person, or as a highly sensitive person, we have more highly sensitive, nervous systems.

So what that means is we have very perceptive to the environment around us. We don’t really have as much of a filter on our nervous systems. I like to give the analogy of that. It’s not as filtered as say someone who’s a non highly sensitive person. So we navigate the world in technicolour. I sort of see it as so much sound, sensation, feeling, experiences that we go through. And that’s normal to us. We don’t know any different. And so that’s why as a highly sensitive person, if you’re not navigating life, taking care of yourself, taking care of the environment that you’re in or setting yourself up with the foundations that you need, you can become quite overwhelmed, stressed, burnt out because the world isn’t really set up for the highly sensitive person.

We pick up on subtleties in the environment, nuances, and actually some signs if you are a highly sensitive person and I suspect many of the people listening to this podcast, are probably highly . sensitive because most creative people, I would argue, have high sensitivity.

But the signs of being a highly sensitive person are things such as feeling your emotions really deeply, being moved by beauty, by nature, by the arts, by music, you might get quite teary if you engage with something that’s quite meaningful to you. I know for myself, I get quite inundated and flushed with emotion when I go and see a musical, for instance.

And I used to find that really embarrassing. Now I just take tissues with me and I allow myself to just really feel the experience of going to a musical. Cause it’s not a sadness. It’s sort of just an overwhelming sense of emotion that we experience. As a highly sensitive person, you’re probably also very sensitive to physical sensations. So very perceptive to things like touch, massage, might be a bit more sensitive to pain as well. We’ve got a really rich inner world and deep imagination, which makes us very good storytellers. Our imagination can sometimes run a bit wild and we can become overwhelmed and think anxious thoughts with that.

So we have to keep that in check as well. And like I mentioned, we’re very much effected by the external environment. So a lot of highly sensitive people will have some sort of sense that is a little bit overwhelming for them sometimes. And for myself that’s noise. I was just saying to Terri before we got on these chat that the man next door is mowing his lawn.

And that’s actually what aggravating to me, not to the sense that I’m going to tear my hair out, but, to the sense that it’s just a bit much. So I’m very sensitive to noises within my environment. So for other people that might be taste, it might be the smell, it might be emotions, it can be a whole range of different things.

It might mean that you’re also really affected by being in busy environments like airports or public transport, buses, shopping centres, being stuck in traffic, gyms, those types of things. And we’re also very deeply affected by the moods and the emotions of others too. So we’re very good at stepping into a room and then being able to detect the energy in a room. We can often tell if there’s been some sort of a conflict or there’s been something not quite right happen.

And we need to be careful not to absorb that as well. So a lot of highly sensitive people might get home from work and just feel absolutely drained. Not because anything significant has happened, but because the interactions, the sights, the sounds, the smells, everything that’s been going on through the day can become quite exhausting.

What else? Our conversations, we like to have really, really deep, meaningful conversation. So we make good podcasters. So like yourself, Terri, seeking deep, deep answers to deep questions. And with that too, we can ruminate a little bit, I suppose. We might come away from conversations and really over analyze what we’ve said or what the other person said. And did I say the right thing and what did they mean when they looked at me in that way? So we really need to take care to withdraw when we need to restore ourselves. And retreat into a little bubble sometimes too.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. That’s an amazing snapshot of what it’s like personally and for others who may be highly sensitive. So it sounds to me like, it’s almost like everyone has their own brand or experience of being highly sensitive that they need to learn to understand and then manage. Is that how it works?

Becky Corbett: Yeah definitely. Being a highly sensitive person. It doesn’t mean we’re all the same. We are all very diverse. And like you said, beautifully. Yes. It is almost like having your own brand of high sensitivity. So like I mentioned earlier, you can be a highly sensitive extrovert, so you can really enjoy being in loud environments, but at the same time, you might also be very sensitive to the sounds. Or you might be very sensitive to the conversations that are going on.

Or you might be more of an introverted, highly sensitive person. So it can just get a bit too much having too much social interaction, as well. So yeah, it looks entirely different for everyone. And it’s interesting because people that I have bought on to my podcast, actually, that didn’t identify as being highly sensitive, when they learnt more about the traits and what it involved. A lot of people have said, actually, that’s me. I think I’m highly sensitive because I think the word sensitive has a lot of negative connotations attached to it. And I think that’s sort of a cultural thing where we’ve been told that sensitivity is weak, or if you’re too sensitive, then you’re feeling too much and you need to toughen up. So perhaps some of the language around it can deter some people as well.

Terri Connellan: Well, that’s fascinating. So you’ve touched a bit on this, but interested to explore a bit more, what gifts do highly sensitive people bring to the world? You’ve mentioned creativity. That’s obviously highly correlated by the sound of it?

Becky Corbett: Yes. I love this question so much because so many HSPs that I work with HSP, highly sensitive person. So many HSPs I work with come to me and they just sort of feel like everything’s become a bit too much. They are overwhelmed. They’ve been told that they’re too weak, too sensitive, too emotional, too this, too that.

And so a lot of the work that I do is supporting people to realise that actually sensitivity can be a gift. And there is a lot that comes along with that as well. So interestingly, a lot of the great minds of the world, so artists, creatives, musicians, environmentalists, humanitarians, a lot of them are HSPs.

So some examples, actually if you have a Google, some examples I’ve found were, apparently, Albert Einstein, Princess Diana, Martin Luther King, Jr, Alanis Morissette, Jane Goodall. And so you can say they’re not just women either. So men are also highly sensitive, but again, I think a cultural thing is that men are meant to be sensitive. So perhaps women embrace it a little bit more, but I think the research shows it is 50 50. But yeah, women are more forthcoming about it. So yes, when HSPs let go of the story that they’re too sensitive or they’re too much, that then offers them the route to explore their gifts.

So yes, creativity is absolutely one. So deep imagination that we have brings life to things like novels, poetry, songs, beautiful books to the world. We’re very empathetic as well. So HSPs make wonderful friends, wonderful therapists, healthcare workers. But by the same token, need to be very careful not to become overwhelmed or to give too much or to take on people’s emotions too much.

We’re also quite intuitive. But often that is masked by anxiety. So if we’ve got an imbalanced nervous system that often manifests as feeling quite anxious and overwhelmed. We struggle to listen to our intuition, but when we can calm that anxiety down, then we can better tap into the intuition. And it’s very strong for us as well.

We’ve got a strong will to make a meaningful difference in the world. So we’re not interested in surface level questions or answers. In fact, those types of conversations are quite draining for us. There’s nothing, I hate more than being stuck in a meeting with surface level questions.

And oh yes, what are you doing on the weekend? You know, that kind of stuff. So I’m more likely to pursue those complex topics and to really seek answers there. We’re also peace and harmony seekers as well. So sometimes people may say that, we’re a little bit idealistic, but I think we need more idealism in the world looking at what the world is like right now.

That’s absolutely what we need and we do make wonderful leaders too. So I think there’s a lot of belief around leaders as being quite aggressive or arrogant, and that hasn’t gotten us very far so HSPs when they are in leadership, they make very fair, very strong and very wise leaders as well. So, yeah, that’s just skimming, the surface I’d say of the strengths of sensitivity.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, fantastic. What a great list of areas of gifts: creativity, empathy, intuition, meaningful differences, peace and harmony, leadership. They’re such a beautiful set of gifts to bring to the world. So I guess part of the challenge in learning to bring those gifts as well as you can to the world as a highly sensitive person, is learning to navigate the challenges. So what are some examples of the challenges that HSPs might face?

Becky Corbett: Yes. Well, because we are only about 20% of the population. The world is not really set up for the HSP. We do live in a very noisy world and if we don’t manage our experiences of anxiety and overwhelm, we are more prone to experiencing things like chronic illness or to experience even heightened mental distress, like severe anxiety or depression.

Some of the challenges in navigating the world as a highly sensitive person that come along because the world hasn’t been set up for us, we often try and camouflage in. So that can sometimes make us people pleasers. We’re very skilled at camouflaging and making sure that others’ needs are met so that we don’t seem like we’re too much of a bother or too much of a fuss.

So we’re very skilled at identifying the needs of others, but sometimes that comes to the detriment of our own wellbeing. And that might look like things I saying yes too often when you really want to say no. It might look like having really poor boundaries, not taking the time out that you need.

The overwhelm that we experience too can often lead to us, trying to perceive quick fixes to ease the overwhelm that we’re experiencing. So an example that I gave earlier in myself was my unhealthy habits, which was sugar to keep myself going, because I was always so exhausted. And when you’ve got heightened cortisol, the stress hormone in the body, you just more likely to crave and to seek out sugar, to mitigate that.

Alcohol as well can be a problem for some highly sensitive people, because it is a quick fix with our sensitive nervous systems. We are very responsive to alcohol very soon. So it just gives that. sort of instant relief. Caffeine as well to keep ourselves going, but then by the same token, and HSPs can become quite jittery with caffeine. And I suppose the strength that I mentioned before around having a lot of empathy or self-awareness, being able to look into conversations quite deeply, with that comes a tendency to ruminate. So we can go over things over and over and over in our minds and there’s no solution. It just makes us feel worse and our attention to detail as well.

We have a tendency to perfectionism. So a lot of the people I work with and most HSPs do identify as either being a perfectionist or a lot of them say that they’re recovering perfectionists, which is yeah, a challenge to overcome. And I don’t think there’s any quick fix to that either. It’s something we’re constantly navigating.

Terri Connellan: So in your work you provide solutions and strategies for some of these challenges based on your experiences and your skills. So as The Gentle Living Nurse, you offer a Gentle Living Framework and the Gentle Living Podcast for people who are highly sensitive. Can you tell us more about the gentle living framework and about the podcast too, and how it supports people?

Becky Corbett: Oh, I’d love to. Absolutely. So, as I mentioned earlier, gentle living is a framework that I really created for myself to start with. It was my own journey of trying to overcome this anxiety that I’d experienced really throughout my whole life, but never actually managed it properly.

I think it was because I’ve always been highly sensitive, but I grew up in a loving environment and everything, but I didn’t have parents that probably identified that I was highly sensitive. So when I pursued the path of gentle living, I was burnt out, overwhelmed, exhausted. And so I just returned to the basics of self-care, which involved taking care of the nervous system.

So it’s a framework really, which is based on my personal experience, my spirituality practices, but it’s also drawing upon the evidence-based strategies that I have used and learnt about through my psychology studies and also working in the mental health space. A lot of people who were experiencing mental distress or mental illness were highly sensitive people.

And so the foundation of it is really based on understanding your nervous system, how it works, viewing the self as a whole as well. Because I think in, especially in the Western framework, we see mind and body is separate and we still categorize them as mind, body, and spirit, but we are a whole person. And so we need to understand ourselves in the context of a very noisy world and understand exactly what we need as highly sensitive people to enable us to flourish and thrive. I see the HSP as being, like a rare flower or a plant, not a weak flower or plant, but just a rare one that needs ideal conditions to grow and to thrive.

And we know that when we’re immersing in the modern world and we’re not addressing our own needs and the nervous system is becoming more and more overwhelmed, it can really cause us to, wither up, so like a plant or a flower might wither up and not survive.

So I do a lot of work with people around identifying exactly what the stresses and triggers are in their lives, because we’ve got this tendency in our modern world, to just keep pushing through, keep going, ignoring any symptoms that we’re experiencing, ignoring any challenges that we’re going through. But really, we need to address the issues at the source.

So it might be things such as looking at well, what is your work situation like? Is your work burning you out? What’s your home situation like? Are you living somewhere that’s actually quite noisy and you’ve got noisy neighbors? Or you’re living in a big city and it’s not really the ideal environment for you. What do your relationships look like as well, because we as HSPs, although a lot of us are introverts, we still need that social connection. We need deep connections. So it’s important that we establish those deep supports.

The other thing is, are we living aligned with our values? And I know that’s something that connects with your work as well, Terri to really identify what are your values and are you actually living in alignment with them because we try to seek out the things that we think are going to be aligned with our values. But a lot of the time we are sort of living this lifestyle that’s just become too overwhelming for us.

The other thing is, do you listen to your intuition? I do a lot of work with my clients around listening to your intuition. What does it sound like? How is it different to your anxiety? And also rewriting any narratives that we have. So that may involve what I like to see as sort of re-parenting yourself in a way. So if you grew up in an environment where you might’ve had well-meaning adults or teachers or carers trying to look out for you, but they might’ve told you, “Oh you’re too much or too emotional, too this, you should go out, you should do this…”

And so a lot of that is going back to that, giving ourselves self-compassionate around that and identifying, ‘Hey, it’s okay that I’m this way,’ addressing what you need as a parent would to a child. So yeah, a lot of work is around identifying that the way that you are is okay. It’s not better than the non HSP. It’s not less than. It’s just as worthy as anyone else. And it’s really about creating a lifestyle that supports you. So again, thinking about that flower that might need the sunshine, might need ideal soil, shade, whatever it is, what are the things that you need to really flourish and thrive?

Terri Connellan: Mmm, it’s such important work in the world when you think of those beautiful cluster of strengths and gifts that we’ve mentioned. And then the challenges, your work is just so important bringing together personal experience, spirituality and evidence-based practices that, can really support people to get practical strategies for shining the way they are and not being too impacted by the challenges or being able to understand the challenge. A lot of the work I do, and I’m sure the work you do is about being conscious of things that are sort of bubbling away and I guess that’s where intuition comes in. Because often things are unconscious and then we don’t know why we’re going off the rails. Isn’t it? It’s about becoming more aware.

Becky Corbett: Exactly. And actually something just came to mind when you were speaking then I’m not sure who said this quote or where I read it, but someone out there and anyone that’s listening can, if they’ve heard the quote or whatever, I’m alluding to they can chip in. But there’s something said out there about being a highly sensitive person.

So when we’re navigating the world as a highly sensitive person, it’s like we have a pack of 48 colored pencils, whereas the HSP has a pack of maybe 12 colored pencils. So it’s okay to be exploring all of that, but perhaps not all at the same time. We need to appreciate that. Yes, we have these deep rich world, but we need to also honor our energy and our value system and our lifestyle too.

Terri Connellan: That’s a great way of looking at it. And it’s like, yes, you can do all those things, but not all at the one time. And your podcast too explores those areas too. You’ve got some great conversations with people about spirituality, evidence-based practice. And of course, just as on this podcast, personal experience, which is so important.

Becky Corbett: Yes. Yes. I love combining all of them because none of them need to be mutually exclusive either that you don’t need to just be a spiritual person or just be a science person. You can combine all of them to have the best results.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, I think it’s great. So I know you’re also an INFJ in Jung/ Myers-Briggs terms. And as you’re talking and describing all this, I’m thinking, that sounds a lot like NF sort of temperament, and I’m thinking, how does this relate to personalities? So, how does being highly sensitive relate to other personality preferences, like being introverted, intuitive, or feeling, for example.

Becky Corbett: Yes. It’s funny because you don’t necessarily need to be an introvert to be highly sensitive, but so many HSPs I know are also INFJs, which are as you know, the rarest type. So it’s funny. A lot of the people I work with, when I ask them, what’s your personality type? A lot of them say they’re INFJs. So I tend to attract other INFJs into my orbit as well. But yes, it makes sense. There is a strong correlation between the N and the F parts of the personality profiles.

So for people that aren’t aware N is the intuitive part and F is the feeling yes, yes. Which are both strengths to the HSP. We’re all often deep feelers, we’re deep thinkers. And interestingly, the personality preferences leaning towards connecting with emotions of the self and others are more likely to be highly sensitive people.

So if you do have that NF component, as part of your personally preference, there’s probably some high sensitivity there. I don’t know if there’s been many studies actually done on it, but I think it would be really, really interesting to explore. From what I understand, the feeling component is often linked with personality types who are inclined to follow their hearts, their feelings, emotions. They’re often compassionate, warm, and friendly. But then they often uphold the needs of others before their own. Is that right?

Terri Connellan: Yeah, very much so. And the other key things with the NFs, they often idealists. And their key focus is often around values. It’s very values driven. And as you were talking, naturally having that sort of knowledge in my head, I’m hearing you talk about that really strongly, that what we value and what we want to share with the world and how we connect with people and have those deep, meaningful conversations about it.

Becky Corbett: Yes. It’s so interesting. Whereas I know personally preferences, which are probably more T and what is that the T [Thinking]?

Terri Connellan: I’m an NT [Rational/Intuitive, Thinking] I’m I N TJ. So I actually have the same dominant preferences as you, which is introverted intuition. I think we chatted about this on your podcast. But as you say, it sounds like being highly sensitive could cross any of those, but is more likely to be correlated with someone who’s intuitive and feeling in preference.

Becky Corbett: Yes. Yes, I think so. And this is probably generalizing, but perhaps preferences that are more leaning towards facts, figures, logic, probably less inclined to be highly sensitive doesn’t mean that they don’t care. It probably just means that they’re less inclined perhaps to hold the highly sensitive trait. But it’s not impossible by any means, but certainly because intuition and feeling are so deep for the highly sensitive person. I think that makes sense. Yeah.

Terri Connellan: So for example, an ENFP for example, could be highly sensitive. And as we were talking about, that sort of brand or how it manifests for individuals. For that person, there’s an extroverted way it might manifest and P [Perceiving] is often about opening up options, not having closure, having choice. And I guess that for that person being highly sensitive, may have many strengths, but also might manifest as too many options, which can get overwhelming. So is that how you see it play out?

Becky Corbett: Yeah, I think so. I don’t have as much in depth knowledge about Myers-Briggs or Jungian psychology types as you do, but certainly I have noticed that there definitely is a trend or a pattern there. And I like actually what you said about it, having your own brand, perhaps the different Myers-Briggs types are sort of different brands of the highly sensitive person.

So say an ENFJ versus an INFJ might be very, very similar, but the difference there is the extroversion, but they’re still more inclined to be very intuitive, have those deep feelings and, and still to perhaps ruminate and be people pleasers as well.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah, the people pleasing comes into it because it’s about harmony. Particularly for people who have that temperament, it’s very important and some more than others, but have that sense of, everybody being happy about a solution or an outcome and not wanting to rock the boat.

We could talk about this all day and we might have some other conversations on this. I think it’s fascinating. So you’re a nurse by background, but as you mentioned before, you found that hospital-based nursing wasn’t for you and that resulted for you in a time of burnout and unhappiness. So how did you rebuild refocus and rewrite your story to help and inspire others?

Becky Corbett: Yes, I’ve had about three burnouts, I think, through my nursing career. And each time it happens, it’s trying to tell me over and over again, Becky, you’re on the wrong path. Do something different and it can be the case for a lot of other people too, to experience burnout more than once.

So the first time I experienced burnout, really the most significant time was in 2018. As I mentioned earlier, that’s when I first created or came up with the idea of gentle living for myself. So I took some time off from work. I was very unhappy. I took a trip to India and they say that India always has something to teach you. Have you been to India?

Terri Connellan: No I haven’t, but I always love hearing stories about India and visits there.

Becky Corbett: Yes. I had read extensively that India will always teach you something and it may not necessarily be something that you want to learn. And that was my experience. Absolutely. So at the time I was working a lot of shift work, I was saying yes to all these shifts. I was doing double shifts. I was burning out, drinking too much alcohol to calm down, to manage my stress, had next to zero unhealthy habits. And when I was in India, I had planned to go on a meditation retreat and to do my training as a meditation teacher.

And before I went on the retreat, the day before I was due to start… So I’d traveled around India with my partner for a couple of weeks. And then I was going to do this retreat for myself. The day before I just had this intense panic attack. And it came out of nowhere. I didn’t have anyone there. My partner had gone home by that stage. I was in a foreign country and although I felt safe, my surroundings felt quite safe. I found the Indian people to be quite warm and I really loved where I was. It was just this internal state of panic that all of a sudden came out which I’d never experienced before.

And I think because of my mental health training, I knew how to identify a panic attack. So I said to myself, okay, you’re having a panic attack. Just do this, you know, name five things in the environment. Breathe. Do all those practical grounding strategies. In the midst of that panic though, I just thought I need to get out of here. I just had this intense desire to just go home.

And so I spent way too much money to book a flight back home, and I didn’t end up going to this meditation retreat, even though it probably would have done me a lot of benefit and on the flight home, I just thought, gosh, I need to change something. This is too much. Okay. Yeah.

Anyone that’s experienced a life turning event like that would understand that it’s really hard to put into words what was actually going on. But it was just this real intense desire to make a change. So I got home and I just decided, yes, it’s time to overhaul my lifestyle. And that began with quitting the job that was burning me out. When I spoke earlier about stresses and triggers, that was the number one thing that I just had to cut out. I know it’s not always practical to say, just quit your job. And I was lucky at the time that that was something that I was able to do, but it’s really just about mitigating whatever stresses you’ve got going on in your life.

So for someone else that might not have the option of quitting their job. It might be about reducing hours or just finding something else that’s not as triggering to the nervous system. So I ended up going into community mental health and I had another burn out there. I had better balance, but I had another burn out and I still wasn’t feeling that sense of wholeheartedness, which you describe.

And that’s when I really decided that I would create my own business. So I took care of myself first. I made small little changes along the way, and I think that’s really important to highlight to people as well, that it doesn’t need to be this whole, I quit my job and I changed my life overnight. It is a series of small steps.

When we look at other people that may have changed their lives or created a successful business, we tend to think, oh, they have it all. They’ve done it so easily when really it’s just making tiny, tiny, small steps along the way. So yeah, I decided to create my own business as soon as I’d gotten my health back on board and I decided, yes, I want to work with people that are like me because I always felt so isolated in who I was. I suppose I always felt like a little bit of an outsider. I was very good at fitting in and camouflaging, like I said earlier. But I had this sense to really want to connect with other people that were like-minded.

I had this really strange aversion to the word coach though, which is interesting. And it’s funny. I think there’s a lot of words that we need to challenge for ourselves and the meanings that they hold for us. And another one that I mentioned earlier was sensitivity or sensitive having a negative connotation.

So I had this strange aversion to the word coach and I thought, no, I’m not a coach. I’m a mentor, I’m a teacher, I’m a guide. And I just got real with myself and I thought, well, why am I feeling that aversion? And I think it was just because of these perceptions that I had around what coach meant to me. In my head, coach held the connotations of maybe being really upbeat, really rah rah, change your life and change your mindset, change your life, which is not my style at all.

And I think that extreme approach to overhauling things really quickly, made me feel a little bit unsafe, but now I’ve transformed that belief anyhow, and I know that coach could mean a whole different range of things, and I embrace that title now.

So I certainly, I didn’t quit my job and throw it all away, but I steadily built the blocks to get to where I want to be in a way that felt safe to me. So it was just about pivoting. So for anyone else, that’s listening. If they’re experiencing a challenging time, don’t feel like you have to get from a to b straight away. Just take a small shift or pivot with what’s realistic for you. That might be reducing your hours, setting more boundaries, changing up your relationships. And for me, it really started doing the work of taking care of my nervous system. and yes, now I’m just continuing to build and grow and not looking back.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s awesome. And they’re tough times, aren’t they?, when we hit b urnt out or hit the bottom or go through crisis. I certainly can relate to what you’re describing when you just know where you are is not the right path, but trying to work out what the right path looks like can feel quite challenging. But yeah, so agree with you, it’s just building small practices and often we can sort of say, well, I either stay or I go with our job, but there’s plenty of in-between options that people can explore. Like it could be working four days instead of five or working from home a couple of days or just something that helps manage. That maybe opens up some time for us to look at other options.

Becky Corbett: Hmm. That’s right just reducing the stress by even 2% to start with, 5%.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. We get a bit stuck, sometimes cause we’re overwhelmed, but then because we’re overwhelmed, we don’t have the time or the mental headspace to look at other things. Well, thank you for sharing your story. And, that’s really inspiring others and the work that you do is just fabulous. So what does your life look like now for you as a holistic nurse and coach on a day-to-day basis?

Becky Corbett: Yes. So I’m so pleased now that I balance an employed role that I really do enjoy as a health coach actually. So I support people in that role to reduce their risk of chronic disease. But I also run alongside that my business. Which I don’t see it as my side hustle. I see it as my main business and perhaps my employment is my side hustle. So the Gentle Living Nurse allows me to support my beautiful fellow HSPs, which has been amazing because I’ve been able to connect with other highly sensitive people from around the world. And connect to people who never even realized that high sensitivity was a thing.

So I support people through my one-to-one nurture program in which we address nervous system health. I’m looking to build into creating a group program as well, because I think it’s so important that us HSPs find one another, stick together and learn from one another’s experiences. Because like I said, we are in this noisy world where the majority of people are not HSPs.

I have periodic wellbeing workshops to learn more about sensitivity and what it means and how you can draw upon your own sensitivity gifts and learn more about the trait. And as you’ve mentioned as well, I have the Gentle Living Podcast, which you have been a guest on, which was so much fun to speak on all things about high sensitivity and how to nurture your nervous system. So I speak to people on a range of different things to address all the scientific elements, the spiritual elements, the practical elements, all of it, yeah.

Terri Connellan: Oh, that’s fantastic. You have a wonderful newsletter. I always love it when your newsletter lands in my inbox. It’s always like a warm hug around you as you read. We’ll pop the link in and just encourage people to connect with you.

So with the stresses on nurses and healthcare workers with COVID and other issues, what impacts are you seeing on individuals and how are you supporting them? You’ve covered a lot of work that you do, but perhaps there’s extra special things you’re doing in that field at the moment?

Becky Corbett: Yeah. Such an important issue. And I think a big problem is that a lot of nurses and healthcare workers don’t really seek the support that they need. There’s a big culture of not taking care of ourselves and one another. There’s the whole saying of nurses eat their young. So younger nurses come through the healthcare system and older nurses, which are burnt out. They might not even be that much older. They might have just been in the hospital system for five years or so, really give younger ones a hard time. And so they’re just not taken care of well enough, I believe. And the thing is a lot of HSPs are drawn to the areas of healthcare nursing, because they have a desire to make a difference.

But because it’s not the best environment, hospitals, are very noisy. They’re busy. They are overwhelming. They smell bad. They’ve go bad food. They’re not the best places for healing. So it’s understandable that even if you’re not a highly sensitive person, you just burn out quite easily in those fields. We’re losing so many wonderful doctors and nurses and therapists as well having worked through COVID and I’m not sure what the solution to that is.

But I think the entire health care model needs to change for a start. And I think more health care workers need to understand the signs of burnout for themselves. Because it’s very subtle to start with. As I’ve mentioned before, when I was in India, I was feeling exhausted. But realistically, looking back, I was burnt out, but I didn’t really realize it. And so I think identifying those signs of burnout. When I work with people in the healthcare field, it’s about identifying, well, actually are you burnt out? Cause burnout doesn’t need to necessarily mean that you’re physically burnt out.

It doesn’t mean that you can’t move necessarily, although it can be that, but it can also just be the experience of not thinking clearly, brain fog, feeling as though you’ve lost a lot of compassion. Not that you’re not a compassionate person, but compassion fatigue is a really big one for nurses and healthcare workers, because they giving, giving, giving so much of the time, but then they’re not receiving the support that they need.

It’s a really difficult question because I don’t know what the answer is. And I know for myself, the answer was to step away from that field. And I know that it’s not practical for everyone, but perhaps it’s taking those small pivots away, and finding something that’s more sustainable for them.

Terri Connellan: And also, as you said, just being more informed and more conscious of what’s happening to them. I think for all of us, but I’m sure those in the healthcare profession are probably even more likely to, like you said before, push through and think I’m okay, I’ll be right tomorrow. I’ll be better. But it’s just stopping, time out to identify those signs of burnout and that empathetic overload. The old oxygen mask story. Certainly experienced it when I was caring for my mother, a time when I was in that caring role, fairly intensely and that learning for me going through that time was I had to learn to look after myself to be able to care for my mother. And I think we all learn that on our life journey, but for those in the healthcare profession, that must be super intensified, it’s all about caring, isn’t it?

So speaking of self care, one thing I’ve noticed you have done recently, which I’ve been watching and finding really fascinating is that you stepped away from Instagram altogether and you also stepped away from social media generally for a while. So how does social media fit with being highly sensitive and living gently? And how do you manage your energy and choices?

Becky Corbett: Mm. Yes, I did step away from Instagram. It was a bit of an experiment, I suppose, towards the end of last year, I had a bit of a love, hate relationship with it for a while. So I loved the opportunity to connect with people. I connected with you and I connected with so many other wonderful people and I’ve been immersed in other people’s work. And I love the opportunity for collaboration and creativity. But it’s also an overwhelming space with complex algorithms. And I sort of stepped back and I started to think, if this was a physical place, what I want to be stepping into Instagram and immersing in all of this all the time?

So I did a lot of work around, I was really mindful of who I was following and I was trying to implement boundaries about not getting on and scrolling too much and fall into self comparison. But by the same token, it’s easier said than done too. So I found over time that the stuff I was creating wasn’t reaching people like it used to. And the algorithms have changed a lot as well. So there’s this whole thing with Instagram, where you have to be on the stories you need to do Lives, you need to do this and that and make reels.

And it was actually becoming overwhelming for me as a highly sensitive person. I was feeling, and I think it was pressure I put on myself obviously. But I was feeling this pressure that, oh, if I want to connect with people, I’m going to have to make a reel. I’m going to have to post this many times a day. I’m going to have these hashtags. And I got someone to help me out with my social media who helped with the scheduling for a little while, and she was wonderful, but it just didn’t feel right either. I like to be at the front end of creating all of my content and being in charge of that, I suppose.

I just was really cautious with how I was extending my energy and it was taking a bit too much of my time. And I found, I’m spending all this time creating this content. It’s not even reaching the people that I really want it to reach. And I experimented with maybe just diverting my attention to content that I knew was going to have a meaningful difference. For example connecting with my email list, connecting with my community. Having more time and energy for my one to one clients. Spending more time on my podcast as well, because that’s quite, time-consuming spending more time writing, blogging, all of those things.

And I just felt like my creativity flourished. It was sort of like if an HSP maybe steps out of a busy environment, like a shopping centre or a busy workplace, and they go into a little bit of a quiet bubble for a period of time, the creativity is more likely to flow again. And that’s just what I found stepping away from social media for a little bit of time.

And I went back on after a couple of months and I thought I don’t really miss this. I’m going to miss maybe seeing people’s stuff. But I don’t miss it as much as I don’t miss being in a really, really busy environment. And so I’m not probably off forever but certainly I’m enjoying being off it for now. And I think with some of the ethics, and this is going a bit deeper into it, but some of the ethics around social media and how it’s run as well didn’t align with me and my values. And some of it was a little bit icky for me. But I don’t judge people that are on social media and I don’t think I’m better than. Just a choice that you can make as a highly sensitive person. Just as much as you can choose to step out of a relationship that’s not serving you.

Terri Connellan: Good on you for honoring your creativity and your sensitivity and making those choices. I’ve shared that I love social media, but I must admit at the minute. I’m actually finding it a bit draining, which is unusual for me. So I think it is important just to tune into how you’re feeling about it at any one time and managing it, setting up structures, like you said, scheduling, someone else to support you. The nice thing about it is you can choose to turn it on and off. I love the way you described channeling your energy into connecting with your community, podcasting, writing, blogging, because it all takes time. And there’s so many hours in the day.

Becky Corbett: Yeah, that’s right. And I think there’s this big misconception as well that if you’ve got a business, you have to be on social media. And it’s absolutely not the case. It can be one part of it, but it doesn’t have to be. I think it’s a big trick that social media has made us all believe that you have to be on there to be making a difference, but you don’t.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And just to choose for a while. We always want to be nurturing our community that we’ve built, but you know, to really focus on that, I think is really lovely way to look at it.

So a question I’m asking all guests on the podcast, being the Create Your Story podcast is how have you created your story over your lifetime?

Becky Corbett: It’s such a beautiful, reflective question. So I think many of us float along in life and we don’t, we don’t realize that we are the creators. We might have that realization at an early age, and then you may not, or it can be later in life that you realize actually, I am writing my story. And so I think I consciously took more control of this around 2018.

That magic time when I was in India, when I created Gentle Living. Before that, because I have experienced anxiety throughout my whole life, I just sort of thought, just float along thinking it’s just what it is. A lot of people don’t see themselves as in the driver’s seat.

So I have done a lot of work about rewriting my narrative, which has been a key thing. Understanding that no, I’m not too sensitive. I’m not too emotional. I’m not too much spite beliefs I might have had. Whether they came from adults or peers or people at school when I was younger. But actually learning more about being a highly sensitive person has been really, really liberating and empowering so much so that I feel that this is now my life’s work to support other people, to understand sensitivity and what it looks like for them and to come to the same realization that you really can create your own life.

And you really can overcome the challenges of sensitivity too. I think with the negativity bias that a lot of us humans hold or all of us humans hold in our brains where we weigh up the negatives in life a lot more than the positives. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of feeling as though a trait that you may have, or something about you just makes you not a great person or whatever. But really, there is so much more that you can rewrite and understand that yes, there are challenges and sensitivity or whatever it may be.

And you can capitalise or harness those gifts and then create your path going forward. So now I’m trying to set up a life that is supportive of my high sensitivity, going back to the rare flower analogy where I make sure that I have a lot of time in solitude, but also deep, meaningful connections. And I’m doing work that’s meaningful to me. That I’m constantly connecting with my values and doing that deep inner work as well to understand myself better. Setting up my life the way that I want it to be, which which we can do.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I love that as you said, since 2018, particularly taking that time to rewrite your narrative to reframe both yourself and the work that you do in the world and focusing on that mission, that’s so important for you about supporting your own life. To live the way you want to live as a highly sensitive person, but also supporting others based on all your learning and your skills. Yeah. Beautiful.

Another question that I’m checking in with people on. As you know, I wrote Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and share 15 tips in that book. But love adding to that body of work through hearing what people would share as their top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices, especially for women. So I’d love to yours.

Becky Corbett: Yes, absolutely. My top one and I think because it lines up with one of my values, is I very much value learning and growth. And I would guess that probably everyone listening to this podcast values the same. I would say never stop learning, especially about yourself. Because we live in our own body and we deal with our own thoughts every day, I think we think we know ourselves quite well. But in fact, we probably don’t. So explore more about yourself, understand yourself better, whether that’s through personality profiling, whether that’s through exploring the high sensitivity trait, if that’s something that you resonate with. And approaching that, learning with a childlike curiosity, as well is so important.

So approaching everything with a beginner’s mindset, not going in and thinking that, you know it all, because I think when we go in and we think we know it all, that’s when we stop growing. And yeah, I think we have sort of stopped evolving by that stage and we don’t need to close our minds. So never stop learning would be my top one about the self.

The second one would probably be to take a really honest inventory of your life, which is something that was key for me when I got back from India. So you might not be able to change everything at once as we were talking about before. I think when we get real with ourselves, we sit down and we think, okay, what’s going on in my life? What’s not serving me? Even if I can’t change it, writing it down, just really getting clear about what it is.

So whether it’s being unhappy or unfulfilled in your job, your relationship, all those things that we talked about before. Do you need to make some changes? And what’s one small step that you can take each day, whether it’s 1% of where you want to get to or 0.5% of where you want to get to. What can you do each day?

There’s always some action that we can take each day and something that I like to do. I don’t get a chance to journal every single day. I would like to make that more of a habit for myself, still a work in progress. But one thing I try to do each day is just write one step. I can take towards whatever my higher vision is. So that could be something like speaking up for yourself. So you might have something challenging coming up that day. But really, you want to be able to set your boundaries a little bit more and you want to be more authentic to yourself. So it could be speaking up for yourself even though it’s scary. It could be setting some sort of a boundary or could be working on yourself, learning something about yourself, learning something about someone else, taking an honest inventory.

And the third one, which I think is really especially relevant for highly sensitive people, but I would argue it applies to all people is to really expend your energy wisely. Not only to avoid burnout but because we are under an illusion that we need to be productive all the time and it’s just not true. It burns us all out.

And as women, especially, we do have greater fluctuations in our energy than men, perhaps. Say with hormonal cycles, men have more of a 24 hour cycle, whereas women’s fluctuates a lot more of a day to day whether you experience a menstrual cycle or not. Our energy is quite different, so we’re not designed to go, go, go all day, every day. We do need those periods of rest, restoration, balance. It’s like the yang and the yin. Yes. We need to get up and do things, but by the same token, we need to care for ourselves. So how can you take care of your energy a little bit better?

So for myself, I always schedule time to rest, do nothing, have solitude in between periods of busyness. So if I’ve had, even if it’s an enjoyable social day or I’ve seen friends and been a bit of a social butterfly that day, I’ll make sure the next day that I’m resting and not doing anything. Because I know if I keep going, if I socialize the whole entire weekend, I’m just going to burn my wick too short, and I’m going to feeling so exhausted.

So just identify, how can you expend your energy more wisely? Like how generally, most of us would have an idea of financial budget and how much you’ve got to spend. I think we should have the same approach with our energy too.

Terri Connellan: I love those answers. Three really top tips about learning, taking an honest inventory and expending our energy wisely. So some immediate takeaways for people to implement in their lives now, and shift towards more wholehearted living, which is what we’re both about I think in our work in different ways. That’s wonderful. Thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure to chat with you today, Becky. So where can people find out more about you and your work online?

Becky Corbett: Yes, well, the best place to find me is on my website. So you can go to www.thegentlelivingnurse.com. And I’ve got the Gentle Living Podcast as well. So I’m just about to start season three on that. So that’s exciting. But they’re probably the main places to find me. And you can find out more about how to work with me or a bit more about what it means to be highly sensitive as well. I’ve just created a Self-Soothing Guide for the Highly Sensitive Person. How we can take care of ourselves, nurture ourselves, soothe the nervous system, practical strategies to take away. Yes, but thank you so much for having me, Terri. It’s been so much fun and again, it’s been an honour to be here.

Terri Connellan: Thanks so much, Becky it’s been great.