Are you super-sensitive? Here’s how to make good use of it!

Posted on April 22, 2017 by Leontien Reedijk

Are you extremely sensitive? Are you one of those people that burst into tears easily, over all sorts of seemingly little things, while people stare at you, telling you that it isn’t that bad or just calling you a crybaby? Do you feel ashamed about being so emotional, and wish you wouldn’t be like that? Well, here you might find some reasons to change your mind about that!

This post is inspired by one of my clients, a young woman who came for a massage in the Karma Shack. I will not divulge her real name, but when she reads this she will immediately recognise her story, without a doubt. Here I’ll call her Kitty, just because she loved Pumpkins, and he loved her, at first sight.

If you ever read the FAQ section on this website, or the blogpost I wrote on the topic of FAQ on Little Corn Island, you know that I try to be silent during massages. But it doesn’t always happen. With some clients there just has to be a conversation, for a variety of reasons that I won’t discuss here because they are not relevant to the story. super-sensitive people cry often

Kitty was such a client. The conversation just had to be. We spoke about many things, mostly just light topics. Asked about her job or field of work, she told me she was between jobs, figuring out what she really wanted to do most. At that point we moved on to another topic and didn’t go into the options that she was considering.

Much later during the massage, she burst into tears when she was talking about a few animals she had seen here on the island: a skinny horse, a dying puppy, maybe a cat…. She apologised for her tears and beat herself up for being oversensitive. She said that she could even become upset and cry over the fact that she can cry about anything. Well, once you go down that lane, you’d never stop crying, right?

I stopped her in the middle of her apology and told her that there was nothing wrong with showing emotions and being sensitive. It is a human trait (and right!). Some people are very sensitive, others are unable to show any emotion at all ever, and then there are hundreds of shades from teariness to stoicism in between those two extremes. Then I asked her: who has ever decided that crying over little things is bad? I never had a vote in that, did she? She laughed through her tears.

Actually, in these times of being numbed out by all the violence and negative news of the media, being sensitive is in my opinion a very positive trait. More people should try and tap into their sensitive side, because it could spark their passion about something. It may make them ask themselves or others some serious questions about the way they live their lives and the way things are going in this world. Maybe they would even stand up for a cause of some sort and make a difference in this world, instead of just passively consuming whatever gets put in front of them on social media and TV. They could start with a sensitivity-rights movement to get things moving a little bit, just like there are a gay-rights movement, and an animal rights movement.

Kitty agreed with me that sensitivity is a positive trait in these mind-numbing times. Then she said that she could probably win a contest with her crying.

The next thing that happened was the funniest thing ever.

My mind fired into a major bout of creative imagining, and this is what came out: the marketability of sensitivity. It could be Kitty’s new career.

First of all she could offer trainings in sensitivity management. Knowing when to tap into it, when to put a lid on it, when to let it show and when to hide behind your hair. This would be for overly sensitive people.

The other end of the spectrum would be trainings to develop sensitivity. How to stimulate it, how to show it, how to use it in the right moment as an emotional outlet. How to let your sensitivity inspire you into action. Teaching the cold people to be more sensitive.

Both trainings could be made into special retreats, preferably on a small tropical island, like for example Little Corn Island, and should include a couple of sessions in the Karma Shack, always good to get a bit closer to your true self.

Then of course there could be books, a website, a blog, audio-recordings, online-trainings and individual online coaching sessions. I could swear Hay House would love it all! Oh, and of course there would be sensitivity yoga and sensitivity meditation, the latest of the latest.

Sensitivity is the new black.

The other end of this new sensitivity hype would be a TV-show: The Sensitivity Contest. Contestants would be exposed to certain cues in different settings, each with a judge on their side, timing the start and finish of the tears running. Cues could be pictures of skinny puppies, a father holding his newborn child, an older couple embracing, or a young woman sitting on her own in a bar. Then the contestant would be told some really good news, or maybe some slightly less happy news, or random world news of all sorts. Also some compliments, a few mild criticisms and different types of music, smells and touch. A small gift or two, a favour done to them…..so many ways to set them off, if I may believe Kitty. The contestants would be exposed to some of these cues in public, for example in the studio in front of an audience, at home in the company of friends and family or at work amidst co-workers. Other cues would be given in an isolated situation, where nobody could see them cry (apart form the camera). There might even be a hidden camera part to this show, to make it reality TV too. The person that cries quickest, longest and most often under all circumstances wins the contest. Of course there can be prizes in subcategories, so that there will be more tears of joy and less of disappointment when it comes to the finals.

I can see some of the major TV-stations wanting to buy this concept to make millions!

Kitty can stop looking for a new job, we just invented her new career. She would be working with what she is really good at, that is being sensitive. She is passionate about it (it makes her cry), so she will be very successful with it! Go for it, Kitty!

I told her that she could take all the credit for this amazingly original idea, I will not ask any royalties or sue her for stealing my idea when she is making the billions. I hereby hand it over to her, to use it to her best ability. I mean, she is the sensitive one, so she has earned this. If it weren’t for her tears during the massage, I would not have come up with this idea.

I did ask her to invite me to all the opening nights of her trainings and retreats and to the presentations of her books and of the prizes she will win with both her books and her TV-show. I will stand in the corner and smile, and I may even have a little tear in the corner of my eye. I hope she will not forget that afternoon massage in the Karma Shack, when she gets all famous.

I wrote this post to make sure that the idea will not be claimed by anyone else. Whoever reads this and thinks they can get ahead of Kitty in making this idea reality will have to deal with me. Only I know the real identity of Kitty, and any publisher or TV-station that wants to buy this concept will have to check with me if they are dealing with the real Kitty, because otherwise there will be a huge lawsuit. It’s all about Karma, isn’t it?

(this post is published with the consent of Kitty).

The cat that changed his mind – a true story, part 5

Posted on April 10, 2017 by Leontien Reedijk

This episode finds you at your new home. You instantly made the big mistake of flagging your territory inside the house as well. That definitely made you a little less welcome, and my neighbours banned you to the porch for good, but you seemed alright with that anyway. Your legs were getting stronger, and you were venturing into the garden every day, and stayed away a little longer every time. You were slowly getting back to being a proper bush cat, always outside. But you had changed your mind about one thing: it was very convenient that you had a plate of food on that porch waiting for you every day, plus some treats whenever they had some tasty leftovers from their dinner. Life wasn’t too bad for you, a couple of months after you dragged yourself near-dead into that hotel-kitchen. It had been worth the humiliating effort of asking for help.

Pumpkins the cat gets chased by dogs Having said that, you got into trouble again. Somehow two dogs got you cornered when you had ventured off the deck. My neighbours caught them in the act of tearing you apart, literally. One had hold of your hind legs, the other of your head, and they were pulling in opposite directions. You “looked three feet long” as my neighbour described it agitatedly after they had bravely rescued you from the bloody chops of these ferocious canines. Result: re-traumatised cat with several puncture wounds and cuts. Where had we seen that before?

Anyway, back on the porch you licked your wounds, stayed low and just recovered again, like you did before. A little more skittish for a bit, but after a while you were just back to your “normal” self. Did I ever tell you that we have a dog on this island that’s called Trouble? I don’t think she gets into a whole lot of trouble herself, but jeez, that name would fit you well, Pumpkins!

So after this incident my questions were: how do you get yourself into so much trouble…..do you not see the danger coming because you’re partially blind or deaf or otherwise impaired? Or do you not consider it danger? Did the Creator not fit you out with a healthy sense of danger-assessing abilities, the way they usually come with a complete cat-kit? Do you just have no concept of danger at all? Are you a total dare-devil? Or do you have such a big ego that you think that you can handle everything, and no cat or dog or even two or three dogs can bring you down? Maybe you are just plain suicidal but not very successful at it? I am not sure what is the answer to these speculations. Let’s keep it on a mixture of all of them. Although, on second thought, if you were suicidal you wouldn’t have dragged yourself into that kitchen. So fair enough, we’ll scratch that option.

Life goes on even if you're wounded Recently I was reading a book by Wayne Dyer, such a wise man. Illustrating the concept of living in the moment he described how he had once been on a safari where he watched a zebra peacefully grazing and chewing her food. She seemed very graceful and calm, notwithstanding the fact that one of her legs had been chewed off by lions the night before, but she had somehow escaped. Since there was nothing she could do to change the situation of her probable near-death, she just went on with what she would always do in the morning: have breakfast, and then go for a drink at the watering hole. When I read that story, I couldn’t help but think of you, Pumpkins. Even though you are severely damaged at times, you just go on with life, as normal as possible.

We humans could learn a lesson or two from animals here, couldn’t we? Whenever we get “severely damaged”, we curl up in bed and cry and whine and feel very sorry for ourselves and hope that everybody else also feels very sorry for us, and how are we ever going to get over this misery? Often we need counselling to get over all our traumatic experiences, or store it at cell level in our bodies which then start aching or develop chronic diseases……Right? Well, as the zebra and Pumpkins have been illustrating, there are other ways to deal with trauma…… Just saying.

If you missed earlier episodes of Pumpkins’ story, you can read them here.

This no-fail recipe explains why you are suffering

Posted on March 9, 2017March 9, 2017 by Leontien Reedijk

fear of change A simple, no-bake 3-ingredient recipe that anyone can make in less than 1 minute. Whether you like it or not, that is totally up to you.

Ingredients list:

1 cup of this quote by Heraclitus: “The only constant in life is change.”

1 cup of this old Hebrew proverb: “Change can happen in an instant, but the resistance to change can last a life-time.”

1 cup of (only the thought of) change of your own choice ( for example a new job, a divorce, a new exercise regime or diet, going back to school, an accident, loosing someone close, moving to a different place).

change Directions:

Fold all three ingredients gently into the recipient of your consciousness. Stirring is optional if you want to throw in an extra dash of upheaval. And Voila!: most likely you will be experiencing a variety of unsettling emotions, ranging from just slight and short-lived unease (when you’re getting a new hairstyle), to full-blown anxiety-attacks, anger bursts, depression or great sadness. All of them causing you to suffer. And nothing hasn’t even changed yet!

Change, it ain’t fun for most of us, is it?

Change (and the resistance to change) is one of the main pillars of my blog. In these pages I will regularly explore the many ways in which change manifests itself and the many roles that it can take on for us, hoping to inspire you to look at all those things in your life that you could change to make it happier, healthier and more fulfilling.

I bet you have heard this quote a million times: “Change is the only constant”. It is so true. There is no way denying that one! It’s the cycle of life: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Everything with a spark of life in it gets born, grows, blossoms at its peak, withers and dies. Even concrete will crumble, stainless steel will get unstable, sand dunes shift, mountains get pushed higher by sheer tectonic force, or lower from the never-ending grind of little grains of sand.

Nothing is forever.

We all know it, but in our way of living, behaving and thinking we are constantly in denial of that natural law of change. We don’t want to grow older, get sick and die. We don’t want to lose our jobs, our loved ones, our favourite TV-show, our health, our wealth. And we never ever want to throw away our favourite sweater. EVER! Even just thinking of those changes can make us unhappy. So there we are: let’s be totally open and honest about it: we d
on’t like change.

The second quote in my recipe rubs this in so clearly: ‘Change can happen in an instant, but it is the resistance to change that can last a lifetime.”

It is this last quote, that is less known, that spells out for us the recipe of our own suffering. Our resistance to change is what creates all our emotional upheaval.

Resistance to change……where does that come from? Resistance rhymes with clinging, right? Well, you know what I mean. So why do we cling? Why do we so badly want to hold on to all these things that we have or are, unwilling to let go of the old and familiar and try on something new?

In comes the Comfort Zone, one of my favourite topics (it was on my list as a potential name for this website, but already taken). I will talk regularly about our comfort zone too, because it is such an important aspect of our lives. It is the nursery of our well-being. At least that is what we want to believe. Comfort feels good, warm, cozy, relaxed, familiar.

No stress, no pressure, no worries, no hurry.

Your favourite clothes, your favourite corner of the couch with your favourite food and drink at hand, your favourite person or pet at your side, your favourite music or movie playing……isn’t that what first comes to mind when you think Comfort Zone? All those very familiar things, always the same? Always the same……we don’t want them to change. Every day the same. The security of knowing exactly what is coming. Nothing unexpected to be feared.

We humans are such creatures of habit, aren’t we? Your daily routines, your work, your relationship…..all very much within the comfort zone. Life seems easy, when you know exactly how and when to do something and what to expect. But routines could easily become ruts, and that already sounds a little less comfortable. Ruts can get ugly, right?

In ruts, you get stuck.

resistance to change OK, I plead guilty, I have just made your comfort zone probably a little uncomfortable……on purpose. Why? Let’s look at that same comfort zone not as a nice, cozy, protective shell keeping the scary unknown out, but as an imposing, restrictive prison cell, keeping you from reaching for the unknown good stuff out there…? What if it is holding you back from exploring new horizons, new possibilities and opportunities, new talents; from personal growth? What if the happiest and most fulfilled version of yourself, your-best-you, doesn’t live in your comfort zone? In the Karma Shack blog I will regularly explore that possibility in depth. For now I want to finish with my third favourite quote:

“Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.” (Neale Donald Walsch)

See you there!

If you want to read a bit more about change and the resistance to change, check these links: