FREE Webinar: How CASIGYs™ Can Thrive Through the Holidays

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Creative Coping, Creative Healing, emotional resilience, Existential Depression, Gifted, gifted children, gifted relationships, Highly Sensitive, highly sensitive child, Holiday Advice, Inspiration, Jungian psychology, Self-Acceptance, Soul Care Leave a Comment

Are you Creative, Super-Sensitive and/or Gifted, AKA a CASIGY™?  Have Previous Holiday Seasons left you feeling frustrated or hurting emotionally? Are you Thinking, “THIS YEAR the Holidays MUST be BETTER!”? Here’s Hope and Help from Sharon M. Barnes, MSSW, LCSW, Therapist for Sensitive and Gifted.  I’m giving a Free Webinar: How CASIGYs™ Can Thrive Through the Holidays! Join me in this Free Webinar, where you’ll learn: Life Lessons We Can Learn From Classic Holiday Movies That Can Help Us Improve Our Holiday Experience as CASIGYS How To Bring Soulfulness In, So Your Holidays Have Depth And Meaning How To Sensitively Navigate Difficult …

What Can a Creative Sensitive or Gifted Person Do When You Don’t Feel Grateful

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Creative Coping, Gifted, Highly Sensitive, highly sensitive child, Holiday Advice, Self-Acceptance Leave a Comment

What can a Creative Sensitive or Gifted Person do when you don’t feel grateful, especially on the annual day set aside for giving thanks? If you’re like most CASIGYs™, you probably feel guilty about it. Beyond that, the short answer is that you can feel what you feel! And then you have the opportunity to deal with how you feel.The long answer is, well, the rest of this post. What do I mean, “you feel what you feel”? When you don’t feel grateful when you think you should, that usually means that you’re feeling something else. Maybe you’re feeling anxious, …

How to Face Bad Dreams – for Highly Sensitive or Gifted Children & Adults

Sharon Barnes Contemplative Handwork, Creative Coping, dreams, Gifted, gifted children, Highly Sensitive, highly sensitive child Leave a Comment

Not long ago, two sensitive, gifted children came in on the same day telling me some recent bad dreams.  These were intense sessions. It was hard for them to tell their bad/scary dreams. Their moms were also worried about what these dreams might reveal – about their child’s psyches, about their parenting, about what the dreams might mean. Bad, scary dreams are hard for anyone to deal with, especially children. And when you add sensitivity and intensity into the mix, well, strap on your boots, we’re getting serious here! We did unravel these dreams, and their possible meanings. I helped …

Pandora’s Box of Emotions

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Creative Coping, emotional resilience, Gifted, gifted children, Highly Sensitive, highly sensitive child Leave a Comment

As you may recall, the myth of Pandora’s Box involved a Forbidden Box which was not supposed to be opened, but of course WAS opened, and then unleashed Evil . . . . and finally, Hope.  We each have similar boxes; ours are often boxes of emotions. I remember standing with my father in his home office when I was a young adult. We were talking about life, and coping with emotions. I told him that getting in touch with my emotions had not helped me feel better at all! Instead, getting in touch with my emotions was making me …

CASIGY Coping Tools-Steps 5, 6, 7

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Creative Coping, emotional resilience, Gifted, gifted children, Highly Sensitive, highly sensitive child Leave a Comment

Here’s More CASIGY™ Coping Tools This continues Strategy #4 in the series, “7 Strategies to Cope With the Differences of Being a Creative, Highly Sensitive or Gifted Person”. We’ve been talking about CASIGY coping tools (CASIGY™ = Creative, Acutely Aware, Super-Sensitive and/or Gifted You-s). CASIGY coping tools are ones that are suited to your creativity, sensitivity, intensity and intelligence.   In my previous blog post of this series, I introduced the Personal Power Pyramid, a collection of CASIGY coping tools. They help CASIGYs develop Emotional Resilience and build Emotional Core Strength™.   In that post, we then discussed the first 4 …

Creative Coping Tools for CASIGYs

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Creative Coping, emotional resilience, gifted children, Highly Sensitive, highly sensitive child Leave a Comment

Creative Coping Tools for CASIGYs and Skills to Use Them. This begins Strategy #4 in the series, “7 Strategies to Cope With the Differences of Being a Creative, Highly Sensitive or Gifted Person” Creative Coping Tools and skills to use them comprise Phase I of the CASIGY Cycle of Encouragement that I mentioned in my previous blog post. As a CASIGY, you may feel the need for coping tools suited to your creativity, sensitivity, intensity and intelligence. You may have tried many other coping tools for yourself or your children, only to find them ineffective or even aggravating to an …

How to Help Your Creative, Sensitive or Gifted Kids Weather Emotional Storms

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Creative Coping, emotional resilience, Gifted, gifted children, Highly Sensitive, highly sensitive child Leave a Comment

How to help your creative, sensitive or gifted kids weather emotional storms is a frequent dilemma for parents, grandparents and teachers of CASIGYs (Creative, Acutely Aware, Super-Sensitive, Intense, and/or Gifted You-s). Betty, mother of an eight year old gifted boy recently asked me “When my son comes home from school, I can tell he’s upset by something that happened. I ask him to tell me about it. When he does, he gets even more upset than he already was. I don’t want to make him so upset. But I don’t want to ignore his upset either. Do I wait for …

Happy Holidays – as the light returns to the North

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Creative Coping, Holiday Advice, Inspiration Leave a Comment

Happy Holidays! No matter what religious holiday each of us celebrates this time of year, we all share the change of the seasons. CASIGYs (Creative, Acutely Aware, Super-Sensitive, Intense and/or Gifted You-s) may feel more connected to this phenomenon and be impacted by it than do many others.  For those in northern climates, the light of the sun begins to increase again. In ancient times, this was often celebrated with outdoor bonfires. In winter’s deep darkness, we humans celebrate the light, as if to reassure ourselves that the light of the sun will actually return. Likewise, when we are in …

Happy Halloween

Sharon Barnes Creative Coping, Creative Healing, Grief and loss, Holiday Advice, Inspiration, Jungian psychology, Overcoming Adversity, Self-Acceptance, Soul Care Leave a Comment

Today is Halloween – the one day in the year that we dress up in costumes, put on masks and . . . . well, we pay attention and even homage to parts of ourselves that we hide and put away the rest of the year. Psychologically speaking, this is a very healthy and an even necessary thing, especially for highly sensitive people, which, of course, includes many creative and gifted people as well. For it is when we repress, or pretend that we don’t have darkness within ourselves, that it goes underground. Pretending that we have no darkness inside …