I Hate Mothers Day

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Creative Coping, emotional resilience, Gifted, gifted relationships, Grief and loss, Highly Sensitive, Holiday Advice, Inspiration, Overcoming Adversity, Perfectionism, Self-Acceptance, Soul Care Leave a Comment

Reflections on How to to Heal our Lives, Feed our Souls, and Grow our Dreams I hate Mother’s Day. Awful though it sounds, I’ve hated mother’s day for a very long time.  I’ve also felt guilty that I hated it. I also know it’s not politically correct, so I’ve not said it out loud. But it’s time to admit it. I hate Mother’s Day. I first hated it when I was in my twenties. I felt hurt and angry at my mother for many things that she had done or not done that I felt hurt me when I was …

Seven Tips to Help the Creative, Sensitive or Gifted Sleep Peacefully

Sharon Barnes ADHD, CASIGY, Creative Coping, Creativity, Gifted, Highly Sensitive, Self-Acceptance, Soul Care Leave a Comment

Sleep can be elusive for anyone, whether you’re 3, 13, 33 or 83. We all have nights where we toss and turn, or get to sleep but we can’t stay asleep. When you’re a CASIGY™ (Creative, Acutely Aware, Super-Sensitive, Intense, and/or Gifted You), you may face challenges with sleep that have a slightly different twist than others face. And if you have ADHD, Anxiety, Depression or other ‘labels’, sleep can be an even greater challenge. Here’s seven tips to help creative sensitive gifted people sleep peacefully. A creative person may have creative ideas show up as soon as their head hits the pillow. …

How CASIGYs Can Become Social-Emotional ACES

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Creative Coping, Gifted, gifted relationships, Highly Sensitive, Self-Acceptance Leave a Comment

Many highly sensitive, creative, gifted or twice exceptional people struggle to find and keep their balance emotionally. It’s not that they don’t have emotions or aren’t in touch with their emotions, but they tell me that they are often find it challenging and even overwhelming to find ways to cope with them and manage them. But CASIGYs can overcome this overwhelm. Here’s how CASIGYs Can Become Social-Emotional ACES! The top three emotional and mental health concerns of gifted people are  Sensitivity Anxiety Depression according to research done and published by SENGifted.org. I have found the same to be true in …

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, …

Seven Strategies to Cope With the DIFFERENCES of Being a Highly Sensitive or Gifted Person. (Part 1)

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, emotional resilience, Gifted, gifted children, Highly Sensitive, highly sensitive child, overexcitibilities, Self-Acceptance Leave a Comment

At least once a week, a highly sensitive or gifted child or adult tells me that they HATE being SO DIFFERENT from other people. They tell me that they feel abnormal and just wish they could be NORMAL! They say things like “I feel like an alien from a different planet!” and ‘What’s WRONG with ME?” Highly sensitive and many gifted people have Central Nervous Systems that are more perceptive and more reactive than that of most people. They perceive many things that go right by most people, from a tiny piece of lint on the floor to the buzz …

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 …

Happy CASIGY™ Mother’s Day

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Contemplative Handwork, Creative Coping, Gifted, gifted relationships, Self-Acceptance

Happy CASIGY™ Mother’s Day! Balancing CASIGY™ Mom’s Own Needs With Your Family’s Needs Today is Mother’s Day in the United States, Australia and many other countries. It’s a day of great joy and also pain for many. If you’re having a tough time with Mothers Day, you may appreciate this post from my archives:  ‘I Hate Mother’s Day!’ When I had young children, my fantasy of the perfect Mother’s Day was for my husband to take the kids and do something fun with them and leave me alone in the house for a change. That never happened, and is not ever …

How to Prevent Holiday Meltdowns!

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Creative Coping, Gifted, Grief and loss, Highly Sensitive, Holiday Advice, Self-Acceptance, Soul Care

Have past holidays been a nightmare due to ‘inevitable’ holiday meltdowns? Do you dread upcoming holiday family gatherings? It may not be a fun thing to admit, but there wouldn’t be so many movie and sitcom comedies about disastrous holiday family gatherings if it weren’t so common. So if you’re not looking forward to holiday family gatherings, know that you’re not alone, and that if you wish, you can let go of any guilt or shame you feel around dreading them. The perfect family does not exist on this planet, from the very first family to the First Family in …

Keys to Preventing or Overcoming Holiday Overwhelm

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Gifted, Hero's Journey, Highly Sensitive, Holiday Advice, Self-Acceptance, Soul Care

The holidays are coming. Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanza are racing towards us. Just saying this starts a sense of overwhelm to creep into me. How about you?  Let’s explore together how to prevent  – or overcome – holiday overwhelm. When we were children, the wonder and magic of the holidays filled us with eager anticipation. As adults, it’s quite another story. There’s gifts to make or buy, homes to decorate, inside and outside; relationships to consider-both interconnecting family relationships and friendships; food to prepare, including considerations of who’s allergic to what, and who’s on which diet this year; budgets to …