Alane Freund – Highly Sensitive Person’s Life Redesign 2023

During this intensive 7-week course, you’ll:

• Experience hands-on tools that will support you in building trust with other participants as accountability partners
• Design a life that’s compatible with living as a strong, empowered, sensitive person who puts their own mental health and sanity first
• Learn to use your high sensitivity as an asset in redesigning your life and enjoying close relationships
• Appreciate your gifts as a highly sensitive person and deepen your understanding of who you most naturally are
• Create new habits and reset your life by developing a deep toolbox and accountability with your fellow participants
• Experience the deep comfort and acceptance that comes from being in community with others who are also highly sensitive, which can help you move out of isolation and self-doubt
• Become an expert on the HSP trait, and learn how to talk about this trait with others
• Reframe and heal from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)
• Discover coping mechanisms for dealing with overstimulation
• Find new ways to improve your close relationships — and explore what to look for in choosing the right career
• Expand your clinical competencies and support strategies if you’re a clinician working with HSPs
• Continuing Education Credit for licensed practitioners is available for this course through Cassidy Seminars

Can’t make it live? After each class, video and audio recordings are available to download and watch anytime.

Twenty percent of us are highly sensitive people (HSP). It’s a valuable and innate trait — many great artists and thinkers are HSPs, and we’re generally highly conscientious and intuitive. But there are also challenges. HSPs are easily overstimulated and more affected by a troubled past and by present stressors.

The path to thriving and redesigning our best lives begins with developing a level of expertise in understanding exactly what the sensitivity trait is, what it means, and the ways the brains of HSPs are different. Sensory Processing Sensitivity is the scientific name for this trait, which has been documented in at least 100 species and is hypothesized to exist in all species, even fruit flies.

We’ll explore the how and why of the 80-20 rule of genetics. At the end of this module, you’ll be developing the expertise required to explain the trait and the science to your family and community.

In this session, you’ll:

• Learn a gratitude practice focused on living a great life as a highly sensitive person
• Develop expertise on the trait of high sensitivity
• Question and challenge the scientific research so you’re comfortable speaking about it with others
• Use and understand the Are You Highly Sensitive self-assessment — with special considerations for extroverts and male-identified HSPs
• Begin telling the new story of your life as an HSP — the plot, characters, and outcomes are up to you
• Explore practices to settle the nervous system and reduce empathy overwhelm
• Share the beginnings of your story with another HSP and discover that you’re not alone
• Become acquainted with the Hallelujah Breath, a simple physical exercise practice for preventing anxiety and overstimulation (including a video link you can use daily between sessions)

Some people say that highly sensitive people aren’t resilient, and while it’s true that we’re more impacted by our surroundings — which can create anxiety and make us appear less resilient — our ability to access deep resilience is actually greater than the 80% who don’t have this trait. The trick is knowing how to access and implement our growth and resilience potential.

Resilience comes from the understanding and conscious implementation of what’s called differential susceptibility. Functional MRI studies have shown just how profoundly the brains of HSPs are unique and reactive. Thanks to this reactivity, HSPs have stronger reactions to stress, especially in childhood — they are “differently susceptible.”

The good news and the bad news are the same: While HSPs are more easily stressed, they are also most susceptible to positive influences thanks to their strong empathy. Many empaths are also highly sensitive, but in this case we’re talking about the empathy of all HSPs.

In this module, you’ll:

• Come to understand anxiety’s special role in the life of HSPs
• Learn a 60-second HSP-friendly mindful living technique called Mindful Doors
• Hear why meditation doesn’t work for HSPs, at least not the way most people meditate
• Explore a meditation technique designed for the sensitive, reactive, empathic brains of HSPs
• Experience Hard Style Plank, a physical exercise practice for preventing anxiety and overstimulation (including a video link with a 2-5-minute practice you can use daily between sessions)

Do you find yourself becoming overwhelmed and overaroused when the people around you seem just fine? What’s happening is that you’re noticing so much more and processing all that input, a justifiable reason to become overwhelmed.

Now imagine yourself at age three, five, or seven (or any time in childhood). What must it have been like to be a small, powerless child soaking in everything — everything people say and do and feel… everything each of your senses perceives… and everything happening around and within you? If the word that comes to mind is overwhelming, you would be right.

And what about your parents? Did they sign up for raising a child who saw and felt everything so deeply? Chances are high they didn’t quite value your sensitivity. Maybe you were part of the generation that was told to toughen up. Maybe you were diagnosed with ADHD? Perhaps you were prescribed stimulants that made it all worse.

It’s time to reframe and heal that child’s life and perspective so you can flourish in your life today. This isn’t your typical inner child work. This is about the sensitive experience and temperament.

In this module, you’ll:

• Explore the role of high sensitivity in neurodiversity and giftedness
• Discuss how neuroplasticity shapes and reshapes the brain of the highly sensitive child you once were
• Learn a 60-second HSP-friendly mindful living technique, Green Leaves
• Explore the Listen Like a Horse meditation technique
• Receive the HSPush-up physical exercise practice to prevent anxiety and overstimulation (including a video link you can use daily between sessions)

In this course, we’ll reframe past trauma experiences through the lens of the trait. Suddenly, we’ll know that we are neither crazy nor alone. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) often lead highly sensitive people into medical or mental illnesses — in this session, we’ll explore the role of health and illness in the life of a successful HSP.

Thriving as a highly sensitive person is all about leaning into past challenges and embracing them with deep compassion. We’ll discover that success is about prior and proper preparation.

Highly sensitive people are likely to explore many different priorities and careers, some wonderful and some awful, yet none of them may be a long-term fit. Sometimes the career or path we love is too overstimulating or exhausting. With deep processing, we may find that we’re slower to change our minds, or struggle with attaining the success we envision.

In this module, you’ll:

• Explore the role of mental illness in the life of HSPs
• Have the opportunity to ask questions about medication and differential diagnosis during Q&A
• Discover paradoxical interventions to turn the strive into a thrive
• Learn Car Keys, a new 60-second HSP-friendly mindful living technique
• Learn Talk to the Hand, a new meditation technique designed for the sensitive, reactive, empathic brains of HSPs
• Explore a simple physical exercise practice for preventing anxiety and overstimulation, Nitric Oxide Dump (including a video link you can use daily between sessions)

Highly sensitive people were born to be advisors, philosophers, healers, creatives, thinkers, and shamans. Where is your shaman’s hut? We’ll explore exactly what that means in your own life.

An HSP can live in the middle of Manhattan or off the grid in the Rocky Mountains as long as they design a life that honors their gifts. Most modern, Western cultures no longer honor the shamans in their midst. Whether you surround yourself with helpers or dial back your life to the point that you don’t need them, honoring your reactive and finely tuned nervous system is not optional.

Tools for thriving and training that brain of yours are front and center this week.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn about the “rhythm and routine” life plan
• Explore the Window of Opportunity — and how to prevent the spinning brain
• Discover certain non-negotiables for HSPs
• Experience Drink Up, a 60-minute HSP-friendly mindful living technique
• Learn Prayer Beads, a meditation designed for the sensitive, reactive, empathic brains of HSPs
• Explore Table It, a simple physical exercise practice for preventing anxiety and overstimulation (including a video link you can use daily between sessions)

I do enough, I have enough, I know enough… I AM ENOUGH. Yes, you are. What does it take to believe it? You are enough as the author of your own story. As you write and design that story, you step into your personal power, becoming the shaman of your own life. Some might even call your sensitivity your superpower.

The beauty of empathic and sensitive people is that while we’re unlikely to abuse that power, at times we might be hesitant to use it. Wielding personal power in relationships means you’re the one who draws the line. You find yourself tapping into unlimited resources and attracting personal and professional relationships that sustain and nourish you.

We’ll explore empowerment practices, including abundance, spirituality, and self-awareness as totems to sustain us and our lives. It’s time to break through the denial and create new habits.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn Alane’s program, Speaking Volumes, to improvecommunication in relationships
• Absorb the truth that spiritual health is the key to your mental health
• Discover how to resource, take sabbaticals, and balance social engagement with solitude for your wellbeing
• Discover a 60-second HSP-friendly mindful living technique, Knock Knock
• Learn Analytics, a meditation designed for the sensitive, reactive, empathic brains of HSPs
• Discover a simple physical exercise practice, Get Up, for preventing anxiety and overstimulation (including a video link you can use daily between sessions)

After this intense and intimate journey together, we’ve created a strong sense of empowerment as individuals and as a community.

Through this journey of building community, accountability, and skills, you may feel better and stronger about your high sensitivity and life in general. Now it’s time to take it on the road and venture into the environments that have challenged you in the past.

With your deep, full toolbox, you’ll explore emotional leadership as the gifted and empathic sensitive being your genetics designed you to be. We’ll strategize and plan for the beautiful life you have redesigned.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn what it means to be an invisible minority and come out of the closet, while addressing the stigma attached to being an HSP
• Explore how emotional leadership is a blessing (and your birthright)
• Gather talking points, see yourself as part of the speaker’s bureau, and embrace mentoring and HSP leadership
• Discuss avocation and vocation
• Learn Left Bank, a 60-second HSP-friendly mindful living technique

In each week’s modules, you’ll:

• Receive journaling prompts to become the author of your story
• Be introduced to an intimacy practice for developing personal leadership and preventing empathy overload
• Learn a new breathwork technique specifically designed for preventing overarousal and returning to an optimal level