We experience life through our senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and spirit. It is also our senses that help to heal us. After all, it's our senses that promote feelings of joyfulness. However, most of us tend to neglect our senses more than we should, which leads to a lack of energy, boredom, dissatisfaction with life, and feeling overwhelmed.
Sitting behind a "screen" all day, whether it's your cell phone or the computer screen at work, is a weak "sight-based" substitute for touching flower petals, listening to bird-song, enjoying tasting a juicy peach, watching the sun rise or set, or seeing your child grin in their sleep, relaxing in a warm, candlelit bath, or exchanging massages with your significant other.
Mind-based therapies, such as positive thinking and counseling, are extremely helpful in alleviating mind-based issues, such as fearful memories, relationship complexities, and decision-making abilities. In contrast, sense-based activities are relaxing and motivating activities based on your senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, and spirit.
Until recently, anxiety disorders were typically thought of as mind-based, meaning thought-based, as in Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), where individuals can't mentally cope with something they've experienced. Typically, mind-based therapies are considered in these instances.
Here's something else to consider. Mind-based therapies will never erase genetic sensitivity or cure the highly sensitive individual of sensitivity or stressful symptoms and syndromes caused by genetic sensitivity. Being highly sensitive is not a mind-based condition. If you're a Highly Sensitive Person (and even when you're not), engaging in sense-based activities to manage stress and ease stress-related conditions is essential. When you're highly sensitive, you have a body-based "condition" where your brain and body overreact to stimuli (or the lack of stimuli) due to genetic predisposition. Your thoughts are not the catalyst for your anxiety when you are genetically sensitive. Your senses are.
Being genetically sensitive can cause some of the same symptoms of mind-based anxiety disorders, such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and phobias. Sensitivity is often confused with having General Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Because GAD may overlap sensitivity, mind-based therapies, in addition to sense-based treatments, may be beneficial. However, sense-based therapies should be the first rule of thumb for calming and healing the body when you are highly sensitive and overwhelmed. Why? Sensitive people tend to "shut down" their senses as a means of self-preservation, which leads to hypersensitivity (increased anxiety and depression). So do people with GAD and PTSD. For this reason, it can be much more challenging to bounce back from stress. Anxiety and intense overwhelm can develop when using only mind-based therapies.
It's also essential to mention that trauma, chronic stress, near-death experiences, abuse (sexual, emotional, verbal), or witnessing acts of violence can also create extreme sensitivity or agitation that causes an individual to shut down and avoid their senses.
Most people bounce back from stress or trauma once they give themselves time to wrap their minds around an issue, make decisions leading to positive outcomes, or get the rest they need. But for authentic HSPs (born with sensitive amygdalae) and those who have shut down their senses, healing will likely never wholly occur without implementing sense-based activities.
So, what does it mean to shut down and stop using your senses?
When you're chronically anxious, depressed, or in pain, it's not as easy to bounce back from stress. It's normal to begin to avoid things you used to do because you lack the energy or find less joy in them (known as numbness). Numbness is a survival mechanism, a means of not feeling. However, when numbness is ongoing, it leads to increased avoidance and more numbness, sometimes to the point of doing nothing all day unless you have to. Sense-based activities can help you engage in your world again (even from a social distance). In contrast, mind-based therapy focuses primarily on what's happening in your mind (your thoughts and feelings).
Sense-based activities work faster than minded-based therapies because most people react more strongly to their senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and spirit. Sense-based activities help prevent and relieve ongoing stress by providing an outlet for negative emotions whenever you feel stressed, bored, or as if something is missing in life. So, how do you know which sense-based activity is suitable for you? Your intuition will draw you to it.
Whenever you feel antsy, bored, or as though something is missing in life, choosing a sense-based activity from the options below will help balance your energy, reduce ongoing stress, and provide a fresh perspective. Because of the pandemic, a few activities may not yet be "COVID-appropriate". Try getting creative or ignore those for now and choose others you are intuitively drawn toward.
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