Transcript of podcast interview by Douglas Eby

Douglas Eby: Jenna Forrest has been a committed student of higher consciousness since 2004. She published her memoir Help Is On Its Way to introduce the topic of high sensitivity to mainstream audiences. Today, she runs her own business as a writer and consultant. From her office in Durham, NC, Jenna represents companies, businesses and personal brands as they grow toward enterprising goals, keeping their image and communications credible, earnest, alive and relevant.

She also does interviews and writes articles to help people who want to empower and transcend their high sensitivity. To learn more about Jenna's consulting services or to find links to her book, articles, and empowerment blog, visit JennaForrest.com.

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Douglas Eby: According to Elaine Aron, author of The Highly Sensitive Person, about 15 to 20 percent of people have this trait, which includes being highly aware of both the environment and inner experience. What are some of the main defining qualities of high sensitivity?

Jenna Forrest: People with high sensitivity are very intelligent, intuitive, perceptive, and creative. They're very diligent about caring for others and wanting things to be at peace. Where the difficulty lies is that the world isn't always at peace.

Challenges begin in childhood, when as toddlers and pre-schoolers they pick up subtle signals, thoughts, moods and other sensory energy from home, in the neighborhood, from TV or school, or from their playmates -- and they don't know what to do with it.

In a short time, the world's problems become their own. Millions of highly sensitive people right at this moment are carrying a heavier burden than the rest of society just because they're perceptive of the world's discord, which is coming at them every day from a laundry list of sources.

This is where many sensitive kids and adults are right now, thinking that all these energies going on inside them are because something's wrong with them.

Douglas Eby: And you're saying that is not really true.

Jenna Forrest: Highly sensitive people have a beautiful ability to turn these burdens into art, inventions, writing, acting and other expressions that speak to the hearts of humanity.

They also have powerful, healing intuition that when developed, can be used to nullify the suffering that's been endured by themselves and others.

People who want to heal from unhappiness, disease, trauma and other unwanted circumstances, can progress fast if they work with another sensitive person - like a therapist or teacher -- who has already transcended his or her sensitivity by turning it into empowered awareness.

That coaching relationship can help the sensitive person learn to release what isn't his and protect his energy field. This is especially important when longstanding energies cause a person's health to diminish into chronic pain or illness.

Douglas Eby: So you're saying that coaching, particularly with a sensitive coach can really help sensitive people heal more completely?

Jenna Forrest: Absolutely. All sensitive and intuitive people... we all have the capacity to develop the ability to heal themselves and others with training and practice.

A common trap that sensitive people fall into is trying to help others without having healed themselves - giving energy away with no fullness or energy to draw from. This can be life-threatening. Interestingly, part of this is wrapped up in low self worth.

Sensitive people have to believe they're worth saving, and worth loving. Affirming that they belong in the world and that their self care is of primary importance changes things drastically towards the positive.

Douglas Eby: Yes, it must. Well, many of us have had hurtful and dysfunctional family histories; how does being highly sensitive impact or determine our future personal growth?

Jenna Forrest: I know you've covered a lot of A New Earth, and Eckhart Tolle states that highly sensitive children are particularly affected by their parent's pain and also by the collective pain of humanity.

If those children whose pain and whose parent's pain are not healed through awareness and presence to transmute that pain, the adult child can live out his or her adulthood holding onto an unbearable accumulation of pain.

When this pain is no longer bearable, it can become an intense motivator for some type of breakthrough.

This is when the path of personal growth opens up, and where our consciousness is awakened.

Douglas Eby: So pain, instead of being something to run from, can actually motivate us to change?

Jenna Forrest: It's something for us to use. Transcending what Tolle calls the "pain body" of high sensitivity means no longer building an identity around pain. This is a process that takes time - so it helps to approach developing a new identity as a free and peaceful individual with patience.

Month by month, year by year, as each layer of pain is observed, validated and cleared, the pain body loses its control over our emotions. This is transcendence of the pain that allows the individual to experience the truth and peace of his or her own being.

At this level of peace, high sensitivity is replaced by awareness. In other words, the awake, aware, creative being is fully expressed, no longer held back by the limitations of pain or resistance to life's circumstances.

From this viewpoint, we begin to see that we can now choose how we think and feel about things. We can now choose happiness or sadness and how we view our lives and our world. When we say transcending sensitivity, it's not denying it, it's becoming a different definition.

It's a matter of identifying ourselves with our pain body, versus identifying ourselves as a person of peace and fullness - which is us, standing in our awareness.

Douglas Eby: How do you counsel people who are conflicted about working or being with others, but also need to protect themselves, emotionally?

Jenna Forrest: One thing that really helps is for sensitive people to understanding that there's an energetic field that each person, animal and object, carries. When working with other people feels overwhelming or dangerous, it's because the other's energetic fields are bombarding the body, causing the self to lose its definition as a separate identity.

Without an understanding of what's happening, the sensitive person naturally becomes guarded, defensive, or controlling, ready to protect his or her self.

Eventually, this response might become isolating and exhausting, making the person unhappy.

Douglas Eby: So how do you counsel people to overcome that?

Jenna Forrest: For people who feel vulnerable out in the world, whether or not they are highly sensitive, it can help to read books or getting coaching to learn how to define personal boundaries and develop an empowered energy field.

One technique can be done every morning when you wake up. Sit up in bed or in your chair at the start of the day. Ask Spirit to surround you with an impenetrable capsule of healing light.

Ask for help to release all darkness and negative emotions from the lid of that capsule before it's sealed and imagine that the darkness released has been turned into light. Physically feel all of the residual darkness, doubts, fears, anger, and sadness go out of you.

You may not realize what was in there until you've cleared it.

Now, you're mentally feeling empowered because you've taken charge of identifying and protecting your own energy field.

I just recently read something by Abraham-Hicks that said, "If you will give more attention to what is flowing through you toward something-- instead of what's flowing through someone else toward you, things will get better right away."

In other words, as you go out into the workplace or in social situations, instead of fearing how you'll be affected by other's energies, you can imagine how your love, beauty, and inner peace will positively affect all the people you come in contact with.

There are many ways to turn fear into power. Replacing a need to protect the self with something that feels more strong, centered and confident is the key.

Douglas Eby: That sounds like it can be a powerful shift.

Jenna Forrest: Yes, shift - that's a good word. We're replacing the need to protect ourselves, and can turn into that strong, centered and confident person, and that's the key to this transcendence we're talking about. It becomes feeling comfortable in the world, and being able to do the things we want to do, and are invited to do, and feeling good about it.

Douglas Eby: What would you say are a couple of the most helpful ways sensitive people, especially writers, actors and other artists, can encourage their own success and growth in life without losing the advantages of their sensitivity?

Jenna Forrest: If you were to list the advantages of sensitivity and write down the characteristics of awareness, you would see they're both the same. So as we romance our own awareness daily (meaning watching our thoughts and feelings without analysis or judgment), it automatically attracts success and growth.

This is because we're allowing the truth of the self to surface. There's no more hiding, no more pretending, and no more attachment to false identities.

When writers, actors and other artists can watch the feelings that come up as they work and as they relate to people, their very presence with those feelings is bringing in success.

So here's an exercise to try when a feeling comes up in the body as fear or another unwanted emotion. Say for example, your heart is aching with anxiousness because of tension in one of your significant relationships.

Pull up an imaginary chair and sit down beside that feeling or pain in the body just as you would sit beside a hurting friend. Just be there with it. Offer no judgment or analysis.

You'll notice that the fear, tension and pain goes away very quickly, because it's gotten through to you. It's no longer being ignored. This is a clearing process that dissolves the size and power of emotional pain through acknowledgement.

Douglas Eby: That's really interesting. It sounds like one of the techniques in Gestalt Therapy, in which you imagine a significant person sitting opposite you in an empty chair, and reacting to them - then switching to that chair and imagining their reactions to you. It can be powerful.

But the technique you mentioned - do you find that is helpful with a number of people you work with?

Jenna Forrest: Yes, and I have been using it myself. I find it forces me to be honest about how I'm feeling, and not judge myself.

Another thing that can help is to make an intention to find any help you need, and a technique will come up in something you read or listen to, or you'll meet the right person with the right message.

One thing that works for many people in personal growth is the Paraliminal audio recordings, which are favored by a lot of people who want to quickly re-program their subconscious thought patterns.

I've been using them for a year or two now. I have used the titles Positive Relationships and Prosperity. There are so many more I'd love to. I would love to have the full library, and I intend to. So I'll put that intention out there. (laughs)

I hear that Emotional Freedom Technique is used a lot. It combines affirmations, forgiveness and tapping of trigger points on the body to release old pain. All of these can be used separately or together to release layers of pain while building up strength and ability.

The important thing to remember is that even if you think you're not making progress, you most likely are. But everyone's got their own story, and their own technique.

Just keep trying. There's a cumulative value of doing little things with intention over time. There's nothing right or wrong in the journey. The fact that we're trying means we're growing.

I've had impatience with my process over the years, and what's really helped me is the book "Transcending The Levels of Consciousness" by David Hawkins.

It has helped me gauge my progress. It's really empowering to stand back and get perspective on our lives, and recognize where we are, and be okay with that.

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Related material:

Listen to the audio podcast interview at Inner Talent Interviews.

Jenna Forrest's site

Jenna Forrest's blog: Empowerment Tips for Body, Mind, Spirit, Money, and Relationships

Books:

Help Is On Its Way: A True Story, by Jenna Forrest

Transcending the Levels of Consciousness, by David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.

Article about Steve Pavlina using Paraliminals: Caffeine, anxiety, productivity.

Paraliminal CDs used by Jenna: Positive Relationships, and Prosperity.

Articles on Emotional Freedom Techniques.

Articles by Eckhart Tolle