Life in 2025 — It's not Easy!

The month of January always holds a little extra meaning for me. It was in January of 1997 I more or less accidentally stumbled upon Elaine Aron's "The Highly Sensitive Person" at a Borders Books and Music store in Austin, Texas.

It's hard to believe it has been 28 YEARS...

I have learned a lot in the course of those 28 years, not just about myself, but also from the thousands of fellow HSPs I have had the pleasure and privilege to meet on this journey... both online and face-to-face.

We are a pretty amazing bunch of people, and we are definitely "of another species!" I say that only somewhat facetiously, because most of us really do see and parse the world differently from the mainstream.

So here we are, at the beginning of another new year, and somehow we have also made it one-quarter of the way into a new millennium. I am not going to talk about "New Year's Resolutions" here, because I feel they are one of those cultural inventions that just result in our placing undue pressure on ourselves (stress) and then dinging our self-esteem (stress) when we fall short of our plans.

I prefer to simply recognize that it is time for something in my life to change, make a plan... and then simply make the changes, without much fanfare or telling anyone. If someone notices something has changed, great!

Whereas I realize that some people feel motivated by a "public announcement", I personally find that I just get stressed out by focusing too much on "other people's opinions" rather than just quietly executing my own plan.

A large part of managing myself as an HSP revolves around simply not participating in the situations that most likely will lead to overwhelm and overstmulation.

As a wise person once told me: "NO is a complete sentence." It's OK — if not essential — to say no.

What I am doing at the moment is "taking stock."

My therapist admitted that she was "not surprised" that I feel perpetually overwhelmed by everything in my life, because I am trying to balance so many things, all at once...

But why?

I expect it is mostly just the way of life, in 2025. The mere business of being alive becomes costlier and costlier at a far more rapid pace than my income grows. In fact, my income has been pretty much stagnant since 2019.

I imagine I am not the only one facing this kind of situation.