Embodying the Mindset that HSP Clients are Creative, Resourceful and Whole

A beautiful braid of belief, blessings and the best bits of being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)

A Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)

My nursery school teacher said I quietly took everything in, and if anyone ever thought I wasn’t switched on, they’d be very mistaken. Later, I remember I’d come home from school, do my chores, crawl behind the sofa, dark and warm, and I’d go to sleep until dinner. Nowadays, I can feel anxious about time with my in-laws knowing they’ll talk over each other, knives and forks clanging on plates, voices getting louder.

I can pick up on the atmosphere in a room in an instant. Cry to the words in songs. Empathically feel the emotions of another. Others’ kindness brings tears. Nature moves me deeply. I’ve been told I take things to heart too much. I’m pretty experienced as a highly sensitive person (HSP), I’ve been doing it my whole life. Sigh…

While I am a constant work in progress (and often just want to be ‘sorted’), it has very much taken working with my coach this past year — the first time I have really felt a coach genuinely believe that I am creative, resourceful and whole — to experience first hand why this mindset is a vitally important advantage that lends itself well to working with the natural strengths that come with being an HSP.

What Does Being an HSP Mean?

The term Highly Sensitive Person, or HSP, was coined in the mid-1990s by psychologists Elaine Aron and Arthur Aron, an eventual result of Elaine Aron seeking therapy “to understand why I always felt different” and this leading to “a discovery waiting to happen.”^[1] An observation from her therapist — “Maybe you’re highly sensitive…” — led to the beginning of interviews and research which hasn’t stopped since.

This resulted in identifying Sensory Processing Sensitivity, or SPS, a temperamental or personality trait involving “an increased sensitivity of the central nervous system, and a deeper cognitive processing of physical, social and emotional stimuli”; and defining a Highly Sensitive Person, or HSP, as “a human with a particularly high measure of SPS or hypersensitivity”^[2]

SPS is known to be found in 20% of both men and women and in over a hundred other species. Being an HSP is genetic (I got it from my mum), is part of someone’s personality, and is impacted by environmental influences. Being highly sensitive has survival advantages in situations where paying attention is valuable. Thirty percent of HSPs are extroverted, and the other 70% introverted are quietly observing, taking everything in, probably waiting for others to talk to us first (yup, that’s me!). Overall, simply, we experience things – ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – more intensely including our emotions.

What Does This Have to Do With Coaching?

As HSPs we can find being highly sensitive both painfully tough and joyfully beautiful. As Elaine Aron expresses, HSPs are “most noticed…when they are being overly sensitive.” Because we process things deeply on the way into and inside our brains, we can be easily overstimulated, are especially emotionally responsive, and are super sensitive to subtleties, we are more affected by everything that happens to us, and can become easily overwhelmed — what others tend to see.

And every coin has two sides. When flipped, HSPs are also highly creative, intuitive, imaginative, soulful, deeply moved by the arts, empathic, and have a rich inner life. I write poetry without trying, know when something is not going to work out, have so many ideas, value depth and connection, seek meaning and why, am moved by the sunrise and sunset, and can feel others’ pain, among many other examples.

So how a coach works with me, connects with me, treats me, thinks about me, matters. It really super matters. The mindset they have about me and bring to coaching can, has, made the difference between me staying stuck and moving forward leaps and bounds. Simply put, when a coach genuinely, unwaveringly, believes that I am creative, resourceful and whole, no matter my emotional state at the time, this enables me to step into my HSP strengths and work with, rather than against, my trait. So let’s dive in a little deeper.

A Cornerstone of Co-Active Coaching

The coaching relationship is one of the most vital relationships where the partnership can make the difference to us thriving rather than surviving. Singer and songwriter Alanis Morissette, in her song ‘Orchid’^[3], beautifully shares her experience of being an HSP, an orchid, a delicate flower with very specific needs, but feeling treated like a rose (a hearty flower easier to keep even when ignored). We have particular needs and being nurtured as creative, resourceful and whole (Whitworth et al, 1998)^[4] seem to be the water and sunshine that’s helped me grow and develop.

This is the first cornerstone of the Co-Active Coaching Model^[5] developed and taught by the Co-active Training Institute (CTI)^[6]. A core belief is that clients already have the answers they need. They are not broken, do not need to be ‘fixed’, and they have their own innate wisdom about how to live their lives. The coach’s role is to facilitate the client’s self-discovery, shifting the coaching dynamic to a partnership where the coach and client work together to explore solutions. A style that’s supportive and respectful of the client’s abilities and maximises my HSP strengths.

Creative

Do you know that feeling when you cannot imagine ever feeling anything except what you are experiencing right now throughout your body, in your bones, every cell? You can’t imagine anything ever being different again. That this is all there is. You cannot begin to imagine something different or new for yourself, overwhelmed by the all consuming tsunami of the here and now washing away all possibility. As Snow Patrol sing so beautifully in their song ‘All’, from their album ‘The Forest Is The Path’:

It wasn’t that I wasn’t feeling anything,

more like feeling everything at once

And in those moments, the last way I see myself is creative. Of being capable of different ways of thinking, feeling and behaving. Stuck in the now, unable to envision a different future. Tripping over not finding the ‘how’. Forgetting this capacity hasn’t gone, it’s only inaccessible at that moment in time.

The power of my coach genuinely believing, knowing, never questioning, that I am a creative being still capable of different and of imagining and creating that difference, regardless of the stuckness of the moment, is incredible. My coach being fully present, telling me I am creative, inviting my ideas, and supporting my expression of suggestions, wakes up my HSP strengths in making connections, seeing patterns, meaning making, being imaginative, being visionary, seeing future alternatives for myself, and having unique novel ideas.

Resourceful

When I first reached out to my current coach I remember sharing that I’d fallen into a black hole and couldn’t get out. That this kept happening no matter how many times I’d gather myself, scramble back out of it, then find myself back there wondering what happened. I recall feeling helpless; not noticing that in that moment reaching out was in itself resourceful. I must have had some sort of inner knowing that this could be the route to overcoming the inner overwhelm.

I’m reminded of the Portia Nelson poem ‘Autobiography in Five Short Chapters’^[7]. Each time I’ve sat with this poem, at different times in my life, different lines have called to me. Considering the importance of believing our clients are resourceful, the lines that strike me now are:

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost… I am helpless.

The power of my coach genuinely believing, knowing, never questioning, that I am not helpless, that they’re not there to rescue me, and that I already have everything I need within me, is something quite remarkable. To see me as help-full. Having an unwavering faith in me, acknowledging my work, my context, environment and experiences, asking me questions that take me beyond my current thinking, and inviting me to consider resources and support to move forward, invites my HSP strengths in bringing together my inner and outer experiences, coming up with new insights, novel ideas to help myself, being the first to see what needs to be done, and who and what can support that.

Whole

Despite always feeling a yearning, a strangely gnawing ache, to have children, one of the reasons I didn’t was because I didn’t want to bring a little person into the world and risk them feeling how I did. Being responsible for them being how I am. I didn’t want them to carry around the weighty question, as I did for a lot of my life: “What is wrong with me?.” It was as if at some level I knew SPS is genetic, even when I didn’t know there was such a thing, or that SPS is what I experience.

When you can sense that you are different from most others, but you don’t know why, or exactly how, just that you are, it can feel very isolating, confusing and shameful. Lack of understanding, surrounded by norms, shoulds and expectations, meant I actually thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me for a lot of my life. No amount of training courses, psychometrics, counselling, you name it, ever helped me answer that question clinging to me to be answered.

When I discovered I’m an HSP, everything clicked into place. And it’s only in the past year, empowered with the most incredible coaching, that I believe there is nothing wrong with me at all, there is everything right. I am not broken after all. I speak from the heart when I emphasise how vitally important it is to believe that your coaching clients are indeed whole.

The power of my coach genuinely believing, knowing, never questioning, that I don’t need to be fixed, that sharing what I share and crying as I do, does not mean there is something wrong with me, or by default because I am emotional, I must need therapy, is priceless. Carl Rogers’, humanistic psychology approach^[8], emphasises the importance of being comfortable with client expression of uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. My coach treats me with the most incredible unconditional positive regard – acceptance, love, and respect without conditions – I have ever had the pleasure to experience.

By withholding judgement, recognising my talents, being comfortable working with my big deep emotions, being empathic, open, transparent and vulnerable themselves, my coach creates the safety needed for me to release, express and explore my true self, and make space for my HSP strengths in listening deeply, recognising and working with feelings, being empathic and compassionate in service of myself.

Final Words

Through direct experience, I truly believe that genuinely seeing our HSP clients as creative, resourceful and whole, and treating them with unconditional positive regard, creates a beautiful braid made up of belief in the other, the blessings brought by the coach, and the most beautiful benefits of being a highly sensitive person. And as we head towards closing today, what better way than these words of Dr. Elaine Aron, for whom, alongside my coach, I am forever grateful:

“To the highly sensitive I say, I beg you, speak out. You now know you are in good company, we can support each other, you’re not the only one”.^[9]

^[1] Aron, Dr. E, (2020), film documentary Sensitive: The Untold Story, found on appleTV: www.sensitivethemovie.com

^[2] Aron, Dr. E (1999), The Highly Sensitive Person, HarpersCollins publishers.

^[3] From the album ‘Flavors of Entanglement’, 2008

^[4] Whitworth, L, Kimsey-House, H, Sandahl, P, (1998), Co-Active Coaching, Davies Black Publishing

^[5] Co-Active Coaching Model video found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxCHdX3IJIE&t=148s

^[6] Co-Active Training Institute, Coaching Framework Models: Which One Is Right for You?, blog found here: https://coactive.com/blog/coaching-framework/

^[7] Nelson, Portia (1993), There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-discovery. Beyond Words Publishing.

^[8] McLeod, S (Updated April 28, 2025), Carl Rogers Humanistic Theory and Contribution to Psychology, found via SimplyPsychology here

^[9] Aron, Dr. E, (2020), film documentary Sensitive: The Untold Story, found on appleTV: www.sensitivethemovie.com

Gillian Gabriel is an International Coaching Federation (ICF) Professional Certified Coach (PCC), a qualified Coaching Supervisor, Mentor Coach and coaching skills Trainer and Facilitator, and the founder of The Stars Are Aligned Coaching.

With a 26 year corporate background in leadership, Human Resources (HR) and Learning & Development (L&D), she combines her passion for mental wellbeing, humanistic psychology, personal development and growth in her personal and professional life’s work.

Gillian partners with executives, leaders and managers, L&D professionals, and coaches navigating life and work in a world not always conducive to our needs – especially the sensitive ones walking among us – to overcome the anxiety, overwhelm and self-doubt that Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) can bring.

As a bibliophile and lectiophile, it’s no surprise she’s the writer of the sensitive coaches pHiloSoPhy on Substack — the vulnerable, brave and daring writing, sharing and community for Highly Sensitive People (HSPs). She’s a published poet with her poems appearing in ‘Poetry for Coaching: Transformation Through Verse’, a unique anthology bringing together the poems and stories written by coaches, counsellors and therapists.

Above all that, Gillian is a learner truly believing life is for learning, her purpose and number one value, is to learn with, from and alongside others. And, of course she is a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and human being, being human in her life and work. Find out more about her here.