blog | The Burnout Queens

Hello from the English countryside! 8 September 2020

September 8, 2020

A personal note from Dr T & Dr B. We hope you are staying safe and well. During the Covid-19 global pandemic we are all searching for that ‘new normal’ in our lives: we can’t go back, we are limited moving forward, but we can live fully in the present. For many of us that has meant rethinking values and rethinking where and how we live. For many home is even more important as a refuge and comfort and, my darlings, that’s what this issue is all about.

Home is where the heart is.

Home for The Burnout Queens means comfort, security, style, ambience and expression. Our HSP hearts and minds were in need of idyllic rolling fields, stone villages, hip towns, sheep, cows, horses and lots of peace and quiet. So we found ourselves a little farm cottage that fits the bill and began a new chapter in our lives.

We had been thinking about this move for quite awhile, in fact before we even left Canada it was part of the ‘big’ plan. Now it was time to put our plan into motion so we could live in harmony with our values and desire to live more simply and leisurely.

It’s official, we are countrified.

During the Covid-19 lockdown we moved to a small country village. It was a relief to make it happen before total lockdown hit. However, trying to rebuild a lifestyle when nothing was open has proved to be a huge and difficult challenge.

We had prepared and planned. Last year we began Nordic walking and now find it a great way to walk, climb and see the countryside in a very personal way. We never imagined that we would be trekking through fields past big historic houses or climbing footpath ladders, but here we are!

We challenged ourselves to plant a vegetable and flower garden to enjoy. (our friend and VA sang ‘Green Acres’ to us and she wasn’t far off). After frustrating weeks of waiting for deliveries everything arrived at once! Not shy of hard work Dr T and Dr B used muscle-might (and the wheelbarrow a sympathetic neighbour loaned to us) to move 1 tonne of soil into new raised beds. The plants are now standing tall and producing a great crop for dinners with extras to share with new neighbours.

The walks around us are peaceful although not always quiet. We have discovered just how loud sheep can be. There is history everywhere we look; a church here, a Manor House there, and farms and fields that have existed for centuries.

The architecture is different in this new area; gone are castles, shops and brick structures replaced by thatched stone cottages, village churches, Manor Houses and many quirky little buildings. It is definitely quintessential English countryside.

Our nature neighbours seem to have their own diverse architectural homes. Believe us when we say, that beyond the expected robins and sparrows, we had not exactly banked on getting up close and personal with this new curious neighbour!

Lockdown is easing in the UK so that means we can hop in the car and explore the backroads. We look forward to sharing our new journey with you…even when we frequently get lost!

Stay well, stay safe. We hope that home is truly where your heart is.

Until next time, love from Farm Cottages.

The Many Styles of Highly Sensitive Women | We Are. No apologies.

July 25, 2020

Many years of knowing and working with Highly Sensitive women (and being one myself) has shown me what a diverse group we are. It is nothing short of infuriating to see HSPs portrayed as ‘shrinking violets’ or so vulnerable that they need to take special care when out in the world.

I don’t think I’m the only one that gets annoyed when reading advice suggesting that if you are Highly Sensitive it would be a good idea to notify those around you so that others, at work or at home, can accommodate or make allowances and adjustments for your sensitivities! If that doesn’t set you up to feel ‘different’ in a not-so-good way, or feel like there is something ‘wrong’ with you, I don’t know what would. The attitude of ‘be careful with us’ diminishes us.

We don’t need or want others to ‘be careful with us’ we simply want others to respect who we are, who we were born to be.

Highly Sensitive women are strong, resilient, talented, and quite able to take on the world, thank you very much. We may be quiet and reflective but when we are in full swing, nothing stops us. You may see us as cautious (and truthfully many of us believe we are ‘too’ cautious at times) but we are the members of your team who will see any potential pitfalls or errors, we will ‘cross the T’s and dot the I’s’ so to speak. We see things others do not. Call it intuition, psychic ability, good guessing or enhanced brain waves. Whatever or however you see our ability to read between the lines, you better believe it is real.

Of one thing you can be sure (and proud), whatever we do, we do with heart and soul. And…passion.

Passion fills us with joy. Passion gives us the energy we need to keep going in the face of difficulty. Passion overcomes our fear when we need to fight for what is right and just, two things we passionately believe in.

Without passion we suffocate.

Most people think that anyone who is sensitive is automatically an Introvert. Well, not true. Quite a few highly sensitive individuals are Extroverts and many more are simply able to draw on both their introvert strengths and their extrovert abilities. We are actually very adaptable and flexible! It is true that we often like ‘alone’ time to recharge our batteries, but that does not mean that we are anti-social or fearful of the world at large. It simply means that we love peace and quiet, even solitude. No apologies.

As I write this I am flooded with memories of talented, strong and powerful Highly Sensitive women. So let me sum us up…

We are world travellers.

We are techies.

We are artists and performers.

We are scientists.

We are daughters, sisters, mums, and grandmothers.

We are partners.

We are leaders.

We are philosophers.

We are environmentalists.

We are animal rights activists.

We are healers.

We are wise women.

We are.

Until Next Time…Defy Ordinary!

Cupid Is Getting On My Nerves! | With Love HSPs Can Change The World!

February 12, 2020

Here’s my dilemma, I’ve been sitting at my computer waiting for divine intervention. You see it’s Valentine’s Day and everytime I attempt to write something thoughtful Cupid hijacks my mind with all things red, rosey, and chocolatey! Now I love roses and chocolates as much as the next person but my soul really wants to honour what Valentine’s Day is supposed to be about. Simply Love.

One of my all time favourite books is a ‘little’ book called “Love is Letting Go of Fear” by Gerald Jampolsky. Now when I say ‘little’ I mean it’s truly skinny in size but huge in ideas. When I first discovered this tiny gem decades ago, I didn’t get it. I wasn’t ready to get it. So I dismissed it as self-help rubbish! (I humbly apologise for my youthful ignorance.)

Years later, mysteriously, this little book flew off the shelf. I swear it flew off the bookcase with angel’s wings, landing in my unexpecting hands. Blessedly, this time I read it and, more importantly, I got it. (Which is why you should never ever get rid of a book!)

Here is the premise of the book in a nutshell, preferably a hazlenut praline!

You can’t love, be real, or be free when you live in fear.

Why?

Love and fear are mutually exclusive.

You can’t live in fear and love life. You can’t live fearfully and love yourself. Fear makes us feel vulnerable and visible, so we hold ourselves back from loving.

When I fear failure, I can’t love the breathlessness of trying something for the first time.
If I fear success, I can’t love the exhilaration of accomplishment.
When I fear being visible, it is impossible to love the boldness of my creativity.
When I fear not being understood, I cannot love openly and honestly.

I know this is resonating with you…

When I let go of my fear I love my child enough to let them grow and go.
When I let go of fear I watch with love as my partner pursues their dreams.
When I stop fearing loss, I can love with abandon.

Love is quiet, love is gentle, love is big and love is bold…love is all there is (Lennon & McCartney were a true love of this sixties girl!). Love means letting go of fear because fear is inconsequential in the face of pure love.

BE Love.

Join us in the spirit of Valentine’s Day and embrace Love. Each day for the next week let love show its power through your words and actions. Find a way, small or big, to be love. Face the fear that stops you from experiencing and expressing the ‘you that is Love’.

Love means letting go of fear. Go ahead, be bold, be love.

With love’s power us HSPs can change the world.

Until Next Time…Defy Ordinary!

Hello from Lewes & London! 8 February 2020

February 8, 2020

Little Town Living

From the time we were teenagers we dreamed of living in the big, bustling and cultured city of London and we finally made that dream come true. The thing is dreams aren’t static, they need to evolve. Our environments change, life changes, and we grow and change. So our decades long dream needed to grow-up and sync with who we had now become and how we now wanted to live.

Much to our own surprise we ended up moving out of the ‘Big Smoke’ (i.e. London) and into the English countryside. We are truly little town residents with city ties (known here as ‘down from Londoners’). We left the galleries and glamour for history, pastures full of sheep and cows, and muddy boots!

Our little county town has community, a vibe, lots and lots of history and many traditions that stand the tests of time.

People are different here, they aren’t always walking with a mobile to their ear. They will stop to chat, neighbours wave, the ‘veg boys’ call us ‘darling’ and you are known when you stop for tea and cake or a veggie burger!

Our views are now of fields, sheep, swans, and cattle rather than skyscrapers and smog. (And yes of course our Castle!) Canada geese (they found us!) honk flying over, the garden is alive with birdsong, and the night skies are so dark (the street lights go out at midnight, we couldn’t believe it either at first!) they sparkle with stars and planets. Our little town literally straddles the Greenwich Meridian dividing eastern and western hemispheres! (Personally I find that powerfully interesting but then I am an HSP nerd).

Little town living has given us the courage (and dare we say desire) to ‘go’ even smaller at some point but that’s the future and who ever knows what the future holds. All we know is we will be ready to embrace the next adventure that comes our way.

For now, we’ll enjoy the sights, sounds and pace of where we are. There is always something to celebrate like Bonfire Night which is mad, loud, and what this town does best!

But please, don’t just take our word for it, watch this 5 minutes of Lewes madness!!!!!

(P.S. it is hours long to watch in person and, oh yes, it gets freaking hot!)

Lewes Bonfire 2019

Until the next issue, cheers from these ‘little town Brits’!

The HSP Fear Factor! | Your Pause To Check Advantage

October 12, 2019

Here is my confession fellow HSPs… I’m cautious and I make no apologies for it. For me being Highly Sensitive comes with its own ‘fear factor’. I also know that fear no longer makes me feel powerless. I will never again be held hostage by my fears. As long as I stay in touch with my highly sensitive fear factor I can trust myself to take risks, have adventures, get out into the world and get on with living.

Accepting and embracing my HSP fear factor means
I’m free to defy ordinary!

I haven’t always enjoyed this freedom. My mum used to say, “I won’t live in fear” and I (being small and impressionable) believed this was how ‘larger than life’ I should be! My natural HSP cautiousness made it hard to live up to that belief.

Over time I began to feel ashamed about being fearful (and that was pretty darn often). Fear made me feel weak, sometimes ‘crazy’ and wrong, very wrong. Instead of trusting my fear I lived with constant stress, worry, anxiety and eventually panic attacks. That was the result of losing my natural, innate connection to fear and trying so hard to “not live in fear”.

Then I read a book that changed my relationship with fear, The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker (Little, Brown & Company,1997) and it truly was a gift. From that day forward I have recommended this book to every woman I have had the honour of knowing and working with.

I began to understand that living with fear day in and day out was creating white noise that everything was filtered through. With all that inner static I didn’t know when to be afraid and when not to.

Fear is involuntary…worry & anxiety are choices.

It wasn’t easy to recognise and change my fear factor. Fear has many disguises! I began by asking myself questions about my fear on a regular basis and as I did the inner static began to subside:

Is anything bad happening right now?
Are the knots & butterflies in my stomach about anything real?
Do I need to be afraid?

Fear is anticipatory. Fear in and of itself is a warning that something bad might happen. This gem changed my relationship with fear. Pause and let this revolutionary thought sink in.

If I am feeling fear nothing is happening at this moment!

If you are slightly perplexed by this new way of conceptualizing fear a couple of my own experiences might make it clearer. I looked up and saw a car heading straight for us. I felt Fear (yes with a capital F). In the next second fear was gone. Why? I was in action, responding to the actuality of the accident by extricating myself from the car. Here’s another: it was 2am and a very loud invasion-type burglary begins at the front door! I woke in absolute terror. Then I was on my feet, on the phone, and although my heart was pounding I didn’t have time to feel the actual fear. (Just so you know it was the next door office!) We don’t need to be afraid of fear, we need to listen to it.

Fear can make you second guess everything about yourself.

Fear keeps you clinging tightly to the old instead of being open to the unfamiliar and unexpected. When we don’t understand fear, life begins to revolve around our fear. Fear stops us from taking chances, stops us from being creative, and stops us from chasing our dreams. Fear stopped me from truly being myself.

Fear rules when you burnout!

Fear plays a major part in burnout. You can’t get over burnout when you live in fear. Fear makes us tighten the reigns, push harder, try to get more control over life and those around us. We are fearful we are going to be ‘discovered’ and found lacking, fearful we can’t keep going, fearful ‘it’s’ never going to change, fearful for our health, our relationships and fearful we are ‘ruining’ our life. Fear keeps us trapped in the same old patterns that led to burnout in the first place, patterns like perfectionism, people pleasing, and trying to be everything to everyone.

I used to curse my ‘overly’ cautious nature: I was embarrassed by it! For years my fear caused me shame. Now I cherish my Highly Sensitive pause-to-check advantage. My natural intuition, coupled with a dose of healthy HSP caution, gives me the time and ability to assess and consider whether the fear I am feeling is relevant and imminent… or simply white noise. Now that’s an advantage I can use!

Until Next Time…Defy Ordinary!

P.S. The BOQs would love to hear from you! Leave your wisdom and comments in the box below.

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