EPISODE 4
Welcome to Sensitive with an Edge for highly sensitive people who embrace their intensity, uniqueness, and value in this world. Join us on the exploration of relationships,
complex trauma recovery, non -conventional mindsets, neurodiversity, and themes that involve healing, growth, and empowerment. Hi,
this is Chris. Before we begin today's episode, I want to provide a content warning. In the following conversation, we'll be discussing sensitive topics, including early childhood experiences of sexual abuse and interactions with individuals who've been involved in violent acts.
While we won't be delving into explicit details, if you feel these discussions may be be unsettling for you, I encourage you to prioritize your well -being and consider listening at a later time or reaching out to a trusted support system.
The next guest is someone I have great respect and gratitude for. I've been recommending her work and books for well over a decade. I hope you enjoy this sincere,
open and enlightening discussion with this special guest who fits right into being sensitive. with an edge. Okay, we have a special, special guest,
so excited. This is Karla McLaren. She has a master's in education. Her concentration is in linguistic anthropology and neurodiversity studies. She's an award -winning author. She's a social science researcher,
groundbreaking educator, and her empathetic approach to emotions. Revalues even the most negative emotions and open stars. startling new pathways into self -awareness,
effective communication, and healthy empathy. She's a rock star. We're really happy to have her here. She's also the author of "The Power of Emotions at Work," "Embracing Anxiety," yes,
you heard that right, "The Art of Empathy," and "The Language of Emotions." She's been doing this for quite some time. She made a big change in her career. She left her metaphysical approach.
behind. And her work is recommended by Peter Levine, developer of somatic experiencing, Gavin De Becker, author of The Gift of Fear, and of course, highly recommended by many esteemed colleagues in her field.
So we want to welcome you here, Karla. We're really happy to have you here on the podcast. Thank you so much, Chris. I'm glad to be here. Well, thank you. So let's get started with you sharing some background,
if you would. on your personal and professional journey in the healing field. You started out in one field originally, and then you really branched out. Can you tell us some about that?
It was through early childhood trauma and abuse. And for many people, not everybody, but many people who are traumatized early,
I'd say say before they really totally get language they they turn up their empathy really high their people are reading skills really high because it's a survival it's a survival tactic right yes yes so you become hypersensitive because you need to because it's not a safe environment also for me it was sexual assault and that's will blast out people's boundaries.
So I didn't really have boundaries, either. So the world was sort of an assault. Go outside and play, they would say, I'm like, it's not safe up there.
No. So what I had done was turned up my, my sensitivity and my empathy very, very high to remain safe. This This was a neighbor who was molesting a lot of the girls in the neighborhood.
So it was like a reality in our neighborhood. It was just a social fact. And, but we had to keep an eye on him. And I was one of the older girls, I was three or four.
So I would keep an eye on him and then make a decision, like, do I wanna go over there and take the hit today so the little girls can play, right? Anyway, it was like,
like that kind of weirdness, right? So I was like one day I'm three and then I'm a thousand years old. So that was my beginning and part of being that sensitive is that I became emotionally very,
very aware of like nuances and how the breathing would change and maybe the anger was coming and you know maybe the rage was coming or maybe he was going to cry or right became hyper Aware,
but because I didn't know how I turned it on. I didn't know how to turn it off right So that became My journey was was how to treat a hypersensitivity and hyper empathy and emotional Super receptivity as how to learn to treat it as a skill instead of a personality personality type.
Yeah. So I'm writing a little book about it now. I'm actually writing two about it now. One is called Missing the Solstice, which is about my time as an empath and thinking of myself as psychic,
which is a lot better than thinking of myself as broken. So I'm gonna say it was a good good point. Good point. But realizing in my new age metaphysical career that a lot of what was happening there,
a lot of people who also had early childhood trauma found me in that career. And they came in because of my books, but then they were in a very unsafe place.
If you had any kind of connection in the new age alternative healing world. There's no checks or balances whatsoever. True. There's no AMA. There's no you can't sue anybody,
you know. And so a lot of hypersensitive people had come in. I had called them in. I didn't mean to but they found me there. And now they were in this pretty abusive space.
I'm sure a lot of people mean well, but they don't have that training. training that they would need to be able to do well. And so I began to feel kind of horrified and overwhelmed by what I was seeing because people were reporting to me what had happened to them.
But they were making excuses for it, like I must not have done it right. So people were not only getting hurt in the new age and alternative healing, but they were taking the whole burden of it upon themselves.
Right. - Right. Did you notice that some people were using spirituality with it to guide people? And that's in large part where you may have seen people being misled too?
- Yeah. One of the things you see, especially in alternative medicine spaces or alternative eating, is that if people aren't doing well, it's 'cause they're not doing it right. So blaming the patient,
blaming the victim is very prevalent. So you're not doing veganism. veganism right. The reason you're sick and your skin is breaking out is because you're not doing veganism right. Instead of what is going on here?
Why? What what's happening to your body? So it was that kind of thing. And it's still going on today. But I also realized that empathy is not a psychic skill.
And making it into one is so problematic because it means means it's special, and only special people have it, which also means that there's people who don't have it.
Yeah, like someone's better than someone else. Yeah, so I'm a pathic and you're a narcissist, right? And I'm hypersensitive and you're a clawed,
you know, like here. Right. So there's a lot of exiling that happens. there. And I thought I cannot be a part of this hierarchy of Humanity, I can't you know the haves and the have nots the better and the worse and as we see in especially with our artistic friends This idea that they're unimpathic,
which is so wrong because they're hyperimpaths the treatment treatment that they're afforded is, oh, I would say dehumanizing. It's dehumanizing.
There's a treatment for young kids called applied behavioral analysis. And it's basically, ABA people, you can come for me. I work out, but it's basically dog training.
And it also came from the, "Pray the Gay Away" training as part of its lineage. So basically what you're saying is you,
a beautiful autistic child, I want you to pretend to be neurotypical. And I want you to perform as a neurotypical person and I want you to stop stimming,
which is one of the most wonderful ways to manage your... Right? Yeah. We all stim... stim. Yes. An autistic person sort of shows it more.
Right. I want you not to have your dietary sensitivities. I want you to eat the damn dinner. And there's actually, I've seen some ABA where they give M &Ms to reward them for being who they're not do the behavior.
Here's your M &M. So it's like hand over hand behavioral training for some. people, that sort of thing is is necessary for some behaviors, because maybe they have a neurological thing where they cannot start from this piece of the behavior and go to the next piece without some kind of intervention.
It's a very troubling thing. A lot of touching the hands, making the hands do this, stopping the hands from from doing the natural stem behaviors. It's like looking at it,
you know, I'm like silent screaming. Don't do that to that child. - That's horrible. It's just forcing somebody to be who they are absolutely not and just forcing it.
And there's wiring there. That's just so harmful. - Yeah. And a lot of autistic folks when they get in their 20s, 30s, 40s, even later, there's a real awakening of their actual body.
bodies happening where they are reclaiming their natural body movements, their natural requirements for how to live in this world. It's like a militant autistic renaissance when people find it,
right? And yeah, so so if people are called unempathic, and of course autistic people are, you don't have to treat them as people. people. You know, another group of sociopaths and psychopaths,
which is a thing in the brain where there is an empathy delay, but they're not unempathic. They can make decisions. It's like they'll always speak it with it with an accent.
There's been books written by people with sociopathic and psychopathic brains saying just because I don't care doesn't mean I want to hurt you. Yes.
Yes. I've heard some of many of them say that actually. Yeah. Yeah. It's like I can, I can leave my hands off of you. Right. There are people who are surgeons and, you know,
attorneys and they're professionals and they help people. They want to do their job a certain way. They have different ethics about their work. Yeah. But it doesn't mean they're out to hurt people.
It doesn't mean that that's their work. walking around trying to do damage. I think they're trying to feel their way through life based on how they're wired. Yeah. Yeah. Based on what their neurology is doing.
And there are some places like surgeons. You don't want to be hyper sensitive as a surgeon. I had a surgeon that was sociopathic and I appreciated them. They were really clear about their job and how well they did it and how it went.
And I appreciated their work. Yeah. Yeah. They're out there walking them us. - It's necessary. Oh my gosh, you know, they're monsters and this whole unempathic people are monsters or they're less human.
That's one of the most troubling parts of the whole empath world. - Right, so I hear you from the very beginning talking about this really in general, us and them mentality that you have kept coming up against from the very beginning of your life.
your career. And it's brutal in all these areas. I'm with you on this completely. I think that's wrong. It's harmful. It's toxic. And we need to speak out about it for sure.
Yeah. And I think one of the problems is there's some shadow because people who are hyper empathic or hyper sensitive have been thrown into the trash heap or thrown out the window,
you know, toughen up. get over it. You're too sensitive. So there's a way that there's a shadow of saying, hey, no,
you're too unsensitive. That's what I say. You're not sensitive enough. And I find it's often gaslighting. They're often gaslighting them. Do you ever find that maybe they feel bad that they can't relate to these sensitive people?
They can't go where they go? Maybe that's part of where the insult is too. too? Well, also, I've seen people who are obviously incredibly sensitive and happen to live in a male body. And they've learned to shut that shit down for themselves.
Yes. To the extent that anybody can. And those will be the ones who want to shut me down the most. Okay. So those are the ones who have the most shame and self -rejection.
And so they're trying to shut you down because they're seeing in you. what they're not accepting in them. Like Carl Jung would go, "I talked about this in the shadow." Shadow, yes. A lot of people will bring me unempathic people and they'll say,
you know, "My husband is unempathic," and I'm like, "Let me just sit here." And it turns out the husband is just highly empathic, never learned how to deal with it,
and is shut down. I mean, men are just so abused. by our culture. Absolutely. They're emotional and empathic bodies in their lives. From childhood all the way through into adulthood.
I mean, we focus on women as the victims. I'm like, nobody wins in a hierarchical world where things are split into two non -overlapping categories.
Nobody wins. And patriarchy is like, nobody's winning. winning. Lose, lose. Yeah, it's a lose, lose thing. Exactly. Again, us and them isn't benefiting anyone.
Now, as far as the high sensitivity, you've said before and you said now that you're highly sensitive. And then also you have the trauma as well, which it kind of somehow works together sometimes.
How do you believe that being a highly sensitive person or being highly sensitive has helped you? you in your life or your work? I'm also hypercritical, which is wonderful because you don't want to be uncritical.
You know, I mean, oh, it's all good. For me, it was learning how to do it and how to turn it off. That's been the most important,
to know that there's an off switch for it. And I created that through a lot of the practices that I have. and learning a lot about emotions a lot of hypersensitive people Just get bowled over by emotions and they just become non -functional around the emotions of others So learning how to understand emotions was huge,
but also I Organized empathy into six Um discrete aspects. Yes to be able to know where your hyper empathic where where you're hypersensitive and then learning how to turn turn that down.
Also, a lot of people who come to me are an empathic burnout, they, they burnt their candle at all 17 ends, it's done. A lot of people would isolate at that point,
right? They would isolate. And my point is, no, you're still a hyper empathic person. That's a fact of your neurology. So let's find things that that places where it's perfectly safe for you to be as open as you are,
as sensitive as you are, as empathic as you are, usually to nature or with animals, and spend time there working on your empathy, understanding it better, understanding your specific hypersensitivity,
then learning to turn it up and down, then go back to people and start noticing if these people are nourishing you. or draining The energy you're taking in from what's around you Find the nourishing people and then learn how to shut down in the presence of the draining people because a lot of people who are Depres sensitive have no boundaries.
So yes now that energy. They're taking in the human sponge thing, right? I believe they have a choice about what they're taking in. Can you talk more on that about that? They do and how?
Oh, you can't know that you have a choice until probably until you're broke enough because you're like I can keep going forever. What I look at is I do a lot of work with boundaries and thresholds and knowing where I am in time and space.
Because a lot of times, two of the questions I ask people are can you identify the difference between your emotions and the emotions of someone else and a lot of times for people with no boundaries It's no I don't I don't know whose emotion is whose and the next question is Do you have a choice about whether you feel another person's emotions or not?
so there's the I the Awareness of it, and then there's a choice point To me that would be a turning point, right? Yeah, those two questions are so powerful that it turning turning point about considering the possibility that you may have a choice.
And if you grew up in a very volatile family, it's probably was a really good idea as a little person for you not to have a choice. Yes. But if it was a survival mechanism,
then there's going to be more work to do rather than it's just sort of you didn't realize you do have a choice. But if it was was an early survival mechanism, there'll be a little bit more work to do.
But again, finding those nourishing people and nourishing people don't require that you do their emotion work for them. - Yes, and at the time, I understand what you're saying about the developmental years,
you know, as a child. - Yeah. - It would seem the safest thing to be able to take in all the information that you can. and to understand your situation as much as you can.
That would be the safest choice as a kid in those situations but as an adult it's actually not as safe. You know like any survival skill in a non -survival situation it becomes really detrimental.
If you're always freezing you know it's like no this is calculus which okay, you need to complete your calculus test. Or we don't freeze at this time. Yes. No,
no, we don't want you to do that. No. Learning that you have a choice about what you're taking in and what you're processing. I think that's a great start and then helping to walk people through it. And part of that is understanding what you say the value of emotions,
such as you put in your book, the language of emotions. Yeah, this is just groundbreaking work. Tell us more about the value of these emotions that would be for us to learn from them and use them to our benefit.
I think emotions have been one of the least loved and least understood things in the whole of human history. Although Rumi and Hafez knew about it,
their great Sufi Muslim poets, they knew emotions like nobody's business, so we did have the information at one point, but I think people think of emotions as problems.
And what I found is that emotions don't create problems. They come to help you deal with problems. And if emotion and emotion looks troubling,
it's because of the person's skill or lack thereof. So if anger comes up for me, I know that anger's anger is about boundaries, right? So someone stepped across a boundary.
When I was a little one and I had no boundaries, I was in rage a lot of the time. I was a hard kid to be around. I was a hard kid to raise. But that rage was me creating emergency boundaries.
I had no skills at all. My boundaries are continually being toppled, right? That was the only thing. To protect you. Yeah,
and thank goodness my family didn't know what was happening yet, but they let me do rage, which is unheard of for girls. It is. So you would think that child needs anger management.
That little explosive child needs anger management. But if I had learned to manage my anger, I would have been in more danger. I would have anything at my disposal.
The rage was coming to say something terrible is happening and I brought not just some anger, but all of the anger. The big fence. I had no skills.
Right. I was just a little child on fire with rage. And so you would definitely look at me and say there's a proof that emotions are negative.
Right. Karlo and your anger was keeping you safe. in reality. - Yeah, yeah. And so each of the emotions has that very specific a gift and skill that it brings you.
And so when I talk to someone who has a ton of anxiety and panic, I say, first of all, is your life in danger 'cause panic is the life saving emotion. So we don't wanna down regulate that or make you breathe deeply or anything like that.
- Yeah. Are you endangered now? Yes. Right? And then we address the panic and the panic's going, "Well, no, but there's a lot of projects that are undone and we may lose our job." I'm like,
"Okay, now anxiety, you're the emotion of getting things done and getting things done on time. What do you need?" Wow. It's like, first of all,
no one could do these jobs. on this kind of time, right? When you can talk to the emotions and know what they do, then you can get into an empathic relationship with yourself.
Yes. Better understanding. And it's safer. It's more secure. And it helps you work through issues. It helps you with your cognitive function. It helps with so many things.
Yeah. People are very afraid of their emotions. Yeah, the way we talk about our for instance, there's this idea that emotions are at a different place in the brain than supposedly rational thoughts.
And that's been an understanding for many decades. It's not true. But that's what we've been taught, especially that we're going to wait until you're less emotional and you're rational.
That's not how the brain works. It's not how emotions work emotions. Emotions are at all levels of the brain, the neocortex, the amygdala, but the amygdala is not where emotions live. People are like,
you know, you don't want to get in your amygdala. And I'm like, why wouldn't I? It's a beautiful almond shaped space. I love that. Why do you want me not to have the full use of my brain right now?
Right? That's right. Good point. Love that reframe. Powerful stuff. You get out of my amygdala. I know, right? Right.
So now about how people feel their emotions. A lot of people listening are considered themselves highly sensitive. Do you think that people who are highly sensitive really feel their emotions more intensely or not?
I don't know if they feel them more intensely. I think they react to them more intensely. Do you think that they process them more deeply? Sometimes if they have any emotional skills,
right? But if if they've learned don't get out of your amygdala and go get anger management, then they're going to kind of spin. And probably because they are sensitive,
their emotions know that they can be heard, right? Their emotions like, I'm going to say this one more time. No, I'm going to say it five more times. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to say to say it harder and maybe they'll listen.
They may have more sense of suffering because their emotions just won't shut up, but your emotions aren't supposed to shut up. You're supposed to hear them. So can you respond to that reactivity?
What would be the alternative? Well, I often say that people have emotions about their emotions and then there's an emotion pile up that never needed to happen. So for instance, I'll get angry,
but I happen to be in a female body. And so now I feel shame about being angry. Now I'm gonna feel afraid about the fact that I'm feeling shame because shame is a negative emotion,
which is bullshit. Right, now I've got fear and shame on top of the anger. Now I feel some panic because I've got four emotions that I don't want to work with. (laughs) Now panic's like,
"Hey, what can I do?" "Are you in danger?" And now I'm like, "Oh my God !" And then confusion will come in because there's too much going on. - Yes. - Where we started was with the anger,
right? - Wow. - Reacting to your emotions as if they're problems in and of themselves can start an emotion pile up. They may not have any skills for whatsoever,
right? I mean, if you have skills, then you'll be like, Hey, panic, come on over, you know, oh, look, there's confusion. That means we need to just take a break for a minute. Let's go for a walk.
Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's a whole different attitude about emotion, like more than here. Come on. Love that a whole different reframe about it,
for sure. Yeah. So what about trauma? Do you think that highly sensitive people are affected by trauma? differently or no? I'm going to say it's high sensitivity and high empathy are often kicked into gear trauma.
Totally. Yeah, they're together often anyway, right? Thank you so much for listening. Make sure you meet us right here for the next episode. We'll continue talking with Carla McLaren.
In the meantime, send the link for this podcast to those you think will benefit. . Let's get the word out. And would you do me a solid? It would mean a lot if you would subscribe and rate this podcast to help us get this out to more people who are sensitive with an edge or those who love someone who is.
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life. Remember, I'm an HSP with Complex Trauma. Make sure you hit the link for that and join us. Sensitive with an Edge is a podcast created by Chris M. Lyon for highly sensitive people,
seeking relatable and practical insights. While the content is designed to be informative and supportive, it is not intended as medical or clinical advice.
Listeners are encouraged to determine what is best for you. their own sensitivity level and consult with a healthcare professional if needed. Views and opinions expressed in this podcast are based on the knowledge and experience of the host and guests,
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