Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy: We're here today with Jenn Granneman talking about highly sensitive teenagers. It often seems like the word sensitive is used as an insult or as a dig. "You're too sensitive. Stop being so sensitive, toughen up." In our culture. We often look at highly sensitive people as weak, or as overly dramatic, or too emotional, but that's not actually true. Highly sensitive people actually have a lot of superpowers. They perceive process and respond very deeply to their environment, and they think very deeply about information, and they can find connections between memories, knowledge, and ideas at a very high level. The key is not necessarily to toughen up our sensitive teens, but to give them tools for how to deal with overstimulation. And that's exactly what we're going to cover on this episode.

Jenn Granneman is one of the forces behind some of the world's largest online communities for sensitive people and introverts, Sensitive Refuge and Introvert, Dear. She's the author of The Secret Lives of Introverts, and she's been featured in HuffPost, the Washington Post, the BBC, Oprah Daily, Buzzfeed, Glamour, and many more. She contributes regularly to Psychology Today and Forbes, and she's the author of the new book, Sensitive: the Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person in a Loud, Fast, Too Much World. Jenn, I am really excited to speak with you today about highly sensitive teenagers. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Jenn: I'm excited to be here.

Andy: We've got a really interesting topic today. You have written a book called Sensitive, and I'm super interested to dive into a lot of the stuff you write about in the book. You've got some great research in here, all kinds of topics that I think will be interesting to discuss. But can you just walk me through why we need a book on sensitivity and what kind of inspired you to write this?

Jenn: I think we need a book about sensitivity because sensitivity is a misunderstood trait. We're all sensitive to some degree, but about 30% of us are highly sensitive. That means we fall on the far end of the sensitivity spectrum. And sensitivity doesn't always mean what we think it means. We think of sensitive people as those who might cry at the drop of a hat or get easily offended.

Andy: They can't take a joke.

Jenn: Right, exactly. And crying and feeling big emotions can be a part of being sensitive, but it's a much bigger trait than that. In fact, I like to say that a better word for sensitive would be responsive.

Andy: Yes. And why is that?

Jenn: Well, because a sensitive person simply is someone whose mind and body respond more to the world around them. They respond to external stimulation like lights and sounds or smells and tastes, but they also respond more to internal stimulation, like their own thoughts and feelings and the experiences that they've had.

Andy: I love that you talk about this on page 15 here and say that "Sensitivity is defined as the ability to perceive process and respond deeply to one's environment, which happens at two levels. Perceiving information from the senses and also thinking about that information thoroughly, finding lots of connections between ideas."

Jenn: Yes. The sensitive mind is the mind that goes deep. Other people's minds might only skim the surface, but the sensitive person's mind thinks very deeply about the things. And I'm not saying they sit around having existential thoughts all the time, but the mind is just reflecting on and analyzing all the information it takes in. And this is an unconscious process usually, the sensitive person isn't even usually fully aware that they're doing it.

Andy: Isn't this just another word for introverted or a shy or something like that?

Jenn: Oh, great question. No, I would say it's not just another word for introverted or shy, although a lot of sensitive people are introverted, they can also be shy. So you can be more than one of these words. Personally, I'm both introverted and shy and highly sensitive, but you can be very extroverted and sensitive or you can not have any shyness at all. Wouldn't that be nice? I would love that.

Andy: So in that case, how do we know if we're parenting a sensitive teenager if it doesn't exactly, necessarily present as them being really kind of shy and quiet, what does it look like or how do we notice it?

Jenn: If you're parenting a sensitive teenager, you probably already know on some level what's happening. And just to be clear, you can be shy and introverted or anxious and sensitive too. It's a very broad range of behaviors, but if your teen is sensitive, they've probably been that way since birth. I have a toddler who I think is growing into a highly sensitive person, and I can tell you that pretty much day one you was a sensitive kid before we even brought him home from the hospital. So yeah, you might deep down know already, you might just not have a word for it yet.

Andy: You write and hear about some research on introversion and sensitivity, showing that 30% of sensitive people are extroverts whereas 70% are introverts.

Jenn: Yes, I love that you have my book and you're flipping through it. Good job.

Andy: Oh yeah, I read this thing carefully, Jenn.

Jenn: Great.

Andy: We've got a lot to talk about in here. Okay, well that's helpful to kind of understand there's maybe some overlap, but it's not necessarily kind of one to one.

Jenn: Yeah, absolutely.

Andy: What kind of made you feel like this was something that more people needed to know about or be aware of?

Jenn: I'm a sensitive person. I always have been. I was that kid who came home and after just a seemingly normal day at school, I had to go into my bedroom and close the door, maybe turn out the lights, listen to some music, read a book, something like that, not because I didn't want to be interacting with the people around me, or going out and doing things. But it was just because being in a classroom all day was really fatiguing for me as a sensitive person. All the different people, all the different relationships, the noise, the activity, seeming like I could sense other people's needs and their emotions.

It was all just a lot for a sensitive person. But a lot of times the people in my life didn't understand that.
My parents didn't understand it right away. My friends didn't always understand it. So I always felt really out of place because I loved people, I loved engaging with the world around me, but sometimes that world around me would just become too much and I needed to withdraw from it to recharge myself.

Andy: It's funny, I think that the word sensitive is often an insult. It's like ...

Jenn: Exactly.

Andy: ... So sensitive. Stop being so sensitive.

Jenn: I know. And that's something we talk about in our book. But yeah, another reason I wanted to write the book was so that we could change the way the world sees sensitive people. It is often an insult. I mean, when I was writing the book, people would ask me, "What are you writing about?" And I would say, "Highly sensitive people" and you cannot believe just the range of reactions that I got. Some people said, "Oh my gosh, that's me." I had a woman in a bathroom at a concert say, "Oh my gosh, that's me. That's so me." Total stranger. But of course that's kind of a common experience for sensitive people that total strangers want to tell you their life story. But then a lot of times other people would say, "Oh, I'm so glad you're writing a book to show people how to be less offended by the world."

Andy: Yeah. How people can not be so sensitive.

Jenn: And I was like, "Oh, wow. You totally missed the mark here and what I'm talking about."
Andy: But I think about that, like when you were talking about being a teenager yourself and needing to kind of go home and have some space in your room to decompress from the day. And I can see being a parent and seeing your kid having those kind of feelings and being overwhelmed with the school and thinking like, oh my gosh, my kid is so sensitive. How can I get her to be more ...

Jenn: Tough.

Andy: Assertive or ...

Jenn: Outgoing.

Andy: Yeah. How do I toughen her up a little bit so that she can go and mingle with the other kids and just get in there or whatever? And so I wonder, is that not the way we should be thinking about it? Or isn't it good to be more thick-skinned and be able to get out there and just go grab life by the horns and stuff like that?

Jenn: That's a great question and there's certainly something to be said for helping sensitive teenagers push their comfort zones. I'm not saying that we should just wrap them in bubble wrap and say, "Okay, good. We'll protect you from that harsh world." Because we do need to learn how to make it through a tough day or even a day that might just feel overstimulating. And sensitive people especially love to connect with others. Even if they are introverted, they do love to connect with people in a very meaningful way. So sensitive people, whether they're teens or adults, do need to learn how to make those relationships that they want. Otherwise, life is going to feel especially lonely for them. So yes, we need to push their comfort zone, but we also need to do it in a way that works for them. And overall, I think we need to see sensitivity as a strength and an advantage, not a flaw that has to be rooted out.

Andy: There are a lot of advantages, I think, and it's cool you break down the different types of sensitivity. We talked already about maybe the different levels. There's sort of like the response to the external world and also to the internal world. But you also talk about how there's three types of sensitivity, there's low sensory threshold, ease of excitation, and also aesthetic sensitivity.

Jenn: Yeah. Very academic sounding terms. And we break them down in a book in a little less academic sounding way, but it does draw on research so it makes sense as academic. But yeah, those are just different ways to show that people can be sensitive in different ways essentially. You can be someone who is very sensitive to art and beauty and your surroundings. That would be someone who has aesthetic sensitivity. I knew a painter who is very sensitive person, and he told me that he would always have to arrange the way he was looking at someone to have it be an aesthetically pleasing view for himself so that he could pay attention to what they were saying because he was just so sensitive to the visual information that was coming in. And that's probably not all of us, but if you're someone who does appreciate the arts and beauty, and music, fine foods, whatnot, you probably have that aesthetic sensitivity.

And then the others refer to how sensitive you are to your own environment and how sensitive you are to your internal state and your emotions. And some sensitive people can feel very overwhelmed in loud and busy environments, but for other sensitive people, maybe that's just not as big of a part of it. It really depends on you as an individual.

Andy: So we talked a little bit about it is helpful to help sensitive kids to find tools to deal with overstimulation, and you have a toolkit in a book on how to work on that kind of thing and lessening overstimulation. And I wonder if we could talk a little bit about that, or some tools that we could equip our kids with. But also I start to wonder how do we do that in a way that still affirms the way that they are and doesn't make them feel like we're saying, "Hey, you're too sensitive, bad to be sensitive. Let me help you to toughen up a little bit." So how do we give them some of these tools and help them to build the ability to cope with some of these things while not making it feel like we're telling them that they're bad the way they are?

Jenn: Yeah, that's always the line to walk, isn't it? And I don't think we as parents always get it perfect. It's hard. But yeah, you're absolutely right. We want to affirm that sensitivity is a good thing, but just like anything else, it can have its challenges. And so we can deal with those challenges because when you can go out and maybe not get so drained, or when you can notice when you're feeling overstimulated and take some steps to correct that, then you're going to feel better and you're going to be more successful in life overall.

Andy: And I like referring to it as overstimulation because it feels like, wow, we're in this situation where it's like our dial is a lot more sensitively calibrated than a lot more peoples. But that means it can really, when you're recording audio, if you're maxing out the channel, then you're not going to be able to do much with that track. And I think of it in the same sort of way, that's like if you have a really sensitive microphone, you're recording something, it's awesome because then you have so much more, you can hear all these little things that are happening in the room and it's picking up all this stuff. But then also at the same time, it can max out a lot easier.

Jenn: That is a great comparison. That is exactly it.

Andy: As a podcaster here in the audio space, it really makes me think about that and how just sometimes if you're at a rock concert, you maybe don't want to use a super sensitive microphone for your vocals, you want something that's a lot more kind of rugged and that you can scream into and all of that. So we don't have the ability to just swap out our internal microphone. We have to calibrate ourselves a little bit.

Jenn: Right. Oh my gosh, wouldn't that be nice. Yeah, that's what an overstimulated teenager feels like. They might be going to school and just picking up on so much more than a less sensitive kid. They're picking up on the smell of the whiteboard markers, they're feeling the brightness of the overhead lights, they're hearing the deafening noise of the cafeteria. I was a fourth grade teacher for a long time, and oh wow, that cafeteria could be just deafening in its volume.

Andy: And the echo.

Jenn: But they're noticing things that people are doing. The sensitive mind tends to be especially tuned into cues from other people. I like to say that that other people are the brightest things on a sensitive person's radar. So we're not just paying attention to the lights and the sounds and the smells. We're paying attention to the tiny little things that other people do. Like a sensitive teenager might notice when their teacher comes to school and is having a bad day and the teacher doesn't say anything, but the sensitive kid can just tell by their demeanor, it's a little different today. Or it's friendship issues too.

They will be that person who intimately knows what's going on with their friends and can just tell when something's a little bit off. So it's a lot to take in every single day if you're a sensitive teenager. It can be really hard.

Andy: That's really interesting to think about and I love that way of framing it. And it also makes me think that sensitive people are going to be a lot more likely to almost read too far into somebody's expressions or "I think they're mad at me, did I do something wrong?"

Jenn: They didn't text back right away. Oh my gosh.

Andy: I'm really looking kind of almost too deeply sometimes into ...

Jenn: I mean, I do that too. I've wrote a book about it. I'm still doing that.

Andy: Sometimes that's helpful, like you're saying, because then we're more empathetic and we're able to notice what's going on with people, but also sometimes maybe it's a little bit not helpful because we're kind of seeing things that aren't there or going too far deep into things that we don't really need to be concerned with or something like that.

Jenn: Yeah, it's a double-edged sword, isn't it? It gives you a superpower to notice how other people are feeling, but then you can also turn it on yourself when you're worried that maybe you did something wrong. I think that's where it's important for sensitive teens and adults like me, to learn different skills to deal with those things. I've learned in my life to ask the question, are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong? Did I hurt your feelings? Is everything okay? And honestly, I don't do it as much as I should, but I'm trying to do it more. But just having that conversation that can stop that wheel of anxiety from spinning in a sensitive person's mind.

Andy: We were talking about overstimulation, and I wonder what are some of those tools that we could equip kids with to deal with that in a healthy way? Or I guess, is it about limiting how much stuff is coming in? Or is about, like you were talking about earlier with having some space to decompress after really overstimulating, being in a environment that's really overstimulating? Or what does some of those things look like?

Jenn: Yeah, it's all of those things. So there's a lot of things that we can do to help highly sensitive teen deal with overstimulation. The first thing, and I think the most important thing is to teach them to be aware of when it's happening because if they were like me, I didn't even have a word for overstimulation when I was a teenager. I barely even had a word for it in my 20s and 30s. So it just takes a long time to even be aware of what's happening. And I think it's important to teach highly sensitive people, teens, adults, to be aware of what's going on in their body. Pause and ask yourself questions. How are you feeling right now physically? What are your emotions like? What are your thoughts like? If you can catch overstimulation before it blows up into something really bad, like full-blown overstimulation, like I need to run away and get to a quiet place because I can't handle anymore and I need to sleep for three days.

If you can catch it before it gets bad, then you can make some adjustments.
So you can take a break to let your mind and body decompress, or you can find a way to limit that stimulation. Maybe it's through headphones, maybe it's by taking a walk. Maybe it's by putting your head down on your desk for a few minutes, maybe it's by going to the bathroom, something like that. And then I think it's important too, to just build that decompression time into the day, and the week. So it's important for parents not to schedule too many activities for their sensitive kids. Of course, we all want our kids to do activities and to have a thriving social life, but sensitive kids need that downtime too. So it helps to just schedule that time because they need that time to let their senses settle down and to recharge their energy.

Andy: And so often I think that just having words to describe things is just so profoundly helpful. And so that's a lot of what I got out of this book too, is now having new language to talk about these things.
Jenn: I think awareness is the first step, and once you become aware of it, you're going to find your own ways to deal with it. But just having that word is so powerful. It can be just life changing to know that there's a word for it and that other people experience it and you're not alone in what you're experiencing.

Andy: It seems like some of the drama that we have in families and between siblings could come from kind of mismatches and having one highly sensitive kid with another who's not so sensitive and how they interact with each other.

Jenn: Yeah, absolutely. Are you speaking from experience?

Andy: Just theoretically, possibly, it potentially could be an issue.

Jenn: Right. Yeah, no, it absolutely can. I mean, not just my siblings, but friends and parents, grandparents. I mean, anytime we don't understand what's going on with someone else, I think there's a potential for conflict there. But especially with sensitive kids, because then they get labeled as too sensitive, crybaby, toughen up. We have all these negative words for them, and that can be really hard.

Andy: We were talking about the sort of this superpower of really reading other people and tuning into other people's emotions. And I want to circle back to that a little bit because you have a section in the book where you break down, you really differentiate between empathy and compassion. So isn't that just basically the same thing?

Jenn: That's huge. I feel like you're setting me up here. No, it's not the same thing. Empathy means taking on the burden or the feelings of someone else. It means suffering with someone else, and empathy is super important. Don't get me wrong. Sensitive people tend to have a lot of empathy, and empathy is so what's needed in our world right now. But empathy inherently involves some pain or some suffering. And anybody who has a lot of empathy can tell you that emotion can be painful sometimes because maybe you're feeling the stress of the other person in yourself, in your body physically. Maybe your chest is tight or you're not sleeping well yourself. Maybe you're feeling their anxiety or depression.

All emotions catch, emotions are contagious, and we all pick up the emotions of those around us. That's nothing new, but sensitive people do it to an even greater degree because of their empathy.

Compassion on the other hand, it feels different. It feels good. It's an emotion that compels you to take action to help someone. It says, I don't necessarily have to feel your suffering in my body to be able to understand what you're going through and to take action to help you. So in our book, we teach sensitive people how to move from empathy to compassion because the idea isn't to care less. I mean, I think we could all care more. I think that's what our world needs most of all right now, to care more and sensitive people teach us how to do that. But if you are so bogged down or burdened down with other people's pain, how well are you going to be able to help them? How well are you going to be able to function in your own life? So that's why we need to move from empathy to compassion.

Well, read my book, but I would say the main thing to do is to just shift your mindset, put your attention on the other person. A lot of times, empathy puts the attention on yourself. It puts the attention on your feelings for them. So try just shifting your mindset. We include a meditation that you can do to help you do that, and we include that in the book. But just try focusing on the other person and focusing on what they need and focusing on what you could do to help them, what kind of action you can take.

Andy: What is going on here when you talk about the relationship deficit? You're looking at some data from the perspective survey showing that Americans have fewer close friends than they once did, talk to their friends less often, and rely less on their friends for support. And it's actually more pronounced for men than it is for women. Why do you think this is important to talk about in the context of sensitivity?

Jenn: Yeah, great question. So the relationship deficit is happening for everybody, not just sensitive people. But it's important to talk about for sensitive people because again, sensitive people really suffer when they don't have those close relationships. And this is true for adults, this is true for teenagers. We really need close relationships with people in order to thrive. It doesn't have to be tons and tons of people. You could be an introverted, sensitive person who maybe just wants one or two deep connections in your life. Or maybe you are an extroverted sensitive person. I have a friend who is, and maybe you do have just a huge network of people. There's no wrong way to do sensitivity, but this is important because sensitive people are not going to feel good if they don't have those connections. And sensitive people are the ones who are very good at making those connections and helping us develop intimacy. So whereas the circumstances of modern life are often pushing us away from each other, sensitive people are seeking to draw us closer.

Andy: What do we call the opposite of sensitive people on the topic of language and having the right words for things? What? Sensitive people and insensitive people?

Jenn: Oh boy.

Andy: How do we refer to those guys?

Jenn: I would just say less sensitive people because sensitivity is a spectrum. You can fall on the far end of it and be highly sensitive. You can fall on the other end of it and just be less sensitive. So yeah, I would say more or less sensitive people. But I would say that, yeah, an insensitive person, a jerk, a psychopath, a narcissist. Those are all probably in some level the opposite of sensitivity. Not that sensitive people are perfect angels or something in life. We're not saints. But in terms of empathy, I would say that those are opposites.

Andy: What about it strikes me that with all this rhetoric around sensitivity as being a bad thing, that we might have kids kind of make themselves be more tough or something, or not show that they're feeling certain things, or in terms of what we're just talking about with relationships and how much relationships can impact us. I think it's easy to put ourselves in a place where we're like, "No, I'm fine. That's okay. I don't need you guys. I'll be fine on my own" when really it hurts.

Jenn: Yeah, that's been my toddler lately. Anytime he falls down, he gets up and he says, "I'm fine. I'm fine."

Andy: Okay, but you're bleeding.

Jenn: Yeah, no, that that's an important topic. I think especially for boys, maybe highly sensitive teenage boys, I think our culture is one that encourages them to hide their emotions. We're really not doing a good job teaching boys and men how to show their emotions in healthy ways or cope with their emotions in healthy ways, and that's really sad. It does a disservice to all of us. There's something in the book we talk about called the toughness myth, and I think that's kind of what you're touching on here, that the toughness myth tells us not to have emotions or if we do, to push them down and not show them, and to never show that we're hurt.

Obviously there's a time and a place for all emotions, and you can't walk around in life just blasting your emotions everywhere on everybody. That would be kind of hard for other people. But also that puts you in a very exposed and vulnerable position. But there's got to be a line. There's got to be a way that we can allow sensitive boys and men and anyone really to show those emotions and not have to just pretend they're okay when they're not.

Andy: And making a space for it to be okay, I think is really our fault.
Jenn: Exactly. Yeah. It's a change we need to make just in our culture at large, and I hope that my book helps contribute to that, and I hope that someday things will be different for the next generation of sensitive people.

Andy: What is loving detachment?

Jenn: That kind of comes back to the idea of compassion.

Andy: Yeah, it feels parallel to kind of compassion versus empathy.

Jenn: You can love someone but also take a step back emotionally. Their burdens aren't overwhelming to you. You can also take a step back from relationships that aren't good for you and say, I love this person, but this isn't right for me. So we can love people without having to become enmeshed in them or without having to take on their stress and their burdens and their emotions. I think for sensitive people, because we are so empathetic, it becomes easy to get swallowed up by another person and their emotions. Maybe our listeners have seen that with their sensitive teenagers getting swallowed up by a problem that their friend is having or something like that. I mean, I certainly remember doing that as a teenager myself. My friend's problems would deeply become my own problems. Sometimes to the point of me losing sight of my own problems because I had them or my own goals. So loving detachment can help us take a healthy step back while still showing love and compassion to the other person.

Andy: And how do we achieve that or how do we find that place of balance between love and caring about someone, but not just getting so wrapped up in their emotions or their problems?

Jenn: Well, first and foremost, it's a mindset shift. It's about recognizing what's going on and choosing to put your attention somewhere else and to see things a little differently. And then it can also involve some practical steps too. For example, I recently had to tell a friend that I just couldn't keep talking through certain issues with her. She was having some issues with a boyfriend and some other things in her life, and me being the sensitive person, I wanted to be there for her and support her and listen to her. But it came to the point where she was calling me every day, sometimes two or three times a day, and she just vented at me and needed someone to listen, and it became too much for me. It became a very one-sided situation.

So I still love her and I still support her, but I had to say, "I just can't, I just can't talk through this topic with you right now." So it's okay to set those boundaries with people and just tell them what you can or can't do for them. Maybe it means just taking their calls or their texts a little less, seeing them a little less. I think it's important to communicate when you're doing that though, I don't like ghosting. I don't like just not saying anything.

Andy: Just shutting them out.

Jenn: Yeah. I've had people shut me out without explanation, and it's really painful. So I always recommend stating the boundary or stating what's going on instead of just shutting them out or withdrawing.

Andy: And those are helpful life skills.

Jenn: For all of us. If I was a teenager and I had learned these things, oh wow, my life would've been so different.

Andy: Oh my gosh.

Jenn: Just think of that. The problems I would've avoided. But I guess that's how we learn lessons. That's how we grow.

Andy: Now we're writing a book about it, so other people all over the world cannot repeat the same cycle.

Jenn: Here's hoping.

Andy: What is gentle discipline?

Jenn: That's about how we talk to our children when we need to give them feedback or correct them. Or sensitive kids, teenagers and adults, really for all sensitive people, it can get really hard when you're being yelled at or scolded or talked to in a harsh way. Some people can just let that roll off their back or make a joke of it. But sensitive people tend to.

Andy: Those insensitive people.

Jenn: It's hard. A lot of times that makes sensitive people withdraw or maybe even lash out. So it's about speaking to them in a way that they'll be able to hear it. It doesn't mean never giving them feedback, never pushing their comfort zone or never correcting them. But it does mean, for example, maybe your teen comes home and there is an issue you have to discuss with them, but your teen is really upset about something else, while it's probably not the time to double down on that issue that you need to talk to them about. It's about letting them move through those emotions first. And then once they're in a more, or I should say a less emotional head space, then it's about talking through things in a way that feels fair and comfortable for them. We can't hear feedback or correction when we're in a highly emotional state.

Andy: A lot of it is kind of really creating that space and just calm things down first, and then we can talk about this a little more later. And also there's some tips in here on really also creating space after disciplining, and I think that's helpful too. It doesn't help to really be abrupt on either end.

Jenn: Yeah, I think it's important after that conversation, after that discipline to let sensitive teens know that you still love them and you still care about them. I've heard sad stories about sensitive kids just thinking my parents are rejecting me or they don't love me anymore because they had to discipline me or correct me. And it's important to let sensitive kids know you're still on their side and you still love them and accept them.

Andy: Yeah, it's easy to feel disconnected after discipline, and I feel like, wow, that is something really bad.

Jenn: And sensitive people, we thrive on that connection. We really do.

Andy: We talked a little bit earlier about overwhelm and managing overwhelm, and you have a section in here in this parenting chapter on when to push their comfort zone. So when is that a good idea and how do we do that?

Jenn: Yeah, that's a great question. So like I said, we can't just wrap sensitive kids in bubble wrap. We can't protect them from everything that's going to happen to them out in the world, and we do need to help them push their comfort zone sometimes. So it's about doing it in small, manageable steps so that it doesn't overwhelm your teenager. For example, maybe you want your teenager to learn how to play basketball. Well, instead of just signing them up for practice and throwing them in, like you might do with a less sensitive kid, you can ease them into it. So maybe you watch a movie about basketball together, maybe you go to some basketball games together and then take those steps. Maybe you practice some basketball skills at home before they even go to their first practice, because sensitive kids tend to ... They actually perform worse when they feel a lot of pressure and attention on them. Like someone is going to scrutinize them.

So I remember as a kid and a teenager, it was really hard for me to show up to a soccer practice or a dance class and learn these things in front of other people, and I felt like I was messing up, and the more I messed up, the more my anxiety went up. So just giving them some sort of basis to start that activity, that can really help. The more we can prepare sensitive teenagers ahead of a situation, whether, like I said, it's joining basketball practice, or maybe going to a birthday party, or a sleepover, or their first school dance, or something like that. The more we can help them feel prepared for the situation, the better they'll do.

Andy: No, I love that. And we've been talking about a lot of these topics where just a little more slower transitioning into and out of things, and thinking how we can just be more gradual about stuff like that is really helpful.

Jenn: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, slow and steady is the way to win the race with a highly sensitive teenager and adults, all of us sensitive folks.

Andy: We have been talking kind of throughout this discussion about this idea of being too sensitive and that kind of a bias to see sensitivity as bad. You write that the phrase, "You are too sensitive is gaslighting." What do you mean by that?

Jenn: Yeah, it can be gaslighting. Let's say for example, you get in a fight with someone and maybe they've said something hurtful to you and you say, "That's hurtful" or "I'm hurt." And they say, "Oh, you're being too sensitive. Just get over it. Grow up." Exactly. "Can't take a joke." Well, you've probably all heard that before at some point or another.

Andy: Oh, that makes it so much better.

Jenn: Oh, you were just joking.

Andy: It's all my fault for misinterpreting and being an idiot. Yeah.

Jenn: And that's what gaslighting is. It's putting the blame on the victim, the person who was hurt. And not that I'm saying we should see sensitive people as victims. But it means the person who did the hurtful thing is not taking responsibility for the hurtful thing they did, and instead saying, "You shouldn't have reacted like that. You're too sensitive."

Andy: And how should we kind of respond to those kind of things? Or is there, when we notice that or notice other people doing that, what can we say?

Jenn: If it's just something that happens once, I think you can have a conversation about it and say, "No, I'm not too sensitive. Here's how I feel. Here's how what you said impacted me. Here's how it hurt me." But I would say if the person still doesn't understand after that conversation, maybe it's not someone you want to have in your life. If it's something that they do over and over, even after you've talked to them about it, it's probably time to take a step back from that person.

Andy: They sound pretty insensitive.

Jenn: Exactly.

Andy: And really just if someone's really is a friend to you, shouldn't they always care that they're hurting your feelings or that what they're doing is not nice, or is not something that you like, and if they're just going to put that back on you, it doesn't seem like a real friend.

Jenn: Yeah. Real friends are people who care about how you feel and they care about when they hurt you. Of course, all of us hurt the people in our lives without meaning to sometimes, and that's where that conversation can come in. But a real friend will recognize, "Okay, I did something wrong. Now that I understand, I recognize that I did something wrong and I hurt you."

Andy: We're getting to the end of our time here. I just really found so much helpful things in this book. It really got me thinking in the back of the book, there's a whole cheat sheet for dealing with sensitivity. You've got all kinds of goodies in here that what I think would be really helpful for people to check out.

And there's so much research that you did all these pages of notes here of studies and citations and everything like that. So I think that this book is a really great resource for all people, but especially for parents and would really encourage people pick to up a copy. The book is called Sensitive: The Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person in a Loud, Fast, Too Much World. Jenn, thank you so much for coming on the show today and speaking with us about your work. It's been really enlightening.
Jenn: Yeah, thank you so much. This was truly a pleasure.

Andy: Can you talk just a little bit about where we can send people to maybe just learn, obviously get a copy of the book, Amazon, bookstores, anywhere you want to do that. But is there somewhere people can go to maybe just get updates from you or follow what you're working on or to what you're doing next?

Jenn: Sure. You can buy the book at any major retailer, and you can find me pretty much all over social media. You can find me under Jenn Granneman, J-E-N-N G-R-A-N-N-E-M-A-N, lots of Ns in there. You can also find me through my main website, which is introvertdear.com, dear.com and Introvert, Dear is also all over social media. And I also am a part of another website called Sensitive Refuge, which again is all over social media. So yes, just any of those names will lead you to me.

Andy: Excellent. Thanks again for coming on the show and for speaking with us today, and good luck with the book.

Jenn: Awesome. Thank you so much.