3 Brains Theory: How Highly Sensitive People Thrive In Leadership And Coaching?

Good afternoon, morning to everybody. And Robbie Williams, as some people know, kicked it off with Let Me Entertain You. So that's our— one of our missions we have, Claire and me. So we are really grateful to see you, and everybody's still popping in, so probably you see sometimes a finger going on for admitting. We're already recording it. So you don't miss a second of it.

So Christoffel, while you're speaking, I will woman up the admit button so you can just focus on—

Okay, that's perfect.

I got you.

Sounds good to see you all and also coming from all around the world from Switzerland, Spain, United Arab Emirates, USA, USA, Toronto, that is Canada, according to my To my geography and all the other places we are in. It is amazing. Calgary, yes, that's Scotland. And Calgary is also— we know that was once for the Olympic Games, so that's also cold, so it must be Canada. So what are we going to do this hour? We're going to hopefully put a lot of energy into you and a lot of thoughts and a lot of connections. So who are we? to give you somewhere that idea who are we. What you're looking at, this beautiful lady is Claire. And excuse my pronunciation, this is a Dutch-English way. Claire, she's an executive coach.

Christoffel, I'm not— I don't want to interrupt you, but I'm going to ask everybody to mute. I can see Molly's not muted. There may be some background noise, and I want everyone to hear Christoffel clearly. Thanks, Molly.

And we also have a button as host to mute everybody, Claire. We have the power.

There we go.

That's all we have. So as I said, I'm very happy to see you, Clare. Clare is an amazing executive coach. I met her some time ago because she's a specialist in high-sensitive people or personalities or traits, whatever label you like to put on it. Specialist in productivity and sustainable performance, but also connects of course with that, with those beautiful traits. And she's a speaker and brand ambassador and also based in Toronto, and that is Canada. Yes, and I'm extremely grateful that she joined me because I invited her to let's do a webinar together because I really thought 3 brains and high sensitive people, that is a beautiful mix. Let's just say yes to it. So I'm really grateful that you're here, Claire.

Thank you, Christoffel. I mean, we had an interesting start too, because I think I was on your email list and I wasn't paying attention to the topic. So I sent Christoffel a message saying, please take me off your list. And the message that came back from Christoffel was so thoughtful and so full of rich content. I went, wait a second, I need to pay attention to this. So I wrote him back and I said, actually, what you're talking about seems really interesting. I'd love to know more. Will you have me back? And it kind of went from there. We got to know each other and we've been planning this for you for, for a little while. So let me tell you a little bit why I was so excited to connect with Christoffel, who's based in Madrid right now, coming to us from Madrid. He's an executive business coach with 30 years experience at PCC level. He's a visiting professor at the IE Business School in leadership and organizational behavior. He's a supervisor in clinical hypnotherapy. He's a hypnotherapist, and he specializes in depression, PTSD, anxiety, and addictions. He is also the author of How Men and Women Fit: Finally Understand Your Partner with the 3 Brains Theory. So lots of value. I invite you to think about, as you listen to Christoffel and I speak about high sensitivity and the 3 Brains Theory, How, of course, this applies to yourself. You'll hear things and you go, oh, that's me, or I used to think that way, or that's relevant. How it might apply in your coaching, how it might apply in your family or with colleagues. So I invite you as well, as well. Christoffel and I want this to be super engaging. You can tell from the start, Christoffel is high energy. You can tell from my colors, I like to be there too. So we would love this to be something where we're in communication together. So please feel free. Find your favorite emoji and throw it in the chat right now, or use some exclamation marks to give us an idea of how energized you are for this conversation. And right now I'm going to pass it back to Christoffel to kick us off.

Beautiful. So high sensitive people, and what I tricked Claire with was to say, you know, almost all the coaches are, otherwise they will not be a great coach because it connects with a big heart brain. And we spoke about it, how does it affect us as coaches, but also for the leaders of the future. So that's what we're going to do in this little hour, to give somewhere that energy to you and some background. We cannot dive in everything. We took some beautiful cherries of the tree to share with you. So this is somewhere what we're going to do. A short introduction of the 3 Brains Theory in one slide. So I skipped all the kind of scientific background. We're going to become aware of the high sensitivity traits, a conversation actually how the traits relate and what does it mean for us and how can we use it in our own benefit, and some little offers that at least you can learn more, benefit more, and do more. And of course Q&A at the end, but if you have a question in between, or please ask in the chat or right away. Yeah, our objective, mission, passion is that you get the best out of it. I think Claire and I, and I think we almost did, we can talk hours, hours, days about this. So we have to squeeze it in 1 hour. So please get your needs fulfilled. Yeah.

Can I ask everyone in chat to put a 3B if you're already familiar with 3 bearings theory, put a 3B in the chat. And if you're already aware of the HSP trait, type in HSP and will give us an understanding of who here is familiar already with Christoffel's work and with the sensitivity trait?

Oh wow, that's an extremely good question of you because at Commonweal we have extremely knowledgeable people here. So now we get almost nervous.

Look at my highly sensitive people and the 3 Bs popping up. Awesome. Yes, awesome. Okay, thanks, thanks for that.

Great. So what is 3 Brains Theory? Now I think we all know from the old schools We somewhere had— and I'll do stop share so I don't see all of it— that we had 3 brains here. This is what we taught everybody. We have a reptilian brain, an emotional brain, and we have a mammal neocortex brain. And based on research, Lisa Feldman Barrett wrote a whole book about almost about it is actually not true. Even that little lizard outside your garden has the gene set up in his DNA to have a limbic brain a neocortex brain. So when that was actually true, we had to start reconsidering what is actually then happening inside us. Who is making decisions? And I don't know if you ever went into, say, um, the sea, because in the sea there's remarkable vegetable. Actually, it's the name of a vegetable, it's a sea cucumber. And if you look at the sea cucumber, it's actually where we all are somewhere originating from. And if you look at the sea cucumber, food comes in, now waste material comes out, and in between is the digestive system. And if you would look at it from just a little bit simple view, it's almost what you have and what we have inside our gut— a mouth until an anus. And that's actually where we're all coming from, and all the parts around us are extra. Evolution made that decision somewhere. And everybody— now I see a lot of, uh, HSP and 3 brains, we know it— everybody who likes to make decisions. And for me, it's now 6 o'clock in Madrid, and for the people from Europe, probably somewhere the same time. Yeah, you could have that little feeling now in your stomach and thinking, oh, I could have something. But just imagine you have that feeling in your stomach You would now go to your fridge and see on one side, say, a nice cheese, some chocolate cake, and see the other side, say, healthy carrots. I put the word healthy in there so at least you know, right, those orange things. Then what kind of discussion could you have with yourself in front of that fridge? The fact I say healthy carrots is already somewhere an help inside me to choose for the carrots, although everything inside me says Go for the easy sugars or fat, because that is much easier to bring energy in us. That's what we talk about— 3 brains. Your 3 brains make different decisions. And actually, your heart, 100,000 brain cells. Your gut, 500,000— 500 million brain cells. Research shows it. If you like more about it, later on we give you some offers and some free info. Get into there. But what do our 3 brains do when we talk about coaching, when we talk about, say, working with people? And I'll do stop share screen again so we get into that. In one slide, and you only have to pay a couple of minutes really focused attention, and then probably you have a full head. 3 brains. Gut-brain biology, 500 million years ago originating. 500 million brain cells inside your belly, the same size of a dog, dog's brain. In your heart, 40,000 to 120,000 neurons or brain cells. Depends actually on your sensibility, your connection, if you are actually a high-sensitive person. The more high-sensitive person, the more brain cells there. And you have 100,000 million brain cells in between your ears. What did evolution do? Now, when we came to this life, just like a bacteria, you have a lust for life and a need to survive. That's the objective from the little thing behind your belly button. Is naai is niet establish personal success. It likes to be the CEO. It likes to be the winner. It likes to be safe. How does it do those kind of things? It has resources of all the neurotransmitters you also have in your brain, even more because it has ten times, twenty times, one hundred times more resources there. It has an nerve system to communicate. And how does it communicate with us? Actually communicates with sensations. So what I mean with sensations, we all know, is probably those we call them sometimes emotions or feelings. Fear, that is there to run away if something happens. Anger, rage, to put your foot down and fight. Lust and desire, otherwise we would never be on this world again. Hunger, the 6 o'clock feeling, otherwise we starve. And disgust to protect us that we don't eat the wrong stuff. This is actually what your gut brain does as a coach for you, as the CEO inside your body. This is the sensations it communicates with to keep us alive. Later in evolution, they say 90 million years ago, when the mammals really became Warm-blooded animals. Dinosaurs were somewhere dying out. We survived as mammals. The warm-blooded animals stepped in, 4 heart chambers, and they had a need to belong. Think about the zebra. Think about all those herd animals. They like to belong. They only survive if they're part of the group. And if you think of humans, for everybody who's daddy or mommy, Or grandparent, when you had that little baby of you, a zebra can run within 30 minutes to save his own ass. How long did your little one take to run away from some predator? More or less than those 30 minutes. According to my older sister, it took me five years at least to understand what was danger. So for me, it took some more time. But we are helpless if we are not. Taken care of by our parents, we don't survive. Belonging is the most strongest things for our survival. That's why it's so innate, hardwired in us. How does your heart communicate? Neurotransmitters: oxytocin, the love hormone, norepinephrine, and dopamine— reward and action. And also, every heartbeat communicates. Maybe some people know that The amygdala is the seat of all your emotions. Do you know what neuroscience came aware of? That your amygdala sparks up 7 milliseconds after your heart does boom boom boom boom. Your heart gives a signal to your amygdala: I'm at ease, you don't have to do anything. I'm stressed, put some more cortisol in the body. I'm extremely stressed, more cortisol please. Your amygdala is actually following instructions from your heart. Electromagnetic energy, 5,000 times stronger than your head. The energy your heart produces, it can be measured 3 to 6 meters outside your body. And of course, the nerve systems you all have as communication highways. What does your heart do? And then we also connect right away partly with high-sensitive people, love, acceptance, compassion. The feeling part, the passion, the enthusiasm, also hate and sadness. Otherwise, we would not feel the loss of things, guilt and shame to reconnect with the group. We did something wrong, and all the values of good and wrong are somewhere stored there. Later in evolution, we started to think. We can still admit that some people don't think, but we started to think, and Wat is nou de meest amazing thing of je hart? Waarom hebben we zo'n groot hart? Als ik zei, de reptiel, de little reptilian animal outside your home has the same genetic genetic setup for everything here. Wat maakt ons zo'n amazing? En er is één vraag: waarom heb je een herinnering? Waarom herinner je je wat er vorig jaar gebeurde, vijf jaar geleden, tien jaar geleden, dertig jaar geleden? Wat is de gebruik dat je beautiful thing in between your ears consumes 20% of your energy on a daily basis, and that diminishes survival energy because all the energy you use, you cannot use for running or working. So why does it keep it active to think about all the things once happened? Only for one reason: to predict the future. The better you can predict the future, the better survival you have. Hence we have memory. That's why when you're anxious, your head cannot stop thinking, because you're thinking and thinking and thinking, what is the solution for tomorrow? Your gut actually gives a signal to your head, I'm fearful, dear gut, I need a solution what to do with my presentation tomorrow. And yes, you don't sleep because during the whole night you start thinking about all the slides you're going to prepare. This is just an example, not about me last night, or just kidding. What is amazing of this one, it's— it has the only thing that has time. And that's where also coaching steps in. Your heart and your gut always live in the present, like your dog or cat. So that means all the things they learned in the past are still experienced now. That's why as coaches we can work on it. You don't have to go as a therapist back to time and talk about what happened 20 years ago. You go, hey, 20 years ago you learned this. Habit, disbelief, you still do it now. Now we can change it, because if we now change it in your heart or gut, it also is solved 20 years ago. Future is happy. Hence your head brain, and it's the only part that can use language. So in coaching, we have to work in different ways because heart and gut work in sensations, and it gets translated, conversed here. What does it more? Learning, understanding, predicting, creating, judging. This is in, I hope, 3 minutes how our 3 brains work based on biology and how it is. So now I can stop talking and let's connect how does that work from the other— now not from the other side, from a different perspective— the amazing high sensitivity traits.

Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Christoffel. Does anybody feel like they're in a biology class right now? This is taking me back. This was my degree actually, so there's no No wonder why I was so fascinated with it. That was such a beautiful explanation. And I'm going to dive us into explaining a little bit about the trait of high sensitivity. It's part of what people call neurodivergent thinking or neurodiversity. Neurodiversity actually means our brains think differently. They're wired differently. And everybody is part of neurodiversity. But neurodivergent thinking includes high sensitivity. It includes autism. It includes ADHD. ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, all kinds of different ways of thinking that we need to make room for. So why am I showing you a picture of a meerkat? Here I'm showing a meerkat because I think it's one of the most easy analogies to think about. You can see that meerkat is standing on his hind legs. He's, he's on sentry duty and he's sniffing the air. He's feeling the energy. He's listening. He's looking. Where is she? And they are— sentry duty is to keep the rest of the mob safe. And it's interesting because even within a mob, there are certain meerkats that are trusted more and do more of the sentry duty. So it's— I think it's an interesting one to look at because the meerkats have figured it out. They are on duty and then they rest and some other meerkat goes on duty. But a highly sensitive person actually has a nervous system that is always on. It's something we see in about 100 species from something called pumpkin sunfish. They measured more tenacity or timidity or aggressiveness. And Dr. Elaine Aron, who came up with this whole understanding of the trait, actually says she'd just call them stupid, but that's her word. There's a difference in the way that a portion of the pumpkinfish population actually interacted, and the ones that were carefully looking and observing before moving forward didn't get caught in the trap. And so that was deemed to be also sensitive to the surroundings. Also, some studies on macaque monkeys and looking at how they were raised. If a macaque monkey was raised to— and one who noticed things was raised to a very calm, caring parent, they went on to become the leaders. of the troop. If they were, however, sensitive but went on to be raised by a nervous parent, then they were not thriving well. And this is interesting because this shows up in humans who are highly sensitive too. And for anyone who's listening sort of deeply to think about coaching with this segment, to pay attention to when there might be need for therapy in addition to coaching, um, is related to often the early, uh, the early life of someone who's highly sensitive. But I wanted to share and give credit to Dr. Elaine Aron. I call her the queen of HSP, and her husband, Art. You might remember an article with 36 questions. I think it was in the New York Times some time ago. And it was a fabulous invitation to build connection with someone else. Art is not highly sensitive. Elaine is. And she learned— this all came to be because she was in session with her therapist, and her therapist said to her, well, you might just be highly sensitive. And it was before it was a thing. So Elaine's dedicated her life to that. The book on the right has been, uh, that's the 25th anniversary edition that just came out last year. It's called The Highly Sensitive Person. And, uh, I highly recommend that as a deep dive in case anybody is interested in learning more about it. Just some examples of people who are or were likely highly sensitive. Alanis Morissette there, um, Canadian icon. Christoffel, not into the music, um, you might know Alanis's songs.

Oh yes.

Yes. So she's proclaimed a sensitive person and was in Elaine's first movie, Sensitive: The Untold Story. So Van Gogh, known as somebody being very sensitive. Brené Brown, we see her compassion and she talks about someone being growing up highly vigilant. There's another keyword for sensitivity. So, and that's Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Dalai Lama, all people who exude compassion. So let me give you a little bit more about how I have come to talk about the strengths and the challenges of being highly sensitive. It's interesting, Elaine Aron would say, gosh, if I could rename it, I would, because sensitivity has a pretty bad rap. What I'm going to invite you to to do now is in the chat, put in when you, if you hear and you don't know about HSP as a trait, if you hear somebody sensitive, what do you think that means? Is it a positive word? Is it a negative word? Does it matter if you're a man or a woman? What do you think of if you hear the word somebody is sensitive? What other words come to mind? Kathy says fragile. Touchy, difficult, emotional. Yeah, Danielle, something negative. Gentle, delicate, crying, easily upset, high maintenance, naive. Yeah, laughing.

I think I've called all of them.

Sensitivity has had a pretty bad rap, right? I think it needs a rebrand. Some of my presentations are called Sensitivities. Sensitivity is Sexy, or Sensitivity is a Superpower. And I want to present to you a way to more fully understand the trait of high sensitivity, which is known clinically actually as sensory processing sensitivity. And for any of you more aware of different neurodivergencies and challenges, there is also something called sensory processing disorder, which is different. Again, that's a more extreme challenge of processing sensory input. But what I've done is I've taken Elaine's model and redesigned it because some of you may know me from my prior work as an organizer. I was like the Marie Kondo in Canada, slicing and dicing things up and restructuring them for people. And I like to present it now as the SEED model, in part because I like to paint the trait far more positively than I think it's been perceived. That emotional reactivity is something that a lot of people expect, And it can indeed be part of what we'll experience here. But let me just show you how I've broken it down, and hopefully this will be easy to carry with you as you think about high sensitivity going forward. And my highly sensitive people out there, definitely put some comments in here as I'm explaining these different elements of the trait. And if you start to recognize that you might be highly sensitive, let us know if any— if there's any more clarity being achieved here. So the S in SEED stands for sensitivity to stimulation. And some of you probably noticed right away the happy face in that sea of buttons. We are the chief noticers. We will catch a glance that goes sideways. We will notice, oh, that milk is, is off before the other person might pick up the scent. We will feel a texture and find it uncomfortable to use. There's a lot of noticing that's very positive though. Because as most coaches would say, I think awareness is the key to any kind of change or evolution. And we can be incredibly well positioned to notice facial expressions when we're coaching someone, for example. We'll catch that shift in energy when we're, when we're seeing somebody is more excited about what they're talking about or something they're, they're thinking about doing. So Chief Noticing is, is one of the strengths. Challenge, though, and this is where the fragility and the, you know, that, that need to be really careful around what we're around is really important because the, the potential to be overwhelmed is real. I'm sitting here in a conference room in my condo building because the apartment below is undergoing concrete wall cutting right now. And if I stayed there, I can tell you I would look worse than this girl in this picture by the end of the day. It would be absolutely taxing to me. So S for sensitivity to stimuli. First E is for empathy. We are amazing people at building relationships and caring for others. And in the coaching relationship and in leadership as well, empathy is a really recognized and sought-after soft skill, but it's, it's, it's something that HSPs have naturally and can really step into, whereas some people need to be really developing that empathy and related compassion as well. So, exclamation marks, if you— if anybody notices, this is, you know, if you see as I'm talking something that resonates with you, let me know in the chat. I got my eye on it. The, the challenge here, though, with a big dose of empathy is that we can really become easily emotionally exhausted. And so we have to really be careful with fortifying ourselves so that we can then be present and enough for— and responsive enough to our clients. So that's the empathy piece. Now this, yeah, we can be emotionally exhausted. From there, we're also wired to be, and if you look at the brain of a highly sensitive person, we can be very emotionally responsive. Now, if we're well rested and we're not feeling under threat, this translates into great self-awareness, beautifully articulated thoughts, great self-expression. If we're not well rested, it might look more like this. It might look more like Will Smith at the Oscars. It might look like a total unleashing, and there's no more control available, and it is just, here's everything I'm thinking and feeling right now with a little less filter. No exclamation marks for this? Come on, don't leave me alone here. I can talk to you about the story about not one, but two assaults in my elevators in COVID after asking people to put a mask on. gone. So this is something to continually build skills in to keep that regulation. Thanks for that. Thanks for the support in the crowd there. I'm seeing that. The last part of the SEED model— so we've had sensitivity, empathy, emotional responsiveness— the D is for deep processing. And our brains actually light up. We make connections. So we're noticing and putting together things. So if you're coaching someone, And you'll recall the words they said, or they'll trigger a thought that might cue to something else in their history. You can connect dots incredibly, incredibly well. Show me some love in the chat if you— if that's something you notice in you as well. So we are wonderfully also creative. That's where the ideas come from. We can be just like, ah, and then we'll have potentially a line of questioning that might come to us to unearth a different insight. We can think very broadly. So loving that, big yeses and absolutely. The challenge here now, and I want to know if this relates to you because I get stuck here sometimes, we can have analysis paralysis, right? Because we could, well, we could do this or we could do that or we could do the other or we could do it tomorrow or we could do it next week. We can just cycle through options because it can be kind of an endless road of opportunity. So I wanted to give you that sense of high sensitivity really more fully in the traits, both the superpowers and the struggles. And now I would love— so Kristen's saying some HSP see these traits as who they are, not things they do. Yeah, you know, it can— there's a wiring that's there where I think there's opportunity is to be able to say, well, I like that part and I want to step into that strength. But I don't know anybody who loves to be spinning in analysis paralysis. So what I offer in the coaching and the groups that I work with of highly sensitive people— how do we journey through this to build skills to pull us out of analysis paralysis? One, one example, I was talking to a speaker last week, and you know, we get we get invited to speak sometimes and either the fee isn't there or the place is difficult or maybe it's my audience and to come up with things like decision matrices so we can work through things so we don't get stuck in that analysis paralysis. Don't most people relate to this? Rachel, I love that question. So I developed— and just before I'm passing it over to you shortly, Christoffel, I'll just answer this one question.

OK.

I've developed a quiz which takes you through questions related to the SEED model. And the HSPs amongst us will often say, but doesn't everybody think like that? And it's interesting because most people go, no, not necessarily. They don't. So it's quite interesting to look at the cross-section of people and tune in more deeply. You might find that there are some of these trait elements that speak more intensely to you. I know in Elaine's book, she says she has a 22-point quiz. Anybody can take it at hsperson.com. And there in the analysis of it, she says, you know, she's got some kind of numbers as to how many traits you need to be highly sensitive. But even if you have 2 or 3 very, very intensely, then you might be highly sensitive.

I've looked at It's a fun game.

It's a fun game. You can play it a little bit differently. And I have 16 fun questions, so I invite you to try that out. But now I want to bring this discussion back to integrating it with 3 Brains Theory, and in particular the heart brain. Christoffel, I'm going to stop sharing screen. Maybe before I do that, before Christoffel gets going though, the people who think based on that explanation of HSP can put in the chat whether Hey, that's me. I'm HSP. Or, oh, I see that in my clients. Or, oh, I see that in my family. Who do you think in the community of people you know already might be highly sensitive? And let me, let's see what came out of that and I'll stop sharing now.

I love your explanation, Claire. And I know, say, that I have a lot of those traits, just like many of us coaches. Yeah, so I think we all can somewhat relate to it and think, oh wow, oh yes, oh, I have those, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. So if you now think about it, biology— who's actually in charge of our traits? That was always my question. Who's actually now making that decision? Is it just the genes, the DNA, or something happening to us? Then who is then there? Research shows, based on identical twins, that 50% of all our things we do is actually genes, and 10% is only environment, and 40% is actually all the actions and decisions we make. There's identical twins who once got separated by birth, they saw all their differences. Now that's something else. Share screen. And now going to show you biology, why all those traits of us make so much sense. Of course, this is our— let's walk in, that makes it your heart-brain trace. When you look at your heart-brain You can come aware why Claire and I somewhere had something like, oh wow, because as a coach or leadership, and there's a lot of words, I know I'm not so visual as Claire, we like to participate, collaborate, work together, focus on others, avoid conflicts. Now this is all why we're so freaking good as coach. What happens in our strengths? We are loyal, we're compassionate, we're empathy, team player, accepting, pretending, protecting, enthusiast, optimistic, and you all can say, oh yes, yes, yes, yes, we are. And we have to have that as a coach. You have to have it somewhere as a trait. The high SP is not only heart, only gut, or only head, because it all works together. But most of the HSP, based on my research of 700 people who filled out the 3 Brains Questionnaire, I came aware if it connected, say, with high sensitive Personality traits. Yes, 50 to 60% at least has it. Because what are the pitfalls? We are too— we are naive, too optimistic, too trusting. And where comes it hard? We have a hard time saying no, or I made it bold, setting boundaries. When people say, you know, we get overwhelmed, it is because we don't set boundaries, say just with the friends, but also in an internal setup. So that sound that makes us crazy, we don't have a boundary somewhere that says I'm going to let that go. That focus from, you know, I just focus on my screen, everything else is now just not there. No, we are always in sometimes that alert state, and it has to do actually with a lower gut-brain state that is somewhere feeding that is happening. If you have a big heart-brain and you like to connect with everybody, you like to please everybody, then you have to be always alert if something is happening. Hence the trait. What happens? What drives us? We like to be accepted. Well, what is our fear? To be rejected by others. So just imagine if you fear of being rejected by others, what does it mean? You're always open to what's happening in the room. Is everybody happy? If somebody— we started like this. Our objective is to make everybody Learn something in this. Not most of us, everybody should learn something. So that's your heart brain trait. Now what happens when we get tired? When we're getting out of energy, then our biological system says, "Oh, our survival is somewhere at risk." So on that moment, biologically, the gut brain steps in and says, "Okay, dear heart brain, I love you. You know that you're extremely useful, but let me give you some support." And then you get that Will Smith slap. Then it becomes aggressive because the gut brain says, you know, we are result and success oriented. We're demanding, forcing, overstretching. We make it happen. So we just go to the shortcut of making things done, focused on goal, bite the bullet, competitive, compineering. So in that moment, the gut brain helps the heart And steps in. And pitfully, the gut brain is, say, a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful brain, only it's extremely primitive. Like Michael Gershwin, the writer of The Second Brain, wrote, he said, you know, the gut is actually working always with shit, so it has a shitty attitude. Come on, get over it. What is the pitfalls of the gut brain? Let me step in. It can't say sorry, is impatient. It's socially aware. So when that one steps in and is less developed with us, it could create those pitfalls because it's not so really balanced out. It just steps in in an I need to act moment and likes to succeed, achieve, survive. So let's take the shortcut. Okay, everybody's tired, let's do something. And what happens when we're in a fearful state And that's why we're so sensitive and we get tired and we get the brain drain and we're having a headache, as I said at the beginning. Because then the gut and the heart say, okay, we don't find the solution. I'm tired, I try to please everybody, even if I shout or say it's a little bit louder or more direct, they don't listen. Help! And then the head brain steps in and said, okay— Sorry, that's my dog. Let's start thinking about things. Let's start making this logical. I will find a solution. By the way, if you fall asleep, I will think about it, so I will keep you awake because I will find a solution. And by the way, you thought that you really could relax, because in a relaxing moment I'm going to be logical, analyzing, doing cause and effect analysis, and create all kinds of solutions. And get even more tired. But that's actually what your heart and gut are saying. The pitfalls Of the of the head, if you're there too critical, too judgmental, too perfectionism, can all happen. Drivers, it likes to understand, so it keeps on working until it has it. And what's their fear? And that's why they keep on working to be wrong. So our beautiful head likes is afraid to be wrong. So when we get exhausted from our beautiful heart, the head still runs around to say what kind of solution can I give to the heart that is not tired anymore? I don't know. I like to say no, but no is not in my system. If I say yes, it's also not helping. God help me. Okay, if I scream, then people are not happy. If they're not happy, my heart also is not happy. Okay, now I'm somewhere in a paradox. How can I solve this? And we start talking faster, faster, faster to find it. Those are the traits that biologically support high-sensitive people. That's why I love, say, Claire and her insights, because it matches so beautiful together. and the biology part and how we coach people and how we work from it and say what it does with us. And HSP makes a beautiful concrete what we have as traits, and the 3-Brain Coaching makes it so extremely clear where is it actually originating from. And if you now follow Claire or me, it doesn't matter, it gives you insights how to work in it. So that's us together, and we still have all those beautiful 17 minutes for all the discussion, so we fit perfectly in time. I'm so happy, my heart is totally happy. I did it. I did it good. So this is the heart brain, likes a little applause there. Questions? What would you like to have? What would you like to know more after this brain drain of us?

Yeah, do we have any questions? I know that sometimes I get questions about, you know, this high sensitivity. Can I do anything about it? Do I just have to accept the way it was. I think a lot of it is understanding how the trait shows up for the individual and then stepping into regulation. So Kathy has a question now. What coach approaches can we take with HSP? So yeah, it's a great question. I think one of the things I'd like to say is that the awareness of the trait tends to be pretty low. You know, we talk a lot about neurodivergency, and even though that there's 1 in 5 people have the trait of high sensitivity. The numbers of awareness, I don't have a measure. I know it's changing all the time, and depending on where you are in the world, there's different levels of awareness. I know a big book just hit in Japan last year and just drove awareness up considerably. So I think first of all is some— and this is why I wanted to be part of it and join Christoffel, because I think awareness and understanding what we're dealing with is a great first step. And then from there, it's understanding some of those challenges. The struggles piece is usually what people are working on, or maybe it's noticing if somebody is looking for a next career move, for example, stepping into those strengths. So I think it can really inform coaching with, with this knowledge about practically from a topic perspective, but also from creating an environment that feels safe. I was just talking to an HSP therapist last week, and she said she invites people to— she asks them if there's anything in her background that might be triggering for them. And so she has pictures and a few artifacts. And I said to her, yes, if anybody was ever killed by a red kettle, you're in big trouble because there's a red kettle behind her. But it's this sort of this invitation to recognize that somebody else might be responding. This is why in the beginning I'm immediately asking someone to mute or making sure the environment is conducive to everyone being able to participate. If somebody was joining us right now with their camera on, on a treadmill, and they were walking and moving and doing this, and they're not the speaker, I would ask them to turn their camera off. to protect the visual input for that which is relevant, facial expressions, the speaker, the slide, whatever. But we don't need extra incoming stimulation. I hope that helps, Kathy.

Beautiful answer. And I saw a question about the hard brain, 40,000 to 120,000 brain cells, and I skipped that, only it was there. Now, research shows actually that all our brains, as you know, can grow and it can shrink. The more we learn, the more connections are made. What they came aware of, the same is with the heart. So without calling names, there are some people who are just like Scrooge, the movie, and from Oliver Twist. They have a heart brain of 40,000. You can put in the people, you can put in some prime ministers' names in there. I will not call any names. If you have 120,000 brain cells in your heart, most of us, most of them are, say, the people Claire showed. They have big friends, community, they have a loving environment, and they train actually their hearts. And postmortem research showed actually they have more brain cells there. So you actually can really create a bigger heart. So there is still hope for Putin. Okay, yeah, I know I could— I couldn't resist the joke.

I'm seeing here— thanks, Christoffel. I'm hearing it, seeing a question here from Chris I wonder if synesthesia is connected to HSP. There's not much discussion out there about the world— in the world on this yet. Now, synesthesia, for those of you who don't know, as far as I understand it, it's the ability, for example, to listen to music and see color. So our brain actually senses more different sensory input with one incoming kind of stimulation. We'll actually experience more. And I think there's a lot of overlap. There's a great book called Divergent Mind by Jenara Nirenberg. And when Christoffel's talking next, I'll, I'll put that in because highly sensitive people, not really good doing 2 things at once. I got lots of stories about trying and that going wrong. So Divergent Mind is an amazing book and, um, high sensitivity is in there. You will find a lot of conversation around neurodivergency that is not talking about high sensitivity. And I'm really puzzled as to why that is. I think there is a little bit of limbo land for us because it's not a diagnosis. It's a normal way of being. And so we're a little bit caught out that we can't say, I have a diagnosis of, and I would appreciate an accommodation of, or a meeting to, you know, whether it's in the education system or whether it's now in the workplace. Neurodiversity is getting a lot of attention. And I look at like, it's like a subway door and the doors are closing. And they're a little bit open, and I'm, I'm going, I'm here, I'm here for this conversation. And like, let's, let's not marginalize this, this 20% of people.

Absolutely not, Claire. What you say is so right. If you go, say, to the DSM-5, what psychologists use as a handbook for what kind of thing you have— when it was originated, DSM-1, it was something like 30, 40 pages. Now it is something thicker than 5 Bibles altogether. Yeah, with all the things, and DSM-IV, and HP, and other kind of things are still not in. Because what is it actually? It's a mental illness, not a mental illness. Is it— what is it? Somebody is so much in this beautiful 100,000 million brain cells here, and those 5,000 connections from every brain cell, that you somewhere are. And the beauty is, if you think about brain plasticity, written down by Menschendieck, who once actually invented the word brain plasticity in research in the '60s, where he said We can train our brain massively. So when you look at all those beautiful— there's a book of Brian Norman Deutsch, The Brain That's—

Torontonian in the house, Norman Deutsch.

The Brain That Heals Himself. They talk about people who lose half of the brain and still can regrow or re-function again. So we can do massively, Ellen. There are a couple of things to learn. This part, and also actually the other 2, is repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition.

What was that?

Repetition. No, repetition, I think, because just it has to actually create new wiring, new neurons wiring, and that means a massive amount of training. And it needs a lot of training because I just said all your brains take 30 to 40% of all your energy consumption. This one already 20. So to say to your 3 brains, okay, start learning more, it really needs an extremely strong, strong, strong reason. And so it needs a lot of— but you can do amazing things. I will not say that everything, ADHD or something else, can be cured because that's a really strong sentence, but we can do massively about it. Kids who are diagnosed with Asperger or with autism can actually ungrow it. Based on the right things, based on their research. And now I'm calling the research of Menschendietz and other ones. It doesn't mean for everyone, but it can. So there is so much more possible than we know. The only thing is, also, don't throw away the baby with the water. We have an amazing quality, we have an amazing gift by being HP or having those traits in us. That's why we're freaking amazing coaches. The thing is, can we be in control? And somewhere Turn it off. And you can, if you start thinking about your 3 brains, that they have all the qualities. We quote quote only have to use one of your brains more. And I say quote quote only have to use because if it was so easy, we already did. But it is possible to do so if you find the right key. Yeah, so that that's my answer to it, and we can do amazing stuff. So, and I think. We all just think the first 3 years of your life, and I love the facts, then we grow. Our brains grow from 80% after we are born to 100% almost in connections. After year 3, we start pruning down all those connections because they're not all needed. Until the year 21, our brains are growing. In those 21 years, massive things happen. The taxi driver research shows that the visual cortex can grow massively, and where we have all that located map and geographically inside our heads. we can do amazing stuff. So we can be an HSP when we choose, and we can be something else when we choose. We have those abilities. I will never say it's easy. So we can have actually both of those worlds. So that's my big answer on it.

That's a great answer. Do we have any more questions coming in around— oh yeah, we do. Nina, right here. What is more challenging, an HSP coach coaching an HSP client or one who Isn't. Where does more growth happen for the coach? Interesting question. I think, you know, it's interesting. I have one client now who is, um, very highly sensitive, and there are challenges coming up with this individual that I have not experienced before that I recognize are part of overthinking, emotional reactivity. I can see where it's coming from. And it's even as an HSP myself, I'm having to figure out what my boundaries are and how do I invite— actually, I think the issues are to be coached on. And so I think challenges can come in so many different areas that I don't think I would label it, but I would say, It's a different kind of growth. So I'm being asked to step into perhaps a richer understanding of the experience and how that might play into a coaching relationship. But I think so many coaching challenges can come from just different areas related to HSP or not. I'm not sure about that one. Thank you for the question, though. Have you noticed any differences between countries and cultures in relation to HSP? You know, I, I think that yes, there are differences culturally in terms of the level of compassion in society. So a lot of Eastern countries, for example, will have a more collective sensibility. So in Japan, when I lived there 20 years ago, you would see people in the spring wearing masks because for preventing pollen allergies. And you would also see people in the fall, if somebody was sick, they would wear a mask out of care for others. I'm seeing right now in Canada and the US a lot of, I don't feel like wearing a mask, you're on your own if you want to wear a mask. There's an inclusive culture versus a collective culture, and I think that degree of compassion is built in. That's probably the most prominent example, but I can even see it, I think, in the care and design for— like, we have the most god-awful plastic garbage bins all over the city. They've institutionalized garbage collection because trucks can come by. There's been no sense of the damage to the visual park environment with all this plastic lying around to pick up the garbage. So there's a sensibility around what we're creating that I think is different in culture. So that's a yes. Christoffel, you let me know if you see a question for you because we've got 5 minutes left. So just to stop for a second, I want to let you know I put my handout in the chat. And Christoffel, if you have something you want to share, we can do that. We can do that now, and then we'll come back and we'll finish up the questions.

Well, what's easy, I will send— because we have all the email addresses for everybody— I will send together with Claire, say, and the recording or the link for the recording, the slides of the presentation I have, and some other information. So you have everything in your email box. I would say I'm not so advanced. I came aware as Claire right away. Everything uploads in a website. Point taken and learned. So we can on the question, hey, AHP coach, how do we learn what kind of client are challenging? As a therapist or coach supervisor, also say if you have an issue with the issue, don't coach people on it because transference and countertransference, as they say in psychology, can be at risk if you feel or empathize. Be too empathic for the issues of the client, it's hard to be the observer anymore. So the moment I coach people and I say, if you have an issue with the issue, don't work with them because you can become the issue and counter and transference can step in. That doesn't mean step out if the client trusts you, but be aware it's a risk. And that, that's my point of view, but also as being a therapist they have to be extra careful in that because a lot of people love to help their client. But if the client comes in severe depressed, please don't do it if you have issues with that. As an example, you don't like to be both on the, on the side of the cliff and holding hands when you jump off. So that's a strong thing that doesn't happen to us, but be aware of that one. Having said that, it's a beautiful coaching learning experience if you become aware of the same issues the client have, because finding solutions could help also you in that part. So there's an answer on that, and I answered some in the chat, but I think— I don't know how it's with Claire, but also as a personal next step, if you have any other questions, and I sent out an email, you can always connect with me, and I would just say also with Claire if you'd like to know more. I just put it out to her, and please do so.

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, Christoffel and I are both here to explain more about our areas of in-depth interest and knowledge. So I just wanted to make sure you had my contact information. The handouts are there, and I welcome questions. I welcome questions, and I take a lot— like Christoffel said, I do a lot of media work, and so anytime I get a question, it's basically food for another story. So I welcome that. And because I think we may run out of time now to answer all the questions that were in the chat, just taking a last, last look to see if there's any more that— do we have time or do I need to— oh my, just sorry, I just went to the top of the chat by mistake. There we go. I thought I saw one. How can How do we help our HSP children? I will let you know, there are— there, I think Elaine's writing a book about high sensitivity and parenting now. Let me know. I'm actually doing a monthly chat and I'm talking about the HSP family. I do monthly chats every month, open call Zoom like this, and it's on the first Monday of the month unless the Monday is a holiday. And so you're welcome to find that at happyspacepod.com/events. You can find a place to sign up for the monthly chat. But this one coming up on June 6th, I think it is, is all about the HSP family. And I'm going to be inviting conversation with fellow HSPs who are going to be— we'll be exploring family and supporting each other when we've got sensitivity in the family. Yeah.

And yes, the question coming off the slides, I always believe in sharing.

12:59. Wow. It's been wonderful. Wonderful to have you. Really, are you sending them now? Are you gonna—

No, no, I send it later. So when we have all the email addresses, I have them. If you have your— what you like to send, I collect everything in one. I put this recording in YouTube, put our link in it so we can all have it, and then it's sent all in one big beautiful email to everyone so everybody has it. So they can also have our both emails, and if we can, can connect Yeah. From my side, it was really—

And I would say, Christian, Christian, email later rather than putting in the chat here, because we may not grab it from here, but email Christoffel or myself directly, and then we'll be able to reply to you. There's too many inboxes. Don't put them here. This is going to be awful to do again.

You now see an overload of 2 people suffering. Oh shit, I see so many things in the chat. What should I do with it? I know the chat will be saved, so We can always read the chat and see if we missed something. But also, I will say reach out. We are more than willing to reach out and more to connect with people, because if we make this world— if it can help you, you become a better coach, a better person, better mother, and the whole world contributes and benefits from that. So that's a freaking amazing thing.

Thanks, thanks so much, Christoffel, for being someone so fun to present with. This is the first time we've done this, but I would look forward to jamming with you anytime. And thanks everyone for joining us. Have a wonderful rest of your day.

Pavla, thank you so much again for being here. Pavla, that's a beautiful lady who sits there with beautiful glasses, is one of my ex-students and a freaking amazing MCC coach. I didn't put you earlier in the chat, but Thanks.