Sensitive Stories

REPLAY: Emerging Into Your True Self as a Sensitive Person

• April Snow and Jen Berlingo • Episode 11

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Have you put yourself aside for years? In this episode, I talk with Jen Berlingo, LPC, ATR about tuning back into your inner calling and…

• Emerging in midlife and unmasking to be your full self again  

• Looking inward to identify what needs to change 

• Navigating big life changes and taking one small step forward at a time 

• Turning your ear back inward to listen to your inner yearnings and reclaiming your true nature 

• Assessing whether your lifestyle supports your sensitive nervous system  

• Learning to assert your preferences in a world that’s not built for HSPs  

• Stop abandoning yourself and people pleasing to make others comfortable  

Jen (she/her) is a midlife coach, a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Nationally Registered Art Therapist, and a master-level Reiki practitioner. After two decades of midwifing hundreds of women through life’s major transitions and experiencing her own passage through a fiery midlife portal where she more fully stepped into her queer identity, she was inspired to write Midlife Emergence to accompany other women in traversing their midlife journeys. Upon its publication, Midlife Emergence reached #1 in several Amazon categories, including midlife management, divorce, LGBTQ+ memoirs, LGBTQ+ parenting and families, adulthood and aging, and self-help. Jen is also a visual artist who not only created the painting on the cover of her book, but also makes custom pieces for collectors worldwide and exhibits her fluid, abstract art locally in her beloved town of Boulder, Colorado. 

Keep in touch with Jen:
• Website: https://jenberlingo.com
• Substack: https://jenberlingo.substack.com 
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenberlingo   
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenberlingotherapy 
• Etsy Shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/artsorceress 

Additional Resources:
• Get support when undergoing profound transitions like midlife, divorce, or coming out later in life. Learn more + sign up for a free discovery call with Jen at https://jenberlingo.com/coaching 
• Midlife Emergence Book: https://jenberlingo.com/book 
• 100 Day Project:

Thanks for listening! You can read the full show notes and sign up for my email list to get new episode announcements and other resources at:
https://www.sensitivestories.com

You can also follow "SensitiveStrengths" for behind-the-scenes content plus more educational and inspirational HSP resources:

And for more support, attend a Sensitive Sessions monthly workshop: https://www.sensitivesessions.com. Use code PODCAST for 25% off.

If you have a moment, please rate and review the podcast, it helps Sensitive Stories reach more HSPs!

This episode is for educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for treatment with a mental health or medical professional.

Some links are affiliate links. You are under no obligation to purchase any book, product or service. I am not responsible for the quality or satisfaction of any purchase.

Jen Berlingo:

I was looking at my life and looking at the paths not taken and wanting to feel that sense of no regret later. I felt this urgency of everything life had to offer and to do it in a way that was gentle, especially in being highly sensitive. How do I look inside and find out what needs to change and what I want to express?

April Snow:

Welcome to Sensitive Stories, the podcast for the people who live with hearts and eyes wide open. I'm your host, psychotherapist and author April Snow. I invite you to join me as I deep dive into rich conversations with fellow highly sensitive people that will inspire you to live a more fulfilling life as an HSP without all the overwhelm. In this episode, I talk with Jen Berlingo about turning your ear back inward to listen to your inner yearnings and emerging as your true nature, learning to assert your preferences in a world that's not built for HSPs, and navigating big life changes and taking one small step forward at a time. Jen is a midlife coach, a licensed professional counselor, a registered art therapist, a visual artist, and a master level Reiki practitioner in Boulder, Colorado. After two decades of midwifing hundreds of women through life's major transitions and experiencing her own passage through a midlife portal where she more fully stepped into her queer identity, she was inspired to write Midlife Emergence to accompany other women in traversing their midlife journeys. For more HSP resources and to see behind the scenes video from the podcast, join me on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube at Sensitive Strengths, or sign up for my email list. Links are in the show notes and at sensitivest stories.com. And just a reminder that this episode is for educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for treatment with a mental health or medical professional. Let's dive in a Jen, could you start off by telling us how and when you discovered that you're a highly sensitive person? Yeah.

Jen Berlingo:

I suppose it was when I was a child. I was pretty contemplative from a young age and empathic and tender. And I have memories of a few instances that I could track back to now that I have the language for being an HSP, but I didn't at the time. But I remember seeing the Muppet movie in the theater when it came out. I was four years old. And I remember bursting into tears at a couple different parts, and my mom was so confused. And one part was when Kermit was just alone and talking to himself about a promise that he had made to his friends and to himself and not wanting to let any of them down. And he was just like walking off into this darkness. Remember, and I just it like touched me so much and also feeling moved by Gonzo singing, I'm going to go back there someday. I felt like those lyrics were like reminding me of this like larger knowing that I couldn't really explain and I couldn't explain to my mom why I was crying. And I felt pretty alone in those feelings. Yeah, whether or not that was true at the time. And I remember when I was six years old, I was in my grandparents' living room where they had their Christmas tree up, and tears were just streaming down my face. And I was just like reckoning with the fact that they wouldn't be here someday for Christmas. So they wouldn't be there anymore. And then Christmas would go on without them. And I remember I like had this knowing that I needed to clean my face up before I went back into the kitchen to join the rest of my family. So they wouldn't really know I was crying because I didn't know how to explain like the tenderness that was happening at that age. Yeah, and I was just always like wanting to write and make art alone in my room as a kid. I still do, I'm still the same person. But I was called too sensitive or shy by my dad, which as if that was like an insult, it was more used in a pejorative way at the time. But yeah, I just didn't really speak up as a kid to say things that in the environment were harsh, that the lights in the grocery store felt too bright, or the volume on the ads on the TV were or like movie premieres were like too loud or overwhelming, or that the chemical perfume that they spray on you when you go to the department store was like making me dizzy. And then as a teenager, I just felt yeah, I remember just tears welling up in my eyes, like when I'd smell rain in the fall, or feel that like hollow, there's like a hollow drumming sort of feeling when the sound of fireworks go off, it would get to my belly and would make me tear up. So I don't know. I always just felt permeable in some way. I still do. When I go to the doctor or dentist, I always get reflection of like how I'm more sensitive than most of the patients. And they always seem really surprised. And some practitioners are even shaming about it in the sense of I remember getting acupuncture one time. And when I get acupuncture, I can feel the energy really coursing through my body really so strongly. And I remember one of them saying, like, how did you have a baby when you can't even handle this tiny needle? So yeah, it comes through in a lot of ways, like the physical and environmental stuff and the empathic, like tenderness pieces for it.

April Snow:

Yeah, he uses a lot of great words permeable, which I've never thought about, but it's so true. I use the word spongy. We've taken everything so much, and even from such a young age, at the age of four or six, and having these uh big, deep, accidental feelings and experiences that you can't really put words to. And uh there's not always another person around to help you understand it more deeply and thoroughly. How do you make sense of that as age four, age six, especially if you're hearing those messages of you're too sensitive, get over it? All those messages that we hear as little sensitive beings. It's a challenge to make to understand yourself and how do I take up space in this sensitive body?

Jen Berlingo:

Yeah, yeah, it's hard. You don't feel met or seen in it, or maybe you're seen in it, but it's not normalized or validated quite necessarily. Yeah. It seemed like they were having different experiences of it or could really handle more input or stimulus than I was comfortable with.

April Snow:

And yeah, you there's this great quote in your book, Midlife Emergence, some over design wanted to ask you about it. And it relates to what you're just saying as these experiences throughout your early life as a sensitive person. You said, as a child, I always felt like I was a lot emotionally, and I wasn't sure how or if my heart could ever expand to include all that I cared about. I just love that. Because there is so much we're feel so passionately about and so aware of. And you said over the years I have learned how to carry all that I take in, that permeability. I'm curious since then, when you were a younger person, realizing there's something different about you to now and having language for it and maybe hopefully having community around it. What has shifted with your relationship to your sensitive parts since then?

Jen Berlingo:

I feel like I'm more able to see them as a gift and even just in the last few years coming to that. I think I came to it slowly over time, but I don't really feel like I could be an effective coach or therapist or healer without my sensitive nature. Once I actually learned how to take care of myself while being of service to another, yeah, I was fortunate enough. I got my graduate degree at Naropa University, which is like a Buddhist-oriented school where mindfulness meditation is about a third of the counseling curriculum or so. And so the therapist's identity and the care of the therapist self were hugely emphasized in my program. And I eventually, once I got out of school, realized that not all therapists were trained in that way. And I felt really lucky that was happening. So I started to facilitate a guided, self-paced online program called the Soul Space Series, that where I help other helpers who maybe didn't get those messages or skills in that sort of self-compassion so they could tune into their own needs, whether or not they're highly sensitive. That's just always been a big part of my work. And I feel like it also serves me as an artist and as a writer because I just try to communicate or convey my own really acute perceptions through this like highly impressionable lens that I have. I like to think of it as like seeing the world through almost like a slightly fevered brain, even though I know that's not the science behind it. But it just feels like things are more vivid, like the colors are more seeping and lights are more sparkling, and my ears can be pierced with like subtle sounds more, and my heart is more porous. So it's I I feel like describing whether it's in words through my writing or in images through my art, through painting. I feel like it's a gift that allows me the level of self-expression and authenticity that I want to be, I don't know, modeling and inviting more of in the world.

April Snow:

Yeah, I love that you're supporting yourself, but also other healers, therapists, artists, because we're well suited for that work, but it is also a lot to process and move through your nervous system, your body energetically, emotionally. I'm curious, it sounds like self-expression is a really important part of your own personal process. I'm wondering if you could speak to how that supports you as a sensitive person. You talked about being permeable, porous, having this, I love that, this fever dream of experience of the world. I wonder if it's connected to that and that processing or for something else.

Jen Berlingo:

Yeah, I think self-expression for me is, I don't know, it feels like a medicine. It's like I'm giving myself something that I didn't fully get to have as a kid, where I felt like I had to mask a lot of my actual feelings, thoughts, sensitivities in some way. And now I'm more trying to communicate that through various channels a lot. And I like to do that so that it can invite other people into doing that as well. Like when you see someone expressing their truth or flying their freak flag or just really being raw and honest about their experience of being a human being on earth at this time. It's ah, I can say that weird thing or whatever. Like I feel it's so freeing. It's been so freeing for me to see other people do that. That I want to do that as well. And it's like reciprocally healing, I feel like.

April Snow:

Yeah, there's a lot of healing in taking that mask off and allowing our sensitivity to fully come through and all the different layers and experiences that allows us to have, connecting to emotion and creativity and intuition. And and it can be really hard to do. A lot of these conversations I've had. People have mentioned that there's a vulnerability in that. Yeah. Taking that mask off. Is that something you've experienced as well? Oh, definitely.

Jen Berlingo:

Especially in publishing my book that was supremely vulnerable and anxiety-provoking for me. I lost a lot of sleep, but ultimately rewarding in all of the ways I just described, as well as just cathartic for me to process my own story around that. And but yeah, the vulnerability hangover is real. It definitely felt like that and still does sometimes for sure.

April Snow:

Yeah. Yeah. Having written a book myself, it is probably the most vulnerable I've ever been. Uh, you know, taking just this labor of love and all this personal expression and putting it out for someone else, right? To interact with and somewhat judge, and hopefully it helps someone, but it is very it's a hard process. The I think the creative part of it, the writing, the the processing, the absorbing is is so pseudofree. So it's opposed, but then when you it's ready to put it out to the world, it's a completely different experience. And and one that I think stops a lot of sensitive people from living their truth. I know that's a big part of your book, right? Is connecting to what you're yearning for, what your purpose is at any stage of life. And you've caught it midlife emergence. I'm wondering if you could say a little bit more about what that means for you.

Jen Berlingo:

That sure. Yeah. So in psychology or developmental psych, midlife is said to be like 40 to 65. And the stereotypical midlife crisis usually is centered the male experience. And I felt like the sports car and all of the those things that we hear about, but I don't feel like it has to be a crisis or an emergency. So I flipped the word emergency into emergence because it's defined as the process of coming into view or becoming exposed after being previously concealed with an unmasking in itself and just like a truth-telling or an exposing of something maybe that others weren't able to see before. I reframe it that way because it's like this time of life where we can muster the courage or our challenge to actually shed some of the earlier conditioning that we might have had in the first act of life. And when I entered midlife or entered my 40s, which is like the decade I think of as like a liminal space between the first and the second act of life, it felt like I was in a sort of waiting room where I still am. I'm 48, um, where I have this opportunity to architect the next act in the way that I would like it to be. So in doing that, it really was like I was unveiling within me what had been previously unseen. Yeah, it feels like more of an emergence of my authentic self and just like I said, like shedding the social, familial, cultural conditioning that I'd been living into.

April Snow:

I think a lot of HSPs have that experience where because we're deep processors, we need more time to reflect and get comfortable being ourselves. Because of the need to mask and the need to shield away from those two sensitive messages that we often find ourselves later on in life, 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond even stepping into our true selves, what we wanted to do all along. Finally, we feel like, okay, I'm ready now. It's coming across your book, it it feels like a big permission and just a relief, I would say. It's not too late.

Jen Berlingo:

Yeah.

April Snow:

Right. Because I hear so many sensitive people who they really want to make a big shift, whether it's work or relationships, or it's how they live their lives, how they express themselves. And you can unveil at any time. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious, was there what brought you to that midlife emergence point in your own life? How did you know that's a big question? It is.

Jen Berlingo:

It's a good question. I ever since I was that sensitive little four-year-old wanting to just write stories in my room. I was like, I want to be an author and an illustrator one day. That was my dream. So it was really like that all coming true. And no, I'm not an illustrator, but I'm an artist. And I did do the cover of my book. But how it came to be, those were the seeds. Yeah, it felt like I wanted to express while I was going through the process that was really nonlinear and really messy and emergent. It felt risky and emergent in a way of writing it from the middle, from where I was, not when it was like tied up in a bow at the end of this process. So as I entered my 40s, then I was looking at my life and looking at the paths not taken and wanting to feel like that sense of no regret later. I felt like this quickening and this urgency in a way to wring the juice out of like everything life had to offer and to do it in a way that was gentle, just especially in being highly sensitive. I knew I couldn't just like set my life on fire or blow it up as a lot of people use those sort of things. I was like, okay, what can what's the flow burn? What's burning? How do I look inside and find out like what it is that truly needs to be, what needs to change and what I want to express. So I started writing it actually without knowing I was writing a book. I was doing the 100-day project on Instagram. I think I'm in my ninth or tenth year of it now, but my theme that year, I called it 100 days of midlife emergence. And every day I shared like a snippet of truth from this place where I was coming out later in life. I was working through the idea of open marriage that my ex-husband and I were experimenting with, having my first queer relationship, all sorts of pieces of that, all the way through like separation and divorce. So I was like giving these little things. Also, like the changes in my career, a lot of things were changing all at once for me. A few people commented on those, a lot of people did, and that resonated with them, or I would get DMs saying, Oh my gosh, me too. Thanks for saying this out loud. And a few people were like, this should be a book. And I thought, oh my gosh, maybe this is that book I've been meaning that I was meant to write. So even though it felt, yeah, like my most most vulnerable personal stuff, I knew that the places where we feel most alone and maybe the most shame or vulnerability are really where we connect most deeply. And that's what I'm interested in doing in this life. So I was like, what better pursuit then? Yeah.

April Snow:

So I've rather than to put it in a book. Because you're right that we are often going through these this process alone, especially sensitive people. We're often feeling so different, so disconnected from what we see other most other people going through the pace or the lifestyle or just how we're moving from day to day. So important to get these stories out and to put it on the page. And thankfully, you know, to you listen to that urgent call inside of yourself. Because we have, yes, we have books on sensitivity, but for me, I want more personal stories.

Jen Berlingo:

Me too.

April Snow:

Yeah. What does it actually look like? How can I get there? And I love how you use the word slow burn. Because even when there's that urgent call, we don't have to deny our sensitivity. We can still ease in, take a gentle approach. So it can be both.

Jen Berlingo:

Yeah. For me, it had to be like I couldn't ignore the burning, but I also needed to do it in a way that kept me feeling relatively safe, or even while experimenting with kind of letting go of the safe, familiar path toward what was more mysterious and unknown. It feels there can be a gentle process in doing that, which I invite the reader into in the book. I also like to read personal stories. I read memoirs and I read like personal growth books. And so mine is a combination of the two, actually. So I invite the reader into their own process while telling my story. And everyone's process is so different. I know from my clients, it's not linear, but there are these themes that seem universal. And that's what I was hoping to speak to.

April Snow:

It's true. It's not usually linear, yet we still continue to move forward. When you said universal themes, I'm wondering, could you speak to that a little bit more? What were you noticing? Yeah, sure.

Jen Berlingo:

Um, I feel like I guess there are steps that I went through that I see other people going through before I wrote it, during and after, of what do you like? How do you turn in word to listen to your inner voice? And then what's the next right step after that? Is it to tell one safe person? Is it to maybe that person's a therapist or coach, maybe it's your best friend or your partner? And then like themes around looking at early childhood conditioning and then reclaiming some things, overturning those, welcoming the mystery is a theme. Each chapter, I have 13 chapters that have different 13 themes, identifying your why, like why would you want to be doing this and how can that ripple out maybe to people who observe you and your children if you're a caregiver parent? Yeah, and really just I outline a whole bunch of them. But what I'm saying is it's not 13 steps to getting through your midlife permit. It's so not doesn't go in that order all the time. But yeah, I've just, it's something I've seen happen with so many of the women I work with.

April Snow:

You're noticing there are overlapping themes, although a lot of times they can happen in different orders or at different paces. Do you remember what the first step you took was once you recognize okay, this calling needs to be answered? Do you remember what you did first? I told my ex-husband. You did? Yeah. So disclose it. Right. You you mentioned that you're thinking about who you can tell. And that was where you started.

Jen Berlingo:

For me, it was really needing to share that with one other trusted, loving person in my life. And yeah, I'm someone who likes one-on-one connection, and I need to feel that and seen and like what I'm going through. So that felt like a natural step for me as a next step. And then to have a partner in it who could help me work through that and myself and help me process it verbally. And even though, of course, he was impacted quite a bit from it, there's hope, I think, in telling the truth and yeah, being able to connect on a deep level and know each other even more through that. So that was my first step. And it's different for others, I think sometimes too. They don't might not choose that, they might choose, I'm gonna journal about it for a while, I'm gonna join a group, I'm going to hire a therapist or whatever that may be. Yeah.

April Snow:

Yeah, there are a lot of different steps, and there's something about sharing your truth, being seen in it, being validated, being able to express it. And that could be with a therapist, it could be with a friend or a partner. There's just something about it that's so powerful. And it it allowed it to come out into the world for you and let it be real.

Jen Berlingo:

Yeah, it helps it be more concrete to see it externalized or hear it externalized or coming out of my mouth. I'm like, okay, this actually has like traction now. And it felt relieving in the sense of not carrying it alone. And also, okay, something needs to happen, something needs to move. Really not wanting to be stagnant and stale and just stay in this homeostasis that I don't know felt wrote like what I was supposed to have been.

April Snow:

Yeah, what you were supposed to have been. And so you're breaking that down. You talked also in your book about coming from, I'm just paraphrasing here, but I think coming from a long line of women who sacrificed. Yeah. I have a quote here, which I just loved. Coming from a long line of women who are givers until they're empty, which I think a lot of HSPs will relate to, I definitely do. Giving it all away first, putting self last all the time. Said, we learn to be needed, not to need. We learn to be wanted, not to want. How did you step out of that to listen to this call to say, my needs are important enough to listen to? Yeah.

Jen Berlingo:

I was conditioned to not rock the boat, like whether that was just in my DNA or the water I was swimming in, with statements like being a good girl, or like this idea that a quiet baby's a good baby. I realized once I had my kid, it was like, oh, are they a good baby? And it was like good, meaning quiet and sleeps. And it was like a compliment of my family when someone said, Oh, she always puts others before herself. She's so selfless, like selfless, like without self, as if that's a virtue. So I learned that some of the things I was feeling would be like inconvenient or disruptive, and I didn't want to be those things, which is a brilliant survival strategy when you're dependent on caregivers. I learned to tolerate a world that was loud and harsh and beautiful and heartbreaking and all of those things and powered through those even when I felt uncomfortable. And yeah, I felt, yeah, I think the world wasn't made really to accommodate the what is it, 15 to 30 percent or something, like somewhere in there of us. Yeah, or yeah. So how I guess I started to find myself again in that, or to listen internally. Yeah, I feel like there are a couple levels to that question. Like one is the more inward one, like the desires that I had, and tuning back into what do I want? What do I need? I feel like I was born receptive to those things. We all are like in our wildness, right? And then we're domesticated or unwilded, and we tune them out and we're acculturated into that status quo. And then in midlife, there felt like there was a rewilding or remembering or a reclaiming of my true nature. So I had to relearn to hear that inner voice, like whether it was whispering or shouting, and then yeah, knowing that it shouts through bodily symptoms sometimes, which is a piece of my story that I talked about in my book as well. Yeah, and I talk about how to like how I turned my ear inward to listen and I bring the reader through their own self-inquiry exercises, like art and journaling and personal ritual to begin to tune into what their desires are then. And I think the other level of your question is more about like the environment of that. Like my therapist asked me a few months ago, I think it was actually six months ago or so now. Does your lifestyle support your sensitive system? And I think about that every day. So I think the other piece of it is like how I'm learning to do that is to honor these, I guess, more delicate parts of myself that are just so receptive to every freaking thing. And just respecting the fact that the nervous systems of HSPs are more sensitive to the stimuli in our environment. Right now, I feel like I'm trying to strike a balance between tolerating discomforts, like when it's necessary, and with also asking for what I need around my sensitivity so I don't become overstimulated or grouchy, like my girlfriend. She's really accepting of the fact that I keep my house so dimly lit with like incandescent lights, and I can't have LED bulbs and there are lampshades, and my teenager wears headphones when they need loud music during the early evening hours, because that's when I am blown out. I use my weighted blanket. I have those loop earplug things to help me tune out and not spin out when I'm in a loud space or like at a live concert. So, and I think like validation, like I enjoy consuming things that feel validating. Catherine May's book, The Electricity of Every Living Thing, was such a beautiful read for me, like really resonating with how she eventually in midlife was received an autism diagnosis around her sensitivities. And I still have a lot of question marks about that. I don't know, like that spectrum and where this is or if. And then like podcasts like this, there's and there are a few sub stacks that I like. So I think that like little tweaks like that and advocating for my needs in both of those ways are a big relief for me. And just learning to assert my preferences, at least in my own home, because we all need like a sanctuary. And when we go out into the world, it's not built for us. Yeah, it feels like doing that where I can, and then stepping out of my comfort zone too, to stretch and grow. Cause I think that I think that there are definite places to do that. And I've done a lot of that, but I don't think we have to in the sense of having it be like tolerating what's harsh or loud on our soft systems.

April Snow:

Yeah, finding that balance of comfort and edginess. Right. Yeah. Where there's growth, but also you're supporting your nervous system, your need for a slower pace for processing all of that. And I love that. Can you assert your preferences at least at home? Right. Or it might be a little safer. And I'm also always telling my wife, we need to turn off the overhead lights.

Jen Berlingo:

Yeah, I actually always have it off and it's dim. And if I go out and come back and my girlfriend's been here by herself, she'll have the overhead lights on, she'll have Sports Center blasting. I call it the young man show. I'm like not athletic or sporty in any way, but she'll be like on the computer, multitasking, texting, listening to Sports Center, overhead lights. And I'm like, oh, and she's like, oh hi, sorry. Which like she needs to be able to have that environment too. Um but it's a funny like juxtaposition to how I am when I'm here. I'm like, oh, I've candled the volumes really well. Exactly.

April Snow:

It's almost dark for me. Yeah, me too. Me too. Yeah, and just having that, yeah. I just think of home as sanctuary and just having that space you can come home to and just fully take off the mask or fully let your nervous system unwind. Yeah. And I really appreciate that you said having these practices, these rituals that help you come back to self to tune in. What do I need? Because it's probably not a question you've had a lot of experience asking yourself. I'm saying that to the general few and in our HSB community. We're not we're we're really conditioned to, you know, just assimilate to other people's needs. We're shapeshifters in a sense, chameleons. And then you do, you get to a point where I can't tolerate it anymore a lot of times. I had that I was like, okay, I need to live in a different way. Yeah. Yeah, as I've gotten into my forties now, it is a lot easier. It is. It is.

Jen Berlingo:

There's something about this time of life, I think that it makes total sense and developmentally and I don't know psychology of having this individuation process again or a second adolescent sort of a situation of like really individuating from social and cultural messaging and tuning back into the self. And then when we do that and we find, oh, I do have an inner compass and maybe even someone like me, or I feel like I've been in therapy my whole adult life. I've become a therapist. I've been doing self-inquiry work and personal growth work for decades and still was abandoning myself in favor of making other people comfortable, or for me, seeming like to be assimilating in social environments so that maybe I wouldn't be as anxious or weird. Yeah. It's I got to a point where it's like, why would I do that to myself? Or why be that around others? Like it could actually free them up as well.

April Snow:

That's a good point. I think the assumptions were taking care of others, making them more comfortable, more safe. But what are we actually doing when we mask?

Jen Berlingo:

Yeah, I think we're playing into the normie mainstream culture and making it so that everyone needs to assembly where it feels like that's the opposite direction that I would like to be going, at least making space for all sorts of difference is really so key to coexisting on this planet and in a way that isn't going to make everyone internalize everything and have it come out sideways physically or emotionally, mental health-wise. Like if we could all actually be ourselves and our true selves, and then we could actually know each other more deeply.

April Snow:

So there's so much that becomes available when we're more authentic. There's I don't know, I feel like there's this more opportunity for deep connection and seeing each other, experiencing each other. And then we often we also get to have those sensitive gifts that we talked about come through. Yeah. We're it's such a it just really hurts me that we're covering up so much. All of our beautiful intuition and creativity and emotionality and insights that we bring to the world that are so needed. We think we have to assimilate and be like everyone else. But yeah, it's such a sacrifice, right? Not just us for everybody. Right. Because we like you said, we need that difference. It's so important.

Jen Berlingo:

Yeah. And I love the quote by Glenn Doel where she says, There's no such thing as one-way liberation. And I feel like that's what modeling that does. It's like in freeing myself, it helps other people free themselves too. And not just me, but like when I see someone else doing that, it helps me feel more liberated.

April Snow:

It's true. It it gives safety or permission for that. Yeah. Yeah. So we have both been in therapy. We're both therapists. Yeah. But I'm just curious for maybe someone who's just beginning to set down that tendency to self-sacrifice, who's just starting to maybe want, feel that urge to reconnect with self. How do you start to find yourself again? How do you start to tune in? You talked about tuning back in, listening to yourself. Where do you start to reconnect with your needs?

Jen Berlingo:

Oh, yeah. And that's a big question. It is. It's it's the whole beginning of my book. But I think I would just say, myself included, like me, most of my clients are recovering good girls and former people pleasers who've like done all the right things and met the expectations of the life we all should want, and then still come up feeling unsatisfied in midlife. And I feel like there's a time when the stakes feel really high. It could feel disruptive to change things when you're settled into career, mortgage, child, taking care of elders, all of the things that come with this stage. And but we don't really have the models or roadmaps or cheerleaders that help us to unfurl into this more expansive, aligned way of being in the world. And that's what tempts us to stay in our safe, sleepy, stagnant habits, because it's really difficult to face that inner voice that might wonder, is this all there is, or to admit to yourself that you might want a different kind of life. That is scary. I think change is scary to people, but so is staying the same when it isn't feeling full or congruent with what's inside. Yeah, I do think we all have a unique gift to bring to the world. And in midlife, we have that like achy yearning that we sometimes can't name. And I think that is because, like we talked about, we haven't been taught to name it or look at what is it that we want. But I think that in that mess, like of not knowing, it really can't be harmful necessarily to at least get to know yourself in that, at least look inside and admit to yourself. Like, I saw this meme that was like, above all else, don't lie to yourself, or something like that. And it was like, oh my gosh, like that can't be harmful to at least tell yourself the truth. At least starting there. I have this exercise at the end of the first chapter of my book about writing what it is you'd want to say, and then writing, go a level deeper and write that. And then, like end of it is really one of my favorite prompts. What aren't you saying still? Write that. And so it's like you can, and just knowing that you don't even need to have an audience for it, but just what aren't you saying? What aren't you expressing? And that's usually what wants to be unleashed in midlife. So I think that I guess just staying the same day after day and swallowing your truth and authenticity to every make everyone else feel better, presumably, but probably not, isn't the way to go necessarily. Yeah, I don't feel like it's ever too late. I think it's like right on time to do that at this stage of life. It makes me think of this poem by Laura Weaver that I love at the end. She says something like, You've not missed the boat, you are the boat. Like some people are like, Oh, I've done all of this stuff. Like, I it's too late for me to change all of that, but you are the boat.

April Snow:

You are the boat. Exactly. I love that. And it's a good reminder that you don't have to disrupt everything, at least not right away. It's a good reminder, just as you did. You talked about how you that slow burn you eased in with one step at a time, telling your husband, and then slowly unfurling more and more. Yeah. That's the pace that you can go at. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. I'm staying in this completely, or I'm completely disrupting my whole entire life and all my relationships and my work. Yeah. What if you just started listening to yourself? I love that. And then slowly you get to that deeper question of okay, what am I still not sitting with? Right. Is there more to see? Is there something that's unmet in you that you that feels really important to listen to? But it's one step at a time. Otherwise, it's very overwhelming. We'll never start. That's you. You don't have to start at the end.

Jen Berlingo:

No, and you can't, because you can't know what is on the other side of that mystery. It's really just creating the path with your feet as they're walking. This is the only way. You can't really know like what's at the end of that path. Yeah. And just being present to each moment and checking back in, is this still the way? I love how Martha Beck in The Way of Integrity talks about, I think it's in that book. It might be in an earlier one where she says, move toward what's warm. And I use that as a barometer a lot of the time for me if I'm trying to make a decision. And it's almost like muscle testing, but you can feel like what would feel warm? What's warmer about this situation? And my heart wants to go there. That just feels so valuable at every juncture.

April Snow:

Yeah, what a great check-in question. A barometer. What's warm? Or is it still warm? Yeah. Take a step forward. Does it feel right here? Do I need to take a different step or am I ready to move forward?

Jen Berlingo:

Or pause and really follow this ebb of okay. I need to just be still for a minute and curl into a boss on my cat.

April Snow:

Exactly. Get under the weighted blanket. Yeah, that's where I go. Me too. Could not live without my weighted blanket. We do. That's such a good reminder that, especially for an HSB, take a step, pause, digest, process, and then what do I want to do for my next step? That's it. If anything, that's it. If someone's out there thinking, but it's too late, you are such a great example of you can change your life at any time. You can listen to those inner yearnings one step at a time, be your authentic self, set down that good girl mentality, that perfectionist. But if what if someone's saying, no, it's too late, I can't follow this calling inside of me. What would you say? You are the boat. You are the boat.

Jen Berlingo:

Exactly. Yeah, I feel like it's a good reminder. I feel like it's never too late. In my work, I'm, you know, I work with people of all ages, and I have a couple clients who are in their 60s, even late 60s, which is outside of the developmental psych thing. Oh, this is midlife, but it's also who's to say, really. It's just wherever you find yourself when you awaken to there's more. What is it? I want more truth and grid and depth and meaning and passion or whatever it is for that person. Then what would leave you with no regrets? Go get that. Like, how can we do that? What is a way to do that that's manageable and sustainable and doesn't necessarily shirk the responsibilities you've taken on? Because I think that's what people mean when they say it's too late. It's I've already been this person, this dependable person to all of these people in this specific way for this long. I can't abandon all of that right now. And in doing so, like engaging in a self-abandonment that might feel or be more unconscious. So I think that yeah, it's just to be able to honor the self and that we change just like everything in nature. And I hope I don't butcher it, but I'm thinking about my favorite poet, Andrea Gibson, who talks about how like being able to love someone is like asking them, who are you now? And who are you now? And who are you now over and over. And obviously they say it with much better words than I just did. But I think about that a lot because allowing the people we love to really be new every day and to be curious about who they're then who are you almost as though they're a stranger. And then being able to do that for yourself. Yeah, I think I I think about that when I think about it, it's too late, it's for what? Like literally everything in nature changes, everything is temporary, and it's our attachment to this, to like states that we get into that keeps us from flowing and shifting and being flexible in that.

April Snow:

I love that question. Who are you now? We're always growing, right? That's why I love therapy work because it's like we're always growing and there's always something new to learn about us or something to reclaim within ourselves. Yeah. And I love working with folks who are in their 60s and beyond, where you see that and that connection back to their young self as it's coming back online is so incredible to watch. And it's not too late at any point. And also I love giving other people permission to pivot and grow and shift, just as you hopefully you are to yourself. Yeah. It's so beautiful. And it doesn't have to be grandiose, it could be one small little shift where you allow your space to be more of you.

Jen Berlingo:

It can be just really day-to-day preferences that you're asserting, turning on a lamp rather than an overhead light, or exactly what do I really want to eat for lunch, and then listening in. We're following envy. I use that as a compass sometimes. Like it's such a useful emotion, I think. It's like watching what others might have, and not a way of like coveting that or taking it, but more in a way of if I feel that rise up in me, I'm like, oh, that's pointing me to what I really desire. Oh, that there's how I know. So yeah, they're just different ways of doing it that are like one degree turned toward like more and more of yourself. They don't have to be huge earth-shattering things, although my 40s have included a lot of those myself, but in a slow enough way for me.

April Snow:

Yeah, you made big changes over time. And I love that it doesn't have to be earth-shattering, it can just be one step forward. Right. Yeah. Yes. Beautiful. Well, Jen, I just want to thank you so much for this conversation for sharing part of your story. I hope folks will dive more into it in the book, Midlife Emergence. I'll include the link to that in the show notes and your social media links. How else can folks connect and work with you?

Jen Berlingo:

Yeah, my website's really the hub for all of my offerings. It's just my name, Jenberlingo.com. It's in the show notes. Yeah, my book is through there. You can find my book and it's um available wherever you want to buy books. And on Amazon, they also have the audiobook version, which was important for me uh to create because I like to listen to books a lot of the time. I also write weekly on Substack now. Yeah, so every Monday I come out with a new post um with topics like this and just more um updated things that I'm thinking about on different midlife sort of topics and sensitivity and queerness and all sorts of good things. So there's a link to that there as well. Yeah, and I do one-on-one coaching. I do group coaching programs, I have the self-placed online programs of different uh varieties, and I'm on social media. I hang out on Instagram the most. I post there at least every day. Um, and my handle is just my name, Jen Berlingo. And yeah, there's a bunch of other stuff too. I have an Etsy shop where I sell my Oracle deck that I've been selling for the last seven years. It's also very gentle and soft. It's like intuitive watercolor deck, and yeah. So anyway, I hope that people will reach out and I'm open.

April Snow:

I love that. You folks can go through and and see your journey week to week and find some resources as they navigate their own journey as well. As we're saying, it's so helpful to have examples and supports as you go through this process. So thank you for that. I'll include links to all that in the show notes. Thank you so much, April.

Jen Berlingo:

Thanks for having me here. This is really wonderful.

April Snow:

Same thing. Thanks so much for joining me and Jen for today's conversation. What I hope you'll remember is that it's never too late to reconnect with yourself, listen to your inner calling, and slowly begin to honor your needs as a highly sensitive person. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the Sensitive Stories podcast so you don't miss our upcoming conversations. Reviews and ratings are also helpful and appreciated. For behind the scenes content and more HSB resources, you can sign up for my email list or follow Sensitive Strengths on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Check out the show notes or sensitivestories.com for all the resources from today's episode. Thanks for listening.