The Highly Sensitive Person And Singing

 If you are a highly sensitive person and you feel that that affects your voice, this video is for you. I will show you how to use your highly sensitive trait as an advantage to dramatically improve your singing. On top of that, I will share a resource you can use to train your voice as a highly sensitive person, but only if you stick around till the end.

My name is Jorgelina. I am a singer. Vocal coach and songwriter. Now, I am not sure if you have come across the world highly sensitive person. 15% of the population to 20%,  have this trait that apparently is there because of survival reasons as a species. A highly sensitive person’s brain actually works differently than other people.

Not everybody that is sensitive is highly sensitive. High sensitivity trait is a very particular trait and it is important to know if you have the trait because it can really improve your life just to know it.

If you are a highly sensitive person and you don’t know it, you might think that you are weird, or maybe people might tell you that you are weird and that’s not true. So what I’m going to do first, I’m going to tell you what is a highly sensitive person. So I’m here with the website of the person that is the main researcher about highly sensitive people and I’m going to read from this all the things that you can check to know if you are a highly sensitive person or not.

(Reads Elaine Aron’s webpage) 

On this page, you can also take a test to know if you might be a highly sensitive person or not.

Now, of course, this is a singing channel. You might be wondering, What does that have to do with singing? Well, a lot. There are many, many ways that this trait affects your singing.

And if you are not aware of that, you can perceive it as something negative and it can affect your singing in a negative way. But if you are aware of that and you work around that, then it can actually make your singing better. I’m going to share with you three ways that a high-sensitivity trait affects your singing.

The first one is: if you go to sing in a different place, in a pub, in an open mic, or in a show, and you might feel overwhelmed by crowds, by lights, by a lot of sounds, and that actually really affects your singing. Now, I am a highly sensitive person myself, and I tend to have migraines when I am in closed spaces with not a lot of oxygen in places that don’t have a window, or in places that have a lot of sound or lights. And that, of course, affects my singing. When I have a migraine situation, everything is. Tense everything is tight singing is really hard.

And of course, you don’t have a good time. So now that I know that I Figured out ways to walk around I’m gonna let you know at the end of the video. You might be highly sensitive and you might not have a migraine issue. You might, still get overwhelmed in those places and it might affect your alarm system, and when your alarm system gets triggered, your voice is shut.

Remember that? I’m gonna leave a link to some of my videos that talk about that specifically.

The second way that being a highly sensitive person can affect your singing is that highly sensitive people tend to be a bit more sensitive to criticism.

And that of course can trigger your alarm system, shut down your voice, and for a lot of people it can just prevent them from ever singing again. And that is much bigger problem. So if you are a highly sensitive person, you need to develop ways to work around those criticisms to take them in a way that actually helps you and that is possible I’m also going to talk about that at the end.

Another way that the highly sensitive trait can affect your singing is that highly sensitive people tend to react differently to emotions.

We tend to feel anything a little bit more. Apparently, our mirror neurons are a little bit more active, which means if someone gets hurt, we feel the pain. As a singer, I have struggled with that quite a bit. In the early days when I was studying at the singing Academy, we were presented with a lot of songs and we had to resolve them from an interpretation point of view. We had to connect with the song, and of course, as a highly sensitive person. And you can connect at such a deep level that it affects you. So I’m also going to talk about how to prevent that from happening at the end.

But if this is you, you might be aware of what I mean. You try to sing a sad song and you can’t because you cry, for example.

Now let’s talk about how to shine if you are a highly sensitive person if you Identify with the things I have been saying. Alright, so the first point, being overwhelmed.  

The good thing about it is that it really energizes you, but you need to be able to know how to work around it so that energy doesn’t become too much. So as I said before, I tend to have migraines when I am in a place that is crowded and that is small and closed.

How I worked around it: firstly, on the day of the performance or the day that I have to go out to do my performance, I, take the day as easy as I can.

I try to sleep really well. I try to avoid any unnecessary meetings. I try to get as much time for myself as possible. Meditation, some exercise. I usually go for a walk or for a run and I take some, maybe a yoga session. And then of course, my vocal warmups of the day are designed to bring my nervous system to a calm state to be prepared for that.

I also, practice my performance, visualizing the space to get mentally ready for that. At the venue, I try as much as possible to go outside to get some air now and then. That really helps me prevent migraines.

Leading to the event, I also prepare myself by taking some supplements that calm my nervous system down. I have magnesium and l theanine, and I usually take a bath with Epsom salts as well. So that’s how I get around that one in particular.

The next point was being too sensitive to criticism.

Yes, I know that actually everyone is sensitive to criticism. But of course, highly sensitive people tend to have a little bit of a lower self-esteem and it can be a little bit harder on us.

So how to get around that a few things that might help. The first thing you have to do is of course separate the comments that help and the comments that don’t help.

Of course, there are people that give you constructive criticism.  Then of course there are always haters. That always happens! Every time you put yourself out there, there are people who don’t have anything better to do, and they criticize for the sake of it sometimes. It is a really good skill to have, being able to identify the differences and to develop the ability to pay attention to the good ones.

Often we get a lot of good feedback, and then one person says something that we don’t like, and we tend to fixate on that. Well, why can’t we train the ability to pay attention to the good ones? It is possible!

When you do get criticism that is constructive and that can help you become a better singer, then the process is to take that and give it as much energy as you choose. When we sit with that criticism we need to just analyze what can we get from there, what we agree with and what do we not agree with.

Because when people give you feedback, you need to know that they are giving you, usually in a significant percentage, a personal opinion more than a fact. That is another skill that is really good to have and it is the skill of separating facts from opinions.

It is great to build the ability to do things even though you might be criticized.

It’s terrible that a lot of people don’t sing just because they might be criticized. We will all be criticized anyway, so we might as well just do it anyway if we enjoy it.

The third point is being overwhelmed with emotion. Yes, that happens to a lot of highly sensitive people! and there are ways around it. This one is one that actually can really help your singing. One of the problems that I had when I was starting in the singing academy (of course, back then I didn’t know that I was highly sensitive), is that I would sing a song, and I would either connect with the lyrics and be unable to sing it because I was so overwhelmed with emotion, or I would shut down any emotion to be able to sing it, and I would sing like a robot!

As a highly sensitive person, you have more active mirror neurons, and you might identify with this if, for example, someone is telling you a story and you can feel all the emotions that they are feeling. If you’re watching a movie and you know it’s fiction, but you still can’t separate that from your body, your body doesn’t know it’s fiction, and you suffer a lot from there.

For example, I can’t watch any violent movies!

When you sing, this can come as an advantage, because you can connect with emotions much more easily. And, that gives your voice a lot of different  and that allows people to connect with you as well because you are being genuine. You are experiencing emotions in your own body. But, you need to develop the ability to have a primary emotion of safety.

It is possible to develop a primary emotion of safety, and on top of that, work with a secondary emotion. Which is the one that you are communicating with your song. In that way, you feel protected, but you still connect with the song at a deep level. This is going to give you a lot of textures in your voice, but more importantly, it’s going to make you enjoy the song a lot.

And it’s going to be a healing experience. As I said in the end, I actually have a resource for those of you that are highly sensitive and it’s a gentle voice warm-up. This is very important. When you practice gentle voice warm up, that convinces your brain that it is safe to sing and that lays the foundations for a strong voice.

So you can go to the description below and download it from there. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, give it a like and subscribe and I will see you in the next video!