Redefining the Family Ideal as a Highly Sensitive Mom

As for me and my house, we reject the rat race of family busyness.

About once a year, my husband and I take our ridiculously oversized 2-person kayak out to a quiet lake.

We bring along a small cooler of drinks and snacks, paddle out to a quiet cove, and just be. We dip our toes in the water. We lie back and feel the sun on our faces. We snack on trail mix with chocolate chunks and enjoy beverages that are prohibited on the premises. We talk about indulgent things like hopes and dreams. We also enjoy each other’s company in sweet silence.

Solitude, together.

We only do this about once a year because that’s how often the stars align for it to happen. But when they do, it’s truly a gift from the universe. We have an unexpected day off of work so we get to go on an uncrowded weekday (the crowd factor is VERY IMPORTANT TO ME.) It requires us to seize the day, to follow the YOLO mantra with abandon, to act impulsively to make it all come together, none of which we are naturally inclined to do.

We’re lucky that it happens as often as once a year.

But every time we go, we spend much of the time talking about how we should do it more. We should plan days off just to do it. It should become a priority we carve out time for.

Carving out time to do nothing has always felt like an indulgence while also being an absolute necessity for me.

Necessitating Downtime

I have inadvertently made downtime a core value in my family’s culture. It was simply a means of survival.

Highly sensitive people (HSPs) require downtime to let their nervous systems catch up and recover from all the deep processing and subtle sensing they do all day, every day. HSPs have more reactive brains than less-sensitive folks and it takes a toll. One recent study found that HSP’s brains are more active even while we sleep!

So the struggle is real.

While I’ve largely accepted that necessitating downtime is simply how our family thrives, I’m still insecure about the ways our life pace differs from most. Sometimes I wish we could be the shining family on a hill — the family who does it all and loves it all.

That sports-playing, volunteering, classroom-moming, weekend hustling, elaborate birthday partying, perfectly curated instagramming, never needing downtime family.

We just aren’t.

Losing the Family Busyness Rat Race

I’ve never been someone who can do it all, though I’ve tried my hardest. This is one reason (of many) why I had to leave Evangelicalism. I couldn’t keep up with the expectation of doing, doing, doing for the church and I couldn’t get over my guilt of falling short. It’s taken me a long time to believe that I don’t have to.

I’ve spent most of my adult life learning to trust that my inability to keep pace with western society is not a moral issue.

I know that now. I do. But the insecurity lingers.

The Extracurricular Predicament

In parenting, few issues highlight this more than the idea that the more extracurriculars kids do, the better the family is. I have a lot of insecurity about the lack of extracurriculars my highly sensitive child (HSC) has been exposed to. Extracurricular activities are a hot-button topic for parents of HSCs as our sensitive kids usually have a different, and often challenging, experience of them.

An HSC’s non-involvement is often mostly due to the child’s disinterest and there are many reasons why an HSC might turn their nose up at extracurriculars:

• Anxiety about trying something new
• Perfectionism and not wanting to learn or make a mistake in front of others
• Intense emotions around competition
• The sense that such activities are beneath their maturity as ‘old souls’
• Feeling forced to participate before they’re ready (ie feeling the pressure to stifle their ‘pause-to-check’ instinct)

While I subscribe to the philosophy that kids should take the lead on their involvement in activities, I struggle with my son’s aversion to extracurriculars because I see the potential benefit of his participation. I’ve had to do a lot of internal work managing my thoughts around it, being sure to not get wrapped up in the desired appearance participation achieves.

The thing is, I’ve grown convinced that especially in the younger years, parents often seek out sports or activities for their kids at least in part because they crave the socializing that accompanies them. Or maybe it’s that they are just looking for an outlet — any outlet — for their kid’s excess energy — something I relate to with my non-HSC but I’ve never had to address with my HSC.

Winning Our Own Game

My HSC is showing more interest in extracurriculars now that he’s older and I am hopeful that we are getting to an age where his involvement would produce positive outcomes. Even though I believe we’ve taken the right approach for our son, I still struggle with feeling ‘not good enough’ as a family for not pursuing more structured activities.

I think I struggle so much with this disparity between that idyllic family picture and my family’s reality because I’ve always been insecure about not measuring up. My husband doesn’t have this same insecurity even though he has limited energy like me.

For me, being highly sensitive has contributed to insecurity my whole life. Reclaiming my sensitivity as a source of strength is an ongoing objective. Finding security in my sensitivity has been the most empowering pursuit of my life.

Family Values

I’ve spent a lot of time recently identifying my personal values. A values evaluation feels utterly impossible at first because you peruse around 100 very important-sounding words like consistency, dedication, and inclusiveness and think there is no way you can rank such things (and HSPs have a hard time picking favorites, especially on important matters!) But once I really got into it, I noticed themes in the words that caught my attention.

One of my top value themes is balance.

This makes sense given how my sensitivity affects my life. I have limited stores of energy that are spent easily. One of the greatest joys is my own rich inner life, which takes time and space to cultivate. There is just no other way for me. Others seem to be able to handle imbalance more easily, whether throughout their whole lives or just for a time. That’s just not my way in the world.

I can feel insecure about needing that balance in my family too. It can feel like we do too little. But when I take an honest look at our life, I see all the things we are doing. We do what makes us feel content but not overwhelmed. And if we do fall into a rut of doing too little (which does happen!) we sense the stirring in our bones to balance it out.

It turns out that trusting ourselves is the key. I’ve come to realize that when we give our bodies space to feel what they need and communicate back to us, balance requires less effort.

Highly Sensitive Families Exemplify Another Way

When my husband and I take the kayak out, or when my kids are cuddled up on the couch doing nothing in particular, I try to snap a picture. Not for Instagram, not for anyone else, just for us.

The photos go in our annual family photo album. We love flipping through them, remembering highlights like birthdays and vacations, and also all those little moments in between.

When I let go of societal pressure I realize I am content with my sensitive family’s culture. We are a family who rejects society’s rat race, who declines busyness, who says we will rest and enjoy each other, dammit.

Those shining families on a hill loving it all while doing it all still amaze me. I am glad they exist in the world.

I’m also glad that we aren’t one of them.

Maybe there is more than one way to be a shining family on a hill, lighting the way for others. There is another way to be in this world.

Sensitive families can exemplify an alternative family ideal. We can give others permission to rest. To have empty days on their calendars. To paddle out to a quiet cove and just be for a little while.

You Only Live Once.

As for me and my house, we won’t busy ourselves to death.