Collins - The handbook for highly sensitive people: how to transform feeling overwhelmed and frazzled to empowered and fulfilled

Mel Collins is a UK-based qualified psychotherapeutic counsellor, spiritual healer and reiki master who runs regular workshops, courses and talks. Before her work as a counsellor, increasingly specialising in HSP clients, she worked in Her Majestys Prison Service for two years counselling substance misuse prisoners, then eight years as a prison governor. Being innately sensitive in a challenging prison setting has given her an incredible learning experience, both personal and professional, that has greatly informed her counselling and teaching. She appeared on the Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2 in March 2018, and she has since received widespread interest in her work from both consumers and the press alike. For more information, go to www.melcollins.co.uk

Praise for Mel Collins

This book is a major contribution to the subject of intuitive sensitivity and its relationship to the evolution of human consciousness. It provides an insightful and instructive understanding of this profound subject, and the various other experiences that often accompany it. Filled with a rich assortment of helpful tools, it is a must-read.

William Meader, author, international lecturer and teacher of esoteric philosophy

I have known Mel for 17 years and she brings light and energy in all that she does. This book is an extension of that and will bring a huge insight to thousands of people.

Alan Dudley, retired Principal Officer, HM Prison Service

Congratulations to Mel for publishing this book to help others deal with the issues that come from being highly sensitive at a time when there is so much fear and uncertainty about the future, and so many people are struggling to make sense and find purpose in their lives.

Juanita Puddifoot, international transpersonal counsellor, council member of Woolger Training International and chief trainer for Europe of Deep Memory Process (www.deepmemoryprocess.com)

Authentic healing is a difficult experiential process, with breakthroughs of joy interspersed with extended times of hard graft and challenge, even more intensified for Highly Sensitive People than for others. Having been just one of Mels many teachers, I know that she has long been committed to such a soul-path, and find it hard to imagine anyone who would not benefit from reading her book. She writes inspiringly from deep experience, and can be trusted to convey truth. I hope it will have the wide circulation it deserves.

Jen Kershaw, psychotherapist and member of Soul-Voyagers Network (www.soul-voyagers.net)

I had the privilege of working with Mel in a prison setting. I witnessed her amazing ability to empower some of the most difficult clients to make positive changes in their lives. I truly believe her book will have a positive effect on many people.

Haydn Evans, Integrated Substance Misuse Service Manager and former prison officer

It took me a long time to see the positive in being a sensitive. But now I consider it the source of my creativity, helping me tune into my clients at a deeper level. This book is exactly what we need: a roadmap to being an HSP. It will help you understand, manage and make the most of the gift of sensitivity.

Miriam Akhtar MAPP, leading Positive Psychology coach, consultant and author (www.positivepsychologytraining.co.uk)

THE HANDBOOK FOR

HIGHLY SENSITIVE PEOPLE

How to transform feeling overwhelmed
and frazzled to empowered and fulfilled

MEL COLLINS

This edition first published in the UK and USA 2019 by

Watkins, an imprint of Watkins Media Limited

Unit 11, Shepperton House

89-93 Shepperton Road

London

N1 3DF

Design and typography copyright Watkins Media Limited 2019

Text copyright Mel Collins 2019

Mel Collins has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the Publishers.

Note/Disclaimer: The material in this book is set out in good faith for general guidance and no liability can be accepted for loss or expense incurred in following the information given. In particular this book is not intended to replace expert medical or psychiatric advice. It is intended for informational purposes only and for your own personal use and guidance. It is not intended to diagnose, treat or act as a substitute for professional medical advice. The author is not a medical practitioner, and professional advice should be sought if desired before embarking on any health-related programme.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset by JCS Publishing Services Ltd

Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78678-209-0

www.watkinspublishing.com

This book is dedicated to all my loved ones in Spirit.
Also, to my mentor, Professor Roger Woolger

FOREWORD

We are all different. I remember having an argument with someone and being amazed, ten years later, that he couldnt recall the disagreement at all. Yet I could bring to mind every detail. Every adjective he used, the colour of his tie, the breeze in the curtains, the pattern on the fabric.

Some people forget a conversation over a weekend. Others will never let it go. When I wrote a memoir of my years at the BBC, a boss said, Did you keep all these really detailed notes going back 25 years? No, I said, I carry it all in my head. Dont you find that exhausting, Jeremy? he asked, adding proudly: I cant even remember what I was doing last week.

Well, yes, I thought. It is a bit exhausting.

Until I met Mel Collins and read this book I wasnt sure what an HSP was it sounded a little made-up. Now Im convinced that we Highly Sensitive People are such a well-defined bunch we should form our own trade union. Perhaps because I was the eldest in my family I somehow transferred my parents deep concern for me into a constant state of self-vigilance almost as if I had to do their job for them.

Or could it simply be DNA? I was born to feel stuff, feel it profoundly. Im the one DJ at Radio 2 who constantly complains the headphones are too loud, so much so that the technicians had to work out a different way of plugging the circuits for me. Im the one who cries when a pensioner calls the show and says she has never in her life had one real friend.

But Im not complaining. I find I have my mothers ability to hear hurt in a single word, and tune in with digital accuracy to the feelings of others. I may worry too much about the abrasive remark I accidentally made in the early 1990s, but I certainly am not in danger of repeating it.

I find myself fascinated by people who are the opposite. I remember seeing a high-profile politician going to jail over a speeding offence. Yet on the Tuesday after his release he was on Newsnight talking about the environment, voice booming, not a scratch on him. What are we to make of those among us who seem bombproof and who will walk to the front of a queue without cringing at the indignant complaints behind them?

The key is to understand yourself. When the voice inside accuses you of being gauche, or boring, or of making a spectacle of yourself in front of all your friends last night in the bar, just remember Mels insights in this book. We HSPs think far more about this stuff than others do. For us, a week sat on the beach can be an invitation for a crowd of memories to mug us. That is just the way we are. Its not a bad thing. We dont need to suffer for it. We can get relief by understanding our high sensitivity and by learning to view it as a gift rather than a flaw which is where this great book comes in. Thank you Mel for writing about it, and for coming on my radio show and changing the lives of so many of my listeners.