We Were Never Meant to Live Like This

[00:00:00]Every year, more adults are reporting burnout. More children are struggling in school, and anxiety continues to rise. I don't think that all of these people are just broken, or there's something wrong with them. I think we're trying to adapt to a world that our nervous systems are simply not designed for. Millions of people feel isolated and alone. Nearly everyone says that they're feeling overwhelmed. And everyone keeps asking, "What's wrong with all of these people?"

[00:00:26]But what if we're asking the wrong question?

[00:00:31]Coal miners didn't use canaries because they were weak. They used them because they were sensitive. These birds detected danger long before humans were ever aware that there was anything wrong. And what if highly sensitive individuals are doing the same thing?

[00:00:47]What if we're not broken, or defective, or disordered? What if we're simply more aware, and are just responding to the problems in the world first? Modern life is nothing like humans have ever experienced before. Just thinking back to my childhood in the '80s and '90s, and comparing it to the way most children are raised today, iPads, super long school days, no recess, constant testing, processed foods, and super busy schedules. And in life for adults today, we are working more hours than ever, and we also have that constant stimulation with social media, constant news, and just information overload that just makes modern life seem overwhelming.

[00:01:38]We live in a world where when people are having a hard time with something, we generally blame them instead of looking at the environmental conditions that are causing it. We think that they're not strong enough, or they should just try harder. If somebody is saying that they're overwhelmed working as many hours as they are. We don't listen to them. We think that they just need to man up and and try harder and just get over it and push through it. We've had an extreme rise in health issues, uh autoimmune conditions, unexplained autoimmune conditions. And doctors try and fix the person. They try and medicate the person. They try and see what's going on within the individual instead of looking at the environment a lot of the times. And what if all of these autoimmune conditions are really happening to all of us? We've are living in an environment that is toxic, that our food is not great anymore, and the things that we're putting in our body is actually affecting all of us. It's just some of us are more sensitive to those negative effects and are kind of like the red flag, the warning sign that we should all be listening to. And we're not listening to it. When kids are in school and they're having a hard time concentrating, they can't sit there.

[00:02:58]Why are we medicating them and telling them that there's something wrong with them and that they need to learn how to function inside of the classroom instead of changing the classroom and and realizing that maybe something needs to change within the classroom model. We need to change the environment to match the child, not the child to fit match the environment, especially when it comes to something like medicating the kid or trying to change the child from what it innately is. You see a lot of people walking around today with noise-canceling headphones. And we assume that there is something wrong with the individual, that they cannot handle the amount of noise that is in our environment. And instead of thinking that there's something wrong with that person, maybe recognize that our environment actually is louder. It is overwhelming. And we are not designed to handle all of that noise. It's not something that humans have evolved to deal with. It's It is a new phenomenon.

[00:03:59]And people legitimately are having a hard time with it, not because there's something wrong with them, but because the environment has literally gotten louder. And some people are just more sensitive to it.

[00:04:10]It will eventually affect all of us if that trend continues, if we continue to live in noisier, louder environments.

[00:04:18]And in some ways it is disregulating everyone. The problem with doing all this, not only one, of course, it blames the person for thinking that there's something wrong with them, but it also doesn't allow us to change our environment. It doesn't allow us to recognize what the real problems are.

[00:04:35]And when we are living in a world that is constantly overwhelming and stressful, when we're putting things in our bodies that are not good for us, then we are going to slowly, over time, even the people who aren't feeling the effects, it is still affecting us and putting wear and tear on your body. We have the opportunity today to look at these people who are sensitive as our red flags, as the warning sign, so that our environment can change, and we can recognize what is actually going on within us or what could be happening to us in the future if we do not make changes. In 1997, psychologist Elaine Aron published a research that first identified what she called as the highly sensitive person. And through research, it has been shown that about 20% of people carry a trait that leads to sensory processing sensitivity. Their nervous systems process information more deeply than the average person. They notice subtleties that other people miss. They feel more intensely. They reflect more before acting. Many of them are more affected by beauty, by noise, and by other people's emotional states.

[00:05:51]Imagine a sense like volume. Everybody hears the noise, but a highly sensitive person might hear it at 150%.

[00:05:58]And because they hear noise at a higher volume, the more noise there is in the environment, the more information they have to process. They're not weaker, they just are simply overloaded first.

[00:06:10]And we are doing what our society does best. We are blaming the individual instead of looking at the environment to see if there is a problem. If most adults are saying that they're overwhelmed and burnt out, maybe there's not a problem with the adults. Maybe something about our work culture is changing. For the sensitive person, most of our lives we are told that we are the problem. We are too sensitive. We are too intense. We're too much. But here's what research actually shows. Sensory processing is not a disorder. It's actually a biological advantage. In every species where it appears, sensitive individuals function as an early warning system for the entire group. They detect danger before others do. They notice what's wrong before it becomes a crisis.

[00:06:56]They read the environment with a level of precision that the less sensitive majority simply cannot access. And in humans, it's not all bad. It actually leads to a lot of advantages. It might mean a deeper processing of information, higher accuracy in reading social situations, being able to better recognize patterns, greater creative output, and more nuanced emotional intelligence. Throughout history, there are people that are known to be highly sensitive, that they have different cognitive abilities than other people.

[00:07:29]Nikola Tesla, Virginia Woolf, Albert Einstein were all highly sensitive people that led them to both have challenges, but these sensitivities also led to extraordinary contribution to humans. And yet schools are not designed for sensitive students and workplaces are not designed for sensitive adults.

[00:07:51]In fact, the entire architecture of modern life, the noise, the speed, the constant stimulation, it actually punishes these people.

[00:08:03]These things aren't just affecting sensitive people anymore. They're affecting everyone. Even if you don't identify as a highly sensitive person, do you find yourself checking your phone every few minutes? Do you find it hard to sit through an entire book or an entire movie? Do you feel exhausted every time you leave the house or feel the need to have complete silence after coming home from a social activity or are choosing not to go out and do social things at all anymore? Because most people are. So, it's not just about highly sensitive people anymore. It's about all of us. Imagine blaming the canary instead of escaping the coal mine. It wasn't the canary that was malfunctioning. It was telling us something. Maybe the people who are struggling the most today are not a sign that humanity is getting weaker. Maybe they're just the first people telling us that our environment is out of balance.

[00:08:57]Our nervous systems [music] were shaped over hundreds of thousands of years by wind, bird song, rivers, [music] darkness at night and periods of genuine quiet.

[00:09:10]In just [music] a few short generations, we've replaced much of that with screens, alarms, artificial light, traffic, advertising, and an endless [music] stream of information.

[00:09:22]Maybe adapting to that isn't simply a matter of trying harder.

[00:09:27]Maybe it's worth [music] asking whether we've built a world that asks more of our nervous systems than they were ever designed to handle.

[00:09:43]>> Mhm.