Making Work Work for the Highly Sensitive Person - Hardcover

Barrie S. Jaeger; Elaine Aron

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 007140810X ISBN 13: 9780071408103

Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 2003

Synopsis

A practical guide to coping at work

Making Work Work for the Highly Sensitive Person builds on Elaine Aron's groundbreaking bestseller The Highly Sensitive Person.

This new book, which includes a Foreword by Aron, gives highly sensitive persons (HSPs) strategies to build confidence, combat stress, and find work that is emotionally, financially, and creatively rewarding.

Based on cutting-edge medical and scientific research, this fresh perspective on how readers can secure satisfying careers includes strategies to:

• Detect jobs that are not right for HSPs
• Make their opinions heard and valued
• Control good personal internal boundaries
• Defend themselves from bullies in the workplace
• Move out of a job that feels like drudgery, and into a job that supports career goals and dreams

About this title

About the Author

Barrie Jaeger, Ph.D. is known as "The Self-Employment Doctor" and "Work Purpose Coach." She presents seminars and workshops on workplace issues for the HSP. Her research has been cited in books such as Finding Your Perfect Work and Getting Business to Come to You. Barrie contributes articles on work for the Comfort Zone, a newsletter for the Highly Sensitive person, published by Elaine Aron.

From the Back Cover

Building on Elaine Aron's groundbreaking work in The Highly Sensitive Person, this invaluable book helps highly sensitive persons find the work they are called to do and do their best work in less than perfect enviornments. Here are strategies that will help HSPs experience work in a way that is emotionally gratifying, financially rewarding, and that allows them the freedom to achieve their maximum potential. Because the real job for these exceptionally creative, multi-talented people is learning how to make their sensitivity work for them.

Based on lifelong study, cutting-edge research, and extensive interviews with hundreds of HSPs, Dr. Barrie Jaeger tackles the problems and issues highly sensitive people face on a daily basis--from feeling overwhelmed by the pressures of work and overstimulated by the workplace environment, to suffering from a lack of confidence, and a nagging sense that they are not "cut out for the real world."

Jaeger outlines three experiential states of work, and shows HSPs how they can progress from the lowest, most arduous level, when a job is "just a job," to the highest and most desired state of comfort and happiness in their work:

• Drudgery: For those who are particularly unhappy in their jobs, Jaeger shows how to identify particular aspects of any job that contribute to unhappiness, why certain jobs don't work for HSPs, and what to do to get out.
• Craft: HSPs who take pride in jobs that showcase their skills typically have control over their work and exhibit self-confidence in a job well done, but may not be as comfortable in their environment as they would like. Craft addresses important issues in the psychology of work regarding self-employment and entrepreneurship.
• Calling: The highest level of achievement for HSPs, Jaeger shows how to find a calling--and how to let a calling find you--meaning work that brings joy, creativity, and the greatest level of satisfaction.

Jaeger also includes dynamic exercises, shows ways to take breaks (vital for stress relief) and provides helpful personal assessment features. Encouraging, invigorating, and healing, Making Work Work is an owner's manual for any highly sensitive person who wants to discover how to love what they do--and do what they love.

"If plunging ahead into the unknown to try to find one's true work is not courage, I do not know what is. And Barrie Jaeger is giving that courage. It is at work that HSPs are able, or forced, to interface with the often troubled and troubling non-HSP world. Here is where hope and support are most needed. Barrie provides what counts--the emotional support. Soul support."

--From the foreword by Elaine Aron

If you feel drained and generally debilitated at work, or your work doesn't fulfill your creativity, you may be among the 20 percent of the population who find themselves overwhelmed by the pressures of their job. The Highly Sensitive Person is often highly intelligent, imaginative, empathetic, and hyper-aware of his or her surroundings. This sensitivity is part of being passionate about your work. But it can make being part of the work force a painful trial.

Building on the groundbreaking national bestseller, The Highly Sensitive Person, this book is devoted to explaining why traditional work doesn't work for you--and what you can do to improve your situation. Dr. Barrie Jaeger provides proven strategies to find work you can embrace--and not just endure.

Reviews

The titular Highly Sensitive Persons are intelligent, creative, idealistic and possessed of a strong work ethic. But unlike other workers, they suffer under routine, can be bothered by the sensory environment (the hum of fluorescent lights, workplace odors), might go through cycles of enthusiastic over-stimulation followed by brooding withdrawal, and might even dissolve in tears when pressured by deadlines and criticism. "Work Purpose Coach" Jaeger, following Elaine Aron's The Highly Sensitive Person, insists that HSPs stand up for their right to be sensitive. She provides HSP readers with useful tips on how to monitor oneself, relax and set boundaries to avoid getting overwhelmed; how to face down office bullies; and, using carefully scripted model monologues, how to inform coworkers and supervisors of one's needs as an HSP (talk about "fatigue" rather than "depression," for example). Her goal is to help HSPs ascend from Drudgery, through the "purgatory" of Craft, to their true Calling-which involves "a blending of the intense mind with the love and joy of our imagination and emotions" and leads to being "lifted, inevitably, up toward Heaven." The book is most compelling in its descriptions of Drudgery, which draw on writers like Barbara Ehrenreich to detail what some have termed the "modern slavery" of the corporate workplace. Unfortunately, Jaeger's priority is less to reform the workplace than to survive or escape it, if necessary, through self-employment. Still, readers will find this a perceptive guide to easing their torments.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This book enlarges upon The Highly Sensitive Person (1996), by Elaine Aron, who describes the HSP as someone whose nervous system is particularly susceptible to stimuli. HSPs are more sensitive not only to their physical environments but also to emotional trauma. Jaeger believes that about 20 percent of the population can be described as HSPs and that the personality type may be inherited. In discussing the work environment, Jaeger recommends that HSPs avoid drudgery, which is particularly devastating because HSPs are generally creative types who thrive on new challenges. Jaeger also advises that craftwork can quickly deteriorate into drudgery for HSPs, who often remain in a job they hate for too long because of commitments or fear. Instead, HSPs need to find more fulfilling work, which the author refers to as a calling. Jaeger says the particular needs of HSPs include stress management, rest and healing, learning the importance of saying no, and dealing with abusive co-workers. Jaeger includes case studies and quotes from numerous HSPs to illustrate the advantages of finding satisfying work. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 007140810X
• ISBN 13: 9780071408103
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256