HSPs in long-term care: their fate?
A decidely un-woke situation … here’s the low down.
Until being furloughed in the pandemic, I was privileged to provide musical, creative play and educational services to aging, ill, handicapped or dying persons in California’s long term care facilities. I met some of the kindest, most generous, savvy and wise professional souls anywhere on earth, dedicated to and within jobs that are among the most challenging and potentially exhausting to be found. These would include for me lots of caregivers and activity personnel, since I interacted most often with them; but also social workers and ombudsmen, family members of residents and patients, and a handful of administrative staffers with big hearts.
Some of these service persons are, like me, HSPs — highly sensitive persons. We were born with the kind of nervous system that makes us aware of all the subtleties in our environment, even the vibes, the energetics of relationships. We’re the sort of people who wince at noisy sounds and bad smells, who wane and drain from fluorescent lights, EMFs emitted from televisions, computers, powerlines and cell phones. So when I say I feel for the natural sensitives captive in institutionalized facilities, and for those whose illnesses or aging process has caused them to become more, well, like me –I mean it, literally.
It is for them that this article is being written, because life adjustments can be hard enough to make leaving one’s life, home, friends, preferred meals and activities, and having to be cared for by others, fed, bathed, diapers changed — you name it — without having to also endure the injustices of a harsher environment that you cannot by yourself escape.
I’ll take a case in point from a typical day visit to a convalescent hospital for my singing and storytelling class. Entering the activity room, about 18 elderly residents were encircled in their wheelchairs. From the back and middle of the room, two women were expressing difficulty, one with a loud, wracking cough and the other wailing. Both the coughing and “ow-ing” were erratic, on and off. For both women, this is everyday “normal” behavior, and other than checking on them now and then, it seems not much can be done to ameliorate the behavior, or their health conditions. But could more be done for the residents ‘stuck’ next to them? Some were dozing through it, the noises coloring distant, inner landscapes. For those awake, looks of helpless dismay were overtaking their faces. One resident with some dementia, seated beside the cougher, looked at me as I entered and exclaimed wide-eyed, “Terrible! I can’t stand it” Then she turned, admonished the cougher for not covering her mouth, and hollered, “Stop it! Nobody wants to hear you!”
I alerted a nurse’s aid in the hallway to separate the two women, got out my guitar and sat down. A little weary now, I noted the disquieting glare of florescent lights and prepared to begin my program.
Understand that this particular facility is a good one in a nice town, staffed with caring people,(some highly sensitive themselves), albeit overworked and underpaid with difficult jobs administering to people largely in bad shape, nearing the ends of their lives. On this particular day, since I have a lot of trouble doing my class with pained noises in the room, staff elected to move the cougher and wailer out of the activity room for the time being… And to close the door so I would not be impacted by the loud TV across the hall in the room of a near-deaf fellow…While I’ve adapted to singing, leading reminiscing, and reading stories or telling jokes amid the ‘normal’ and necessary noises of aides or doctors or activity staff coming and going as they attend to residents during our circle — it’s never easy on my nerves. So how hard must it be for those in the wheelchairs with weakened bodies who cannot turn off the noise pollution by changing the TV station or the music sound track or wheel themselves elsewhere away from the coughing, wailing, or incoherent babbling of a neighbor in the room?
What I personally fear most about the prospect of ending up one day in a facility is being overwhelmed by noise, lighting, EMFs from all the electronics everywhere, and the bustle of hurried, stressed staffers and caretakers trying to tend to my basic needs — which might not include anybody able to manage my environments: outer or inner! I also worry that I won’t have access to foods or proper nutrition… but that’s another story.
I write to call attention for managing the special needs of ‘sensitives’ — those born into the world with nervous systems of super subtle registry, bound (mostly unconsciously) to states of hypervigilance to prevent being “overly aroused,” and those who become so due to peculiarities of age or dis-ease related processes. High sensitives fare best with a bit of buffering, protection to our sense-abilities to prevent undue physical, psychological or emotional pain from overexposure or overstimulation. We all too often live in anxious anticipation of becoming “overwhelmed.” And, complicating things, most sensitives do not themselves know yet why they feel especially vulnerable.
With the aging of the Boomer generation there will be more and more highly sensitive persons entering into long term care. They will need special attention, whether in our own homes, senior and assisted living facilities — wherever we are living. Who will understand and care for us, then?
