The Slow, Seeking, Sensitive Souls of My Substack World

How I'm pursuing wellbeing within and away from Substack's (sometimes mismatched) culture

Art by Stephanie Davidson, written by Rae Katz

It seems to me that there are a lot of people here on Substack who identify as highly sensitive. My writing on being highly sensitive—or having sensory processing sensitivity, or being a highly sensitive person (or HSP—a term that I have used but which is controversial)—continuously finds a receptive audience here, and I have noticed that new Substack features, like Notes and the new app homepage, are regularly bemoaned for introducing too much stimulation. There are also a number of other writers here who are doing great writing on their experiences with and perspectives on high sensitivity. Perhaps my exposure to the topic is just a function of my particular Substack circles, but even so, it has gotten me thinking: what is it about this place that is working for sensitive people, and what’s not working? What can that tell us about how to cultivate wellbeing in the world outside of Substack?

The power of matched/mismatched culture

The pocket of Substack culture I’m mostly exposed to (and part of) is what I would call slowly self-seeking. Many of us have gotten off some former path—whether through a career change, or a transition to parenthood, or illness, or retirement, or divorce, or menopause (the types of things everyone faces at some point)—and found ourselves a little lost, or very lost, not sure what comes next. We are generally aware that we would love to get to the answer immediately, but we also know that this is not how life works. The way we handle this, on Substack specifically, is by investigating ourselves on the page, reading other writers who are doing the same, identifying our foibles, interviewing people who have walked an interesting path that relates to ours, researching topics of interest from the solitude of our desks, and in these many ways, fertilizing and growing new ideas with an emphasis on nuance and shades of gray. We plod slowly down this path. We interact with each other (particularly pre-Notes) through asynchronous comments which are 99.9% supportive and filled with phrases like “I feel so seen,” and “this one hit hard,” and “I will be thinking about this today.” We read things when we want, at the pace we want, and (I would guess) mostly don’t mess with Substack push notifications. We cheer each other on for identifying our imperfections. We try not to brag. We observe the world. We don’t do a ton of Zoom meetings.

Now, I’ll only speak for myself when I say that this is just a bit different from the other world that I previously inhabited. In business almost none of this behavior is acceptable, let alone revered. Plodding slowly? Not bragging? No Zoom meetings? These are the antithetical to entrepreneurship in the classic Silicon Valley format, where the winning behaviors are speediness, fake-it-till-you-make-it, projecting a big vision, networking, and generally appearing to have all the answers already.

This culture difference snapped into focus for me recently as I read the introduction to a study on sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) and wellbeing. “Research indicates,” the authors wrote, “that when people are matched with their cultural environment, they experience higher rates of psychological wellbeing (Fulmer et al., 2010) and less negative emotion (Stephens et al., 2012) than those who feel a mismatch with the surrounding culture.” I had felt this mismatch so acutely working in tech, but seeing it stated in matter-of-fact science journal syntax, with citations, made it feel so much more real. 

The findings from this small study, which looked at how individual sensitive people pursue wellbeing within a mismatched culture, “suggest that highly sensitive individuals perceive that wellbeing arises from…low-intensity positive emotion, self-awareness, self-acceptance, positive social relationships balanced by times of solitude, connecting with nature, contemplative practices, emotional self-regulation, practicing self-compassion, having a sense of meaning, and hope/optimism.”

So many of these are experiences I can find on Substack and aren’t generally part of the broader culture of San Francisco where I live. What I’m suggesting is that perhaps I, and other sensitive people, have found a better culture match on Substack than in our previous environments, and that’s why we seem to be gravitating here. Though recent changes to Notes have got me a bit worried, this certainly seems true for me to date.

The wider world

But we can’t live on Substack, or at least most of us probably don’t want to exist only online (even if it can offer a nice stimulation buffer). So what can we take from these insights about Substack culture to apply more generally?

Picking your people

One strategy is to surround yourself with people who operate in a subculture that more closely matches your character. For sensitives, this might mean spending time with people who either 1) have similar sensitivities and prefer similar types of stimulation, or 2) really get how important these things are for you. Last week I sent this text to a friend, and in doing so I realized how special it was that I was unafraid to tell him exactly what was going on with me with no apology, rather than make up a story:

Now, obviously it may not be easy to suddenly find a bunch of people who create your ideal culture—it’s harder to do in the real world than on Substack due to the realities of geography, work, and existing relationships. But a first step could be just to notice: who around me generates the types of experiences that help me thrive, things like, as the researchers in that study put it, low-intensity positive emotion, self-awareness, or positive social relationships balanced by times of solitude? 

Maybe there’s someone around who is super fun and the life of the party, and you feel like you should be really joyful around them, but actually they bring a whole lot of high intensity positive emotion, and it turns out that’s not really your vibe. Sometimes this mismatch is hard to recognize, given how our culture tends to consider “being the life of the party” to be an objectively positive trait that everyone should find appealing. Maybe one new way to think about it is, “how would this person fit into that comments section I love on Substack?”

Honesty about work culture fit

I spent many years telling myself that if I try hard enough and am a talented person, than I should be able to thrive in the work culture that surrounded me—that fast-paced, extroverted, competitive, hard core, pedal to the metal, go-big-or-go-home culture. A failure to thrive there was clearly my own failure to hack it in the world, a failure of effort or talent. For a long time it was too painful to acknowledge the other option: that I couldn’t thrive in that context because of a fundamental mismatch between that culture and my personality. Given how idealized that culture is, given how “success” is so often equated with “success in that specific culture,” I refused to see the mismatch for a very long time. What would that say about me? My talents? My prospects?

It took me a decade to identify that mismatch and extricate myself, and I am an extremely lucky person who started out with a lot of options and had the ability to leave if I wanted to. Many people don’t have that option. The fact that I could leave but didn’t is a testament to how difficult it can be to say, “hey, I just don’t fit here.”

That said, even while I was still in that crazy game, my growing recognition of the mismatch situation was helpful for me. I was able to slightly reframe my intense day-to-day struggles as perhaps, maybe, just a little bit, not my fault, but rather the product of a clash between my traits and the culture. I was able to begin to see, just a little, that this was not necessarily a problem with my traits, and maybe even actually was more of a problem with the culture. In the case of being sensitive, even if you can’t leave a culture, just naming the mismatch can be beneficial, giving yourself permission to not vibe with the current culture.

My whole decade-long realization that I had lived in a culture that was a total mismatch for me has only really crystalized since I started writing seriously on Substack around the beginning of this year. I started feeling actually good about what I was doing, and things seemed to be so much less of a struggle, and in having this experience that I never had before—a culture that better matched my traits—I began to see that that was even possible.

Tuning into emotions & body signals

So how do you tell which people and which work tasks and which environments are matched or mismatched to your personality? In her book, Making Work Work for the Highly Sensitive Person, Barrie Jaeger discusses the importance of becoming an expert in our own inner body signals. This can include paying attention to signals like pulse, breathing rate, and body temperature, and starting to notice when these shift into a higher gear. Looking back, I see that stomach aches and breath holding have long been two body signals that tell me I am in an unhealthy environment for me. 

It is not always the case that we can just notice these warning signs and immediately leave a situation. But in the long arc of life, I hope for me, and for you, that we can move towards days where these alert signals happen less, whether because of the people around us or the work we are doing or where we live. I have started treating these signs with the utmost seriousness, a huge change from the constant ignoring and dismissing that I did for so many years. 

I have rarely found myself holding my breath while reading Substack newsletters. This is starting to change on Notes, where I am noticing little spikes in heart rate and lingering feelings of internal discomfort. It seems like I’m not alone. In order to decide whether to stay, you better bet I will be paying close attention to my pulse.

Tell me…

1. In what ways do you find yourself matched or mismatched with the culture at work, within your friend group, on Substack, etc.?

2. What are the unique ways the people in your life show up for you that make you feel deeply seen and cared for?

3. How does it feel to treat the signals from your body with the utmost seriousness? Do you feel more attuned, more overwhelmed, more honored, more anxious?