Do you often feel drained by everything happening around you?  Do you ever think, “I can’t focus, write that email, or do that mental task unless it’s quiet”?  Do you feel excited to start your day but empty an hour later?  And on the other hand, do you feel like you could climb Mount Everest and get 3 days’ worth of work done in a day when it’s quiet?

You could be an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person), empath or introvert.  Or you could be experiencing these ‘symptoms’ because of other causes, like burnout, chronic stress or a chronic illness.  But also because of unsatisfactory sleep, side effects of medication or simply a very busy or overloaded life.  There are a lot of reasons why you could be feeling like this, and that’s for another blog.  In this blog, I want to go deeper…

So if you’ve been wondering if as an HSP you should move to the countryside, the edge of the woods or a lake house to feel better, you gotta keep reading.  Discover why escaping to the woods isn’t the answer and how you can shift things for yourself today.

I had this desire for the longest time too…  I used to believe that if only I could have quiet, if only I could move somewhere quiet — really quiet — I’d finally feel like myself again.  If all the noise didn’t drain my energy in a split second, I could get my work done.

If only…  But what to do in the meantime?

Looking for the magical fix

Finally finding that dream place became my ultimate goal and every day I’d long for that magical fix.
Because once I escaped all the noise, triggers, and energy drains, I’d get my energy back.
And my focus, joy, my mental clarity. I wouldn’t just be surviving anymore — I’d actually feel like myself again.

And I know I’m not alone.
If you’re a highly sensitive person, maybe you’ve had that same dream of finding a place of peace and stillness, where you can just be.
Not overstimulated. Not depleted. Not empty.

A place that fills you up, energizes you, and brings you the calm you so desperately crave.

Where you could – maybe for the first time – say, “Hey, I feel great!”.  And so I spent decades trying to find that perfect place to live.  Back in Belgium, before I moved to Spain, and became an entrepreneur, I changed jobs over and over trying to find one where my desk would be in a quiet place.  In my last job, I even insisted on seeing my office space before signing, only to be moved to a cubicle in an open office space with 30 other noisy coworkers two months later.  It was one of the things that led me to crash on the job 1,5 years later.  Working from home was a huge game-changer, but still, things would be challenging.  Because even though ‘working from home’ is something people – kinda – understand now, it hasn’t gotten into people’s thinking and behavior that you are there in your home, trying to work, while they’re doing their (noisy) things.

Trying To Find Solutions & Creating Your Own Misery

So sometimes I would jump in my car and just go for a drive.  Within minutes, I would feel better.  Inspiration would start flowing again and I’d be excited to drive back home, get behind my laptop and start writing and creating.  But as soon as I’d get back in the home noise, it all would disappear within seconds.

And if I stayed home, weirdly enough, when things were quiet for a moment — I had one of two reactions.  Either I would feel my energy, focus and joy come back and burst out like a fountain.  Or I would tear up and crash as the tension would leave my body.  
But then the noise would return, traffic would rise again, I’d tense up again and… misery would follow.

I went for walks, listened to guided meditations and spent time in nature to get some relief.  It worked, but then I’d go back home and it would all come back within minutes.

I wore noise-canceling headphones. They helped — sort of.
But honestly, they may work better for introverts than for HSPs.

Because being sensory sensitive, highly sensitive or an empath isn’t just about sound — it’s about feeling everything more deeply.
What works for others often doesn’t work for us. We sense things on a whole different level. We hear more — like dogs or cats, we pick up sounds others miss.  We smell more, like the little canary bird they used to take into the mines to detect gas.  We feel more, like the tiniest shift in temperature that gives us a chill long before others sense it.  We catch energies and feel them even when you can’t see or hear them.  One day, I noticed that I was getting tense and jittery, not feeling like myself anymore, while I was taking a siesta in bed, wearing my noise-cancelling headphones and a sleep mask.  I felt so weird like something had taken over my body and put me in an anxious state.  When I took off the sleep mask and headphones, I saw my neighbor had a party and I had picked up on all their energies, talks, laughs, smells and more.  I had absorbed it in my body, and internally, I didn’t know what to do with it.  Makes sense because it wasn’t mine.  So you get that it can be about more than what meets the eye…

It’s not all bad, though.

We can smell flowers with the faintest scent.

We can feel into how our pet is feeling and comfort them.

We can hear the birds in the distance singing their song and it fills us up with joy.

But so often, this amazing ability is covered in a negative experience.

And so we keep looking for a fix that will bring relief from too much for too long on too many levels.  And by doing so, we create our own misery.

The “If Only” Loop That Keeps Us Stuck

It can be hard to figure out you’re stuck in a self-destructive loop.  Here’s what I didn’t realize until recently: I had started creating my own misery by turning that fantasy of a perfect situation into a condition for happiness.  Yes, read that again.

It’s powerful.

Here were the conditions.
If it wasn’t 100% quiet, I couldn’t start work.  If I didn’t have perfectly clean fresh air, I’d be freaking out trying to fix it, so I could work.  If… then…  I’m not gonna write them all here, but I can tell you, the list was long.
In short, if those boxes weren’t ticked, I couldn’t get past ‘go’. (Referring to the Monopoly game here)  Couldn’t focus. Couldn’t start, couldn’t relax or feel good unless all the things stopped bombarding me.  Needless to say, it was exhausting.

Everything shifted when I realized that I was keeping myself stuck in a loop — waiting for external conditions to shift and make me feel okay.
Even worse, I had outsourced my happiness to the fantasy of a quieter life somewhere else.

It was a simple but deeply harmful formula: if my environment gets quiet, I can be happy.  If traffic stops, I can feel energized (and do all the things I want to).  And on the other hand, because my environment isn’t quiet enough, I will get tired and I won’t be able to do the things I want or should do.

Do you start to see how harmful this “if x then y” pattern is?  And how it is a self-fulfilling prophecy?  Because you give away your power to something you have no control over.  You can’t control your neighbors doing laundry (with their nauseating fabric softener that ruins the air for hours), you can’t stop them from talking, and you certainly can’t make everything and everyone be quiet all the time.  Unfortunately…  Deep sigh.

And so you may have thought about moving to the edge of the woods, the quiet outskirts of town or dreamt of living in a cabin by the lake.  But that’s not really going to fix things for you.  Because let’s face it, if you can save enough to move in 3 years, how will you manage life in the meantime?  How can you be happier and feel better right now?  How can you get work done even if things aren’t perfect now?

The Power of Small Tweaks

So what if the shift could start here?  By realizing that you’ve been creating your own misery with this if-then thinking and getting out of this loop.
With small tweaks. Tiny changes. Simple steps that make life a little softer, even if the world stays the same.

That’s why I created A Tweak Away — my little corner of the internet for people like us.
People who are done waiting. People who are ready to create change — one small tweak at a time.

👉🏼 You can grab 5 free tweaks here — and see how much of a difference tiny shifts can make.

Change Takes Time — Like Growing an Avocado Tree

Some tweaks offer instant relief. Others take time. Like growing an avocado plant.
You don’t see the sprout right away — but you prep the seed, give it water, let it sit in the dark…
And slowly, roots begin to grow.

Change can be like that, too.  It often grows unseen — quietly rooting before it breaks the surface.

It’s not always about doing more. Sometimes it’s about doing less — more intentionally.
Sometimes it’s about giving things time to germinate.  Other times it’s about tweaking your thinking and catching the loop you’ve created for yourself.

The Takeaway for HSPs in a Noisy World

And that’s really what I want to leave you with:
Even if you’re a sensory-sensitive person living in a less-than-perfect setting,
you don’t have to organize a big move or wait to feel better.

You can start small. You can tweak. You can grow.

Right where you are.

Try out the free 5 tweaks, browse the blog and check out the shop.  Remember, it’s up to you to make small changes that bring back control — whether in your daily life, how you show up in your work or even how you make an income moving forward.  It’s time to create your own happiness.  And maybe I’ve got just the thing to help you do it.