The Safe Spaces Project

Sea Birds Still Sing

2026-10-13T05:23:26.000-07:00

You left silently one day in the month of April.
The skies went black and cloudy, and the day stretched on forever.
My mind collapsed and hasn't yet recovered.
The last one standing in a family of four.
A singularity I never considered would be reality.

No time for blame or shame, just trying to face what is alone.
Long walks on the beach. A trip long awaited to the Emerald Isle.
Forced social settings without the desire to be there.
None of it has lessened the weight of the blanket that covers my mind and heart.

You are gone—all three of you now.
As I stand alone, I feel nothing but ice.
Pain I never imagined courses through my mind.
My world has stopped spinning.

Why do the sea birds keep singing?

Central Plaza (formerly the Central Bank of Ireland Building) Dublin.

2026-07-19T04:09:16.687-07:00

Safe Spaces Virtual Tour Field Note

Place: Central Plaza (formerly the Central Bank of Ireland Building)

Central Plaza (formerly the Central Bank of Ireland Building) was designed by Irish architect Sam Stephenson of Stephenson Gibney & Associates and completed in 1978. It remains one of Dublin's most recognizable examples of Brutalist architecture and was highly controversial when it was built because of its scale and modern appearance among the surrounding historic buildings.

What makes the building architecturally unique is that it is Ireland's only suspended office building. Instead of stacking each floor on columns from the ground up, the two reinforced concrete service cores were built first. A large steel roof structure was then constructed, and each office floor was suspended from it using paired high-tensile steel Macalloy bars (visible externally as the distinctive black suspension rods). During construction, each floor was assembled at ground level and then hoisted into its final position before being permanently suspended from the roof structure. This engineering system created the large, column-free plaza beneath the building.

Date: July 18, 2026

One-Sentence First Impression

A remarkable feat of engineering that no longer feels like a place designed for people.

1. Body Signal

At first, I stopped in the middle of the plaza to determine my orientation. I was alert because very few people were sitting near the planters. Most people were simply crisscrossing the plaza. There did not seem to be a logical place to land or an obvious direction to travel once entering the space.

2. Spatial Architecture

The plaza contained planters with trees along the front edge facing the street. At the rear of the plaza, near the building, were staircases leading both up and down, but it was unclear where either one led. To the right was a heavy flow of pedestrian traffic entering from the street behind the building. There was no dominant visual pull toward any particular area.

3. Sensory Inputs

There were green trees and scattered planter boxes, but they were all in direct sunlight.

At the bottom of one staircase was a shaded area and a vertical green plant wall beside the lift, but there was nowhere to sit or rest in the shade. It functioned only as an entrance to the restaurant.

The staircase leading to the darkened office spaces was marked by a large WeWork sign that felt like a gatekeeper, discouraging people from approaching.

The Krispy Kreme in the center of the plaza was crowded, and its entrance was confusing.

I found myself drawn instead to a large area of shade on the far right side of the plaza, created by the neighboring building. A pigeon was tucked quietly into the corner with its head beneath its wing, apparently trying to nap.

4. Safety Mechanism

Nothing.

The planters created almost no usable shade. The large golden orb sculpture added to the feeling of coldness and austerity. The staircases led to destinations that felt exclusive rather than welcoming. The heavy pedestrian traffic reinforced the feeling of "stay out."

5. Stressor or Friction

The lack of purpose and the chaotic pedestrian circulation, combined with cold concrete, pink granite, black suspension rods, and dark, dirty windows, made this feel like an unfriendly space.

6. Transferable Design Lesson

Honestly, only the vertical plant wall—a small, easily missed feature downstairs that seemed primarily intended to hide the lift.

7. Emotional Resonance

Disappointment that an architectural wonder has been abandoned, cheapened, and forgotten.

8. Monetizable Insight

Spaces need containment.

They need clear orientation, clearly defined boundaries, and places where people naturally feel invited to pause and land.

9. What Made Me Feel Safe?

Hiding in the shaded corner of the plaza with the birds, away from the chaos.

10. What Would Make Me Feel Safer?

A directory.

A continuous border of trees.

Shaded seating areas.

A way to interrupt or slow the heavy pedestrian flow entering from the rear street.

11. Would I Recommend This as a Safe Space for Highly Sensitive People or Neurologically Challenged Individuals?

Never.

12. Sense of Place – Why Here?

Before the buildings existed, what qualities of this landscape may have attracted people? What elements of the natural environment influence my nervous system independent of human design?

None that I could identify.

Newman University Church – Dublin, Ireland

2026-07-18T08:33:26.087-07:00

Safe Spaces Field Note

Newman University Church – Dublin, Ireland

July 18, 2026

Body Signal

I immediately felt smaller in the space. The warm stone, dark wooden beams, and lower transitional spaces felt inviting rather than intimidating.

Spatial Architecture

The most important feature wasn't the sanctuary itself—it was the sequence of spaces leading to it.

A modest entrance led into a cloister-like transition before opening into the main nave. From there, the eye was naturally drawn along the processional axis toward the altar and apse.

The foliated capitals at the tops of the columns and the painted timber ceiling immediately caught my attention. At first, I actually thought the ceiling might be covered in fabric because the painted vine pattern was so perfectly executed.

Sensory Inputs

Silence.

Warm stone.

Dark wood.

Filtered light.

Beautifully restored artwork.

The church felt timeless.

Safety Mechanism

The church doesn't simply provide an entrance.

It provides a series of thresholds.

Rather than walking directly from the street into the main space, you gradually transition through multiple architectural layers before reaching the sanctuary.

Stressor / Friction

For some people, incense, larger crowds, or the amount of ornamentation might become overstimulating.

For me, it didn't.

Although every surface was decorated, everything belonged to the same visual language, so nothing competed for my attention.

Transferable Design Lesson

Today's biggest lesson was that a threshold is not simply empty space between two destinations.

It is a designed transition that helps the nervous system change states.

Many modern plazas function as little more than large paved rectangles—almost like an extension of a parking lot—with planters placed around them. They give people somewhere to stand, but they don't invite people into the building.

This church demonstrated the opposite.

Every threshold contributed to the experience of arriving.

Emotional Resonance

The entire experience felt calm, welcoming, and protective.

I was just as drawn to the smaller transitional spaces as I was to the sanctuary itself.

Monetizable Insight

People often don't need more space.

They need better transitions between spaces.

What Made Me Feel Safe?

Multiple nested thresholds.
Warm natural materials.
Human-scaled transitions.
Coherent ornamentation.
A clear visual destination.
Refuge from the surrounding city.

What Would Make Me Feel Even Safer?

Very little.

It already felt like a complete restorative environment.

Recommendation for Highly Sensitive People

Highly recommended.

Those who are sensitive to incense or crowds may want to visit during quieter hours.

Sense of Place

Hidden within Dublin, Newman University Church feels like a sanctuary waiting to be discovered.

The building reminded me that architecture doesn't simply create destinations.

It creates transitions.

And sometimes those transitions are what allow us to truly arrive.

Safe Spaces Virtual Tour Field Note: Spinc Trail Glendalough National Park – (High Intensity) 1,650 feet

2026-07-11T08:53:46.000-07:00

Safe Spaces Virtual Tour Field Note

Place: Glendalough National Park – Spinc Trail (High Intensity)

Date: June 10, 2026

By Troy Alan Cox

The highest point of the White Spinc Trail reaches approximately 1,650 feet (500 meters) above sea level.

One-sentence first impression:

Although listed as a medium-intensity hike, I didn't know whose definition of "medium" they were using. Medium for a Billy goat, not my medium.

It was a wonderful walk at a moderate incline up to the waterfall, and my body was enjoying the shade of the trees. By the time I reached the first summit, it was screaming at me, "What have you done?"

After passing the waterfall, the white trail turned to the right through a metal sheep gate, up a steeper incline, leaving the woods to a second metal gate. After another steeper climb there was a small plateau. You can stop here and see the Upper Lake to your right and the ensuing valley toward the monastic village. This is a great place to turn around and head back down for a shorter experience.

If one continues, the path mostly stays level across the cliff edge with woods on the left and the valley on the right. The path is wide and feels safe. Then suddenly the trail climbs vertically to the top of another peak at approximately a 45-degree angle. Here begins what is considered a boardwalk. However, that term is not defined the same way in America. This mountaintop boardwalk consists of a one-way, wobbly walkway made from metal-studded timber sleepers (what we would commonly call railroad ties). This is where the entire trek becomes an endless endurance test.

The silence of a mountaintop is at one moment breathtaking and solemn and, at another, frightening because of the solitude. The midday light was crisp and bright, making the greens of the grass and trees seem almost luminescent. A soft breeze felt cooling and comforting but was usually followed by a large, unsteadying gust. The smells mixed between boggy earth, muddy hints, greenery, and fear.

For myself, nothing felt safe. My misinterpretation of the terms "boardwalk" and "moderate" caused me to misunderstand the challenge of what lay ahead. I have an extreme fear of heights that I've tried to overcome before, but walking on metal-covered timber sleepers approximately 24 inches wide with other hikers trying to pass and only bog beside me to step into caused me to trigger into a panic attack.

The illusion that the trail was finally going to begin descending, only to discover another 45-degree incline ahead, caused enormous stress. At one section of the balancing act across the timber sleepers, with people coming behind me, I had to step off onto the ground and curl into a ball as I trembled and went into a full-blown panic attack. I hugged my knees into my chest, tucked my head between them, occasionally blowing my running nose into my handkerchief while trying to remember my yoga breathing as the occasional pair of hiking boots tiptoed past me at eye level. No one asked if I was okay, which somehow made it worse. I was too far to turn around and couldn't face walking back past some of the cliffs again.

Tight, constrictive, and stressful spaces need a retreat or designated safe place for a triggered person to recover if they become overwhelmed.

After completing the four-hour circuit, which I've lovingly renamed the "Glendalough Sphincter Circle," I felt a mixture of extreme accomplishment accompanied by extreme pain and physical exhaustion.

If a designed space or highly triggering environment, such as a heavy-traffic area, is known to be overstimulating, it should incorporate a well-marked escape route or a nearby neurologically calming refuge.

The only thing that made me feel safe was that I was wearing heavy-duty ankle-support hiking boots with proper hiking socks. Had I accidentally completed the Sphincter Circle in trainers, I would probably still be sitting on the mountain or at the hospital with a broken ankle. The descent travels through some of the rockiest, harshest, and least foot-friendly terrain I have ever hiked, and I'm an experienced hiker.

An actual boardwalk—which to me means wide, flat wooden planks rather than narrow timber sleepers—or making the entire timber walkway as wide as the few wider sections would have made me feel much safer. Some hikers were also very rude and unwilling to move aside, meaning every time I had to step down into the mud to let them pass, except for one individual.

I would never recommend this trail for highly sensitive or neurologically challenged individuals.

Unless photography is your mission or you are a highly experienced mountain hiker, I would choose one of the many other beautiful walks in Glendalough instead.

— Troy Cox

The Safe Spaces Project

Utilizing Heritage Refuge Design

Heritage Refuge Design identifies spaces where historic materials, preserved craftsmanship, protective massing, natural light, and elevated spatial separation create a felt sense of continuity, shelter, and nervous-system safety.

Heritage Refuge Design

Old bones. Warm materials. Protective elevation. Restored history. Sanctuary for the nervous system.

Place: Upper Lake Trail- Glendalough National Park

2026-07-11T02:32:57.000-07:00

Safe Spaces Virtual Tour Field Note

Place: Glendalough National Park – Upper Lake Trail

Date 6/10/2026

Troy Alan Cox

One-sentence first impression:

Although listed as the Upper Lake, which implies, at least to a Westerner, that it's at a higher elevation than the Lower Lake, it's actually just a term for being farther away. It is worth the extra walk past the Lower Lake, as it is an entirely different experience.

Upon arriving at the Upper Lake, I was instantly aware of what a different experience I was having than the calm, serene walk around the Lower Lake. The Upper Lake shore is more like a beach. I arrived at 11:00 in the morning, and there were already families with young children playing in the cool, clear mountain water. Since the car park is right adjacent to the lake, it's a great day trip for people to have a picnic or a family outing. I instantly felt a full-body sigh of relaxation as I gazed at the deep blue waters of this much larger and almost still lake, surrounded by breathtaking vertical mountains and a long path to the right of the lake of old-growth trees in a forest setting.

When facing the lake, on the left is the vertical mountain pathway to the waterfall, and on the right is a long blue path along soft gravel, completely ensconced in tall green trees. At the end of the lake is the valley created by the two mountains that converge in the middle. The grandeur of nature creates an architectural feeling of being isolated from the world and nestled in a sacred place that must rarely occur in nature. The thrusting walls of cliff and tree create a womb-like feeling, as if one is being held by the arms of Mother Nature. I rarely have experienced this feeling in mountainous areas. Usually, for myself, I only sense this feeling at the ocean.

The shades of evergreen on the forest trees and undergrowth to the right contrast with the deep dark blue of the lake in a visually striking manner that somehow creates a congruency of colors flowing together in a fluid way. The granite stone beach, unlike an ocean beach but filled with rock, has a pristine white quality yet hearkens reverence, reminding you that its sharp pebbles were created by thousands of years of erosion from the stately mountains. At the far end of the lake, the woods abruptly end, and the thrusting mountain is littered with giant, seemingly black boulders cut at angles rather than rounded, some the size of houses. To the left is a slow-sloping hill with the river from the waterfall cutting through it, creating a softer feeling as the sound of rushing water soothes what must be a harsh environment in the winter. The children playing and sometimes screaming bring life to what might otherwise be a place of silent reverence.

The majesty of this particular junction of different geological features created a feeling of peace and calm within me while at the same time inspiring a silencing awe. Were it not for the valley floor behind me being green and flat, the visually striking vista of the Upper Lake could have created a claustrophobic feeling of being swallowed whole by the two mountains on either side. But standing and looking at the Upper Lake, I could feel the flatlands of the valley and Lower Lake behind me holding me in a way that made me feel welcomed and supported.

If one did not know they had a well-established exit route either back through the valley or to the car park, I could see someone becoming overwhelmed by the thrusting mountains on either side and ahead, creating a claustrophobic feeling. While the children playing created a sense of playfulness, they would often scream at full volume or cry for their mothers, either from the sharp rocks beneath their feet or the icy cold water, which could create overstimulation. While I wanted to sit beneath the trees in the shady spot I found, the waves of people coming and going from the adjacent car park eventually became overstimulating for my nervous system.

Architecturally, I learned that if there is a sharp vertical wall on one side, the opposite side should have a slow, gradual rise. If there are two monolithic vertical structures on either side, the distance beyond the viewer should have openness, light, and a well-established exit route behind.

As I left, I felt a type of humorous joy at the magnificence of nature and how the planet has created places of sanctuary entirely of its own accord without needing the interaction of mankind. I felt this place of stunning beauty and serene nature existed long before humans discovered it and perhaps will continue to exist for eons after the moment I stood upon the shore of the Upper Lake and offered a prayer of gratitude to Mother Nature.

When designing a space based upon the feeling of standing at the shore of the Upper Lake, I envision deep azure shades of blue layered upon one another below a space, whether through flooring or tile, with slowly retreating greenery on one side, either through glass overlooking a garden or through a gently stepping wall, balanced on the opposite side by a solid stone wall.

I felt safe in this space because the valley was wide, gradually narrowing in the distance, and knowing the car park was nearby gave me the reassurance that people were close without encroaching. The combination of blues, greens, slate, granite, and a white-clouded sky felt almost otherworldly.

Unfortunately, in modern times, I would feel safer knowing there was a dedicated forestry staff member or security officer occasionally walking through and surveying the area. It felt as though this space could become a free-for-all for individuals with subversive motivations.

I would highly recommend this space for sensitive or neurologically challenged individuals if they brought noise-canceling headphones should the sounds of crowds become too much. I especially recommend the blue path to the right of the lake, beyond the car park. It is long, flat, extremely wide, covered in soft gravel, and enveloped beneath fifty-foot trees, creating one of the most calming walks I experienced before reaching the Miners' Village.

This lake, the Upper Lake, has a unique feeling that I haven't found anywhere else on this trip. I could imagine leaving the hustle and bustle of Dublin to come to this sacred place for the day simply to reset and refresh my nervous system through its serenity. I will forever close my eyes and picture the blue that I cannot sufficiently describe in the color of the lake and how it mingled with the surrounding green forest, causing me to take a full-body sigh and feel neurologically restored. Would I want to stay here all the time? No. Sometimes the neurological effect of this much intense nature can become overwhelming. Would I visit the lake again? Absolutely. If possible, I would simply drive to the shore rather than walk from the information center.

— Troy Cox

The Safe Spaces Project

Utilizing Heritage Refuge Design

Heritage Refuge Design

Old bones. Warm materials. Protective elevation. Restored history. Sanctuary for the nervous system.

Safe Spaces Field NotesGlendalough National Park – Lower Lake Trail

2026-07-09T06:08:45.928-07:00

Safe Spaces Field Notes

Glendalough National Park – Lower Lake Trail

By Troy Alan Cox

Billed as an easy trail, it's definitely more than a casual stroll, with some wayfinding confusion and a few challenging hills.

The first challenge wasn't physical. It was orientation.

The trail is marked as a green trail; however, the green route splits to go either to the Upper Lake, which is a much more ambitious hike, or down to the Lower Lake. At the first fork in the road, it is not clearly distinguished which direction keeps a hiker on the Lower Lake trail.

The walk itself was challenging but, with plenty of opportunities to stop and rest, felt invigorating and took a little over an hour to complete. I finished feeling content but more physically challenged than I had expected.

Although maps are posted at the visitor center, physical maps are no longer handed out. I found it surprisingly difficult to orient myself using the digital map alone. What begins as the easy green walking trail can easily mislead hikers toward the Upper Lake. I eventually relied on Google AI to confirm I was heading toward the Lower Lake because I simply was not prepared for the larger hike.

Once I overcame this initial uncertainty, the path appeared to lead away from the lake before gently curving back toward it. That early confusion created unnecessary stress in what otherwise became a wonderfully calming experience.

The boardwalk crossing the marshes immediately changed the feeling of the walk. Its wide construction and protective railings created a sense of safety while crossing the boggy wetlands. Walking past sheep quietly grazing in the fields, the nervous system naturally began to settle.

After passing the overlook, the trail enters a canopy of trees that covers nearly three-quarters of the walk. The cool mountain air, occasional breeze across the water, and shifting light through the leaves created a deeply calming environment.

Once I knew I was on the correct path, I never

Safe Spaces Field Notes Powerscourt Estate, County Wicklow, Ireland

2026-07-08T03:01:51.530-07:00

Safe Spaces Field Notes

Powerscourt Estate, County Wicklow, Ireland

By Troy Alan Cox

When Beauty Doesn't Immediately Feel Safe

When we visit a historic property, we often judge it by its gardens, architecture, or history. For this field note, I approached Powerscourt Estate differently. Rather than asking whether I liked it, I asked three questions:

What made me feel safe?

What created friction?

What environmental changes might improve the experience for a wider range of visitors?

My goal is not to criticize remarkable places like this, but to observe how architecture, wayfinding, sensory input, and human interaction influence the nervous system.

First Impression

Approaching from the exterior of the building while walking across a gravel drive, I immediately felt uncertainty.

Was I approaching the back of the building, or was this the main entrance?

The large grey stone used throughout the construction created a feeling that was more institutional than welcoming. With visitors milling about looking equally uncertain, there was little indication which of the multiple entrances was intended for first-time guests.

Spatial Orientation

The greatest challenge during my arrival was wayfinding.

Multiple doors led into different dark hallways. Some entrances were narrow, some wide, some tall, but all appeared equally important. Several signs were present, yet none clearly identified where admission began.

Rather than feeling invited into the estate, I found myself searching for permission to enter.

Sensory Experience

The crunch of gravel beneath my feet combined with conversations in multiple languages created a lively but somewhat chaotic soundscape.

The grey gravel and weathered stone gave the entrance a subdued atmosphere that contrasted sharply with the colorful photographs shown in the brochures and promotional materials. The brilliant flowers and sweeping green lawns promised by the marketing were not immediately reflected in the arrival experience.

Environmental Safety

The interior initially felt austere and disconnected, whether intentionally designed or simply inherited through history.

Once inside, visitors are immediately presented with multiple hallways and rooms branching in different directions. It is easy to wander into the gift shop or another corridor without knowing whether you are actually heading toward admission.

The ticket counter sits beside the restaurant entrance, making it difficult to determine whether the staff are assisting diners or welcoming visitors to the estate.

When I asked how to proceed, I was simply handed a map while the attendant gestured over her shoulder. The interaction felt transactional rather than welcoming and contributed to an overall feeling of uncertainty.

Sources of Friction

By the time I located the correct admission counter, I already felt mentally fatigued.

As a highly sensitive person, I honestly considered turning around and leaving, even after the beautiful but strenuous twenty-two-minute uphill walk from the village of Enniskerry.

Once outside, the estate opens into magnificent formal gardens, but multiple paths branch away without immediately communicating where they lead. I found myself repeatedly consulting the map to regain my orientation.

There were no visible notices describing the steep grades throughout the property. Visitors with limited mobility or reduced endurance could easily underestimate the physical effort required to explore the lower gardens and return to the estate.

A Different Experience

One area completely changed my experience.

The William Robinson-inspired wild garden immediately softened the atmosphere. Instead of formal symmetry and expansive lawns, there was an abundance of wildflowers growing together naturally.

Even more significant was meeting one of the gardeners.

He was friendly, welcoming, and genuinely delighted to discuss the different plant species growing together throughout the garden.

That brief conversation created something the entrance had not.

It created a sense of belonging.

Design Lessons

This experience reinforced how small environmental details can dramatically influence the way people experience a place.

Clear entrance sequencing, intuitive wayfinding, welcoming staff interactions, and obvious places to pause and orient oneself all contribute to psychological safety before visitors ever begin exploring.

Likewise, introducing naturalistic planting into more formal environments creates warmth, softness, and visual relief from architectural austerity.

These same principles could easily translate into homes, retreat centers, healthcare environments, gardens, or community spaces.

What Made Me Feel Safe

The small theater showing the history of the estate became an unexpected refuge.

The room was quiet, cool, nearly empty, and narrated by a calm voice. It offered generous seating and enough space to simply breathe and settle.

The café also contained several smaller seating areas tucked away from the larger dining rooms, allowing visitors to retreat from the crowds while overlooking the gardens.

Finally, discovering both the wild garden and the Japanese gardens provided moments of intimacy, enclosure, shade, and restoration that contrasted beautifully with the openness of the formal landscape.

What Would Make Me Feel Safer

A more welcoming entrance sequence would immediately improve the visitor experience.

Simple landscaping, larger directional signage, and a clearly defined arrival path would remove much of the uncertainty surrounding admission.

An information desk separate from ticket sales, staffed by someone focused solely on greeting visitors and answering questions, would dramatically improve orientation while creating a stronger sense of welcome.

Sometimes safety begins long before someone enters a building.

Sometimes it begins with simply knowing where to go.

Why am I doing this?

Safe Spaces Field Notes are part of my ongoing exploration of how architecture, landscape, sensory experience, and human interaction influence the nervous system. My hope is to identify practical design principles that help create spaces where people feel calmer, more oriented, and more welcome.

What environmental details help you feel immediately safe when visiting a place for the first time?

Safe Spaces Field Notes Orlando International Airport – Terminal C Safety Check

2026-07-06T17:00:18.119-07:00

Safe Spaces Field Notes

Orlando International Airport – Terminal C Safety Check

I liked how easy it was to breeze through customs and security with all the lanes wide open.

Upon entering the main hub, the ceiling shoots up six stories high, creating a feeling of spaciousness that feels very different from other terminals.

The greeting of large LED screens showing fun digital animals peeking out of artificial rock walls made me feel instantly safe.

High-top tables set in carpeting surrounding the digital screens invite travelers to sit down and watch the display.

You can walk in between the screens and watch beautiful seascapes transform into desert scenes with stones that appear to move with the viewer.

Past the screens, the terminal splits three ways. Straight ahead, several gates at the end were empty and made a great place to take a quick rest and charge my phone.

Taking the elevator up to the sixth floor, you almost merge with the vertical light fixtures, and there is much less foot traffic.

While there is no designated quiet space, traveling down to the commuter train level drops the volume by at least half.

Stepping into the SeaWorld store, you can watch digital stingrays float by and be calmed by the real fish in their aquarium.

Heading down the vast corridor toward Gates C250–C254 gives you a reprieve from all the food vendors and retail kiosks.

What would make me feel even safer are lounge chairs in the breezeways—places that are not directly connected to departure gates, where it's okay to simply sit, breathe, and observe without feeling like someone is waiting for your seat.

While the large marble walls and highly polished floors feel clean, they also allow the mind to get lost in beige. Adding artwork that isn't digital, along with sculptures or overhead mobile art, would help break up the sanitized, hospital-like feeling and create more visual points of interest.

The Soldier Screamed. It's been three years, and I still see it.

2026-07-06T15:20:52.000-07:00

The Soldier Screamed

It's been three years, and I still see it.

Written by: Troy Alan Cox

Today, standing in the international terminal waiting for my flight to Ireland, I unexpectedly found myself back in Costa Rica.

Three years ago I co-led a yoga teacher training retreat to Costa Rica. It was my first retreat since 2011, when we went to Bali with my studio.

I've traveled the world and was excited to see my first South American country. Growing up in Japan, I have an affinity for rainforests and being able to travel to the mountains and the coast in the same day.

After having to sleep several hours in the airport on arrival while waiting for our transport, the adventure began.

I kept hearing my co-host telling me in the car before leaving the U.S. that there was a last-minute guest coming. A soldier with extreme PTSD. I kept shoving it to the back of my mind, having had this come up in yoga teacher training before. However, never in a foreign country. It was already decided, and I had no say in the matter. I just knew the experiences I had previously had had not gone well, both for the soldiers and the students. I tried to shove it to the back of my mind.

We took a bus all the way down the southern coast and boarded a ferry across the water. It was amazing seeing all the lush growth and animal life. The vibe was very friendly at the stops we made and generally felt safe.

After suffering the terror of traveling with the trots combined with my IBS, I never experiment with food when abroad. However, my travel mates all ventured to a food stand, and I couldn't resist the plantains.

The ferry ride was spacious, and the water was majestic. It felt safe, and everyone was smiling. Once back on land, our bus took off into the jungle. We passed steep roads, deep ravines, and plant life that felt like a ride through Jurassic Park.

We pitched forward and back, side to side, laughing and joking in wonder at the mystical surroundings. Familiar to the feel of Florida, yet taken to the extreme.

As we approached the national park, our retreat center sat astride it. The overhead canopy grew dense, and the sun began to disappear.

At the entrance to where we would spend the next ten days, there was an open-air restaurant, and I rubbed my blurry eyes, not certain that I was reading the word Sushi correctly.

No air conditioning? In the summer? I survived Bali without it, but it was apparent the dense jungle was a different climate. Even though the ocean was down the path a few minutes away, none of the air could travel through the jungle to where our lodge was.

The next days were a blur of adjusting. Screeching monkeys, otherwise known as howler monkeys, peeing on the thatched roofs at 2:00 a.m., the indoor heat, the smell of marijuana mixed with mud, outdoor open-air showers with spiders and the occasional snake, and trying to miss the afternoon heat in swimming pools.

It seemed to be building up to something, but it was manageable. The intensity of the cacao ceremony seemed to bring everything to a peak.

I was asked to request that the soldier stop pacing and patrolling behind the group during lessons. I had grown to really like the soldier, like a brother. They were so respectful and had really bonded with a few of us. At the same time, as the group leader, I had to consider the well-being of the entire group.

The veteran didn't take the request well, and before we began our afternoon session, they asked to speak to the group. We all assembled, and as we settled, the soldier began to speak. Their volume began to grow as their intensity increased.

As a highly sensitive individual, I was already days past my overstimulation limit. My father was not doing well alone at home with early dementia. I was told the trash was piling up at the back door, the dishwasher had backed up in the kitchen, and there were dirty dishes everywhere. I knew it was a risk leaving him alone.

As the soldier continued the dialogue at full volume, I flashed from Costa Rica to my dad all alone and scared, to me as a little child being screamed at and hit every day by the bullies at school and my overcorrective mom at home.

What snapped me back was the soldier declaring at full volume how they had killed civilians in battle, and instantly I was on the front line. One part of being an HSP is that I see movie scenes and feel every minute of them. I could see the bullets ripping through women and children. I could feel the horror the soldier felt as they realized what was happening. It was completely three-dimensional for me, hearing the proclamation and the deep anguish it caused within the soldier.

I had to get up and leave the group, embarrassed that I was grief crying. Crying for the soldier, crying for the civilian women and children, crying for my father, who had to scoop dead bodies out of the sea in Vietnam, and for myself, who had not grieved the passing of my own mother two years prior.

As I hid in my hundred-degree loft under the thatched roof, I kept seeing the vision of women and children being blown apart by machine-gun fire. I kept flashing to the soldier trying to kill themselves out of a deep dread I had never felt before. I kept emotionally going between my father all alone, confused as to why I had left him in a town where he knew no one, and my mother dying before I got to say goodbye in person because of the pandemic.

It took me hours until the visions stopped, and I booked my flight home early.

It's been three years since I've been in an international terminal, and yet it all just came back.

I'll never understand why I was born so highly sensitive, but I will always understand that things have to process on their own, in their own time. Just like grief, everyone experiences life differently.

As I sit here in Terminal C, there is an alarm event. All the lights are flashing, and the announcements are repeating over and over again in English and Spanish. I have my earplugs in and am sitting in an empty part of the terminal, trying to breathe and use my tools to stay calm while reprocessing Costa Rica.

It's so interesting what the body clings to.

One Safer Thing Life Tip #002

2026-07-06T09:19:31.000-07:00

One Safer Thing Life Tip #002

Video: https://youtu.be/5qma6EYYfrI?is=pjDQ89rItGVXc0Fb

YouTube

Discernment: Not Every Tool Is for Every Body

By Troy Alan Cox

Over the years of instructing, I've learned something very important that I like to share with others.

Whenever someone tells me they tried yoga and didn't like it or it wasn't right for them, I don't try to convince them otherwise. I used to tell them all the health benefits and the reasons why they might try yoga again.

Pretty quickly, though, I learned that yoga is good for every body, but yoga practice is not right for everybody.

The same principle runs true for all the different types of tools we might find on our life path while looking for ways to deal with the ups and downs of living. One tool might be extremely beneficial for an individual, and they might want to tell everybody about how great the tool is for them. However, that same tool might simply not work for the next person.

The better question to ask is, "Will this tool work for me?" There is no one universal tool. One size fits all does not apply. It is not true that there is a perfect cure-all.

Right now, breath techniques have become very popular as a new tool for all different types of people. However, some breath tools are energizing or designed to burn off excess energy and create heat. Other breath techniques are meant for calming and cooling overstressed nervous systems and lowering body temperature. Knowing that I am highly sensitive and easily triggered, which can result in panic attacks, a heating, fast-moving breath like one might do before an ice plunge is not a useful tool for me. It doesn't mean it's a bad tool. It just doesn't go in my toolbox.

Build your own personal toolbox. There are so many techniques and methodologies available to us now in the digital age that have never even been allowed to be shared historically. But it's virtually impossible to practice all of the tools available to humankind. Therefore, my recommendation is to be selective. Learn from a teacher who is similar to yourself, somebody who has gone through experiences that you relate to. I don't suggest signing up for a random workshop just because it might be a popular place or a popular technique. Learn about the teacher first and make sure it resonates with you, and then try learning their tools. All of their tools might not work for you either. Be discerning.

Be an experimenter. A scientist. Try out different tools for 30 days and see if you gain any results. More advanced tools might require a longer practice time, but generally speaking, you might have an indication of whether or not a tool is right for you within 30 days. Ask yourself, "How is this tool making me feel? Does this tool leave me needing anything? What is my personal experience with this new tool?"

My next book I'm working on is The G of Yoga: A Safety Guide to Gurus and Spiritual Teachers. I'm studying cult mentality right now, and I understand how this can be so tempting for people. Many of us are looking for a one-size-fits-all solution. It can become so blinding when thousands of people are saying a particular teaching or tool is working for them, even though you might feel misgivings or see warning signs about why this tool is not a healthy tool for everybody.

The Weigh Down documentary has been fascinating to watch. A leader took portion control, which works to a certain point but is not a cure-all, and made it her methodology to seduce millions of people into believing they were finding a tool that would change their lives forever. Portion control without nutrition training and education about healthy eating is not a long-lasting tool. Many people were hurt in the process. Be cautious in your tool searching.

If you use your discernment to pick the right teachers who have the right tools for you, you can start to fill up your toolbox with safe tools for you. Make it personalized, and just remember there is no one size fits all. Happy tool hunting.

If you would like to know any of the tools I use to cool off my hypersensitive nervous system, feel free to DM me.

What is one tool you've tried that worked well for someone else but wasn't the right fit for you?

Awareness Comes Before Change

2026-06-30T09:56:24.549-07:00

One Safer Thing Life Tip #001

Awareness Comes Before Change

By Troy Alan Cox

I often tell the story of getting trapped at the back of Costco in the cooler section trembling and crying.

While that may sound overly dramatic to the everyday big-box shopper, it was my reality.

Having lived in my yoga studio, essentially surrounded by the yoga world, I had become accustomed to a peaceful environment and, for the most part, people who were seeking quiet and calm.

After closing the yoga studio and trying to reenter civilian life, as I call it, one of my new jobs came with a Costco membership. Wanting the savings they advertised, I went to Costco in 2016 for the first time.

As a highly sensitive person, meaning I'm naturally attuned to sensory input, I was immediately struck upon entering by the volume of sound. Then came the pushing and shoving, the chaotic carts rushing toward me and around me, the long lines waiting for food samples, and the glaring signage. My sense of space and spatial awareness became overwhelmed.

For years I had been practicing a tool called withdrawal of the senses, intentionally reducing stimulation to return to a baseline of inner calm. Needless to say, by the time I reached the back of the store, I was shaking. I stepped into the cooler section and called a friend to talk me out of the store.

I didn't return to Costco again until 2022.

Looking back, the greatest tool I gained from that experience wasn't avoiding Costco.

It was awareness.

I became aware of what causes stress in my personal system. Overstimulating environments simply do not work well for me. That experience reinforced the importance of stepping back and witnessing our own situations from a more objective perspective. If we can step back from the front row of the movie screen of our lives, we begin to see where the friction is really coming from.

I have discovered a huge secret to making change happen faster.

The first step is recognition.

Seeing the warning signs of stress and becoming aware of what we want to change is often the missing piece in every area of life where we desire something different.

Almost all stress can be managed through understanding how our biology responds to it. Most of us try to fix stress before we even recognize that we're experiencing it.

The body often notices long before the mind does.

As a teacher, I know people often arrive carrying the weight of their day. My goal has always been to create a womb of safety for those seeking my help or advice, whether that's within themselves or their work or home spaces.

The safer and more relaxed our inner space or environment becomes, the more transformation becomes possible.

To turn this into a tool you can use today, before trying to solve a problem, spend one minute simply noticing what is happening.

Ask yourself:

• What is happening?

• What do I feel right now?

• What do I need right now?

Becoming aware is the first step toward making change.

In order to do that, we often need to remove ourselves from the situation and examine it as if we were an investigator or crime scene reporter interviewing witnesses from different perspectives.

The further removed we are from the perceived stressor, the clearer the picture becomes. When we're standing in the middle of the situation, we're often too close to see what is actually creating the stress or friction in our lives.

Take some time today to go somewhere safe but unfamiliar and detached from the situation causing you stress.

Write it down.

Look at it as if someone else were describing your circumstances.

Notice your habits, Your thoughts, Your words, Your actions, Your environment.

Awareness is the first step.

You can use this tool in just about any situation in life to create a safer experience.

How do you look at what's causing you stress in your life and see it from a removed perspective first before trying to make change?

The Search with the Wrong Question.

2026-06-29T09:48:46.000-07:00

The Search

Troy Alan Cox

After my brother was unexpectedly killed in a motorcycle accident, I began searching for answers. Like most people who have experienced a sudden and unexpected trauma, I questioned everything I thought was important before the accident. I look at my life as before Todd died and after Todd died.

I first began with a bootleg collection of 1960s talks by Ram Dass that my brother's martial arts teacher gave me. It was the first time I had heard religion mixed with spirituality, humor, adventure, and someone questioning established belief systems. I listened to those cassette tapes so many times that I had some of them memorized.

I ask myself questions every day... but I had never thought about whether I was asking the right ones.

Once I realized my parents and I were not going to be much help to each other during this horrible time, I did what spiritual seekers have done for centuries. I ran and hid. First to the forest and then to the Florida Keys. The Keys were still quiet then, before cruise ships arrived, and during the off-season it felt as though the 1970s had never ended. Everything was slower, simpler, and more isolated. Managing campgrounds on that tropical island gave me exactly what I needed at that point in my life: space, silence, and time to begin processing the massive shift I was experiencing.

Eventually I returned to Orlando. There I discovered a bookstore called The Spiral Circle. The original owner, Beverly, had an uncanny ability to walk someone to a bookshelf and intuitively recommend exactly the book she felt would help them the most. My search moved from religion to near-death experiences, then to self-help, meditation, philosophy, and psychology. I read everything I could find trying to answer the questions that had taken over my life. I listened to CDs during every drive to work and immersed myself in different teachers, different traditions, and different ideas.

No matter where I looked, I couldn't find one place that contained the answer.

Eventually my work as a personal trainer led me to teaching yoga at 24 Hour Fitness. At first it was simply stretching and movement. Workout yoga. The classes became so popular that I developed a waiting list. Then something unexpected happened. Students began telling me their lives were changing. One person said they were sleeping better. Another said their family kept asking what had changed because they seemed calmer. Others noticed their back pain improving or found themselves making different decisions at work and at home. Eventually they all asked me the same question.

"Do you know why this is happening?"

I couldn't answer them.

Their questions became my questions.

That curiosity led me deeper into the history and philosophy of yoga. I studied with teachers from India, traveled there myself, received mantra initiation, and immersed myself in the tradition. I spent years reading, practicing, teaching, and researching, convinced that somewhere I would eventually discover the answer I had been searching for since Todd died.

Instead, something else happened.

My teachers rarely answered my questions.

They answered them with another question.

That frustrated me at first. Then one day I realized why.

Truth is, I wasn't getting the answers I was seeking because I wasn't asking the right questions.

For years I had been asking, "How do I change?" "How do I become happy?" "How do I become successful?" and "Why does this keep happening to me?" Those questions never seemed to lead anywhere.

Eventually I realized the better question wasn't why.

It was what.

What is actually directing my decisions? What keeps leading me back to the same relationships, the same jobs, the same disappointments, and the same patterns? Why did I keep moving from place to place, changing careers, starting businesses, and searching outside myself for answers while never examining what was quietly steering my own life?

We think we are making conscious decisions.

Many of our decisions are quietly being directed by values we have never examined.

What beliefs had I inherited without ever questioning them? What values had I accepted simply because I grew up with them? What assumptions about success, happiness, work, relationships, religion, and life had become so automatic that I no longer noticed they were directing my decisions?

That realization changed everything.

I realized I didn't need another spiritual book, another seminar, another teacher, or another philosophy. I needed to understand the compass that had already been quietly directing my life.

That realization became...

The Safety Compass™.

I use this tool all the time in my life so much so that it's become second nature to me. I've taught this tool over 20 years to thousands of people who have always told me the value they find in it.

Next week, I'll share the simple exercise I've used with thousands of people over the past two decades to help them discover their own True North—and why the hardest part isn't identifying your values.

It's learning how to use them.

Tragedy Is Not the Teacher

2026-06-27T14:13:23.000-07:00

Tragedy Is Not the Teacher

Todd E. Cox 1994

Troy Alan Cox

6/27/2026

I had an experience that I will always remember as a radio D.J. on air. It was the time I lost my voice during a live broadcast. I was not ill. I could no longer control my vocal cords.

People often say that tragedy is life's greatest teacher. I understand why they say it. Looking back, however, I no longer believe it is true. Trauma is not the teacher. Trauma simply interrupts the life you thought you were living. The worse the trauma, the more devastating the interruption to ones life. The lessons come much later, if they come at all. The harder the lesson is the least likely it is that your life before will look anything like the life you have after the tragedy.

For me, everything changed on January 31, 1994.

At the time, I was a young radio personality in Kansas City. After spending nearly two years working the overnight shift on an AM oldies station, I had finally earned a daytime position. Like so many people in their twenties, I thought I knew exactly where my life was headed. I wanted to work in radio and television. I dreamed of becoming another Dick Clark. My career was moving forward, life felt exciting, and the future seemed wide open.

Then, just after midnight, the telephone rang. It was my mother and she wasn't calling to chat. She was screaming.

"Todd is dead."

There are moments in life that divide everything into before and after. That phone call was mine. Before I was a happy person pursuing my materialistic goals of money, success and whatever made me happy. After, I was lost.

My younger brother had been killed in a horrific motorcycle accident in Merced, California. He was twenty years old. A gifted artist, a bodybuilder, and the person in our family we all believed would someday make it big in Hollywood creating special effects for the movies. Instead, in a matter of seconds, everything changed.

The details made it even harder to understand. Todd and his girlfriend were riding back to his Air Force base after dinner when a driver pulled onto the shoulder of a four-lane highway. Thinking the car had stopped, Todd did what almost any experienced motorcyclist would do. He moved left to pass safely. What he couldn't have known was that the driver had decided to make an illegal U-turn across the highway.

They never had a chance. His girlfriend died instantly. Todd survived for several hours on the side of the road with catastrophic injuries before he finally passed away. To our dismay the court later ruled that both parties shared responsibility because Todd had been speeding to avoid the car. The driver, whose license had already been suspended, walked away with little consequence. My parents, who had already lost their son, were later sued by the husband of the woman who died with Todd. It felt as though the tragedy refused to end.

I wish I could tell you that something meaningful came out of those first days. It didn't. People often imagine that profound loss immediately makes us wiser or more spiritual. It didn't do that for me. It simply shattered the person I thought I was. It even stole my career. The thing I thought I was going to do the rest of my life. When I tried to return to work at the radio station, I discovered something I never imagined could happen.

I couldn't speak.

'And now back to the studio with Troy" Delilah said. I clicked the microphone to live and, nothing. The music faded. I opened my mouth, and my voice simply stopped working. I cried on the air. Not quietly. Not professionally. I just broke. That was the end of my career in radio. My instrument that had taken me from college radio to the legendary W.H.B. Kansas Cities Oldies and got me the promotion to K.U.D.L right before my brother died was gone. Silence and tears.

I quit my job, moved back in with my parents for the first time since leaving for college, and entered a house that no longer felt alive. We were all grieving, but we didn't know how to grieve together. My parents would sit silently in front of the television like zombies, devastated beyond words. Upstairs, I would curl into a ball on the bathroom floor and cry so violently that my whole body shook. I knew they could hear me. None of us knew how to reach the others. We could not talk, even to each other.

Looking back, I realize something I could never have understood then. My brother's death was not my teacher. The tragedy was not the lesson.

It was the one question, burned into my psyche that would take me the next thirty years to answer.

Next week I'll share what happened after I ran away from everything I knew, and why that journey eventually led me to where I am now and why I created The Safety Compass.

Why Do We Keep Ending Up in the Same Place?

2026-06-22T11:56:00.327-07:00

Why Do We Keep Ending Up in the Same Place?

While cleaning out old teacher training manuals recently, I came across an exercise that I have taught in one form or another for over twenty years. Looking through the pages brought back memories of students sitting quietly with a pencil in their hand, convinced they had a relationship problem, a job problem, a money problem, or a confidence problem. More often than not, twenty minutes later they were looking at the paper in front of them with a completely different understanding of what was actually happening.

One of the things that has fascinated me throughout my life is how often we repeat the same patterns without realizing it. We change jobs and somehow find ourselves having the same frustrations. We move across the country and bring the same unhappiness with us. We swear we will never date another person like the last one and somehow wind up sitting across from the same person wearing different clothes.

Over the years I noticed that most people did not lack information. Most already knew more than enough books, podcasts, videos, and experts to solve their problem. What they lacked was clarity. They could not see the pattern.

The exercise was originally designed to help people identify their core values and create a mission statement. Looking back now, I think it was doing something much more useful. It was helping people identify where their life was out of alignment with what mattered most to them.

That is why I dusted it off, removed all the industry-specific language, simplified it, and turned it into a short self-assessment called The Safety Compass.

The Safety Compass is not a course. It is not a certification. It is not a twelve-week transformation program. It is simply one of the most useful exercises I have ever taught packaged into a format that can be completed in about twenty-five minutes.

If you have been feeling stuck, frustrated, confused, or as though you keep arriving at the same destination despite your best efforts, I think this exercise may help you identify what is really going on beneath the surface.

First Father's Day

2026-06-21T05:00:04.000-07:00

First Father's Day

What Is a Father?

First Father's Day

What Is a Father?

Written by Troy Alan Cox

6/21/2026

Where Is My Father?

It wasn't actually an official Father's Day, but to a little five-year-old boy it was a special Father's Day.

The earliest memory I have of my father is my mom sewing. My mom was a seamstress, and an excellent one at that. She didn't do it for a living. She did it for fun. I so wish I had kept her little pink Singer sewing machine, although I did not inherit the skill. I have these big, fat, clumsy fingers that are not designed for detail work or little needles.

In 1970s San Diego, my mom would take the little-boy version of me with her everywhere. It was just her and me. I was lucky in that I had all the time I wanted with my mom when my dad was away at sea. My dad began his career in the Navy aboard ships. It wasn't until much later in life that he would talk about the U.S.S. Bayfield.

The USS Bayfield was a 1940s World War II Navy vessel that participated in D-Day, playing a major role in the invasion. The ship went on to serve in many important missions up to 1968. My father was assigned to this ship, I believe, as his first ship around 1966. At that time, the ship was near the end of its commission and was serving in Vietnam. Its main mission was rescuing refugees and soldiers. Without going into detail, which I know very little about because of my father's difficulty talking about those days, they not only rescued people from the beaches but also recovered soldiers' bodies at sea.

By the time I came around in 1968, my dad was serving in Washington at the Pentagon. In the mid-1970s we moved to San Diego, where he was stationed at Miramar Naval Air Station and assigned to another legendary ship, the USS Kitty Hawk. This aircraft carrier has a long and decorated history. Through navigating the VA and getting help for my father in his later years, we would meet other people who had served aboard this famous ship throughout its long career.

In the mid-1970s it was sent to San Francisco for six months to be overhauled. This was probably the longest I had been without my father. As a four- or five-year-old, it felt like an eternity before I saw him again.

The First Father's Day

I remember hiding in the fabric shop. I loved playing hide-and-seek with my mom while she shopped for fabric and patterns. I would usually wind up squeezing between the bolts of fabric stacked in a round rack and hide in the middle.

I remember the bright, sunny, beautiful San Diego weather and riding in the car with my mommy, going to different shops while she searched for buttons, zippers, and all the things needed to sew my little sailor outfit.

My earliest memory of my father is traveling on a gorgeous 1974 day to the Navy shipyard in San Diego. It was a big day, that is all I knew. I remember my mom wanting everything to be perfect.

There we stood on the asphalt, my mom looking like a fashion model, all hand-sewn and stylish with big hair, and me dressed in the fruits of her labor. My mother was obsessed with brushing my hair to try to make it straight and lay down. I remember my little blue Navy uniform was stiff and uncomfortable, but I didn't care.

I held my mommy's hand tight as she had been my safety for the six months my father was gone while they redid the ship in San Francisco. We held our sign high, probably reading "Ed Cox" in bold letters. With 5,000 men aboard, it was a sea of sailors coming off the ship in waves. Who knows how long we stood there.

All I remember is that out of the crowd walked what seemed to me like a tall, lean, perfectly blond movie-star man walking toward me and my mother. I couldn't register that it was my dad. It had been too long for my memory to be reliable.

He probably took my mom in his arms and planted a big kiss on her before tussling my hair and messing it up, which I preferred. He probably was in awe of the little sailor uniform and laughed and joked. I don't remember what happened after that, but I'm sure we had a happy day.

In my mind, that is the first Father's Day. Because we made such a big deal out of him coming back, and everything took weeks of preparation just for Daddy.

How Does a Father Show Up?

Since my father's passing, I have heard so many kind words about him. What a great listener he was. How he was such a good storyteller. How much laughter and joy he brought to other people. How he always had a wink and a smile for others.

People shared how he made them feel special and how he would listen to their stories. My father loved writing and collecting funny stories in particular. He always seemed to be on a mission to make other people laugh and have a good time.

In San Diego we belonged to the Y Indian Guides, which I don't think we're supposed to talk about anymore because of its cultural inappropriateness. However, his Big Thunder complete feather headdress from head to toe hangs in the closet to this day. He proudly brought out Big Thunder over the years to show off his handiwork and, to him, keep the story of Native American history alive.

It wasn't until much later in life when we did a DNA test that we found out he actually had a small amount of Native American ancestry. I was his Little Lightning and so happy to get to spend time with my father after he had been away for so long. We went to meetings together, parades, and who knows what else I can't remember. But we loved dressing up in our Y Indian Guides outfits.

Later in Japan he would bring out Big Thunder, including war paint, to show all our Japanese friends a taste of Native American history. Even later he would use the costume to present one of the highest honors in Scouting, the Arrow of Light, to many Scouts.

In Japan there were no American Boy Scout leaders when we were there. So my mother and father stepped up and created the first Cub Scout troop in Yokohama on base. As I went from Cub Scouts to Webelos, my mother and father spent countless hours creating adventures for us and the other boys. I remember it took a long time to find a place for us to call scouting headquarters.

We finally found a space in an old abandoned horse racing track that had been turned into a museum. Up in the dusty old stands underneath the seats was where we met and planned our adventures.

My father was the first to organize a Japanese Scout and American Scout mini-jamboree. It was one of the highlights of his life, and he received a commendation from the Emperor and the local government for his service. My mother taught English off base to mostly Japanese women, so we had many local friends and saw a lot of Japan.

The Final Father's Day

After retiring from the U.S. Navy, my father dedicated his life to working as a professional Boy Scout Executive. Yes, it is a real paid job with a salary, or at least it used to be.

We moved home to Kansas so my little brother and I could get to know our grandparents better, and because that was where my parents had grown up.

He served four years in Kansas, four years in Missouri, and his final four years with the Boy Scouts in Iowa before retiring. Over the years, Father's Day was always a special day for me. I loved making a big deal out of Mother's Day and Father's Day for my parents.

Even though I didn't get the gregarious side of my father, he was quiet at home and we never had lengthy discussions. He mostly spent his time in the garden when he was there.

I'll never understand why we had none of what was shared with other people. At home things were different than they were outside the home. Probably because he spent all his energy pleasing others, there wasn't much left for us.

However, I remember him being strong and silent, and I felt guarded and protected. I had made peace with this duality in my father around 1994 after my little brother was killed in a tragic motorcycle accident.

My brother's martial arts teacher gave me a collection of bootleg Ram Dass teachings. In one of his talks he speaks about coming to the realization that his father was not the role of father.

Ram Dass became aware that we are not the roles we are assigned at birth. We think of ourselves as mother, father, daughter, son, aunt, uncle, sister, brother, grandma, or grandpa. However, we are souls, each on our individual journey of understanding.

Our mothers and fathers were not given books on how to become perfect parents. They are humans with their own fallible traits and lessons to learn. Just like we are not perfect children to our parents. We are individuals who happen to be born into this thing called a family, but it does not define us.

Once I started thinking of my parents as other souls rather than mother and father who had some sort of responsibility to me, it allowed me to lay aside our differences and conflicts and drop the expectations of how my parents should have shown up.

My father shared with me that his father was also mostly silent, although they did a lot together when he was growing up. My grandfather was already an old man, having raised his first two boys twelve years before my little dad showed up.

He also told me he never heard his father say the words, "I love you." After my mother passed in 2021, my father decided to move to Orlando, where I was living.

My dad was in his late seventies when he moved here, and the dramatic difference between the seventies and the eighties cannot be put into words. Luckily, after my brother's passing, we said "I love you" every day. That is what I hold on to.

The last Father's Day was a horrible comedy-of-errors tragedy that I'll spend the rest of my life trying to forget. As I look at pictures and videos of my father now, in retrospect, I can see that I was totally unaware, or unable to admit, how much the Alzheimer's and dementia had progressed. I still clung to wanting him to stay active and viable so we could have some golden years together.

After so much caregiving, I started forcing myself to take some personal time. Last Father's Day I saw a client who lived about forty-five minutes away. Afterwards I did some light shopping and took some personal time for the first time in a long while.

I picked up a bouquet of yellow roses, my father's favorite, to surprise him with. I remember coming home in such a great mood, so happy that I had taken some time for myself.

I arrived at the front door full of joy, ready to surprise my dad, who I assumed was in his usual chair watching his usual television show.

As soon as I threw open the door and said, "Happy Father's Day," there he was, lying face down on the floor in the middle of the living room. A large pool of blood had formed around him like a crime scene. He had been there so long that the blood had begun to coagulate.

Through later research I discovered that dementia patients often stay where they fall because they no longer have the cognitive ability to figure out how to get up. The brain simply cannot fire the necessary commands.

Lord only knows how long he had been there. Thankfully it was mostly torn skin and tissue from instinctively putting his arms out to break the fall. Nothing major had happened because he had used the chair to keep from hitting his head.

I guess I was in shock because I didn't call an ambulance. I just grabbed the first-aid kit and began cleaning him up. The roses thrown on the floor, the hot tears shooting from my face, and the shock of the emotional whiplash after opening the door are horrifying to think about, let alone the fact that I will never know how long he lay there.

When this memory floods my mind today, I immediately try to replace it with the memory of standing next to my mom, holding her warm hand on a beautiful sunny San Diego day in my little sailor uniform, waiting for my mythical father to return from six months away.

If I can latch onto that beautiful black-and-white photograph in my mind, one I wish actually existed, it helps me forget the final Father's Day. Please remember your father is a man who tried the best he could despite his shortcomings and failures, and think of a fond memory if you have one.

While I am realistic enough to know that some fathers do not deserve to be loved because of the horrors they may have inflicted upon their families, I know that my father, as imperfect as he was, loved me in the best way that he could.

I will forever remember the first Father's Day and let the rest go.

Monastic Sites and Garden Getaways: Ireland Trip with Troy

2026-06-18T04:43:43.455-07:00

Monastic Sites and Garden Getaways

Glendalough, via Wikimedia Commons. Used under the license listed on the file page.

Troy Alan Cox

Marinating in the Morose

It has been almost two months since my father passed here at the house. Since then, I have completely rearranged everything in the house and begun stripping his room of carpet ruined from flooding. It is amazing the emotions that come out from simply removing carpeting. Each strip that I cut and roll up causes a deluge of tears. My nervous system is equating the removal of terrible carpet with the removal of memories. Although I know the two are unrelated, the feelings that are coming up are almost unbearable.

While I wait on getting a mold assessment for the drywall, everything my father owned or brought with him from Kansas is piled in boxes in the office and adjoining spaces. It has to be done, but it is almost too hard to handle.

It has been apparent to me since one time in Southern California when a young man who was my neighbor took his own life. It took several weeks for anybody to come after he was discovered, and maybe longer to clean out his space. From what I overheard, he had no direct relatives, just distant folks. Therefore, it was apparent when they came that there was not much caring for his personal belongings. I remember a dumpster was backed up to the stairwell, and almost all of his belongings were thrown in the dumpster. While I did not know the gentleman very well, the impact of seeing someone’s entire life reduced to a portable dumpster caused me to face the fact that everything we create around ourselves, that we think defines us as a person, can be easily erased over a period of a few days.

Unfortunately, this happened to me again in Orlando two decades later. A young man living below me lost his whole family. Again, I did not get to know him, as he was much younger than I was. However, when I left on a business trip to LA and returned a week later, he had taken his own life. Nobody discovered his body for quite a long time until the smell in the building became too bad. It was explained through the gossip mill that he too had lost both of his parents and had no remaining family. This time, everything was removed in hazmat suits because of his method of suicide. That followed a long period of cleaning and sanitation right below where I was living.

Again, I was profoundly impacted by materialism and the lack of importance of the things we accumulate. However, in the context of my father, it is hard to live the practice of deciding what stays and what goes. Thus, everything is sitting in boxes, and I am marinating in morose feelings.

Everything we create around ourselves, that we think defines us as a person, can be easily erased over a period of a few days.

Gardens and Monastic Sites

Places designed for contemplation, not stimulation, are calling my name. Places where people will not ask me how I’m doing, because as well as they intend those words, each time I am forced to face that I do not know how I am doing.

Escape and observe is always my go-to plan. I have learned from my extensive travels that being in a new place where nobody knows you allows one to safely look at everything they are using to define themselves. Getting away from familiar surroundings, especially in a place I have never been before, forces one to examine: Who am I? Am I happy with my current definition of myself? Do I need to create change in my life, whether it be my surroundings, things I have accumulated, or the people around me?

I have thoroughly planned my trip to land at sacred spaces, monastic sites, gardens, and coastal refuge spaces.

Guinness Beer or Gardens

I will not be going to the Guinness distillery, although at one point I would have, as I preferred the darker the beer the better. Although Scottish whiskey was my favorite, Irish whiskey has its own attributes to appreciate. However, I quit drinking several years ago when suddenly one or two sips would result in a migraine.

This trip is not about tourist traps or pub crawls.

I will be landing in Dublin and immediately leaving for Enniskerry, where I will visit planned gardens from an old estate turned public. I particularly want to walk in the Japanese garden. The next morning, I will be departing for one of the culturally iconic landmarks of the entire country of Ireland: Glendalough.

Fifteen hundred years ago, St. Kevin arrived at this site to live in a cave and retreat from life to find himself. That is the exact feeling I am looking for. While he developed a following and built a monastery site that has endured, including the tallest circular stone tower in the whole country, I will be walking the trails, hopefully in silence. I want to sit at the banks of the dual glacial lakes and contemplate who I am and what my life looks like moving forward without my nuclear family.

From there, I depart to what is considered the best example of wild gardening, created by the rebel William Robinson, who took it upon himself to change the entire establishment of gardening in late 1700s England. He challenged the strongly held belief of Italian-style gardening, which is planned and organized around foreign, non-native plants, clean lines, and wealthy estate gardening. He worked with native plants, and while his gardens look completely wild, they are actually obsessively researched and planned.

This sums up how I am feeling right now in my life. I need to do some deep research and planning because I am walking into the wild unknown, facing a future I never contemplated: a life without any blood relatives.

The next stop is the cold, gray, austere coast of the east of Ireland in a place called Greystones. Here I will find cliff walks if I am brave enough to walk north. If I walk south, I will walk along the planned harbor and into a town considered one of the healthiest in Ireland. I need the ocean and have often found the cold winter ocean to be starkly confronting, forcing contemplation of what I consider safety. Nearby will be the comfort of a famous vegan restaurant and an unchanged Victorian neighborhood. But I think I will learn the most about myself walking along the craggy shore, with the gray buildings and stone surrounding me, forcing me to face the future.

I will end my trip in Dublin for only two days, going to specific green buildings. An ancient cathedral built on a college campus filled with heavenly aspirations and stained glass. I will stop at a former castle that now has a rooftop garden in one of the biggest libraries in Ireland before heading to the National Art Gallery. The ocean being my first place of comfort and consoling, art galleries are my second. Sitting in a mostly silent space, gazing at other humans’ expressions of their emotions, thoughts, and contemplations is so comforting to my brain. Some people cannot stand museums because it forces us to face how we are expressing ourselves in life, or not.

My hope for my trip is not a collection of photographs, but researching spaces that create sanctuary and safety.

What Makes a Building Green?

2026-06-15T17:50:22.257-07:00

Green Design, Human Sensitivity, and the Next Step Toward Safe Spaces

By Troy Alan Cox

There is a lot of talk now about green building design. What defines a green building?

A green building is generally understood as an energy-efficient and environmentally aware structure, designed with consideration for its footprint, energy use, materials, sustainability, and impact on its surroundings. It is often part of a thorough certification process by which a building is rated for energy efficiency, environmental responsibility, and overall sustainability.

From what I understand, it takes a team of engineers, architects, designers, builders, and other specialists to oversee the design, construction, and completion phase of a building. The process may also consider the potential destruction or removal of the building one day and the impact that would have on its surroundings. It is quite an extensive process, and it is very much a team effort.

A green building is designed to be comfortable, efficient, and more closely aligned with naturalistic living. The team considers energy usage, comfort, usability, sustainability, longevity, and how the building interacts with the environment around it.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s main principle for architecture was not only about how sound or long-lasting a building would be, but how to bring nature into lived spaces. Green buildings take that idea to another level by also including energy efficiency, environmental responsibility, and the structural integrity of the space.

In the Safe Spaces Project, this is vitally important. Reducing waste, conserving energy, and being responsibly minded go hand in hand with the principles of creating a neurologically considerate and bio-friendly space for the humans who will be utilizing the building.

The idea of construction for longevity also meets the Safe Spaces Project beautifully. Once a space has been consciously designed around human sensitivity, there should be less need to worry about fashion trends causing the building to become outdated. A space designed around the nervous system, sensory awareness, and human comfort has the potential to remain useful, supportive, and relevant for a long time.

However, the Safe Spaces Project asks whether that green building goes one step further. Does it also consider the human nervous system?

How are the people who use the space being affected on a daily basis in their central nervous system? Does the interior take into consideration what may be perceived as a threat to human awareness? Does it use sensory-aware surfaces and textures, or does it become cold and sterile while holding on to the outdated belief that hospital-type sterility is neutral and therefore does not affect the nervous system?

A green space may check all the boxes that are vitally important for healthy environmental concerns. It may be energy efficient and environmentally sound, and still be neurologically overstimulating if the interior does not take human sensory intake into consideration.

Bringing sensory-aware development and safety into the human experience can improve the quality of life for those utilizing an advanced green building space. Considering how the environment uses indoor temperature, sound, smell, lighting, texture, and the need for retreat or safe landing spaces can bring the building into a whole new era of design.

Our goal at the Safe Spaces Project is to help create sensory-aware experiences for those who will be occupying and utilizing these wonderful, consciously developed buildings.

As I wrote in the last blog, we are not only asking whether a building is energy aware and environmentally sound. We are also asking whether a person, especially a highly sensitive individual, can easily navigate the space without carrying a feeling of threat or overwhelm into the building from outside.

Can a person entr the space, cross the threshold, determine which way to travel, and remain calm, relaxed, aware, centered, and focused?

If an individual becomes overwhelmed, which can often happen in a new environment, where are the spaces within the architecture for them to retreat, recover, and reorient?

Green building is an important beginning. It asks how a building affects the planet, the land, the materials, the energy grid, and the future.

The Safe Spaces Project asks the next question:

How does this building affect the person standing inside it?

Is it environmentally important to you to know that a building has been designed and engineered to have minimal impact on its surroundings and to be energy efficient, or perhaps even energy independent?

If you have visited a certified green building, how did you feel inside it?

Did anything in the space make you feel safe?

Love and Light,

True Alan Cox

How I Evaluate the Safety of a Space

2026-06-13T20:53:11.858-07:00

SAFE SPACES EVALUATION METHOD

Troy Alan Cox

6/13/2026

I'm am studying what is considered a safe location, architecture, design and requirement to classify a destination as safe for the human nervous system.

On my self guided trip to Ireland I am visiting out of the way, non tourist destinations. Before I visit each location I'm studying I am using a scientific method I've developed to evaluate their safety and my experience.

My evaluation consists of a series of steps beginning before entering the building up until a half hour after I leave the space or location.

Here is the method I've developed for evaluation.

1. The Approach.

As I approach a location I'm scanning for safety clues. I'm noticing the architecture of the entrance. How is traffic directed towards the front of the structure? Is there clear demarcation indicating the threshold from the exterior to the interior of the space? As I approach I observe if it feels welcoming and safe or cold and austere. Is there a gatekeeper or a procedure one has to complete before entering or is there easy access? Standing outside of the entrance what feeling do I experience? Does it feel welcoming or threatening?

Pausing before entering I stop to consider what energy I may be encountering in my own personal experience unique to my perceptions as a highly sensitive person.

2. The Threshold

Once entering the building or space do I immediately feel on alert or is the reception calming and soothing to my nervous system? After crossing the threshold are there clear directions of where to travel to next? I try to notice if I'm being drawn in any direction whether straight ahead by something in the horizon or to either side of the entrance. If it's possible I stop just inside of the door or threshold and observe everything that's immediately arriving at my senses. Are there colors that are welcoming or foreboding? Does my nervous system feel drawn in to safety and do I take a deep breath and relax or am I immediately in a state of confusion or feeling lost are things that I'm looking for.

Does the designed space have anywhere to land such as a reception desk or seating for someone to stop before proceeding further I ask myself.

I stopped to consider what I might have felt in my sensory system once I crossed into the space. I want to know if my nervous system shifts from sympathetic to parasympathetic right away or if I have to stay on alert to navigate the environment. This is dictated by the lighting, the action of others in the space, the ceiling height or the width of the space. I immediately noticed what colors I'm confronted with, smells or sounds.

3. The First Body Signal

As I stand in the entrance or begin to proceed into the environment I become conscious of how I'm being stimulated through sensory inputs. Am I feeling calm welcoming and inviting or the converse? What am I feeling on my skin and how is my body physically reacting to the space in the form of my shoulders rising and resistance are falling are things that I'm noticing.

4. Orientation

Once I began to enter the space deeper I'm noticing if there is directional navigation clearly distinguished. I paused to notice if I'm drawn instinctually in one direction or another. Is there a sound calling to me drawing me towards a direction or perhaps a crowd of other people or a visual display and or professional lighting or natural lighting guiding me is something I'm contemplating as I stand within the threshold.

If the body feels naturally lead then one feels safe if the body feels lost or confused then one is in defense mode.

5. Sensory Load

Personally the first sense that I respond to is sound. I notice if it is loud and chaotic like a gymnasium full of children at a day camp or calm and serene like a walk in nature. I pick up on sounds off in the distant in the horizon or in the four corners and I determine what the activity of the space is.

The second sense is usually smell for me. What is the smell of the place that I am entering I ask myself as smell is a memory trigger. I wonder to myself if the space smells like somewhere else I've been or somewhere familiar or if it has a distinct smell of its own.

And lastly I rely on my sight. Lighting can be a huge factor in the perception of the safety of a place but so can architecture. Sight is obvious as a sensory input so it's usually the only sense that has been intentionally put in place since humans rely on visual cuing so heavily. I don't want to depend on what I see as it may have been placed there on purpose by whoever created the space whether it be an intentionally designed space or nature.

6. Friction Points

I noticed if the space harder is on the nervous system. I'm observing the surface of the material used to see if it is a harsh reflective metallic marble or tile surface or if in nature rock what type of rock and how does it affect the space. I'm observing if there's chaos in the space if there are other people do they know where to gather or is it just people wondering aimlessly through the space.

If it's a space like a museum or a educational space what might be causing other people to be confused about their part of the space standing in awkward places or blocking entrances. If it's purposefully designed I'm looking for natural elements such as rough hewn stone or light natural colored wood not heavily stained. I'm looking for water elements or air circulation. Is there anything that represents life such as plants or a floor surface that feels earthen?

Before moving further into the space I try to notice where the friction points are and how they might have been redesigned or removed so the space flows naturally.

7. Recovery Zones

I'm looking for spaces that I can retreat to to feel safe if the environment has created anything overwhelming. I'm looking for a quiet room to enter into off of the main space such as a landing place to retreat from the main activity of the building. In most buildings I immediately know where the restrooms are because most spaces have not been neurologically aware in their design. Some examples of landing spaces are areas off to the side to sit and comfortable environment with live plants or a water feature. Or perhaps a small cafe type area that separate from the rest of the activity. I'm looking for maybe a quiet room in some consciously built places that one could retreat to if they become overwhelmed neurologically by too much stimulation of any of the senses. It's very rare to find what I call a safe space in any public spaces yet. But it is through this type of research and awareness I hope to bring ancient sacred spaces into the modern development of shared spaces.

8. What the Space Was Trying to Do

I do try to keep into consideration what the use of the space was originally intended for as part of my evaluation. If this space was a sacred monastic space does it still meet that function? If it is a museum does it invoke a feeling of quiet observation of the historic or artistic pieces? As a space for children it should have elements of stimulation and entertainment mixed with decompression and relaxation so that children are not constantly on high alert.

If the space was designed to be a hospice or caretaking facility does it look cold and sterile and like a hospital for the sick and dying or does it have elements of nature and the comfort of home?

I want to know if the space is achieving its original design or if it has change and taken on a life of its own.

9. What I Would Adjust

If I was able to help this space in any way applying my highly sensitive person awareness what would the three main areas that I could apply some of my experience to improving the environment?

This is when it is important for me to remember that not all highly sensitive people or people in general for that matter have the same experience. I can make recommendations based on my observations that may or may not benefit others. I ask myself how could I make minor adjustments to the area to help others nervous systems feel safer?

10. The Exit Test

After I leave the space I go to somewhere neutral and sit for 30 minutes observing my body's reactions to the space.

The questions I ask myself are:

What just happened?

What am I feeling?

What do I need?

What is a major personal experience I had?

A safe spaces project evaluation is not about whether I like or dislike a space and it is not a online review. I attempt to utilize archaeological, conscious bio-aware design elements, nature and the effect on the central nervous system as my guide. More and more I am finding in professional discussions and awareness of spectrum nervous system intentional, environmental and green space design. This is highly encouraging to me that more people are responding to the idea of creating spaces that are safe for overstimulated humans like myself. I believe looking to the future bio aware space utilization will become more common place.

My intent is to help create safe spaces and to experience sacred and safe spaces myself through my research.

The Tools of Safety

2026-06-12T19:05:52.000-07:00

The Tools of Safety

Pratyahara, Drishti, Samskaras, and the Nervous System

By Troy Alan Cox

Thank you for walking this path with me, the path of describing my experience as a Highly Sensitive Person. In the previous writings in this series 'The Senses of a Highly Sensitive Person' I described how I hear, feel, see and smell the world and what the sense of safety means to me. Today I am describing some of the practices and tools that I have learned to use.

These tools are not just yoga based although they have yoga based names. I have found them to be real world applicable tools. I use them everyday to help me deal with the world that always seems to be screaming at me and making me feel unsafe. I hope that they can help others too.

The first tool is Pratyahara, often described in yoga as the withdrawal of the senses. I do not experience this as shutting the world out. I experience it as giving the senses permission to stop reaching, scanning, defending, and reacting. For a highly sensitive person, Pratyahara can be the difference between constantly absorbing every sound, smell, light, facial expression, and movement around us, and finally having enough inner quiet to feel ourselves again.

This matters deeply to the Safe Spaces Project because most modern spaces do not encourage Pratyahara. They encourage constant sensory engagement. Bright lights, loud music, screens, notifications, clutter, competing conversations, artificial scents, hard surfaces, and visual noise keep the senses reaching outward. A safe space, for me, is a space that lets the senses soften.

The second tool is Drishti, or focused gaze. In yoga, Drishti is often taught as where the eyes rest during a posture. But for me, Drishti is much bigger than that. It is about where attention goes. It is about what the eyes are asked to do in a room. Are they constantly scanning for danger, distraction, conflict, clutter, or escape routes? Or is there somewhere soft, steady, and neutral for the eyes to land?

The Ocular nerve uses the most brain power. When my eyes are not focused I am scanning others faces for micro expressions, watching the perimeters to make sure we are safe and catching every little movement in the room.When I consciously focus on one thing and one thing only everything becomes calm. It takes practice and willpower but when I am able to focus all the distractions fade into the background and I feel calm.

The third tool is Samskara. Samskaras are the impressions, patterns, grooves, and imprints left inside us by past experience. They are not only memories in the mind. They can become responses in the body. A smell, sound, room layout, tone of voice, lighting pattern, or facial expression can pull an old impression forward before we even understand why we are reacting.

This is important because not everyone enters a space with the same history. Lavender may calm one nervous system and trigger another. Silence may feel peaceful to one person and frightening to another. A closed door may feel like privacy to one person and entrapment to another. Samskaras remind us that safety is personal. The same room is not the same room for every nervous system.

The fourth tool comes from yoga therapy and nervous-system education: the relationship between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system is often associated with activation, alertness, defense, and survival. The parasympathetic nervous system is associated with restoration, digestion, repair, sleep, and the body’s ability to settle.

As a HSP it does not work for me to tell myself to relax. I need tools, practical tools I can use in the real world. I have practiced, lived and taught these tools so that I can live an easeful life. I use these tools everyday without thinking of them any more.

All highly sensitive persons and those on the spectrum will have their own tools that work for their safety. It will take time to find the right tools for each person but when they do it will bring them comfort in an uncomfortable over stimulated world where everywhere we go we are being kept in a state of threat. Once the right tools are implemented the nervous system can learn to power down and the mind and body can once again feel safe. It has to happen beyond a nicely decorated room and being told to just relax, hoping that it will all stop. It has to come in the form of safety.

This is where the Safe Spaces Project begins to take shape. A safe space is not just a beautiful space. It is not just a quiet space. It is not just a spiritual-looking space. A safe space is an environment where the senses, attention, memory, and nervous system are considered.

Pratyahara allows one to soften the overstimulated senses and withdraw the constant input through sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.

Drishti allows one to focus on a single object and not get pulled apart by all the actions going on around us at all times.

Samskara gives us the chance to examine if what is coming up by the triggers is current or past trauma and keeping us in a state of fear.

The nervous system asks: Does this environment keep me in defense, or does it help me move toward restoration? These tools help me understand why safety is not weakness. Safety is architecture. Safety is sensory. Safety is relational. Safety is biological. Safety is personal.

And when safety is present, transformation has somewhere to begin.

Feeling Safe as a Highly Sensitive Individual

2026-06-11T16:53:08.796-07:00

How Do I Sense Safety

Feeling Safe as a Highly Sensitive Individual

By Troy Alan Cox 06/011/2026

Photo credit: Simoneau Photography Sanford Florida

How Do I Sense Safety?

Feeling Safe as a Highly Sensitive Individual

By Troy Alan Cox
06/11/2026

Photo credit: Simoneau Photography, Sanford, Florida

Safety vs. Stimulation

Many highly sensitive people, like myself, spend years thinking something is wrong with us. I have heard that if I just learned how to relax, I would be okay. Or if I got drunk, I would relax. Or if I would just “get over it,” which was the most damaging piece of advice a supposed spiritual teacher ever gave me about the depth of suffering after losing our family’s “Golden Child,” my little brother, at the age of twenty.

We are told to try changing our food, read self-help books, exercise, find a hobby, or that we just have not found our people yet. The therapist I was seeing after Todd passed away in a horrible motorcycle wreck on a desolate stretch of highway in Northern California, with no justice for the person who caused the accident, told me that I either needed to take anti-anxiety prescriptions or learn something like meditation. Thank God I chose meditation. Diane Ross changed my life, and I still meditate and take classes with her.

As a man, I was told to toughen up, be a man, grow a pair, that it was just teasing like all guys do, and that if I just joined the military, I would not be such a wussy, though it was not said so politely. I listened. I lifted weights six days a week at the gym. Heavy. I listened to Tony Robbins. I read all the self-help books they had at Spiral Circle in Orlando, back when the original owner, Beverly, would personally walk you to the shelf and let spirit guide her to the right book for what you were looking for. I wore all black and put on my best Terminator persona to keep everything and everyone from hurting me. I had a one-chance-and-you-are-out policy. Why give someone a second chance to hurt you if they did it once? I used the self-help books as a weapon against others to point out what they were lacking in themselves and to make myself feel better.

My job as a host and M.C. on radio and at the Virgin Megastore was perfect for this new tough-guy persona I had worked on because it kept the crowds at arm’s length, and the superficial celebrity personalities did not bother me. When I moved to Los Angeles, I had a great suit of armor I had cultivated, and none of the horrible, unspoken sides of the entertainment industry bothered me. I was proud of my tough-guy persona, and it was really useful in HollyWeird. The thing that broke me was finding my partner sending explicit messages to other guys on my own computer.

My whole person crumbled in an instant because it was not real. It was a fake personality I had created. Inside, it turned out, was still my overly sensitive heart, and it was shattered by the mistrust. I was so mixed up that I even agreed to pay another month of rent for my ex with money I had collected from selling my artwork. That is the thing about being highly sensitive. We can fake it until we make it, but we can never change who we are on the inside or how we feel.

I have learned that safety, for me, means I am not overly stimulated.

Safety Is Not Weakness

Usually safety is interpreted as comfort, relaxation, a certain location, or the feeling that if I just find the right person, I will feel safe. In Yoga Nidra training, which I certified in four times because it was so powerful for me, we learned that the nervous system stays in attack mode when it is constantly stimulated. When the sympathetic nervous system is constantly perceiving stress or perceived threats, it never powers off. Not with a nicely decorated room. Not with drugs or alcohol. Not with finding just the right person.

What I have found, and what I include in my yoga teacher training programs, is that safety comes first, and transformation follows. The human nervous system has to feel safe enough to biologically relax from our constantly assaulted modern-day lives before any type of self-exploration can happen. How does the mind and nervous system switch off from being under attack from the minute we wake up until we race home at the end of work? Everywhere we go, we are constantly assaulted with sound, sight, transportation challenges, politics, war, artificial lighting, crowds, marketing, and demands.

One example of constant stimulation leading into crisis happened for me in a place that is very common for others, who do not seem bothered by it at all. I was trying to start shopping at a big box chain store outlet. I remember going by myself one time, and the crowds, fluorescent lighting overhead, constant announcements, endless lines of people waiting to get a sample taste of whatever was being hawked in the aisles, and the overwhelming feeling of being lost in a maze resulted in me cowering in the corner of the closed-in vegetable cooler section.

I had to call a friend to talk me out of the store. I never went to another one until my dad moved in with me, twenty or thirty years after that first experience. We went once and never went back, even though we had paid for the premium membership. To other people, this is just going to get some groceries. To me, it was sensory warfare.

The Architecture of Safety

Our nervous systems need specific de-stimulating architecture in order to feel safe enough to step back from defending us and switch into letting us actually relax. When relaxation happens, the parasympathetic nervous system, or the relaxation side, signals to the brain that we are okay. There is currently no perceived threat to worry about.

This cannot happen while driving a car. Driving is a constant threat-management task. A vehicle used inappropriately is considered a weapon for a reason. We cannot fully relax while we are at work because we are in survival mode, highly stimulated, just like foraging for food. Our eyes are widened, our minds are focused, and we are doing our work in order to make money to give us shelter.

We cannot feel safe while running errands from store to store, all illuminated with fluorescent lighting, overhead music, other people in the way of what we want, and marketing telling us things that we do not know whether we should believe or not.

Unfortunately, most of us cannot even feel safe at home. The constant stimulation never ceases. Spouses and children are there to point out all their problems and what they perceive as problems with us. Most modern homes have TV or music on 24/7. Countless people have told me they cannot sleep unless the TV is on. This is a practice almost guaranteed to keep the nervous system stimulated rather than deeply settled. In today’s world, with mass shootings and politicians who cannot be trusted, even our own neighborhoods, cities, and states do not always feel safe.

What do you consider safety?

As a highly sensitive person, I have found I can facilitate a sense of safety in others through language, cues, prompts, lighting or no lighting, nondescript and non-vocal gentle instrumental background music, or no music at all. Silence can also be perceived as a threat to some, so even silence must be considered carefully.

Non-judgment matters. Being in an environment where everybody is treated as equal matters. Keeping the focus on the individual and their needs, rather than competition, matters. Sometimes, safety is not even found in a group setting.

When I instruct those who want to become teachers, I encourage them to change the lighting throughout the class. Perhaps they start with no lighting or soft, indirect lighting that mimics natural shadows, then slowly increase the lighting during the class before slowly dimming the lighting near the end. Music that is nondescript and non-associative can help avoid bringing up lyrics or memories from particular times in one’s life, allowing the mind to feel safe enough to focus on the task at hand.

In the last post, I discussed scent stimulation at length. Some scents are marketed for safety and relaxation, such as lavender. However, that same scent could be a trigger for another person’s nervous system. Closing the eyes turns off the optic system, which is one of the biggest drains on the nervous system. Conversely, some people have been taught not to close their eyes while they are awake. I have even had someone tell me their preacher said that when you close your eyes while you are awake, the devil can slip in. No judgment. Just a different nervous system.

There is current and modern research on neurodivergent environments and architecture. How does a person feel safe enough to relax, and can that be facilitated through environment?

During the caretaking years with my father, the house slowly transformed from an everyday house into a womb of safety for my father’s nervous system. The dementia brain slowly loses the neural connections linking thought to reason. It is constantly assaulted with the side effects of the disease, such as hallucinations. Some of what my father described seeing was frightening even to me.

I began to research what the dementia brain needs in order to relax and feel safe. Most of the information kept pointing me back to the senses. What are they seeing around them? Is it familiar, even if the mind cannot remember why? Are they covered in synthetic materials, or are soft, plush, cotton-based, organic materials available to calm the nervous system through touch and feeling?

What sounds are they being subjected to? The news is one of the worst things for the dementia brain, even though my dad felt comforted by it because it had been his habit before dementia to watch the news every night. Instead, I had soft ocean waves playing on the white noise machine, and I hung gentle tinkle-bell wind chimes near the air conditioning vent to create a constant soothing sound.

What tastes bring comfort to the brain? Healthy fats, familiar fruits, and things the brain associates with health and nourishment, not junk food or the poison we are told is modern food. There is no cure-all, and there will never be a perfectly safe space for everybody’s nervous system. It takes trial, error, and experimentation to find exactly what helps you feel safe.

When you look around your current environment, what could you change that would give you enough of a sense of safety that your nervous system might step back from sympathetic defense into parasympathetic relaxation?

“By helping your students feel safe in your class, they can relax and have a deeper experience.”

— Troy Alan Cox, Beginner Yoga Teacher Manual

Smelling as a Highly Sensitive Individual

2026-06-10T17:49:37.000-07:00

What Scent is That?

Smelling as a Highly Sensitive Individual

By Troy Alan Cox

06/10/2026

Photo credit: Dad's Flowers

No Smell and No Taste

Smell and Taste as a Highly Sensitive Individual

By Troy Alan Cox

It was a six-month-long Veterans Administration evaluation process to certify my father for assistance. With all the medical needs that began to mount after his diagnosis of lung cancer, which was connected to his exposure to Agent Orange, he was tested for both smell and taste.

We already knew he had no sense of smell, which was great since he and I shared our never-ending problems with gas, or “gas leaks,” as he called it. Not so great when you are a master gardener and grow extensive flower beds everywhere you live. His specialty was roses. Everywhere we lived, he grew rose bushes.

One of his favorite stories was from when we were a young family in Southern California on Miramar Naval Base. He was tired of the neighbors cutting behind our double-wide trailer and wearing down a path in the grass, so he planted a whole row of big rose bushes.

“Let me see them walk through our yard now,” he laughed at his cleverness.

Roses, geraniums, iris, mums, and so many other flowers I could never name were growing in all five states and Japan. He had such a great green thumb and was always willing to share his secrets for having a thriving garden. The vegetables he grew everywhere kept us fed, and I am so glad I was raised on fresh vegetables and fruit.

We went to the doctor for the V.A. knowing he would probably not be able to pass the olfactory test, and we were right. We had believed for years that he had lost his sense of smell after serving on the aircraft carrier, from all the jet fuel he was exposed to. As she handed him vial after vial filled with all types of scents, I started getting a little nauseous.

Another thing we had in common was vertigo. I get triggered when I move suddenly or fall suddenly backward. I also get vertigo when there are too many overpowering smells, or if I drink alcohol. I have always been grateful about the alcohol part because it is such a waste of money, time, and energy, and it kills so many brain cells.

However, I love essential oils and have used them many times in classes for their neurological and mental benefits. But if there are too many strong scents at the same time, it is as if my mind cannot lock onto one scent, and they overwhelm my sense of balance.

The big surprise came when they started administering the taste detection test. I never knew that he could not taste different flavors. From my Ayurveda training, I knew about the effect of getting all six tastes into a diet and how that could influence my clients’ moods, habits, cravings, and weight management.

It was with a heavy heart that we left that test. After all the little slips of paper were used up, the only tastes that registered to my dad were extreme salt and sweet. That meant all the times he told me how delicious my cooking was after we moved in together, he was being nice to me to make me feel good.

I cried a little because smell affects taste, and taste affects how we experience food, pleasure, memory, and comfort. This also meant that my father could not smell, could barely taste, was losing his hearing significantly, and his vision was long gone because of his rare eye condition.

I could not imagine the psychological effect losing your senses must have on someone. My father, being the kind and considerate person he was, had never complained or even hinted that he had so little sensory input. I remembered all the times we tried to see if he could smell something strong by holding it up to his nose and asking if he could smell it, then waiting for a glimmer of recognition.

Can you imagine losing just one of your sensory inputs?

In yoga, reducing sensory stimulation is taught as a great tool to overcome distractions and reactions. This is called Pratyahara, which I will talk about in my final blog in the series, The Senses of a Highly Sensitive Person.

What Is That Scent?

I have long used essential oils for myself to help with my panic attacks and anxiety. Lavender has literally been all over every part of me. Lavender Epsom salt baths were my remedy after my neck injury. I love peppermint if I need a pick-me-up and do not want any caffeine. Rosemary is heavenly to my senses and an essential part of my cooking.

I am not that big of a blend fan unless it is made for me specifically. My go-to for meditation and grounding is frankincense and myrrh. I love them both and wear them almost daily. Give me a good vetiver when I am feeling a little flirty and fun.

I used oils all the time while teaching my classes until one day I heard, “What is that scent?” from a student.

It was a Young Living Thieves blend, which has a distinct, rich, and warm aroma. It combines the sweet, earthy spice of cinnamon with the sharp, medicinal notes of clove and eucalyptus, balanced by the bright, zesty scent of lemon and herbal rosemary.

My client Carol used it all the time and even cleaned her house with it. The cinnamon, clove, eucalyptus, and rosemary were an instant hit with me, and I did not usually use blended scents. I started using it all the time to clean Sun Salute Yoga Center, my yoga studio.

Until that one student.

After I introduced her to the blend, she became nauseous. I think it was the clove and cinnamon, which can be overwhelming to some, especially since I was using it on almost every surface at the studio through the cleaning products.

It was the first indication to me that we all perceive scent differently.

My Dad’s Mother

Rose oil and rose water were my grandmother Cova’s favorites. I still get a memory hit when I smell pure rose oil. I am twelve or so, standing in her house again in Kansas. It was my first safe space. She was so energetic, like a 4’11” hummingbird. Pine wood paneling lined her dining room and living room. It gave the house a warmth. She was the original storyteller. Every time I smell rose oil, I am back in that house.

The most difficult part of scent for me as an HSP is that I taste the scent. That is okay for some things, but not others. For example, rosemary infiltrates my taste buds, and I begin to salivate for pizza and pasta. Lavender, after I warm it on my wrists and take a few deep inhales with my hands forming a cupping shape, washes over me and into me. I feel a purple haze of deep relaxation come over me that can last for hours in my skin, sinuses, taste buds, and vascular system.

Porta-potties are not much fun when I exit and the smell is on my tongue. Halitosis is another challenge, and I have to focus hard on not being rude and stepping a few feet back. I can taste that too.

Urine has been the biggest challenge. For a while, everything in the house seemed to be soaked in urine, and I could not get it out of my nostrils or mouth. One whiff, and I wanted to run to my closed-door bedroom and strip off all my clothes. I used so many oils to get me through the dementia years.

One whiff of vomit, and I am vomiting too.

What scent do you enjoy?

Which one do you avoid?

How Do I Feel? Feeling as a Highly Sensitive Individual

2026-06-09T16:18:02.000-07:00

How Do I Feel?

Feeling as a Highly Sensitive Individual

By Troy Alan Cox

06/09/2026

Photo credit: Lost in Yonkers, Independence, Mo.

Troy Alan Cox as Uncle Louie

The Prince, The Pea and The Damn Fan

I have always been a light sleeper. I toss and turn and wake up at all odd hours. If there is a ceiling fan on, or a fan in the room moving the air around, I will likely not sleep. For some reason, I have always jolted awake at 2:00 a.m. Even with training and practice, I still jolt awake at almost precisely 5:00 a.m. every morning. Lately, since my father passed, it has been at 4:44 a.m., almost on the exact moment.

I try everything. Blackout curtains, check. No white noise, check. No water an hour and a half before bedtime, check. No animals in the bedroom with me, check. Cotton clothing only, tank top and shorts, no underwear, check. No electronics in the room unless I want to do insomnia shopping, which I have done. A cotton woven blanket over the bottom sheet and a matching cotton blanket on top of me, with up to six blankets over me, all cotton. No joke. I tried weighted blankets. I want them to work, but I end up fighting them all night. And I can never, ever sleep with someone else in the bed.

One of my earlier personal training clients was a successful businessman, and he had only been married twice. Very unusual for Southern California. He was married the first time for thirty-some years before he lost his first wife, and twenty-plus years to his second wife. I asked him what his secret was to a long marriage. In all seriousness, he said, “Separate bedrooms. That way you can visit one another when you want, or not.”

That sounded so perfect to me. Or maybe separate houses. Still a loving couple, but without having to worry about someone keeping me up all night with the breathing, sweating, moving, and all the other things I feel. It is very challenging to lie in bed, on my back, motionless, and feel that the fabric below me is slightly rougher than the sheet over me. Or to feel that there is a fold in the blanket somewhere instead of everything being flat. I can feel the air temperature in the room. Please let it be seventy-six degrees and not moist. The Southern California climate suits me the best. No air conditioning, near the Pacific Ocean, and dry air.

I feel too much.

The Hugini

When I opened my yoga studio in 2011, I was a non-hugging yoga teacher. Firstly, we did not have a touchy-feely household. I do not know why, but my parents were not physical. I cannot remember a hug, ever. I remember holding hands. I remember having fun with my parents, but I do not recall being picked up and held. I do not recall hugging every day, if ever.

It was not a mean thing. Just not something we did. I can see now how that might have influenced my own non-hugging personality. As an adult, I had gone through Boy Scout leadership training as a teenager, and while working at Scout Camp, a big deal was made about appropriateness in touching. It was strictly enforced, too. As a cast member at Disney Traditions, which I took three times as I moved from position to position, we were taught appropriate distancing and non-invasive direction giving.

Looking back at my early yoga teaching days, I must have seemed oddly uncomfortable with everyone hugging and not me. I am still a fist-bump or elbow-tap person. Growing up in Japan, where personal distance is often maintained even in public and a bow is as close as one gets to a handshake, it just seemed natural to me to give everyone their own space.

And then a wonderful nurse and teacher named Dolly came into the studio. She hugged everyone, even me. I would try to wiggle out of it or do the classic side hug, but she was not having it. After a while, I was hugging everyone. It is still something that I am not always comfortable with or that comes naturally to me. However, I noticed that my mood changed after getting a Dolly hug.

So, being me, I began to research the benefits of human touch. There are some great science-backed studies, including work done in the British school system, about the benefits of positive touch on our biochemistry and mental health.

The reason I never hugged was that I am a feeler. When I am teaching a class, I can feel the mood of everyone in the class, even the ones who seem energetically shut down. I feel all four corners of the room. I can sense what someone may need energetically, or at least what my body reads as a need in that moment. It comes to me like an ocean wave. I perceive a feeling at the back of the class, in all four corners of the room, and everywhere in between. I can feel if the mood in the room shifts collectively and if it feels heavy or light.

This personal navigation system is why I believe people often feel safe in my class. I can sense if someone might need me to be softer, take a break, push harder, or pick up the pace. When someone physically touches me, I can often feel where they are holding tension in their body, or where the body seems to be moving energy or holding it. My stretching clients say that I have magic fingers because I find just the right spot.

It is not magic. Here is my process when working on someone’s body. I warm my hands to clear off any residual energy from what I was doing before. I place my hands on the other person’s body, with their permission, and set them there for a few breaths. I wait until their body seems to speak to me. My hands begin to glide like a magnet toward energy that does not seem to be moving. You might frame it as a neuroelectrical interruption. My hands go automatically to where something feels stuck.

I try to get myself out of the way and allow their body to guide my hands toward where their body seems to be seeking relief. If I think too much, it interrupts the process and I do not get guided. I can often feel where their energy seems blocked and what service I might provide to help their body flow more freely again, free of constraints and blockages. Usually, my hands are gliding slightly above their skin and clothing, not exploring with my fingers. I get lost in a trance-like state as their body guides me. The closest comparison I can make is Reiki, of which I have done level one training twice. However, where I differentiate is that I am the witness and not the doer.

Now imagine, if you will, having all that information arriving at once in the form of a hug, without my being in a meditative state first. Someone wrapping their body closely around mine, pulling me tight, with no escape, head near mine, and my body receiving whatever they seem to be carrying at the moment. Or what they may have been storing for years. Emotional trauma stuck in the body, or, as I will discuss in the sixth writing in this series, The Senses of a Highly Sensitive Person, the yogic principle of Samskara. Unresolved energetic holding in the body from this life, or perhaps past lives, which is the basis of all yoga therapy.

It can be overwhelming. Especially if the person hugging me pokes or pushes against my thoracic spine directly behind my heart. That feels to me like being stabbed in the heart from behind, and that feeling on my skin can last for hours. I cannot deal with being touched mid-spine.

Keeping Distance

How do you deal with personal space? Were you raised in a culture or family that touched a lot, or not at all?

Oftentimes, in yoga teacher training sessions, the spontaneous and unplanned conversations with the group can be the most enlightening. I remember one in particular that we had with several different cultural backgrounds in the group. It was explained that in one group member’s Asian household, there was never any touching, and it was just not something anyone did on purpose or out of spite. It was just the way it was. Even with multiple generations living in the same household.

Another member was from Brazil and found this amazing. My understanding is that, generally speaking, Romance-language cultures can be much more comfortable with touching and less personal space. For me, I now like a mix. If I do not know you that well, personally, I keep my distance. I can greet someone from three feet away and feel comfortable. Anything closer and I get uncomfortable. Even if I have known you for several months, I may still not want to be touched. Legally, it is risky in these times. Energetically, it can take me hours to decompress from unprovoked touching or hugging, especially if the other person’s energy, mood, or motives feel strong.

I have developed several protective rituals to prepare myself before entering group situations, particularly if there are unknown people in the room. I have interviewed countless body workers, yoga teachers, and massage therapists on how they clear energy off of themselves. I use them all, especially if I have been around many people in one day.

What do you do to not carry the weight of others with you every day?

Troy Alan Cox

How Do I See?Seeing as a Highly Sensitive Individual

2026-06-08T12:34:10.000-07:00

How Do I See?

Seeing as a Highly Sensitive Individual

By Troy Alan Cox

06/08/2026

Painting artist credit: Troy Alan Cox

Stop Scanning

My role as an older brother in a foreign country was to keep my little brother safe, watch out for him, and know where he was at all times. This was no easy task. From as early as I can remember, Todd was always getting in trouble. The first time I rescued him was when he set the bathroom door on fire from the inside while playing with matches. I got an award of merit for being able to stay calm enough, at nine years old, to run outside, flag down a passing truck, and cross the street to a neighbor’s house to ask them to call the fire station, which we happened to live next to.

Then there was the time he broke his arm by jumping out of the closet trying to fly like Superman, the time he got a major laceration from the swing set my dad built for us in the backyard, and the time he fell through the church roof and almost broke his back on the pulpit. I think I was partially responsible for that one by encouraging him to crawl up into the drop ceiling. We were always looking for adventures, and for some reason, off-limit spaces were our favorite.

The best adventure was riding our bicycles off base into Japanese housing that seemed like the future, or another planet, to two young American boys in the late 1970s. Being in a foreign country and carrying my duties as an older brother built within my young brain a system of always being aware. Later in life, I would learn the clinical term for this is hypervigilance: a nervous system that stays on constant alert, watching for perceived threats. It is exhausting, and it keeps a person’s brain from relaxing.

That is a Rude Habit

I can tell in an instant if something in my environment is out of place. If the natural order of a room, building, park, or beach is being interrupted by friction, I notice friction. It sounds fantastical, but here is an example of me walking through my backyard earlier this year without being conscious of it. That plant needs water. That was not like that last time. Why is that over there now? Look how much that plant grew since last week. Those stones need to be organized better. Actually, that ornament would be better served in that empty space across the yard. Look how that is growing there. Wouldn’t it be better in a more shady place? Non-stop. It never ends.

I can tell you at Epcot which way to navigate the crowd because I can see from across the walkway which traffic pattern each person is on, unless someone makes an unexpected move, which people tend to do. My friends and family know that I call myself Mr. Directions because I can always find my way back to the exact spot a second time without directions. Always, unintentionally. I can remember exactly where I parked, unless of course that parking lot is a Disney park. Then I can get us into the general vicinity, but more than likely I will walk right back to the car without even trying or taking photos of the parking signs.

“This is a really rude habit,” I was told once while in a conversation in a public place. I actually like people who are direct and say things the way they are without being rude themselves. The superpower I do not possess is deciphering subtlety or double talk. Parables leave me scratching my head. I remember she was talking to me at lunch, so we were at our own table and I could actually hear her. When she called me out on my rude behavior, I had to do a double take.

“What is a rude habit?” I asked.

“Looking over my shoulder when I am trying to tell you something. I was watching you. You did not look at me once. You looked all around the room at everyone else, but never even heard what I said, did you?”

I replied that I had, in fact, heard her. Not every word, but I could quote back most of what she had said. However, she was right. I did not know that my eyes were revealing my hypervigilance, which at the time I didn't even know I possessed. In my sixth writing in the series 'The Senses of a Highly Sensitive Person I will discuss the ancient yogic principle of single pointed focus or drishti.

Learning a new habit is difficult. I tried to become extra aware as I talked with anyone from that point forward, but it was blatantly obvious. I do not look in people’s eyes. I am constantly scanning the room. I can tell you everything going on in the room, not only what I hear and see, but what I feel. Tomorrow’s writing will be about feeling as an extra sensitive, as I refer to myself. That is what I was always called. Extra sensitive. I would toughen up one day. I just needed to grow a thick skin, I was told. Well, at almost sixty, it has not happened.

I work really hard on focusing on the person in front of me. My dad’s special power was looking a person directly in the eye and making them feel like they were the only person on the planet for that moment. I witnessed the effect on others when he did that. It did not matter if it was a busy server, a friend, or someone he had just met. He would find the moment, and those baby blues of his would lock onto their eyes. I could see the transformation in their energy happen almost instantly. They became more relaxed, and just for a moment, had a human connection.

What I See in You

My morning writing has become my late afternoon writing because I am afraid to write this and put it out into the universe for others to react to and judge. But I know from The Highly Sensitive Person’s Survival Guide by Ted Zeff, Ph.D., and the documentary Sensitive: The Untold Story by Diana Sinelnikova Harper and the Emmy Award-winning production company The Global Touch Group, Inc., that I am not alone and that each HSP expresses themselves uniquely, and it is okay.

So here goes, tears and all.

When I look directly into another person’s eyes, which I avoid doing, I do not see only their iris. I see something much more. I see past hurts, lies, loves, ulterior motives, deep shame, betrayal, loneliness, longing, and what they may not even be aware of within themselves. It is difficult to look into someone’s eyes and feel that they were hurt so badly by someone at some point that they are crying inside while smiling on the outside.

It hurts me to see when someone is saying something complimentary to me, but I sense they are plotting my demise or wanting to get something from me. I do not act on any of the information I download. I have learned to be a watcher. I am always watching. I am always seeing. I know when someone may be my friend for a while and one day betray me. I could tell within the first moment I looked behind their eyes. I can see when someone is lying right to my face. And I watch. I watch how they show up or do not. I try not to predict when or if, but allow the person to reveal themselves when they will.

I can also see if someone is a kind soul, a loving person, or has a gentleness about them. I can tell if their heart runs deep and if they are genuinely enjoying a few moments of just being with another person. It is difficult with humans because we all have wants, needs, and desires. That creates motives. Motives can be earned honestly or gained quickly through dishonesty. My mother was faster. She could tell you everything you needed to know about someone in a flat minute. And she was almost always right. That is something I should have listened to much more.

The hardest thing I see is not the age of the person in front of me, but how they will look when they are elderly, or if they will make it to elderly. I see the bone structure, muscle tension, the lines that will appear, and the person’s future face as they age. I am certain art and learning to draw the human portrait heightened that effect. But what I notice most are the person’s microexpressions. A twitch in an eyebrow, a crinkle of the nose, a twitch at the smile line, a quivering lip, or that flicker. The flicker in a person’s eye, like a light that ripples across the colors of the iris. It signals, Be cautious, Troy, or sometimes, Be trusting.

It is so intense and instantaneous that I have worked for years on keeping a poker face when trying to look someone in the eyes. It is never wrong. I can almost certainly finish someone’s sentence at least seventy percent of the time before it leaves their mouth.

I do not know if my being filled with Spidey Senses influenced my biology, but since as young as I can remember, I have had extremely light-sensitive eyes, and you will rarely find me without sunglasses on, even inside. I was also born with eyes that involuntarily twitched or shook. I remember going to the ophthalmologist as a little boy in San Diego and learning muscle-strengthening exercises for my ocular muscles. It became a cool party trick later.

So I apologize if you are speaking with me and I am looking over your shoulder for danger or things out of the ordinary, squinting at you, avoiding your eyes, or reading your thoughts before they even form.

I am trying to do better.

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”

— Henri Bergson

Troy Alan Cox

How Do I Hear?Hearing as a Highly Sensitive Individual

2026-06-07T07:37:51.000-07:00

How Do I Hear?

Hearing as a Highly Sensitive Individual

By Troy Alan Cox
06/07/2026

Photo credit: Troy Alan Cox

The First Five Notes

I have been binge-watching the Outlander series since my father’s funeral. I did not have television for 13 years when I lived in California. I felt there were better things to do with my time. I started reading the books in the Outlander series over a decade ago. My mother read the entire series, which is a lot of reading. I made it to the later books but eventually gave up. I love Diana’s characters and the time travel, but the wars, violence, and trauma, which she describes in cinematic detail, became too much for me over time. However, when they first began filming the series, I was hooked. I finally made it up to the latest and final season, season eight.

My father loved the show too and could whistle the whole theme song from start to finish. I loved listening to him whistle it as we started each new episode. I am so sad he did not get to see the final season, released in March of 2026, the very month he lost the ability to walk. It was just too much with all the Civil War battles. I finally made it to season eight last night. Each season has a different singer for the theme song. Within five words, I knew the voice. Within two lines, I was certain it was Annie Lennox, my favorite voice.

I have been touched by her voice and presence since 1982. Arriving in rural Kansas as a little junior high version of myself, coming from the magical, mythical world of Japan, or Nippon as we learned to call it by its original name, was a culture shock I will never fully process. Alone and frightened as I entered high school, relentlessly tormented by my peers and unable to find my own voice to stand up for myself, Annie Lennox was a revelation. As the Eurythmics burst out onto the burgeoning video and MTV landscape, I was in awe. Hearing her voice pierce through the noise, so strong and confident, showed me that I might one day be able to stand up for myself. To be vocal, outspoken, defending myself one day, to explore my confusing gender identity issues, and to be strong.

Hearing her voice on the soundtrack to the show that seems to mirror what I am currently experiencing in life, then Googling who the new singer was on season eight of Outlander to confirm what my ears heard, opened up a bigger reflection for me that I wanted to share today. As I listen to Mozart in my noise-canceling headphones, which I cannot travel without, the words flow through me this morning. What is it like to hear the world through highly sensitive ears?

The Schizophrenic Orchestra

Imagine, if you are able to, an orchestra playing. Picture in your mind all the instruments working together under the conductor’s guidance, creating a beautiful symphonic musical experience. Feel how the instruments blend, merge, float, and mix into one wonderful sound. What if the conductor began instructing each group of instruments to play a different song than the other sections? Let’s say the wind instruments played a piece by my favorite composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but the strings were playing Bach. The percussion was playing a modern rock beat, and the brass began a John Philip Sousa piece. What would that sound like? A cacophony of noise, I imagine.

I do not have to imagine. I hear the world this way. On the airplane ride to and from my father’s funeral, the first time I had flown in three years, it was mandatory that I have my Bose QuietComfort headphones on, a backup pair of fully charged headphones in my carry-on at my feet, and two pairs of earplugs in case the headphones all failed. Why? Because I do not hear one sound, the closest sound to me or around me. I hear the entire plane playing at the same volume. The voices in the back are as loud as the roar of the jet engine. The overhead announcements are screaming at full volume. I can hear the passenger next to me breathing, each rise and fall of their diaphragm. A crying baby is a sonic assault to my ears. With the headphones on, I can hear my own pulse beating in my veins and the constant electric buzz that has always been there and rarely shuts off, since I was a child. With the headphones on and music playing, I still hear the ever-present electric buzz in my ears under the music, but I can no longer hear my heart beating and the swoosh of the blood in my veins. The music masks it.

The first time I remember noticing that my hearing was perhaps unusual was when someone was trying to talk to me in a crowded room. There they were, standing before me, speaking at a regular volume while all the sounds in the room filled my ears. I could see their mouth moving. I could see their expression. Usually, I can read someone’s face so well through their microexpressions that I can conclude what they are saying before they are done speaking, which I will expand on in tomorrow’s blog about how I see the world as an HSP. However, I could not read them this time because the art gallery we were standing in was so busy. Their mouth was moving, but I could not catch a single word. I assumed they were speaking English. I was receiving nothing. The orchestra sections were all playing different songs at the same volume. I had a slight panic attack. “Am I losing my hearing?” “What is wrong with me?” Everyone else seemed to be fine at the reception, chatting in little groups, laughing, socializing. I was frozen in panic, unable to navigate all the sounds, wondering if I had suddenly lost my mind.

Libraries, Museums and Bathrooms

Finding refuge from the constant assault of my senses has been the biggest challenge of being in this body. I cannot always wear my headphones. I cannot always hide. I can use tools, such as the ancient yogic practice of Pratyahara, which I will describe in full detail in part six of this blog series, The Senses of a Highly Sensitive Person. The first time I found relief was in elementary school. Somehow, children can tell right away if an individual is “different.” The teasing and torture of bullying had not begun yet for me. Just comments and looks made me feel like an odd man out. I remember the library was at the end of the multi-story building we called school in Japan, on the top floor, banked with windows, I believe. As I crossed the threshold, I felt as if I was entering a sanctuary. All the quiet books rested on the shelves in order, numbered and listed in the old Dewey Decimal System. The signage of “Be Quiet” stood out to me, but not as much as the other people. Silently moving through the space, whispering, eyes down on books. No one looked at me. I found a murder mystery play, my first play, which I would later act in as an adult, many decades removed from this little quiet boy that I was. He had found his first Safe Space. Somewhere that he could be left alone, sit in silence, and get lost in the world on the pages. It began my love of libraries, museums, and yes, bathrooms.

I often wonder if the people I am out socially with know that I do not really have to go to the bathroom for the obvious reasons, but need somewhere to rest for a moment. Somewhere there is no talking, at least not usually in the men’s room. Unless the smells are too strong, which is another blog entry for another day. I dream of going to Paris, not for the tourist sites, which I have already seen, but for the Louvre. One of the largest Safe Spaces I have found in all my travels. I wish to sit there for days. Slowly move from room to room surrounded by creativity, sanctuary, and mostly silence. I finished planning my trip to Ireland next month. I am going on a self-guided visit to only County Wicklow. To glacial lakes, wild gardens, and the rocky east coast, all of which are unusual and out-of-the-way spots. I will be seeking quiet, solitude, and experiencing nature’s Safe Spaces.

Thank you for sparing a few minutes to read my daily writings as the inner writer in me begins to reveal itself. Even if no one reads my musings, it is therapeutic to finally put some of this out of my head, so to speak.

“Whether animal or speech communication, environmental sounds, or music — all sounds carry some information.”

— Adam Weisser, Auditory Information Loss in Real-World Listening Environments

Troy Alan Cox

Mold, Memories & Sympathy Cards

2026-06-06T10:26:26.335-07:00

A reflection on grief

By Troy Alan Cox

06/06/2026

Mold

I have to remove the carpet from my father’s master bedroom.

It is something that needd to be done for almost two years, but dementia is a cruel disease. The brain slowly loses its ability to communicate with the body. Once my father could no longer get his legs to work and became bedbound, the carpet became the last thing to think about.

This week, two months after Easter — the first time I was sure he was going to pass — I began removing a small section of the carpet.

Underneath the padding, I found one of the worst fears of any Florida homeowner: a large amount of growth. Some of it may be disintegrating padding. Some of it may be dust. But the black swirls are what concern me most.

Immediately, I remembered all the times my father told me he could smell mold in his room.

Unfortunately, the master ensuite had plumbing problems before we ever took on this fixer-upper. After multiple plumber bills and repeated overflows, the carpet was always going to have to go.

Then came the dementia diagnosis.

That diagnosis followed lung cancer, which we battled for three years. It followed the leaky heart valve cardio adventure that lasted another year. It followed the unexplained dizziness that started the whole journey. It followed what I call the terrible year: nine serious falls in twelve months, including a skull hematoma.

I will be processing, for a long time, the trauma of coming home after a day of work with a dozen yellow roses for my father on Father’s Day, only to find him face down in a large pool of coagulated blood from a fall.

And now, the mold spores.

I have to stop the carpet work and immediately remove all of his belongings.

All the photos I unpacked and hung on the wall to keep him company.

All the books and photo albums he spent hours writing in and logging.

The clothing.

The dresser.

The keepsakes.

I have to inspect everything to make sure the mold has not spread.

This means I have to box up my father’s life and try not to think about the symbolism of that.

As a highly sensitive person, everything I look at and touch carries the emotional, physical, spiritual, and historical weight of the Titanic. So I have to put on blinders, fill boxes, and pray his keepsakes are not infected.

Memories

My father loved making photo albums.

He wrote in them all the time: dates, people’s names, places, details. He wanted to tell me the stories.

I have a real challenge looking at photo albums.

I do not only see the image. I feel the era. I feel the hopes and dreams. I feel the love and life of that particular moment. I feel an energetic connection to each person in the image, whether I know them or not.

I look at a photo and wonder:

Who was taking the picture?

Was it staged or spontaneous?

What happened before and after this moment?

Why did that person choose that outfit?

What did the rest of that day hold?

It is very heavy, and I cannot control it.

As I box up the albums I still cannot look at, I hear my father’s voice in my head:

“Son, let me show you this picture here. It has a good story.”

And I hear myself responding:

“I’m sorry, Dad. I can’t look at any pictures of my mother yet. It’s still too hard for me.”

Tears streamed down my face then.

They stream now, too, as I wish I had been able to say yes so I could know the story.

There are boxes and boxes of remaining albums. I do not know the stories inside them. I am not sure if I will ever be able to look at them.

I think of my mother and father as a young couple starting their life with so many hopes and dreams. I think of all they could not have known was coming.

They never could have imagined that one day their second-born child would be tragically killed in a careless highway mishap.

They never could have known that their remaining son would never start a family of his own.

Their hopes and dreams have no one obvious to hand them down to.

Their story now rests in these boxes.

Sympathy

As I type this, I am sitting beside a moderate stack of sympathy cards.

Some are from people I know. Some are from acquaintances. Some are from people who feel almost like strangers.

Almost all of them are from people I would not have expected.

And I find myself wondering:

Where are the names of the people who knew and loved my parents when they were here?

Something happens in grief, especially when you are the last of the bloodline from your direct family. The brain stops glossing over the way people in your life show up — or do not show up.

I have no capacity for the ones who complain and say they are sorry, but were never here when things were getting bad.

Even people one may have known for a very long time may find it too difficult to send a sympathy card.

The cards range from religious to funny. The words are comforting or guiding. Some are beautiful. Some are simple.

But none of them make me feel better about the people who were too busy to be here. The ones who said they would show up and did not.

I am trying to have sympathy for those who want to see how I am, but then complain about all of their own problems, as if I can even hear the words they are saying right now.

It is hard to have sympathy for others when I cannot yet fully have sympathy for myself.

Five years that were supposed to be fun with my father became years of caregiving, medical appointments, emergencies, decisions, physical labor, fear, and long hours.

Mostly alone.

Sympathy is such a strange word.

“Friendship is sewn with love and measured by kindness.”

— From a random sympathy card in the pile

Troy Alan Cox

06/06/2026