Anas Qtiesh uses avid curiosity to embrace his neurodiversity.

Before his yoga passion sparked, Anas began intentional self-discovery work over three years ago. With bright lights, loud noises, crowded spaces, big emotions, and textured foods, Anas feels life more intensely than most. Gradually, he’s found ways to honor his unique experience.  

“I realized I’m not picky or quirky. There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s just that I experience things differently. There are accommodations I can extend myself or ask of other people to make certain situations more accessible, bearable, and fun,” shared Anas. 

I first saw Anas at our local yoga studio early this year, and we repeatedly crossed paths in the same classes. Struggling in vinyasa flows, breathing heavy in yin classes, and blissing out with restorative yoga, we shared space as near strangers and part of a larger community. 

Anas and I connected when I spontaneously asked: “You’re neurodivergent, right?” He laughed and said, “It feels good to be seen.” I’d been scoping out the other highly-sensitive people (HSP) in each room, eager to hear about others’ journeys. 

Over the last few months, he’s impressed me with his self-acceptance and determination to make the world more safe, comfortable, and enjoyable. 

“I think I’ve always been on a journey to understand how my brain works and how I operate through the world. With trauma and highly-sensitivity, when you’re navigating emotional regulation and stimulation, it’s important to stay in your level of tolerance or optimal stimulation,” Anas explained. 

I interviewed Anas in his cozy, colorfully-lit living room with cups of herbal tea and fruit bowls. We talked about Anas’ HSP discoveries from childhood to more recent exploration, his surprising yoga discoveries, and how his heightened curiosity helps him overcome challenges. 

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AC: When and how did you discover your high sensitivity? 

AQ: People always told me I was too sensitive. I saw how things affected me in disproportionate ways to other people and kind of figured it out in my kid mind. 

Seeing HSPs as a specific group of people with commonalities, defined traits, and similar experiences is a more recent thing, earlier this year. I’d heard the term before but never looked into it or thought about it much. I kind of just knew. 

It seems self-explanatory, but then I read the book based on a good friend’s recommendation: “The Highly-Sensitive Person.” It made a lot of things click in a way that felt validating and eye-opening. 

It’s been part of a larger self-discovery journey, figuring out how I function with my own neurodiversity versions and all that. Like, how to interact with other people, how I perceive them, how they perceive me, and the social language. 

How can we work together with different stimulation needs and comfort zones? You learn coping mechanisms to make certain environments or activities more accessible. Things started clicking where they had felt insurmountable before. 

It took time to get to this point. I wasn’t always like this. Growing up was very difficult to just sometimes feel like an alien, even just in terms of my experience compared to kids my age.

Like music, all my friends liked it very loud, like death metal. I hated it. I also never liked going to parties or weddings with loud music, and it took me a while to figure out why.

AC: Tell me about managing social situations and emotional sensitivity. 

AQ: Growing up, it felt harder for me to separate myself from other people’s emotions. If they were sad, upset, or angry, I felt it like it was my own sometimes. Like when someone’s crying, sometimes it makes me cry. When someone close is grieving, that can be too much emotion for me to handle. Death doesn’t bother me, but seeing someone grieving a loved one, that’s terrifying. 

I used to have a really hard time with emotional regulation, like crying. In high school, I’d cry very easily at injustices or things I had no power to change. People teased me mercilessly for it. 

Eventually, I started replacing it with a more unhealthy regulation mechanism. I became very irritable and angry. I kicked a few chairs. Back then, that was the acceptable manly thing, the only way to process emotion. I could either repress it or shout and fight. 

Since other people’s emotions affect me more directly, sometimes I need physical separation from them. I like to keep smaller friend circles, and I’m selective about groups of people. I don’t combine work friends with other friends, for example. I want to keep everyone happy, including me. 

I always approach people with caution until I’ve felt I could be safe-ish around them. I start observing basically and watch for signs that there might be a mismatch. 

Sometimes people are in a tough place or have unprocessed trauma, something causing emotional extremes. I’m like, “Can we find an accommodation? Can I change something? Can they change something? Are they hungry? In pain? Had a bad day at work? Or is this more of an always, life thing?” Like an expression of something bigger they’re dealing with that’s not about me. 

I’ve also gotten good at de-escalating or removing myself from situations. 

AC: What other adjustments do you make around sensitivity?

AQ: With bright lights, I used to hate being in my apartment at night, and I didn’t know why. I only had very harsh spotlights in the ceiling. Then LED lights that are dimmable started coming out, and I started playing with putting in lamps and different lights, like more ambient lighting in the room. It made a huge world of difference. Suddenly, it became cozy and homie, and I wanted to spend time there. 

I’m also a picky eater or particular about how I eat and why. There are a lot of things I don’t eat, and it’s not about the flavor; it’s texture sensitivity. I don’t like the way some things feel in my mouth or when I bite into it. That’s why I don’t eat meat or specific kinds of vegetables, like okra.  

When I was younger I realized I can’t just tell people what to do, but I can choose to go to environments that enforce certain behaviors. Like, I don’t like people smoking. So I’d invite people over, and I can control my home space. Or when I was younger, I’d use my dad’s car because they couldn’t smoke in it. I wouldn’t ride in their cars. 

Places like loud bars, I hated them. I still don’t like them, but once I discovered why, I kept earplugs in every jacket I had. If I was out with friends and they wanted to go to a bar, I had something that could help me stay a bit longer, rather than like 30 minutes. I used to feel miserable, like a hostage, waiting for an appropriate time to excuse myself without seeming rude for leaving after 20 minutes. So that’s been part of the process. 

Some accommodations I discovered were just accidental. Like I was experimenting and trying things I saw other people do, like things I learned online as I began learning about who I am. With understanding my sensory and sensitivity differences compared to the average person, it became much easier to advocate for my needs and exist in an environment while honoring my needs and keeping myself at an ideal stimulation level. 

AC: You said you’ve been doing self-discovery with more awareness since before the pandemic and learned more about high sensitivity this year. Were there any catalysts? 

AQ: My therapist used to tell me, “Okay, let’s work on expanding your window of tolerance.” Because once you go through traumatic events, it really kind of narrows a lot. So if you’re over-excited or under-excited, like too much good or bad, it can become an unmanageable amount of stimulation. 

When my therapist told me that, I was at first very resistant. Like, I’ve been flexing for the world all my life, what can’t it? No, it needs to change for me, like I’ve already done it. I don’t want to do more hard work just to exist. 

Then I started going to yoga early this year, not to expand my window of tolerance, it just happened. I completely randomly ended up at this yoga studio based on a recommendation from a person who stopped me in the street because she liked my leggings. 

Yoga really helped, and I got a lot of benefits from it, like physically but more importantly, mentally and maybe spiritually. I kept going back. 

For me, learning to sit with discomfort was a huge thing. Because that’s been the biggest struggle, and it’s not something I’ve tried much as an adult. I’d mostly tried to control my environment or remove myself from a lot of experiences that could have been at least partly fun or fun for a while. 

AC: Tell me more about your yoga journey. 

AC: With yoga, I gained more access to emotional regulation. I noticed I have a lot more patience for things, like a 12-hour flight, for example. It used to feel like time-stopping and almost suffocating for a while. I couldn’t sleep, and I felt miserable.

After doing yoga regularly, especially yin yoga with the slower, more intentional pace, those longer flights were kind of just okay. The worst sensation was feeling hungry, like wondering when they’d feed me next. The time itself didn’t bother me. I felt more at peace. 

I was surprised by the effects. Like, I was observing it happening and trying to understand it. I’ve only done one trip since doing yoga regularly, and this is a new experience for me. I feel like I have more range and resilience. 

Yoga also allows me to optimize my stimulation level. It’s a social activity and also a very solo activity at once. I can be social and introverted. It’s a low-stakes social fix. I also feel like I’m part of something bigger and have a community. I can also do the class, say bye, get out, and go do my thing after if I want to. 

AC: Had you tried yoga before this year? 

AQ: I’d done yoga multiple times, like individual classes, for fun, on a date, or with a partner. It was okay but never really stuck. I felt some self-consciousness about being in my body around other people and being observed. That felt vulnerable. I also never really connected with the spaces or teachers before. 

When I went to the studio, I just felt very safe in the space. It felt very welcoming, accepting, and inclusive. I felt safe being in my body, being awkward, not flexible, and kind of self-aware. It felt good, nurturing, and made me want to go back. 

It wasn’t about the workout. It was partly about the mental benefits, or like just having time for me to be introspective. I worked on more stretching and mobility rather than cardio. I tried to add the faster classes more recently because I wanted more challenge and variety. I still feel like the slower classes are my jam though. 

AC: Do you have other advice for people on HSP-discovery journeys? 

AQ: I think every person is a little unique even if we fall within larger types or groups we identify with. So the advice for everyone is just to be really curious. Learn about the experiences of other people and different neurotypes. It’s important. Just having those concepts will give us a lot of empathy for others and ourselves and help us reframe certain things.

We can be kinder and gentler. For me, what helped is reading some things I found clicking around Wikipedia or starting with recommendations from a therapist or friend. 

Also just finding community, like finding people who share the things that are difficult or unique for you. Find your people. You no longer feel like you’re weird, and it’s very validating. Finding a community is the best or most important one. It’s not easy if you don’t know who and what you are and how to find people like you. 

The other thing is accommodations, like finding the things you need to make yourself comfortable. You might need to change the environment, change yourself, or your diet, for example. There are so many things you can do.

Yeah, we can tell society what we need, and yes, everything should be accessible. Like, low-volume movie theater nights, for example. But, if we have the knowledge, we don’t have to wait for society to build those accommodations for us. We can have our own survival kit so we can go outside our comfort zones a little bit and thrive. 

Also, being highly sensitive isn’t always about negative experiences. Sometimes, you also observe beauty and little details that other people miss. You observe nuances about people’s state of mind and how they’re feeling. It’s a skill, and there’s value in that, and I’m highly sensitive for a reason. 

I like to think I’m the canary in the coal mine. If I tell people something’s wrong, they need to listen. 

AC: What motivates you in life? 

AQ: I used to joke that I live out of spite, just because of the things I’ve been through plus the resistance I get from people for being the person I am sometimes. 

If I’m being serious, I have a lot of passion for things like art, language, technology, and I don’t know, food. Travel. Like when I was a kid, I didn’t have a dream job, and I still don’t. I just like to travel. I have a passion for learning. I really like to learn as a hobby, and I think it’s served me really well. 

I’m very curious, and it’s like one of my strong suits, one of my best qualities. Without it, I wouldn’t be who I am or have gotten as far as I have without the curiosity and wanting to learn. I don’t know who I would be. I wouldn’t be here having this conversation. It’d be a much more muted existence. 

AC: You mentioned earlier that you make a habit of “doing the right thing.” What does that mean for you? 

AQ: Very good question. I don’t think I have my spirituality defined in words; it’s more of a feeling, like karma as a concept. I act in a way that’s consistent with that belief. I believe if I do good, the Universe will be kind back. 

In the sense, I believe if I do good, it’s just more likely that good things will happen to me. If I’m kind to people, they’ll be kind back or the Universe will be kind back. The things I do, I try to do them without expectation. Maybe it makes me feel good, or it needs to be done. 

There’s also something in game theory where you always first start out cooperative, and if the person responds cooperatively, you keep going and everyone wins. But if you start cooperative and the other person is an asshole, then you change course basically so you’re being exploited. 

There’s just value in not taking shortcuts. Because, do you want the momentary gain or do you want to try to build something? That’s being resilient, and that’s how you make things that will last a long time. 

You need to be okay with things being hard for a while. You have to do the hard thing and believe things are worth it.

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Outside of yoga, Anas works on tech localization and enjoys creative projects like photography, self-expression, and a new excitement for playing the Cajon, a Peruvian box drum. He’s also very involved in the local music and art scenes and semi-jokingly calls himself a “Patron of the Arts.” 

I feel grateful to witness Anas’ process of clearing out old conditioning and expanding in more authentic, beautiful ways. He inspires me to keep taking up space, care for myself more gently, and celebrate my own magical creative energy.

“There’s a lot of discussion around neurodevelopmental differences. People tend to pathologize people in the minority group, and that’s not healthy. There’s nothing wrong with me, I just function differently. I think about all these different neurotypes existing, and they’re just natural in nature or maybe they exist for biological evolutionary reasons. We need a bit of both to survive as a species,” explained Anas.  

 Read more HSP inspiration in my previous posts: 

• “Aron Shares Advice for HSPs Healing Trauma” 
• “10 Insights From My High-Sensitivity Journey”
• “Why Highly-Sensitive People Embrace Spirituality”

Photo Courtesy of Anas Qtiesh

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I publish inspiring, empowering content on self-actualization topics once a week. I include insights from personal experience, research, expert advice, and others’ stories. I use my professional journalism and research background to keep posts concise, empathic, and trustworthy.

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