Quotes from Elaine N. Aron

Learning a little about one's shadow (you never know a lot or enough) is the best and perhaps only way to be free of the straitjacket of oversocialization that HSPs often don in childhood.

Usted nació para estar entre los consejeros y los pensadores, entre los líderes espirituales y morales de su sociedad. Tiene todos los motivos para sentirse orgulloso.

A study of highly sensitive parents found that they were more affected by the level of chaos in their homes than those lacking their degree of sensitivity. Interestingly, the ratings of observers who came to each home agreed with the sensitive parents, while the less sensitive parents were apparently not experiencing the chaos as much. Maybe they were fortunate, but they were also not as able to see objectively the nature of their environment.

All we can do is constantly try to get back in balance.

HSPs know all about being "too tired to sleep." They are actually too frazzled to sleep.

HSPs have evolved so that we especially relish a good outcome and figure out more than others how to make it happen. I imagine that we can plan an especially good birthday celebration, anticipating the happiness it will bring.

How nice to blame someone else for one's own lack.

It is painful to imagine what would have happened if I had been the sort to have shouted at Rob to shut up and get back to bed. He probably would have done just that, feeling abandoned in a dangerous world. But he would not have slept. His intuitive mind would have elaborated on the experience for hours, including probably deciding he was somehow to blame. With sensitive children, physical blows or traumas aren't required to make them afraid of the dark.

There is an emotion many HSPs seem to have that cannot be regulated away by the better attitudes discussed above. That is the depression that occurs when there is less sun, in winter or areas prone to clouds or rain.

For example, Kagan found that babies who later showed this trait also had cooler foreheads on the right side of their head, which indicates greater activity on the right side of the brain. (The blood is drawn away from the surface toward the activity.)

As the novelist Charles Williams wrote, "Unless devotion is given to the thing which must prove false in the end, the thing that is true in the end cannot enter.

But what does this system really do? It takes in everything about a situation and then automatically compares the present to what has been normal and usual in the past and what should be expected in the future. If there is a mismatch, the system makes us stop and wait until we understand the new circumstance. To me this is a very significant part of being intelligent. So I prefer to give it a more positive name: the automatic pause-to-check system.

Since only about 50 to 60 percent of the population enjoyed a secure attachment in childhood (a shocking statistic, really), those of you HSPs who tend to be very cautious about close relationships (avoidant), or very intense in them (anxious-ambivalent), can still consider yourselves quite normal. But your responses to relationships are powerful because there is so much unfinished business in that department.

Think about the impact on you of not being ideal for your culture. It has to affect you—not only how others have treated you but also how you have come to treat yourself.

My favorite line from Captain Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation is, "I have made some fine mistakes in my life." It is so humble, wise, and self-confident, all at once.

How like the opposition I described in the last chapter between the warrior-king class and the royal-advisor class.

adult humans are capable of directing attention, using willpower, and deciding to overcome a fear. If your envy is strong and you decide you want to do something, you probably can.

We all go out programmed in some way: to please and cling to the first kind person who promises to love and protect us; to find the perfect parent and worship that person totally; to be extremely careful of attaching to anyone; to attach to someone just like the person who did not want us the first time (to see if we can change them this time) or who insisted we never grow up; or just to find another safe harbor like the one we enjoyed as children.

Few HSPs escape the pressure to be a good sport, normal, or pleasing to others, and even when those others are long gone, you keep on trying to please them.

It can be just as present in adulthood as you see friends taking on careers, travel, moves, and relationships that you would fear. Yet deep inside you also know you have the same or more talent, desire, and potential.

This greater awareness of the subtle tends to make you more intuitive, which simply means picking up and working through information in a semiconscious or unconscious way. The result is that you often "just know" without realizing how.

Often we can get used to stimulation. But sometimes we think we have and aren't being bothered, but suddenly feel exhausted and realize why: We have been putting up with something at a conscious level while it was actually wearing us down. Even a moderate and familiar stimulation, like a day at work, can cause an HSP to need quiet by evening. At that point, one more "small" stimulation can be the last straw.

clear thinking find that unless people have some emotional reason to learn something, they do not learn it very well or at all. This is why tests are given—to motivate learners to have that thrill of a good score or distress of a poor one, and we have found that

One general rule is that when we have no control over stimulation, it is more upsetting, even more so if we feel we are someone's victim.