Quotes About Sensitivity

When we decide without knowing how we came to that decision, we call this intuition, and HSPs have good (but not infallible!) intuition. When you make a decision consciously, you may notice that you are slower than others because you think over all the options so carefully. That's depth of processing too.

Others knew they were different, but hid it and adapted, acting like the non-sensitive majority.

To her, such sensitivity was hardly a sign of a mental flaw or disorder. At least she hoped not, for she was highly sensitive herself. I recall her grin. "As are most of the people who strike me as really worth knowing.

sensory processing sensitivity

What is highly arousing for most people causes an HSP to become very frazzled indeed, until they reach a shutdown point called "transmarginal inhibition." Transmarginal inhibition was first discussed around the turn of the century by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who was convinced that the most basic inherited difference among people was how soon they reach this shutdown point and that the quick-to-shut-down have a fundamentally different type of nervous system.

As I have emphasized, HSPs are prone to low self-esteem because they are not their culture's ideal.

It is important that we and the public not confuse high sensitivity with "neuroticism," which includes certain types of intense anxiety, depression, overattachment, or avoidance of intimacy, and are usually due to a troubled childhood. True, some of us were dealt both hands in life—high sensitivity and neuroticism—but the two things are not at all the same.

Because you're more sensitive, you don't need extra discomfort or stress around you. A situation may have been deemed safe but still be stressful for you. Likewise, others may have no problem with fluorescent lights, low levels of machine noise, or chemical odors, but you do. This is a very individual matter, even among HSPs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is the documentary Sensitive: The Untold Story and the feature film, Sensitive and in Love. There have been twice-a-year HSP Gathering Retreats, frequent international research conferences, and numerous seminars and webinars for the public on the subject in the U.S. and Europe, plus YouTube videos, books, magazines, newsletters, and websites, and all sorts of services exclusively for highly sensitive persons—most good and some, well, not as good.

About sixty thousand subscribe to my free e-mail newsletter at hsperson.com, where there are now hundreds of articles and blog posts I have written over the years, all archived so that you can search and find something on almost every aspect of being highly sensitive. This is all because you have discovered that you are highly sensitive. I know that for many of you it has changed your life, so we have reason to celebrate this growth over twenty-five years.

parents to read, since even highly sensitive parents will

HSPs usually respond to change with resistance. Or we try to throw ourselves into it, but we still suffer from it. We just don't "do" change well, even good changes. That

You are also bothered by things others may hardly notice, such as the sound of children chewing with their mouth open, jangling keys in your partner's pocket, or a bit of a whine added to a request.

Psychologists have asked me (and I'm sure more only thought but didn't ask), "How could you have discovered an entirely new trait?" The answer is that sensitivity is not new at all but just difficult to observe by watching how people behave, which is usually how psychology proceeds.

I should add that concepts very much like sensitivity are being studied by other researchers. If you are interested in this work, you can look up terms such as biological sensitivity to context (authors will be Thomas Boyce, Bruce Ellis, and others) and orienting sensitivity (the main authors will be David Evans and Mary Rothbart).

The first published studies my husband and I did generated the self-test you have in this book and a slightly different version especially for research, called the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) Scale. This research was also intended to demonstrate that high sensitivity is not the same as introversion or "neuroticism" (professional jargon for a tendency to be depressed or excessively anxious).

Again, when you can only watch behaviors, sensitivity is not easy to separate from shyness, fearfulness, or in young children, just plain being difficult.