Quotes About Empathy

It was as if [highly sensitive subjects] found it natural to look beyond their cultural expectations to how things "really are.

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.

Whatever the times, suffering eventually touches every life. How we live with it, and help others to, is one of the great creative and ethical opportunities for HSPs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It means you are aware of subtleties in your surroundings, a great advantage in many situations. It also means you are more easily overwhelmed when you have been out in a highly stimulating environment for too long, bombarded by sights and sounds until you are exhausted in a nervous-system sort of way.

Research on parenting, for example, continually finds the elusive quality of "sensitivity" to be the key in raising children well. Turning

So unless this section of the chapter is distressing you, stop and take some time to think about your infant/body's first caretaker and the similarities between that early caretaking and how you care for yourself now.

If the relationship has been a source of comfort, it also deserves your seeing that it continue to be a source of satisfying self-expansion.

Children seem to thrive when their caretakers are sensitive. And I have met many highly sensitive caretakers who were at their happiest tending their children or the children of others.

Is Your Child Highly Sensitive? A Parent's Questionnaire Please answer each question as best you can. Answer TRUE if it is true or at least moderately true of your child, or was for a substantial time in the past. Answer FALSE if it has not been very true of your child, or was never true. My child . . .

You have probably learned to take downtime when you need it, which is more often than others do, and avoid overstimulating environments, but only people close to you see this side of you.

Some of the most important containers are the precious people in your life: spouse, parent, child, brother or sister, grandparent, close friend, spiritual guide, or therapist.

But many HSPs avoid people who come in the overstimulating packages—the strangers, the big parties, the crowds. For

Beware of talking so much that your child becomes quiet because he cannot think of things to say as fast as you can. You tend to leap (or speak) first and look a little later. Your child is thinking over what you have said and what to say back, while you may have already changed the subject. Leave silences.

Erityisherkät voivat tiivistää kaikki etikettisäännöt kolmen sanan sääntöön: vähennä toisen ylivirittyneisyyttä. (Tai kahteen sanaan: ole ystävällinen.)

Much of the suffering of sensitive artists could be prevented by understanding the impact of this alternating of the low stimulation of creative isolation with the increased stimulation of public exposure...

Most people's feet may be tired at the end of a day in a mall or a museum, but they're ready for more when you suggest an evening party. HSPs need solitude after such a day. They feel jangled, overaroused.