The Highly Sensitive Person in Love: Understanding and Managing Relationships When the World Overwhelms You

by Elaine N. Aron

I spent several years in therapy, none of it wasted, working through various issues from my childhood. But the central theme became the impact of this trait. There was my sense of being flawed. There was the willingness of others to protect me in return for enjoying my imagination, empathy, creativity, and insight, which I myself hardly appreciated. And there was my resulting isolation from the world. But as I gained insight, I was able to reenter the world. I take great pleasure now in being part of things, a professional, and sharing the special gifts of my sensitivity.

Most people walk into a room and perhaps notice the furniture, the people—that’s about it. HSPs can be instantly aware, whether they wish to be or not, of the mood, the friendships and enmities, the freshness or staleness of the air, the personality of the one who arranged the flowers.

Our trait of sensitivity means we will also be cautious, inward, needing extra time alone. Because people without the trait (the majority) do not understand that, they see us as timid, shy, weak, or that greatest sin of all, unsociable. Fearing these labels, we try to be like others. But that leads to our becoming overaroused and distressed. Then that gets us labeled neurotic or crazy, first by others and then by ourselves.

An individual will perform best on any kind of task, whether engaging in a conversation or playing in the Super Bowl, if his or her nervous system is moderately alert and aroused.

Within a species, the percentage that is very sensitive to stimulation is usually about the same, around 15–20 percent.

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.

What is moderately arousing for most people is highly arousing for HSPs. What is highly arousing for most people causes an HSP to become very frazzled indeed, until they reach a shutdown point called “transmarginal inhibition.”

This book may even increase your annoyance a bit as you begin to appreciate that you are a minority whose rights to have less stimulation are generally ignored.

We are so skilled, but alas, when being watched, timed, or evaluated, we often cannot display our competence. Our deeper processing may make it seem that at first we are not catching on, but with time we understand and remember more than others.

Since the trait exists in all higher animals, it must have value in many circumstances. My hunch is that it survives in a certain percentage of all higher animals because it is useful to have at least a few around who are always watching for subtle signs. Fifteen to 20 percent seems about the right proportion to have always on the alert for danger, new foods, the needs of the young and sick, and the habits of other animals.

The point is best made by Aristotle, who supposedly asked, “Would you rather be a happy pig or an unhappy human?” HSPs prefer the good feeling of being very conscious, very human, even if what we are conscious of is not always cause for rejoicing.

Although a culture’s newborns will show a broad range of inherited temperaments, only a narrow band of these, a certain type, will be the ideal. The ideal personality is embodied, in Mead’s words, in “every thread of the social fabric—in the care of the young child, the games the children play, the songs the people sing, the political organization, the religious observance, the art and the philosophy.” Other traits are ignored, discouraged, or if all else fails, ridiculed.

What is the ideal in our culture? Movies, advertisements, the design of public spaces, all tell us we should be as tough as the Terminator, as stoic as Clint Eastwood, as outgoing as Goldie Hawn. We should be pleasantly stimulated by bright lights, noise, a gang of cheerful fellows hanging out in a bar.

How are you as an HSP being treated now by the media? Think about positive and negative images of HSPs. Which predominate? (Note that when someone is a victim in a movie or book, he or she is often portrayed as by nature sensitive, vulnerable, overaroused. This is good for dramatic effect, because the victim is visibly shaken and upset, but bad for HSPs, because “victim” comes to be equated with sensitivity.)

Often we have to make ourselves unpopular by stopping the majority from rushing ahead. Thus, to perform our role well, we have to feel very good about ourselves. We have to ignore all the messages from the warriors that we are not as good as they are. The warriors have their bold style, which has its value. But we, too, have our style and our own important contribution to make.

“Spend enough time putting yourself out there in the world—your sensitivity is not something to be feared.”

To sum it up again, you pick up on the subtleties that others miss and so naturally you also arrive quickly at the level of arousal past which you are no longer comfortable. That first fact about you could not be true without the second being true as well. It’s a package deal, and a very good package.

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.

Another kind of HSP could potentially have an even stronger pause-to-check system but an activation system that is also very strong—just not quite as strong. This kind of HSP would be both very curious and very cautious, bold yet anxious, easily bored yet easily overaroused.

The way to come to tolerate and then enjoy being involved in the world is by being in the world.

Research on chronic sleep loss has found that when people are allowed to sleep as much as they need, it can take two weeks for them to reach the point where they show no signs of sleep deprivation (dropping off to sleep abnormally quickly or in any darkened room).

Get out of the situation! • Close your eyes to shut out some of the stimulation. • Take frequent breaks. • Go out-of-doors. • Use water to take the stress away. • Take a walk. • Calm your breathing. • Adjust your posture to be more relaxed and confident. • Move! • Smile softly.

Like hungry chickens, when we cannot be fed what we need, we feed ourselves what we can find.

Finally, being sensitive to the discomfort, disapproval, or anger of others probably made you quick to follow every rule as perfectly as possible, afraid to make a mistake. Being so good all the time, however, meant ignoring many of your normal human feelings—irritation, frustration, selfishness, rage. Since you were so eager to please, others could ignore your needs when, in fact, yours were often greater than theirs. This would only fuel your anger. But such feelings may have been so frightening that you buried them. The fear of their breaking out would become yet another source of “unreasonable” fears and nightmares.

While it is wise to accept what we cannot change about ourselves, it is also good to remember that we are never too old to replace discouragement with bits and pieces of confidence and hope.

Remember this experiment the next time you feel overaroused in a social situation. Your heart may be pounding for any number of reasons having nothing to do with the people you are with. There may be too much noise, or you may be worrying about something else you are only half aware of that has nothing to do with the person you are with. So go ahead, ignore the other causes (if you can), and have a good time.

Meanwhile, use all the points suggested in chapter 3 to reduce your arousal. Take breaks. Go for a walk. Breathe deeply. Move in some way. Consider your options. Maybe it’s time to go. Maybe there’s a better place to position yourself, by an open window, an aisle, or the door. Think in terms of containers—who or what quiet, familiar presence could hold you right now?

One solution to all of this is not to insist that your gifts all be expressed at work. Express yourself through private projects and art, schemes for future or parallel self-employment, and through life itself.

Positive metacommunications, however, do the opposite, putting a safe ceiling on how much damage is being done. They sound like this: “I know we are arguing pretty hot and heavy right now, but I just want you to know that I want this to work out. I care about you, and I appreciate your struggling through this with me.”

1. Don’t ask questions. 2. Don’t give advice. 3. Don’t bring up your own similar experiences. 4. Don’t analyze or interpret. 5. Don’t do anything else that is distracting or not reflecting the person’s feeling experience. 6. Don’t lapse into a very long silence, letting the other do a monologue. Your silence is the “listening” half of reflective listening. When timed right, silence gives the other the space to go deeper. But also keep reflecting what has been said. Use your intuition in the timing of these two. 7. And no matter what the other says, don’t defend yourself or give your view of the matter. If you think it’s necessary, you can emphasize afterward that your listening did not mean you agreed. While the assumptions behind feelings can be wrong (and we can do something wrong because of what we feel), feelings in themselves are not right or wrong and usually lead to less trouble, not more, if respectfully heard.

When we first fall in love, the self-expansion due to including another in our lives is rapid. Research on marriage, however, shows that after a few years the relationship becomes much less satisfying, but good communication slows that decline and, with the individuation process just described, the decline can be even further slowed, or reversed. My husband and I did research that uncovered another way of increasing satisfaction. In several studies of married and dating couples, we found that the pairs felt more satisfied with their relationships if they did things together that they defined as “exciting” (not just “pleasant”). This seems logical; if you cannot expand anymore by incorporating new things about the other into yourself, you can still create an association between the relationship and self-expansion by doing new things together.

Dan also had wonderful resilience. “My mother used to sit and lecture me like this: ‘Why do you try so hard? You’ll never make anything of yourself. You haven’t a chance.’ And I just made up my mind to defy her.”

“Permission to do what I need to do—that has been most important. To acknowledge my sensitivity and respect it. To project positive, solution-oriented calm at work. But to watch for looking too much on the outside like someone or something I don’t feel inside.” Because inside “there is a black hole. Sometimes I can’t think of a single reason to go on living. I just don’t care if I live or die.”

You will heal, but in your own way and with some qualities you could not have gained had there been no problems. For example, you will be more conscious, more complex, and more understanding of others.

My oldest interviewee had even come to believe that difficult childhoods are chosen by souls destined for a spiritual life. It keeps them working on their inner life while others are settling down into a more ordinary existence. Or as one friend of mine put it, “In the first twenty years we are given our curriculum. In the next twenty we study it.” For some of us that curriculum is the equivalent of graduate study at Oxford!

One can “cut up the pie” of healing methods with many divisions—long or short, self-help or professional help, individual or group therapy, treating yourself or treating your whole family together. But we can cover it well by serving up four big slices: cognitive-behavioral, interpersonal, physical, and spiritual.

Short-term “cognitive-behavioral” therapy, aimed at relieving specific symptoms, is the most accessible through insurance and managed-care plans. This approach is “cognitive” because it works on how you think, and it is “behavioral” because it works on how you behave. It tends to ignore feelings and unconscious motive. Everything is meant to be practical, rational, and clear.

Interpersonally oriented psychotherapy is what most people think of as “therapy.” Examples are Freudian, Jungian, object relations, Gestalt, Rogerian or client-centered, transactional analysis, existential, and most eclectic therapies. They all involve talk and making use of the relationship between you and another person or persons—often a therapist but sometimes a group or peer counselor.

Physical approaches include exercise, improving nutrition or being careful about food allergies, acupressure, herbal supplements, massage, tai chi, yoga, Rolfing, bioenergetics, dance therapy, and of course all the medications, especially antidepressants and antianxiety drugs. Indeed, today physical approaches mainly mean medications prescribed by a psychiatrist, which chapter 9 will discuss.

Spiritual approaches include all the things people do to explore the nonmaterial aspect of themselves and their world. Spiritual approaches comfort us, telling us there really is more to life than what we see. They heal or make more bearable the wounds received in this world. They tell us we are not trapped in this situation, that there is more. Maybe there is even some order or plan behind it all, a purpose.

The most usual method is medication. But I have also seen an HSP halt the same spiral by taking a vacation to a new place in the warm tropics, forgetting problems for a while. Upon returning, the person took up the old issues with a fresh perspective and physiology. In another case, instead of taking a trip, this person had to come home from a vacation to stop a spiral of anxiety. What was needed was less stimulation. Your intuition can be a fine guide for knowing exactly what you need to do physically to change your mental chemistry.

One hint that hormones are the problem is the kind of inexplicable mood swing in which you are feeling okay one hour, and the next, everything seems hopeless, worthless. Or similar huge variations in energy or mental clarity.

The form of psychotherapy I recommend most to HSPs is Jungian-oriented therapy, or Jungian analysis, following the methods and aims of Carl Jung. (If there are childhood traumas to work with, however, one must be certain the Jungian also has training in these areas.)

The purpose of Jungian therapy or analysis is, first, to provide a container in which frightening or rejected material can be examined safely. The therapist is like an experienced guide in the wilderness. Second, it teaches the client to be at home in that wilderness, too. Jungians do not seek cures but a lifelong engagement in the process of individuation through communication with the inner realms.

When people are stressed for a long time—overaroused—they seem to run low on certain neurotransmitters. (Other things, like certain viruses, will also reduce these important brain juices.) Once low on them, some people stay low: depressed. But not everyone does, and why that is the case is not yet known. And being an HSP does not automatically mean you are more prone to depression. Long-term overarousal is the culprit.

As I said before, however, I think we have to be very careful about allowing doctors to use “overreact to stress” as a description of our basic trait. Who decides what is “over”? (My use of the term overarousal is relative to your own optimal level of arousal.) But what about the positive aspect of our trait and the negative aspect of a culture in which high stress levels are normal? We were not really born with a tendency to “overreact to stress.” We were born sensitive.

This research is important for HSPs. It makes very concrete why we need to avoid chronic overarousal. If our childhood programmed us to be threatened by everything, then we must do the inner work, usually in therapy, that will change that programming even if it takes years. Kramer cites evidence that a permanent susceptibility to overarousal and depression can develop and real harm can be done if serotonin levels are not returned to normal. So we want to stay secure, rested, and serotonin-strong. This keeps us ready to enjoy our trait’s advantages, the appreciation of the subtle. It means that the inevitable moments of overarousal do not lead to increased cortisol over days and decreased serotonin over months and years. If we have blown it, then we can still correct the situation. But it takes time, and we may want to use medication for a while to help make this correction.

Another fact you may hear is that dominant monkeys, of at least some very dominance-prone species, have more serotonin. Just increasing the serotonin in a monkey of this type makes it dominant over its fellows given a drug that decreases serotonin. Putting a monkey of this type at the top of a dominance hierarchy increases the serotonin in its brain. Removing it from that status decreases serotonin. Here is another reason why doctors may want to increase your serotonin—to help you be more dominant and successful in a dominance-oriented society.

Could a low serotonin level and depression and all the rest arise from stress due to HSPs being “put down” in this culture?

Feelings about “organized religion” were very strong. There were a few who were very committed, the rest were dissatisfied, even disdainful. But unorganized religion thrived; about half followed some daily practice that took them inward to touch the spiritual dimension.