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D is for depth of processing. Our fundamental characteristic is that we observe and reflect before we act. We process everything more, whether we are conscious of it or not. O is for being easily overstimulated, because if you are going to pay more attention to everything, you are bound to tire sooner. E is for giving emphasis to our emotional reactions and having strong empathy which among other things helps us notice and learn. S is for being sensitive to all the subtleties around us. I will say more about these when I discuss the research.
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.
Sooner or later everyone encounters stressful life experiences, but HSPs react more to such stimulation. If you see this reaction as part of some basic flaw, you intensify the stress already present in any life crisis. Next come feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness.
Next she fell in love, fast and hard (as HSPs can do). Shortly after, she went to Japan to meet her boyfriend’s family, an event she already had good reason to fear. It was while she was in Japan that, in her words, she “flipped out.”
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. Furthermore, this deeper processing of subtle details causes you to consider the past or future more. You “just know” how things got to be the way they are or how they are going to turn out. This is that “sixth sense” people talk about. It can be wrong, of course, just as your eyes and ears can be wrong, but your intuition is right often enough
Like the fire department, we HSPs mostly respond to false alarms. But if our sensitivity saves a life even once, it is a trait that has a genetic payoff. So, yes, when our trait leads to overarousal, it is a nuisance. But it is part of a package deal with many advantages.
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.
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. While music played by ourselves may be pleasant, heard from the neighbor’s stereo, it can be annoying, and if we have previously asked them to turn it down, it becomes a hostile invasion. 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.
• Better at spotting errors and avoiding making errors. • Highly conscientious. • Able to concentrate deeply. (But we do best without distractions.) • Especially good at tasks requiring vigilance, accuracy, speed, and the detection of minor differences. • Able to process material to deeper levels of what psychologists call “semantic memory.” often thinking about our own thinking. • Able to learn without being aware we have learned. • Deeply affected by other people’s moods and emotions.
We are so skilled, but alas, when being watched, timed, or evaluated, we often cannot display our competence.
Our bodies are different too. Most of us have nervous systems that make us: • Specialists in fine motor movements. • Good at holding still. • “Morning people.” (Here there are many exceptions.) • More affected by stimulants like caffeine unless we are very used to them. • More “right-brained” (less linear, more creative in a synthesizing way). • More sensitive to things in the air. (Yes, that means more hay fever and skin rashes.)
non-HSPs do not seem to enjoy thinking about such things, they assume we must be unhappy doing all that pondering. And we certainly don’t get any happier having them tell us we are unhappy (by their definition of happy) and that we are a problem for them because we seem unhappy. All those accusations could make anyone unhappy.
HSPs tend to fill that advisor role. We are the writers, historians, philosophers, judges, artists, researchers, theologians, therapists, teachers, parents, and plain conscientious citizens. What we bring to any of these roles is a tendency to think about all the possible effects of an idea. 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
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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 can be the most maddening.
Since he was three he has “thought like a lawyer,” quick to notice fine points and make subtle distinctions. He is concerned about the suffering of others and polite, kind, and considerate—except, perhaps, when he is overcome by too much stimulation. His sister, meanwhile, has her own numerous virtues. One is that she is a steady sort, the anchor in her brother’s life. What makes Rob and Rebecca so very different from each other? What makes you answer yes to so many items on the self-test at the beginning of this book when most people would not?
If you think about it, your life is filled with such safe containers. Some are concrete—your home, car, office, neighborhood, a cottage or cabin, a certain valley or hilltop, a forest or bit of shoreline, certain clothing, or certain beloved public places, such as a church or library.
Perhaps the greatest maturity is our ability to conceive the whole universe as our container, our body as a microcosm of that universe, with no boundaries. That is more or less enlightenment. But most of us will need more finite containers for a while, even if we are beginning to learn to make do with intangible ones in a pinch. Indeed, as long as we are in bodies, enlightened or not, we need some bit of tangible safety, or at least a sense of sameness.
protector. Then turn on the radio but keep out the radio’s message. You will probably still hear the words, but refuse to let them in. After a while, turn the radio off and think about what you experienced. Could you give yourself permission to shut out the broadcasting? Could you feel that boundary? If not, practice it again someday. It will improve.
1. Please don’t make me handle more than I can. I am helpless when you do this, and I hurt all over. Please, please, protect me. 2. I was born this way and can’t change. I know you sometimes think something awful must have made me this way, or at least made me “worse,” but that ought to give you even more sympathy for me. Because either way I can’t help it. Either way, don’t blame me for how I am. 3. What I am is wonderful—I let you sense and feel so much more deeply. I am really one of the best things about you.
concerning gifted children. For example, one researcher reminds parents that such children cannot be expected to blend well with their peers. Parents will not produce a spoiled freak if they give their child special treatment and extra opportunities. Parents and teachers are firmly told to allow gifted children to just be who they are. This is good advice for children with all traits that miss the average and ideal, but giftedness is valued enough to permit deviation from the norm.
achievements. Meanwhile, if you were not with gifted peers, you would be lonely and possibly rejected. There are now some better guidelines for raising gifted children.
Sensitive youths seem bound to feel uneasy with the sexual roles of victim or aggressor that the media imply they are expected to play.
friends. Becoming a functioning adult step-by-step really works fine. Suddenly one day you are an adult, doing it all, and you never noticed how you got there. Sometimes, however, we take too big a step.
plus living in a noisy dorm and staying up all night talking or partying, plus probably experimenting with sex, drugs, and alcohol (or nursing your friends through the aftereffects of their experiments).
Even without overt sexual abuse, all young women are known to experience a descent into low self-esteem at puberty, probably as they realize their role as sexual objects. The highly sensitive girl will sense all the implications even more and make self-protection a higher priority. Some overeat to become unattractive, some overstudy or overtrain so they have no free time, some pick one boy early and hang on to him for protection.
Sometimes you are afraid of rejection. Why not? Your style is not the cultural ideal, after all. But as an HSP, sometimes you just don’t want the extra arousal. When others are treating you as if you’re shy and afraid, it can be hard to realize that you’ve simply chosen to be alone, at least at first. You are the one rejecting. You are not being rejected.
In contrast, the highly extraverted women did more “pleasure” talk, sought more agreement, looked for similarities in background and experience, and paid more compliments. They were upbeat and expansive and liked being paired with either type, as if their main pleasure were in the talking.
When the extraverted were with someone who was highly introverted, they liked not having to be so cheerful. And the introverted found conversing with the extraverted “a breath of fresh air.”
The extraverted are right, however, when they say that “a stranger is just a friend I haven’t met yet.” All your closest friends were once strangers.
“I have made some fine mistakes in my life.” It is so humble, wise, and self-confident, all at once.)
since we don’t thrive on long hours, stress, and overstimulating work environments. But much of our difficulty at work, I believe, is our not appreciating our role, style, and potential contribution.
vocation, I don’t mean that all HSPs become scholars, theologians, psychotherapists, consultants, or judges,
Another problem for HSPs who are very intuitive and/or introverted is that we may not be well informed about the facts. We let our hunches guide us. We don’t like to ask. But gathering concrete information from real people is part of the individuation process for introverted or intuitive people especially. If you feel you “just cannot,” you are revealing the third obstacle to knowing your vocation: low self-confidence. Deep inside you probably know what you really want to do. Of course you may have selected something you cannot possibly succeed at in order to avoid moving along and doing the
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people), farmer, writer, artist (lots of these), X-ray technician, meteorologist, tree trimmer, scientist, medical transcriber, editor, scholar in the humanities, accountant, and electrician.
You will have to watch, however, for certain tendencies. If you are a typical HSP, you can be a worry-prone perfectionist. You may be the most hard-driving manager you have ever worked for. You also may have to overcome a certain lack of focus. If your creativity and intuition give you a million ideas, at some point, early, you will have to let most of them go, and you will have to make all kinds of difficult decisions.
wane. I recall a creative-writing teacher once listing nearly every famous author on the blackboard and asking us what they had in common. The answer was attempted suicide. I’m not sure the class saw it as a tragedy so much as a romantic aspect of their chosen career. But as a psychologist as well as an artist, I saw a deadly serious situation. How often the value of artists’ works has increased once they were declared insane or had committed suicide. While the life of the artistic hero-adventurer especially calls to the young HSP, it can also be a trap quite unconsciously laid by those with
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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 which I have described.
HSPs tend to be enormously aware of the suffering of others. Often their intuition gives them a clearer picture of what needs to be done. Thus, many HSPs choose vocations of service. And many “burn out.” But to be helpful to others you do not have to work at a job that burns you out.
Companies do vary. Be alert to corporate culture when you take a position or have the chance to influence the corporate culture you are in. Listen to what is said but also use your intuition. Who is admired, rewarded, and promoted? Those who foster toughness, competitiveness, and insensitivity? Creativity and vision? Harmony and morale? Service to the customer? Quality control? HSPs should feel at home in varying degrees in all but the first.
The difficulty arises when everyone proposes ideas and yours seem so obviously better to you. Yet the others just do not seem to get it. When you go along with the group, you feel untrue to yourself and are unable to commit to the group’s results.
A fourth trait of the gifted, intuition, can seem almost magical to others. They don’t see what you see—this contrast between the surface and “what’s really going on.” So as with your unusual ideas, you must decide whether to be honest or go along with things as others see them and feel secretly a bit alienated.
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.
The Challenge of Sensitive Love
As for romance, Mark remembers intense crushes even as a child. As an adult, his relationships have been “rare but overwhelming. Two are always there. Painful. There is no end, although the door is closed.” But then I recall his tone becoming wry. “But I have a rich fantasy life.”
When in love, one feels bigger, better. On the other hand, it is good to know some of the reasons we fall in love harder that have little or nothing to do with the other—just in case there are times when we would rather not.
Before turning to the kind of powerful falling in love or friendship that can lead to a wonderful relationship, you might be interested in the rarer but more notorious case of overwhelming, impossible love. It can happen to anyone, but it seems to happen a little more often to HSPs.
relationship. Extremely intense love is often rejected by the beloved just because it is so demanding and unrealistic. The one being loved often feels smothered and not really loved at all in the sense that his or her feelings are being considered.
The best protection against falling in love too intensely is being more in the world, not less.
Don’t get me wrong. Flesh and blood and sensuality are all great. They just aren’t going to substitute for the inner figure or the inner goal. But you can see what a confusion divine love can make when two mortals set out to love each other in a human way.
