These are the children that Tom Boyce, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, describes as orchids, “exquisitely sensitive to their environment, making them especially vulnerable under conditions of adversity but unusually vital, creative, and successful within supportive, nurturing environments.”15 The same “sensitivity” genes that in a stressed environment can help potentiate mental suffering may, under positive circumstances, help promote stronger mental resilience and therefore happiness.16 Sensitive people have the potential to be more
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