The Highly Sensitive Person Quotes

“You can be, should be, and need to be involved in the world. It truly needs you.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“So you’re in good company. Ignore the barbs about “lightening up.” Enjoy the levity of others and allow yourself your own specialty. If you are not good at chitchat, be proud of your silence. Equally important, when your mood changes and your extraverted self appears, let it be as clumsy or silly as it needs to be. We are all awkward doing our nonspecialty. You possess one piece of the “good.” It would only be arrogance to think any of us should have it all.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Survive and Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“But psychology is not perfect. It can only reflect the biases of the culture from which it comes.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“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?”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“Yet another form of rest, perhaps the most essential, is “transcendence” – rising above it all, usually in the form of meditation, contemplation, or prayer. At least some of your transcendent time should be aimed at taking you out of all ordinary thinking, into pure consciousness, pure being, pure unity, or oneness with God.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“Individuation is, above all, about being able to hear your inner voice or voices through all the inner and outer noise. Some of us get caught up in demands from others. These may be real responsibilities or may be the common ideas of what makes for success—money, prestige, security. Then there are the pressures others can bring to bear on us because we are so unwilling to displease anyone. Eventually, many, if not most, HSPs are probably forced into what I call “liberation,” even if it doesn’t happen until the second half of life. They tune in to the inner question and the inner voices rather than the questions others are asking them to answer.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person

“Do not overschedule yourself. Allow time to think, to daydream. 6. Keep your expectations realistic. 7. Do not hide your abilities. 8. Be your own advocate. Support your right to be yourself. 9. Accept it when you have narrow interests. Or broad ones.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person

“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.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person

“As I have emphasized, HSPs are prone to low self-esteem because they are not their culture’s ideal.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“But for you, work is play. Not to work would be work.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person

“when highly sensitive patients had experienced a trauma, sexual or otherwise, they had been unusually affected and so developed a neurosis.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person

“anthropologists speak of ritual leadership and ritual space.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person

“Sometime in your past you entered a social situation (usually overstimulating to begin with) and felt that you failed. Others said you did something wrong”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person

“As young children, seen in the laboratory for the first time, their heartbeat rates are generally higher and under stress show less change. (Heart rate can’t change much if it is already high.) Also when under stress, their pupils dilate sooner, and their vocal cords are more tense, making their voice change to a higher pitch. (Many HSPs are relieved to know why their voice can become so strange sounding when they are aroused.) The body fluids (blood, urine, saliva) of sensitive children show indications of high levels of norepinephrine present in their brains, especially after the children are exposed to various forms of stress in the laboratory. Norepinephrine is associated with arousal; in fact, it is the brain’s version of adrenaline. Sensitive children’s body fluids also contain more cortisol, both when under stress and when at home. Cortisol is the hormone present when one is in a more or less constant state of arousal or wariness. Remember cortisol; it comes up again.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person

“You have your own skills—talking seriously, listening well, allowing silences in which deeper thoughts can develop. It is also probably true that you already know much of what is covered by these experts.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“The best way to handle shadow aspects is to know about them and form an alliance with them. Up to now I have been upbeat about HSPs, speaking of our conscientiousness, loyalty, intuition, and insight. But I would do you a disservice if I did not also say that HSPs have as much or more reason to reject and deny parts of themselves. Some HSPs deny their strength, power, and capacity at times to be tough and insensitive. Some deny their irresponsible, unloving parts. Some deny their need for others or their need to be alone or their anger—or all of the above.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person

“I think relationship problems are still social, not genetic.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person in Love: Understanding and Managing Relationships When the World Overwhelms You

“How nice to blame someone else for one’s own lack.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“It is true that even when exhausted you still are providing something to those you serve. But you are out of touch with your deepest strengths, role-modeling self-destructive behavior, martyring yourself, and giving others cause for guilt. And in the end you will want to quit, like Greg, or be forced to by your body.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“since any music increases stimulation, use it only when it seems to soothe you. Its purpose is to distract you. Sometimes you need to be distracted; at other times, you need to attend carefully.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“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 picture we gain from Thorne is that each type contributes something to this world that is equally important.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“To Jung, the unconscious contains important wisdom to be learned. A life lived in deep communication with the unconscious is far more influential and personally satisfying.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“You want to have some professional boundaries. Especially at work, you need to spend more time with the less sensitive, who can be a great balance to you, and you to them. Develop outside of work the more intense sorts of relationships that offer you the emotional depth you seek.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“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.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“in the first two years the child adapts an overall strategy or mental representation of the world which can be quite enduring.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“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.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“In short, somewhere inside you there is a Machiavelli. Yes, he is a ruthless manipulator; but no prince, especially a kind one, would stay in power long without at least one advisor with as remorseless a point of view as that of the enemies a prince will surely have. The trick is to listen well but keep Machiavelli in his place.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“It is not surprising that artists turn to drugs, alcohol, and medications to control their arousal or to recontact their inner self. But the long-term effect is a body further off balance. Moreover, it is part of the myth or archetype of the artist that any psychological help will destroy creativity by making the artist too normal.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“Individuation is, above all, about being able to hear your inner voice or voices through all the inner and outer noise.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“(My favorite line from Captain Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation is, “I have made some fine mistakes in my life.” It is so humble, wise, and self-confident, all at once.)”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person