The Highly Sensitive Person Quotes

“All we can do is constantly try to get back in balance.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

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

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

“For HSPs, the toughest task of all may have nothing to do with renouncing the world but involve going out and being immersed in it.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“In other words, expand your use of your giftedness beyond producing the most noticed ideas at work. Use it to attain greater self-insight and to gain wisdom about human beings in groups and organizations.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“Also outside of work should be the relationships that offer the safe harbor from the emotional storms created by your sensitivity. Don’t look for that among your colleagues, and especially not from your supervisors. You’re just too much for them to handle, and they may decide there’s “something wrong with you.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“Second, you can be intensely excited about your work and ideas. In your excitement you may seem to others to take big risks. To you the risks are not great because the outcome is clear. But you’re not infallible, and others may take particular pleasure in your failures, even if they’re rare. Furthermore, those not understanding this intensity will say you work all the time and probably resent it—you make them look bad. But for you, work is play. Not to work would be work. If this is you, you may have to keep your long hours a secret, known only to your supervisor. Or”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“Giftedness in the workplace, however, is tricky to handle. First, your originality can become a particular problem when you must offer your ideas in a group situation. Many organizations stress group problem solving just because it brings out the ideas in people like you, which are then tempered by others. 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. When you do not, you feel alienated and misunderstood. A good manager or supervisor knows these dynamics and will protect a gifted employee. Otherwise, you may want to offer your giftedness elsewhere.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“Business can also be seen as a work of art requiring an artist, a task of prophecy requiring a visionary, a social responsibility requiring a judge, a job of growing requiring skills like those of a farmer or parent, a challenge of educating the public requiring skills like those of a teacher, and the like.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“It may be best not to advertise it, but keeping yourself healthy and in your right range of arousal is the first condition for helping others.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“Praise yourself for taking risks and learning something new rather than for your successes; it will help you cope with failure. Try not to constantly compare yourself to others; it invites excessive competition. Allow time to think. Keep your expectations realistic. Be your own advocate. Support your right to be yourself.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“Whatever advice you read or hear, remember that you do not have to accept how the extraverted three-quarters of the population defines social skills—working the room, always having a good comeback, never allowing "awkward" silences. You have your own skills—talking seriously, listening well, allowing silences in which deeper thoughts can develop.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

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

“Just be careful about accepting labels for yourself, such as “inhibited,” “introverted,” or “shy.” As we move on, you’ll understand why each of these mislabels you. In general, they miss the essence of the trait and give it a negative tone. For example, research has found that most people, quite wrongly, associate introversion with poor mental health. When HSPs identify with these labels, their confidence drops lower”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“While someone might tell you that you are making too much of your childhood problems, this research says you are probably not. You really were more affected and would benefit or have already benefited from help if you sought it, even if others would not feel the need.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“adult humans are capable of directing attention, using willpower, and deciding to overcome a fear. If your envy is strong and you decide you want to do something, you probably can.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“The bottom line is that in those first years you either learned to trust the other, and the outer world generally, or you didn’t. If you did, your sensitivity remained, but you were rarely threatened into distressing long-term arousal. You knew how to handle it; it seemed under your control. If you asked others to stop doing something, they did. You knew you could trust them to help you rather than overburden you. On the other hand, one way that chronic shyness, anxiety, or social avoidance can begin is if your early experiences did not build that trust. It is not inborn but learned.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“When I’m exhausted, I need sleep. Even when I seem totally wide awake. A regular schedule and a calm routine before bed are important to me. Otherwise, I will lie awake in bed all stirred up for hours. I need a lot of time in bed, even if I’m lying awake. I may need it in the middle of the day, too. Please let me have it.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“there are the even less tangible containers: your work, memories of good times, certain people you cannot be with anymore but who live on in memory, your deepest beliefs and philosophy of life, inner worlds of prayer or meditation.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms 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.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“without people. But they can’t go too long. When you retreat, you lose your sense of reality, your adaptability. Getting older can also take you out of touch with reality, cause you to lose your flexibility. You need to stay out there more as you age. But as you age, grace develops, too. Your basic traits become stronger, especially if you develop all of yourself, not just your sensitivity.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“Are you fit enough, are you progressing in your hobby, are you competent as a cook or gardener? And family life—is your marriage intimate enough, your sexual life optimal, have you done all that you can do to raise excellent children? The infant/body rebels under all this pressure, signaling its distress. In response, we find ways to toughen it or to medicate it into silence. So the chronic stress-related symptoms arise, like digestion problems, muscle tension, constant fatigue, insomnia, migraine headaches; or a weak immune system makes us more susceptible to the flu and to colds.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“was finally living a fantasy I had cherished for years. Of course, I got sick and hardly enjoyed a minute of the trip. At the time, I thought I must be neurotically robbing myself of my big moment. Now, understanding this trait, I see that the trip was just too exciting.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

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

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

“Stimulation is even more complicated because the same stimulus can have different meanings for different people. A crowded shopping mall at Christmastime may remind one person of happy family shopping excursions and create a warm holiday spirit. But another person may have been forced to go shopping with others, tried to buy gifts without enough money and no idea of what to purchase, had unhappy memories of past holidays, and so suffers intensely in malls at Christmas.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“Today many of us are artists and poets rather than prophets and seers, producing a kind of art that von Franz says “is generally only understood by later generations, as a representation of what was going on in the collective unconscious at that time.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Survive and Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“Research on those with the intention and sense of having the ability to start one’s own business (entrepreneurial intention) has tended to identify a “heroic,” extraverted, not-very-sensitive type. However, HSPs have also been found to have a strong entrepreneurial intention, being skilled at recognizing opportunities (depth of processing, aware of subtle stimuli, creativity, etc.) and motivated to be self-employed and manage their own energy and resources— something I discuss in the chapter on work. Finally, John Hughes, an interim CIO and an author on best practices for CEOs, has written on the reasons HSPs make exceptional leaders. First, they notice what others miss, having a greater sense of what is happening for their team. Second, they prefer to process more than simply to take action, often standing back to let others on their team receive credit. Third, and most important, they exhibit what is called “resonant leadership,” obtaining a “feel” for what is going on, often nonverbal, so that they lead with understanding and empathy. Such leaders tend to “say and do the right things at just the right time. This isn’t luck or magic, it’s their innate ability to feel deeply, process richly, and patiently consider the right words and actions for the moment.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“The pursuit of wholeness is really a kind of circling closer and closer through different meanings, different voices. One never arrives, yet gets a better and better idea of that which is at the center.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person

“clear thinking find that unless people have some emotional reason to learn something, they do not learn it very well or at all. This is why tests are given—to motivate learners to have that thrill of a good score or distress of a poor one, and we have found that”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You