The highly sensitive person

a primer

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I have a few . . . quirks.

I prefer sitting in a dark room to one with glaring overhead lights, especially first thing in the morning. I like a quiet house, as in, no TV. At all. Piles of clutter make me nervous. I can’t stand shopping at TJ Maxx with all the things in one long rack, all mixed up in no order.

I am a minimalist, especially when it comes to decorating. The only windows in my house with curtains are in the bedrooms. I only hang real, human-made art—no prefab stuff. I keep the lid on the piano propped up so there’s not a horizontal surface for people to pile stuff on.

We once bought a house that had 1970s Waverly wallpaper in one bathroom. It was so bright and busy, when a friend came out he remarked that it almost gave him a seizure. My daughter stripped the whole thing and we painted it a calm shade of something I can’t remember. But at least it was gone.

As a highly sensitive person, I have always known certain things were so because I could feel them in my body. It was not a “head knowing,” as in facts and such, but a “body knowing.” I could feel the existence of non-physical things in my physical self. I often knew a thing was true but could not put words to it, could not name it. Mostly could not even describe it, but I felt it deeply. Does all this sound vague and confusing? Welcome to my world.

I did not know being a highly sensitive person was an actual thing or had a name until I was in therapy for two years and my therapist mentioned it one day. I had spent my whole adulthood in a culture that de-valued and actually taught against women being emotional or “too much,” so I worked to keep myself under wraps, in control, not showing on the outside even a fraction of what was happening on the inside. I lived in a state of self-deprecation for being what I was not “supposed” to be. Why could I not get control of this? Why couldn’t I just be “normal”? What was wrong with me?

I learned after maybe 35 years of marriage that this was not what my husband preferred and that was an eye-opener. When you live immersed in a certain culture, you assume that everyone in that culture agrees with what is taught. When we get to heaven, I wonder how many HSPs from our “brand” we’ll find out there actually are, who, their whole lives, thought it was wrong to be the way God made them. How many people have we hurt? Be careful what you teach.

(The following information comes from hsperson.com.)

According to research done by Dr. Elaine Aron, HSPs make up about 20–30% of the population. The trait is innate, biological, not learned, meaning it is in you at birth. You come from the factory with this wiring. Sensory processing sensitivity, as it is now called, is found in over 100 species—including fruit flies, cats and dogs, horses, and more—and is thought to be a type of survival strategy, making you look before you leap. HSPs tend to be more cautious. This is an understatement for me—caution is my middle name. This part of being an HSP, more than any other, drives people crazy. “Why can’t you be excited about a new idea? Why do you always immediately see why we can’t do whatever?”

Because I am a highly sensitive person who processes every single thing in life far more deeply than the average non-HSP, so I see the difficulties most people would go breezing past in their excitement. Because I see everything that would stop a plan before it has been thought of by anyone else. Because I am wired this way.

Because God made me this way.

HSPs are “more aware than others of subtleties.” A non-HSP might see you as either mad or not mad. An HSP sees a thousand different levels of mad and feels the difference between them in their body. You don’t have to change one thing on the outside, but if something changes in your mind, I sense it. I know it. And that imperceptible (to others) shift is terrifying. I’m like a dog trained to detect blood sugar dropping when the diabetic is unaware—always on high alert.

HSPs “have what is called ‘differential susceptibility.’” This means basically they are more susceptible to influences in their environment. If one parent in the home is aloof or distant, it may affect one child not much but an HSP child intensely. Have you ever heard of a family where one kid is estranged from parents and another is not? This may be the reason. They experienced the same childhood very differently.

HSPs are “more easily overwhelmed.” When I read this, I said AMEN right out loud. I have always wondered why I became overwhelmed in situations that seemed not to affect other people, and now I know. I’m not crazy or wrong or too sensitive. I’m an HSP and this is the way I was created. My processing of life goes much deeper than a non-HSP, and there is So. Much. Input. All. The. Time.

This trait has been mislabeled “shyness,” “inhibitedness,” “introversion” (although 30% of HSPs are extroverts), and “fearfulness.” I’ve heard this last one so much that I internalized the label and always thought I was just full of fears, which I even wrote about here before I knew any better. Turns out I’m not necessarily fearful. I see sides and depths of things that others do not, and again, there is such an overwhelming amount of information coming in all the time. The overwhelm is overwhelming.

And finally, Aron says, “Sensitivity is valued differently in different cultures,” and boy if that isn’t the truth. Go to Japan and HSPs are among the most revered people. Come to America and you’re told not to be so sensitive. Research says that there are as many HSP men as women, yet the trait is seen as more acceptable for females. Men (and particularly boys) are told to toughen up, quit crying, be a man. In other words, hide your emotions because they make the rest of us uncomfortable. You are not okay the way God made you. You must fundamentally change who you are at your core so society feels better in your presence. You manage our emotions because we don’t know how to manage our own.

Maybe this is more offensive to me because I have lived with that kind of teaching, but can you imagine the damage to a little boy’s self-esteem when he believes his very self is flawed? This is the wiring he came from the womb with, not a trait that was formed in him through childhood experiences or by his own choices. This boy will always struggle with self-esteem and will never be all he could be if he were free to be himself. He will spend his life trying to squeeze himself into the mold society says he should fit. That’s tragic.

Does any of this ring true for you? Do you wonder if you could be a highly sensitive person? You can take a free self-test at The Highly Sensitive Person website. You can also read more on her blog or FAQs, and read the research she’s done.

Please let me know if you are an HSP. There is comfort in knowing you’re not weird or too much or wrong. You are not the only one.