Author’s Note, 2012
[DOER…] D is for depth of processing. Our fundamental characteristic is that we observe and reflect before we act. We process everything more than others do, whether we are conscious of it or not. O is for being easily over-stimulated; 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 motivates us to notice and learn. S is for being sensitive to all the subtleties around us.
…changes that made a parent’s future behavior less predictable seemed to be more of a problem than poor parenting.
Bottom line: a good childhood may be less important than a somewhat predictable one.
…when a past experience was very bad, an HSP can overgeneralize and avoid or feel anxious in too many situations, just because the new ones resemble in some small way the past bad one.
A study of highly sensitive parents found that they were more affected by the level of chaos in their homes than those lacking their degree of sensitivity.
…most emotion is felt after an event, which apparently serves to help us remember what happened and learn from it. The more upset we are by a mistake, the more we think about it and will be able to avoid it the next time. The more delighted we are by a success, the more we think and talk about it, going over how we did it, causing us to be more likely to be able to repeat it.
I’ve always felt like I learned quickly, even by just watching others make mistakes or succeed.
Many studies show HSPs having trouble with emotions—anxiety, in particular—especially, as I said, if they had difficult childhoods. However, the negative emotions are greatly decreased by personality qualities or skills labeled together as part of the trait of mindfulness: nonreactivity, nonjudging, acceptance, ability to describe feelings, and acting with awareness. Anxiety is lower in HSPs with this trait, particularly when we have the quality of acceptance.
What’s good for HSPs is often what’s good for everyone.
A study done by Bhavini Shrivastava of HSPs in an information technology firm in India found that they felt more stressed than others by their work environment, but were actually seen as more productive than others by their managers.
They found that HSPs were more often sent overseas on important assignments but were higher on turnover-intention measures, with stress being the reason.
Another type of HSP, usually those with a more stressful past, will feel more victimized and upset, and at the same time be less able to place themselves in the right environments and avoid the wrong ones.
Then you need to know your sensitive body very well. No more ignoring your body because it seems too uncooperative or weak.
You must actively reframe much of your past in the light of knowing you came into the world highly sensitive. So many of your “failures” were inevitable because neither you nor your parents and teachers, friends and colleagues, understood you. Reframing how you experienced your past can lead to solid self-esteem, and self-esteem is especially important for HSPs,
If you have not yet done so, you must begin to heal the deeper wounds. You were very sensitive as a child; family and school problems, childhood illnesses, and the like all affected you more than others. Furthermore, you were different from other kids and almost surely suffered for that.
The Facts About Being Highly Sensitive
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.
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 that HSPs tend to be visionaries, highly intuitive artists, or inventors, as well as more conscientious, cautious, and wise people.
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.
Once we do notice arousal, we want to name it and know its source in order to recognize danger. And often we think that our arousal is due to fear. We do not realize that our heart may be pounding from the sheer effort of processing extra stimulation. Or other people assume we are afraid, given our obvious arousal, so we assume it, too. Then, deciding we must be afraid, we become even more aroused. And we avoid the situation in the future when staying in it and getting used to it might have calmed us down.
We humans, and HSPs especially, are acutely aware of the past and future.
For better and worse, the world is increasingly under the control of aggressive cultures—those that like to look outward, to expand, to compete and win.
Digging Deeper
But remember that some parents and environments can make matters much worse. Certainly repeated frightening experiences will strongly reinforce caution, especially experiences of failing to be calmed or helped, of being punished for active exploring, and of having others who should be helpful become dangerous instead.
It is not surprising that highly sensitive children, and adults, too, have a hard time with sleep and report more vivid, alarming, “archetypal” dreams. With the coming of darkness, subtle sounds and shapes begin to rule the imagination, and HSPs sense them more. There are also the unfamiliar experiences of the day—some only half-noticed, some totally repressed. All of them swirl in the mind just as we are relaxing the conscious mind so that we can fall asleep.
General Health and Lifestyle for HSPs
Hunger is yet another stimulus, from inside. Besides arousing one further, it produces a diminution of the biochemical substances necessary for the usual, calmer functioning of the nervous system. My research indicates that hunger has an especially strong effect on HSPs.
Taking good care of a highly sensitive body is like taking care of an infant.
Think of what the infant and the body have in common. First, both are wonderfully content and cooperative when they are not overstimulated, worn out, and hungry. Second, when babies and sensitive bodies really are exhausted, both are largely helpless to correct things on their own. The baby-you relied on a caretaker to set limits and satisfy your simple, basic needs, and your body relies on you to do it now.
The point of all this is that how others took care of you as an infant/body has very much shaped how you take care of your infant/body now. Their attitude toward your sensitivity has shaped your attitude toward it.
Toughen up, push through, try harder, failure is not an option, ignore the discomfort.
The way to come to tolerate and then enjoy being involved in the world is by being in the world. I do not say any of this lightly, however. I was someone who mostly avoided the world until midlife, when I was more or less forced to change by powerful inner events. Since then I have had to face some fear, overarousal, and discomfort almost every day. This is serious business and isn’t fun. But it really can be done.
Traveling for work (consulting) taught me some of this. My attitude towards travel and my ability to do it (and lower stress now) is probably directly related.
There is one other reason HSPs drive their bodies too hard, and that is their intuition, which gives some of them a steady stream of creative ideas. They want to express them all. Guess what? You cannot. You will have to pick and choose. Doing anything else is arrogance again and cruel abuse of your body.
Research on chronic sleep loss has found that when people are allowed to sleep as much as they need, it can take two weeks for them to reach the point where they show no signs of sleep deprivation (dropping off to sleep abnormally quickly or in any darkened room).
The mind often imitates the body. For example, you may notice that you have been walking around leaning forward slightly, as if rushing toward the future. Balance yourself over your center instead. Or your shoulders may be rounded, your head down, as if under a burden. Straighten up, throw off the burden.
Many HSPs tell me that a major problem for them is poor boundaries—getting involved in situations that are not really their business or their problem, letting too many people distress them, saying more than they wanted, getting mired in other people’s messes, becoming too intimate too fast or with the wrong people.
Reframing Your Childhood and Adolescence
Finally, being sensitive to the discomfort, disapproval, or anger of others probably made you quick to follow every rule as perfectly as possible, afraid to make a mistake. Being so good all the time, however, meant ignoring many of your normal human feelings—irritation, frustration, selfishness, rage. Since you were so eager to please, others could ignore your needs when, in fact, yours were often greater than theirs. This would only fuel your anger. But such feelings may have been so frightening that you buried them. The fear of their breaking out would become yet another source of “unreasonable” fears and nightmares.
Another, equally important part of growing up is no longer pretending we will be able to do absolutely everything. Life is short and filled with limits and responsibilities. We each get a piece of the “good” to enjoy, just as we each contribute a piece of that good to the world. But none of us can have it all for ourselves or do it all for others.
In my research I found that by school age most male HSPs were introverts. This makes sense, since a sensitive boy is not “normal.” They had to be careful in groups or with strangers to see how they were going to be treated.
by focusing on problems I don’t mean to imply that HSPs necessarily have a difficult social life. But even the president of the United States and the queen of England must sometimes worry about what others are thinking about them. So you probably worry about that, too, sometimes. And worry makes us overaroused, our special Achilles heel. Also, we often
Social Relationships
…by focusing on problems I don’t mean to imply that HSPs necessarily have a difficult social life. But even the president of the United States and the queen of England must sometimes worry about what others are thinking about them. So you probably worry about that, too, sometimes. And worry makes us overaroused, our special Achilles heel.
Remember, discomfort is temporary, and it gives you choices. Suppose you are uncomfortably cold. You can tolerate it. You can find a more congenial environment. You can create some heat—build a fire, turn up the thermostat—or ask those in charge to do it. You can put on a coat. The one thing you should not do is blame yourself for being inherently more susceptible to a cold environment.
Introverts are still social beings. In fact, their well-being is more affected by their social relationships than is the well-being of extraverts. Introverts just go for quality, not quantity.
Linda Silverman, an expert on gifted children, found that the brighter the child, the more likely he or she will be introverted. Introverts are exceptionally creative even with something as simple as the number of unusual responses to a Rorschach inkblot test. They are also more flexible in a sense, in that sometimes they must do what extraverts do all the time, meet strangers and go to parties. But some extraverted people can avoid being introverted, turning inward, for years at a time. This greater versatility on the part of some introverts is especially important later in life, when one begins to develop what one has lacked up until midlife. Later in life, too, self-reflection becomes more important for everyone. In short, introverts may mature more gracefully.
Thriving at Work
“Vocation” Is Not “Vacation” Misspelled
Actually, the relation of a person’s vocation to his or her paying job can be quite varied and will change over a lifetime. Sometimes your job is just the way to make money; the vocation is pursued in your spare time. A fine example is Einstein’s developing the theory of relativity while he was a clerk in a patent office, happy to have mindless work so he could be free to think about what mattered to him.
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.
His task, he realized, was to change the job description. Indeed, it was his ethical duty. He would do far more good by refusing to overwork himself than by quitting.
Close Relationships
HSPs are prone to low self-esteem because they are not their culture’s ideal. So sometimes they consider themselves lucky if someone wants them at all.
Healing the Deeper Wounds
On one point we seem to vary less, and that is how quickly we crash when hungry. So keep eating small, regular meals no matter how busy or distracted you become.
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.
Medics, Medications, and HSPs
…who are at the bottom of the classroom hierarchy Maybe
Maybe we do not need SSRIs. Maybe we need respect!
Soul and Spirit
Having beliefs doesn’t mean they’re unchanging, certain, or to be imposed on others.
We HSPs do a great disservice to ourselves and others when we think of ourselves as weak compared to the warrior. Our strength is different, but frequently it is more powerful. Often it is the only kind that can begin to handle suffering and evil.
HSPs tend to dislike aggressive self-promotion, hoping to be noticed for their honest hard work.
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