Traits of Highly Sensitive People
“Even a moderate and familiar stimulation, like a day at work, can cause an HSP to need quiet by evening”
I remember when I read Elaine Aron's book, a highly sensitive person in my late 20s. It was a real turning point as I realised I was highly sensitive which shed a new light on my life and how it felt for me to live in the world. So in this blog I wanted to share some of the traits of being a highly sensitive person to help you decide if you are one as well…
Impacted by the day to day living
What are the first sure signs that you are highly sensitive is that throughout your life you are likely to have heard that you are ‘too sensitive’ and that ‘you need to grow a thicker skin’. In this context, your sensitivity was made to feel like you’re failing, and that you were abnormal. This can lead us to question - what’s wrong with me? Resulting in low self-esteem as well as confusion.
Your resilience, physically, emotionally, and mentally can feel lower than that of other people. Day-to-day living can strongly impact you and you need time and space to rest or process and decompress more than others. At times, it may feel like your sensitivity is a curse that you have to live with for all the overwhelm it brings.
When, in fact, your sensitivity to all the subtleties in the environment around you and people simply means you can get overstimulated as it can all feel too intense and complex at times because you notice everything. You therefore have a rich and complex inner life. This sensitivity to subtle information and energy can also blossom into being highly intuitive as you may naturally experience - precognitive dreams, strong intuitive hunches, or gut knowings which you have to learn to trust.
Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS)
The clinical name for being highly sensitive is sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) which means you are sensitive to subtle stimuli and easily overstimulated by external input. To put it simply - for you and me, the volume on the ghetto blaster of the world is set to loud, all the time.
This means that we are much more sensitive to bright lights and loud sounds or strong taste than other people. This can therefore lead to headaches and feelings of overwhelm when it just all gets too much. For example, when it comes to external input, we might avoid violent films or even the news because we find it almost physically shocking (the same could be said of violent words or behaviour - it would elicit a very strong response).
Conversely, this sensitivity means that we are extremely touched by the beauty of the world. Therefore, we may be very sensitive to the arts, strongly moved by colour in a painting, or the musical landscape portrayed in pieces of music may be deeply affecting or theatre and film may easily move us to tears. The calming vibration of being in nature is therefore a natural ally, and incredibly soothing for HSPs. We may also have very strong connections to animals as well for this reason.
Strong somatic empathy
Somatic empathy is ‘the ability to vicariously feel the experience of others, knowing that it's not our own’ (See Cindy Engels work to learn more about this). This is a natural human ability, but one that highly sensitive people have a very strong experience of - feeling the emotional experience of others in their own body.
The down sides…
You can become the unofficial family or office therapist, listening to everyone's problems. This is because it can be very clear to you when something is wrong, it affects you as you are aware of the unsaid feelings of others, you have empathy so want to support - but this can end up being a drain.
Strangers may even start telling you their life story on the bus (this has happened many times to me and clients!). Even when it’s not invited, it’s like you have a sign over your head saying tell me your problems! If you're anything like me, you may even end up developing an aversion to people and their problems can just feel overwhelming as well as constant. It becomes too much.
You can experience sudden strong emotions - leaving you feeling dizzy and confused about how you feel. This is because you were being flooded with the emotions of others, through somatic empathy. Therefore crowds easily drain you and you are picking up on everyone's emotions so you will either avoid them or retreat to recharge. This somatic sensitivity also makes you sensitive to atmospheres in the room and collective feelings i.e. you walk in and sense animosity, which is painful to feel so you step in to be a mediator unconsciously to create harmony within the group.
The positives…
The upside of having strong somatic empathy as a highly sensitive person (as you can develop deep connections with others) is you can feel their emotional experience, and therefore deeply empathise with them. This can create strong bonds and a profound sense of witnessing between the two of you.
When we are able to master our somatic empathy, i.e. have clarity on what is ours and what is not we experience emotions in our bodies, this means you can have a very clear idea of the feelings of others and their intentions. You can easily read people, they may even deny it - but you will know the truth. This can then help you to negotiate situations with people to keep yourself emotionally, and physically safe.
This ability can inform your work as well. For example, my strong somatic empathy is now the basis of my healing practice. I use it as my foundational tool to know the experience of my clients to help them heal and become a deep witness of their experience. For you, it may be knowing which contractors to trust, and if they are being truthful or lying - knowing who you can trust.
Struggle to establish healthy boundaries
Being strongly impacted by the pain of others can be one of the reasons making establishing healthy boundaries difficult for highly sensitive people as it feels painful to do as we are over-identifying with the experience of others and not placing ourselves, our capacity and needs into the equation as well. We can become overwhelmed by their needs (or emotional demands).
You may feel it's even your duty to help people and to help fix their problems. You have been told many times, most probably that you are ‘too kind for your own good’. In fact this people pleasing behaviour may have established itself as a way to stay safe within your family, being set in childhood to be ‘acceptable’ and an attempt to be loved.
It is usually fuelled by fear and the need for acceptance - and to maintain this ‘good girl or boy’ status leads to a mountain of self denial, emotional denial, resentment (rage) and self flagellation. With a lack of healthy boundaries an HSP can then be vulnerable to manipulative characters - such as narcissists and ‘energy vampires’, so you can end up feeling like you attract them.
Further reading
Four reasons why highly sensitive people attract narcissists
10 signs you struggle setting boundaries as a highly sensitive person
Lessons, I learned as a highly sensitive person from friends with badass boundaries
(and more on the blog…)
Strong emotional experience
So the emotional response of others can flood us and feel particularly overwhelming. In addition our own emotional experience can be incredibly intense - particularly if layered with unprocessed experiences over years. This can then lead us to want to disconnect from our bodies as the experiences are too much. The intensity of these emotional experiences can make HSP’s more easily prone, I believe, to physical shock in the body and a trauma response to situations.
A number of highly sensitive people, I know, feel as though they are ‘high maintenance’ due either to the fact that they have to work on self-care very diligently to stay well or simply, because this is what they were told when they were younger that they were ‘just too much’.
This overwhelm from emotional experience, be that your own or experiencing the intensity of other people's emotions can make us want to withdraw to regulate our nervous system and process our experience. Therefore, as we are more empathetic to the needs of others, we may find that actually we need a lot of time or space alone to be able to cope with our own experience.
The intensity of our emotional experience can also be another reason why we avoid conflict as arguments can be incredibly activating to our nervous system, and we may find ourselves drained for days afterwards. Our inner world and external world can feel intense which we need to honour, respect, understand and manage. This can certainly massively improve when we do the deep work and move through layers of unprocessed experience within ourselves.
Further reading
Enjoyed this blog? Leave me your thoughts below as I'd love to hear them or share the blog with a friend. To read more join my e-letter to receive my blog and personal reflections to your inbox.
