For a while now I have been wanting to write about the trait of high sensitivity. Highly sensitive persons (HSP) are more likely to seek out therapy than the rest of the population yet, in my experience, often have no awareness of being HSP or even that there is such a thing called HSP. In Australia, there is less awareness of the unique needs, challenges and gifts of highly sensitive people than in other countries where I do research, and it seems often overlooked in therapeutic settings and by therapists. I hope this Holon and others to come on the topic offer information, resources and a sense of kinship and compassion for those that are of high sensitivity and their loved ones that is so sorely missing in the wider world.
And just to say that while the scientific community prefers to use the term Sensory Processing Sensitivity for people who are highly sensitive, I will continue to use HSP as the preferred term.
So here it goes:
When you were growing up, did you hear comments like: ‘Don’t be so sensitive’ or ‘Don’t be such a cry-baby/drama queen/sook’. Or: ‘You are just too much’. ‘Why do you overthink everything?’. Or you were told that you are ‘too shy, too timid, too fussy, too difficult?’. Perhaps these comments were not meant to be critical, but they hurt, nevertheless.
But perhaps no one ever thought to wonder what it might be like to be you.
You might be a few years or decades into your adulthood and still, people comment in a similar vein. And worse still, these comments have made you believe that you are different, even faulty, due to the fine fabric of your being that feels more than most, and keenly senses the nuances of the world around you. Singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette says: ‘We’re super deep feelers, we feel things intensely. We have the keen ability to sense the emotions of people around us, to be aware of subtleties in the environment.’ What Alanis describes is her experience of being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).
Sensitivity is a basic human trait and describes the ability to perceive and process information about the environment, and we are all somewhere along the spectrum between low and high sensitivity. Highly Sensitive Persons are at the far end of the sensitivity scale, where up to 30% of human beings across cultures congregate.
It is thought that a majority percentage of the high sensitivity trait is genetic while environmental factors contribute as well. But why would evolution want a bunch of us to be highly sensitive? For one, those highly in tune with their environment may well sense early or subtle threats and sound the alarm. Also, HSPs tend to be more empathetic, socially and emotionally aware, and responsive to others’ needs, which fosters social bonds and group cohesion essential for survival. Because highly sensitive folk often take longer to process information and consider multiple outcomes before acting, they are sound and strategic decision-makers for themselves and others. Creativity and innovation are the home turf of HSPs and from the earliest days of humanity offered their communities valued benefits like problem-solving, practical innovations, and cultural advancements.
Clinical psychologist and researcher Elaine Aron (1999), who has spent decades studying the innate temperamental trait of high sensitivity, and a highly sensitive person (HSP) herself, notes that ‘People differ considerably in how much their nervous system is aroused in the same situation, under the same stimulation.’ and ‘HSP’s do take in a lot-all the subtleties others miss’. Being highly sensitive is described as a personality trait that has a neurobiological basis and is related to a higher reactivity of the nervous system.
So, what happens in the brain of highly sensitive people? Research in psychology and neuroscience suggests that HSPs exhibit increased activation in brain regions associated with empathy, emotional regulation, and sensory processing, such as the insula and mirror neuron system. This means you are likely more attuned to the emotions and behaviours of others, noticing subtle cues that others may overlook.
HSPs are drawn to the arts and creativity, the healing professions, to teaching, to nature and science, to the spiritual and even the magical. Poets make shimmering words out of their deeply attuned experiences such as Rainer Maria Rilke whose writings suggest that he often found himself in a life alien to his nature. In his best-known work ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ Rilke reflects on the sense experiences during one of his stays in Paris: ‘… where everything echoes and fades away differently because of the excessive noise that makes Things tremble’. Mary Oliver often described her vocation as the ‘observation of life’ and her obituary in the New York Times includes the following words: ‘Her poems — those about nature as well as those on other subjects — are suffused with a pulsating, almost mystical spirituality’.
Then there is Carl Rogers, who was a shining light in the field of humanistic psychology due to his extensive practice-based research, prolific writing and deeply engaged psychology practice. Born a sensitive child who was deeply at home in nature and in his growing years was influenced by his parents’ devout Christian faith. The brilliance of Rogers’ contribution to the field of psychology rests, in my view, on three core themes: the focus on the therapist’s personhood and what she needs to bring to the therapeutic encounter to facilitate client growth (namely: empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence), a foundational therapist position that all humans possess the inherent drive to ‘self-actualise’ and a non-directive approach to the therapeutic conversation, that intrinsically requires the ability to be deeply attuned, sense between the words and understand and support intuitively the client’s journey toward healing. In ‘A Way of Being’ (1980), a book written by Rogers toward the end of his career, he defines empathy as follows:
‘An empathic way of being with another person has several facets. It means entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in it. It involves being sensitive, moment by moment, to the changing felt meanings which flow in this other person, to the fear or rage or tenderness or confusion or whatever that he or she is experiencing.’
I wonder who but a highly sensitive therapist is truly capable of this depth of empathy?
The historical Buddha is in my understanding a member of this illustrious group, too. Born Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha (‘the awakened’) to be, possessed an inherent sensitivity toward suffering, the heart of a seeker and an instinct for something beyond a life at the mercy of suffering brought about by aging, sickness, and death. His life and teachings are testament to this. The Buddha grew up among a people deeply connected to nature, the Sakya clan, a non-Vedic cast of people. Indeed, trees often accompany key moments in the Buddha’s life for example it is highlighted in the historical accounts that he sat under the Bodhi tree (the ‘awakening tree’) on the night of his enlightenment. Again and again it is evident, that people with high sensitivity are deeply at home in the natural world. The Buddha’s often depicted gesture of touching the Earth remains a symbol of his foundational stance that all of life is interconnected, something HSPs are often instinctively aware of.
The world that we live in, with all its conflict, competition, destruction and violence is a world without a natural fit for highly sensitive people and it does not easily support their flourishing. Too much noise, too much aggression, too much intensity around us means we need to learn to intentionally navigate toward a sturdy and spacious life to create fertile a ground for thriving.
I hope this has been informative. There will be a Part 2 (on overstimulation, deep processing and self-care) and maybe a Part 3:
Warmly
Sabina
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