https://aeon.co/essays/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-highly-sensitive-person
"How does it feel to be ‘highly sensitive’? If I’d heard the question without
all I know now, I would have said I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t. But after
the term was applied to me in 1991 by a therapist I was sent to because I had
‘overreacted’ to a medical procedure, I began to seriously study what that
therapist might have meant.
What I discovered after many years of studying this innate survival strategy is
that high sensitivity means, above all, thinking deeply about everything. Which
makes someone like me, well, thoughtful, creative and inclined more than most
to both science and spirituality. Having nearly automatic empathy – almost too
much sometimes – we cry easily. We notice subtleties: birds, flowers, the
lighting in a room, and if someone has rearranged the furniture.
With all that going on in a sensitive person’s brain, we are easily
overstimulated. If I’m travelling and visit a museum during the day, I don’t
want to go to a night club that night. Nix to all noisy restaurants. I wear
noise-cancelling headsets on planes. I love giving talks about high sensitivity
but am totally exhausted afterwards. The more people in the audience, the more
exhausted. I am also more sensitive to pain, as that therapist noted early on,
causing me to explain that to medical staff: ‘Maybe you’ve noticed with all
your professional experience that some people are more sensitive… Me!’
In 2010, after years of research, I boiled all this down to the acronym DOES:
‘Depth of processing, Overarousability, Emotionally responsive and Empathic,
and sensitive to Subtle stimuli’. By this definition, about 30 per cent of
people have this trait of high sensitivity – and because it is a survival
strategy to observe before acting, it’s a trait seen in many. We’ve all met an
especially sensitive cat, dog or horse. But there are sensitive birds, fish and
fruit flies too.
This common yet under-recognised trait finally gained public notice in February
1993, when the
Santa Cruz Sentinel covered my research at the University of
California, Santa Cruz on what I called ‘highly sensitive people’ (HSPs). After
it appeared, I received dozens of letters and phone calls from people wanting
to know more, so I agreed to give a lecture at the public library, in its
largest auditorium. So many people showed up that the staff had to send some
away. Ultimately, I wrote a book – and there turned out to be so many HSPs, it
sold out and went to the top of the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list. As
an HSP myself, I never intended to write self-help books, do book signings, or
give TV and radio interviews, but because other HSPs craved the information, I
forged ahead. I felt like I had been walking down the street, and suddenly a
parade had formed behind me."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
