To calm a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), reduce overstimulation by creating quiet spaces, using sensory tools like noise-canceling headphones or weighted blankets, practicing deep breathing and mindfulness, and ensuring they get rest and limit caffeine, while offering validation and avoiding criticism to help them self-regulate their nervous system.
A Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) often feels overwhelmed by external stimuli and emotions. They might have been labeled as “too sensitive” at some point, a phrase typically used to invalidate their feelings. When dealing with an HSP, it's crucial to create a calm environment and use gentle communication.
How to stop being overly sensitive: 8 tips for emotional resilience
“Some people have an emotional reaction to small cues that others might not even notice or do notice, but don't react to emotionally.” A few signs you may be highly sensitive include: Feeling easily overwhelmed when you're busy. Getting overstimulated by loud sounds, bright lights or other strong sensory experiences.
Here are some strategies to consider if you are a highly sensitive person working to become resilient.
Life can, at times, feel harder simply because the world hasn't been designed for the sensitive person. So, it's important for the highly sensitive soul to understand their trait in order to create a life that works for them and not against them.
If someone you know is highly sensitive, it's critical to accept that it is part of their temperament and likely can't be changed. Giving the person space to decompress, encouraging self-care, and looking for the strengths inherent in their sensitivity can help the relationship—and the individual—thrive.
Possible causes of high sensitivity include: Genetic factors: Genetics may correlate with high sensitivity. Research has shown that HSPs may respond differently to dopamine receptors. Lack of parental warmth: Research also shows that parental warmth is essential for personality development.
The frequent confusion about the interplay of sensitivity and trauma is certainly understandable. While being an HSP is not caused by trauma, difficult life experiences are amplified by high sensitivity.
The difference is that SPD can cause decreased motor function,6 which is not a characteristic of HSPs. In addition, SPD can cause under-responsiveness to sensory stimuli, whereas it's characteristic of HSPs to over-respond. Autism: High sensitivity is not a form of autism.
6. HSPs feel everything more deeply than others, which can make them seem over-emotional to others who don't understand their nature. HSPs have a heightened sensitivity to many things in life. They can be easily overwhelmed by loud noises, strong odors, or large crowds.
The “90-second rule,” introduced by Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, reveals that an emotional surge in the body lasts only about 90 seconds—unless we mentally keep it alive.
HSPs often excel in roles that value emotional intelligence, creativity, empathy, and focus—such as writing, counseling, therapy, research, education, and the arts. Careers that allow for independence, creativity, and deep focus are ideal—such as writing, design, therapy, research, or remote work roles.
The relationship between highly sensitive people and anger is a much-misunderstood topic. Due to traits of their personality, heightened empathy or childhood conditioning, many highly sensitive people have repressed anger, and do not know how to deal with their emotions healthily.
Stop taking things so personally.
Add in the fact that HSPs tend to be people-pleasers. They spend their lives feeling like outsiders, so feeling needed provides its own nourishment, even if to the HSPs' detriment. “Stop taking things so personally” comes across as both a judgment and a mandate. “It doesn't bother me.
A lack of sleep is enough to make anyone cranky, sloppy, and unproductive. But a lack of sleep for an HSP can make life almost unbearable. Getting enough sleep helps soothe HSPs' ramped-up senses and allows them to process their emotions. How much sleep a sensitive person gets can literally make or break their day.
According to Dr. Elaine Aron's research, HSP are more sensitive or responsive to stimuli. Therefore, they seem more sensitive to caffeine, beautiful music, violence in the media, and even physical pain (1).
Stress & Sensitivity Can Worsen With Age for HSPs. Here's How to Prevent That. If you are a highly sensitive person (HSP) you might be growing larger stress centers in your brain without even knowing it, and if you don't do anything about it, they will become even bigger. The larger they grow, the harder life will be.
And it's important to know that being a highly sensitive person isn't considered a mental health disorder — and that there's no official way to diagnose someone as HSP and there's no official highly sensitive person test (though there's this quiz from the doctor who coined the term “highly sensitive person.”)
Living with a highly sensitive person can present various challenges. Some of these challenges are related to the individual's emotional depth, while others are linked to their heightened sensitivity to physical stimuli. Emotional Intensity: Compared to other people, HSPs frequently feel emotions more strongly.
FAQs About Highly Sensitive People (HSPs)
These genetic variants don't block hormone receptors but can make HSPs more sensitive to emotional, environmental, and social stimuli. For example, HSPs may process stress hormones more intensely, leading to stronger emotional and physical responses.
HSP and Conflict
Communication of our own feelings and understanding how the other feels, can often reduce the points of conflict. We don't have to agree with the other's point of view, but if we can understand why they think that way, we are a step closer to deepening communication.
In fact, medical research is very clear that for everyone, stress is the biggest contributor to all health problems. Because HSPs are affected more by their environment than others, including stressful situations, HSPs are definitely more prone to any health problem that is increased by stress.
Stress management techniques, like deep breathing, exercise, and time management, can reduce its impact. Lowering your stress levels can make sensitivity more manageable, allowing you to better regulate your emotions without the impact of added stress.
Introversion is mainly about avoiding stimuli related to contact with others (too large groups of people, conflicts), while for a highly sensitive person the sensory stimuli are the most important ones. Think of loud sounds or bright lights.