Highly sensitive people may be more affected by certain situations such as tension, violence, and conflict, which may lead them to avoid things that make them feel uncomfortable. You might be highly touched by beauty or emotionality. Highly sensitive people tend to feel deeply moved by the beauty they see around them.
For example, if they are feeling overwhelmed or stressed, you could suggest that they spend a few minutes alone and takes some deep breaths. You might also encourage them to take solo walks during their lunch break, and to listen to soothing music with earphones.
From a clinical personality perspective, high sensitivity could be considered to have substantial overlaps with hypersensitive narcissism, or generally vulnerable narcissism.
The 5 Love Languages (Chapman, 2015) include: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. Words are powerful for HSPs, who tend to replay conversations over and over again.
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.
Highly sensitive people (HSPs) tend to get overwhelmed or over-stimulated because they “process more information from their environment and from within than others do,” said Jean Fitzpatrick, LP, a psychotherapist who specializes in working with HSPs.
The psychologist says overwhelmed HSPs also may feel even more sensitive to external stimuli like bright lights and loud noises and they may feel “irritable, on edge and overcome with anxiety”. “It's also very common for HSPs to feel physically unwell when they are stressed,” she adds.
Take a mental step back and assess the situation before responding. This will help you process the criticism and form space for you to think clearly. You can also choose not to react at all. You might think you're the one who's done something wrong but that's not always the case.
HSPs are known to be highly observant, intuitive, thoughtful, compassionate, empathetic, conscientious, loyal, and creative. In fact, managers consistently rate people with higher sensitivity as their top contributors.
Being highly sensitive does NOT mean you're easily insulted or “full of drama.” We always tell people who get offended easily to not be “so sensitive,” but high sensitivity has nothing to do with overreacting, getting offended, or creating drama for people.
The three subtypes of highly sensitive people include Aesthetic Sensitivity (AES), Low Sensory Threshold (LST), and Ease of Excitation (EOE). Before we explain what each of these means, it's important to note that HSPs can fit into more than one subtype, each subtype has its own characteristics.
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.”)
Highly sensitive people (HSPs) need daily downtime that is alone, unstructured, and unplugged. If you are always taking in extra sensory and data information, it will lead to nervous system overload. This trait of high sensitivity is scientifically known as Sensory Processing Sensitivity.
One of the main reasons that HSPs might feel lonely is that their interactions and relationships are lacking substance — and our constant sense of being an “outsider” only makes this worse. Unless we can stop withdrawing and get the meaningful interactions we crave.
HSPs often struggle with overthinking, feeling like an imposter, and feeling like they are always doing something wrong.
Most HSPs are either INFJs or INFPs — the ones that don't tend to be ENFJs or ENFPs. Whether you're one or both, it's important to know what stresses you, what overstimulates you and what makes you feel calm, relaxed and happy.
Bjelland noted a belief that all empaths are HSPs, but not all HSPs are empaths. Dr. Orloff said that an empath indeed carries all of the attributes of an HSP but with more developed intuition and a sponge-like ability for absorbing emotions. "You turn up the volume going from HSP to empath," Dr.
Trauma is our mind and body's response to any distressing event or events that overwhelm our ability to cope. While a highly sensitive person (HSP) is no more likely to experience distressing events than a non-HSP, they may be more likely to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result.
Nature. Being in natural environments make HSPs happy. Highly sensitives have a natural affinity with nature and it deeply affects their moods.
Most highly sensitive people display rare strengths in key areas of emotional intelligence, also known as emotional quotient (EQ) — the ability to recognize and understand emotions in themselves and others. These strengths including self-awareness and social-awareness.
In the DSM sensory processing sensitivity (the formal name for HSP) it is not associated with autism at all. Another major difference is that HSP don't struggle with 'social' issues like eye contact, recognizing faces, social cues, and knowing the intentions of others.