HSP Topics: So WHAT if you're Sensitive? Why should it matter to you?

This is the third in a series of articles about the joys and challenges of life as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). For more background information about HSPs please read The Highly Sensitive Person: An Introduction which also contains an index of all my HSP-related articles.

I quite frequently run into people-- HSPs and non-HSPs alike, health professionals and lay people alike-- who will tell me something like "Well, sure there are highly sensitive people; sure high sensitivity is a 'real' thing. But so what? Why does it matter? Why are you always out there talking about this trait like it's something really important to people? I don't see how it makes any practical difference in the outcome of someone's life."

Some folks are just plain offended by the idea of there being a "label" that differentiates people; others are offended by the implication that if some people are "highly sensitive," others (including them) must be INsensitive. Finally, there are people who-- even though quite well-intentioned-- assert that high sensitivity is nothing more than the "New Age Pop Psychology Concept of the Month."

However, the question I most often face is about "why I bother" to always write about-- and talk about-- being a Highly Sensitive Person like it's "something important." Why don't I just say "OK. Fair enough, I'm highly sensitive," and then just go about my life with no further ado?

Short answer... because there is a "global benefit" to highly sensitive persons knowing that they are HSPs, and there's a secondary benefit to those who are not HSPs having at least a fundamental understanding of the trait.

I should start by saying that I have no issue with people being critics of new concepts. Science-- and scientific tenets-- are established through a process of "theory and challenge." As more research is done, more facts about the "what" of being highly sensitive emerge. Perhaps the most consequential is the mounting evidence that the brains of highly sensitive individuals are-- quite simply-- "hard wired" differently from other brains.

Through observing people connected to EEG and fMRI equipment, it has been shown that a "sensitive brain" and a "normal brain" actually fire different neural pathways, when exposed to the the same stimuli. This has enormous medical and psychological implications, in that it challenges and large invalidates popularly held beliefs that sensitivity is something people can "just get over." In other words, telling a sensitive person to "get over" being sensitive and just "deal with it" may-- in fact-- be a bit like telling someone with size 14 feet to "just get over" having such large feet, just "deal with" wearing size 12 shoes. Of course, we don't do such a thing, chiefly because feet are "observable" and tangible, while "sensitivity" is "fluid" and intangible.

These growing findings have similar significance to the recent research showing that differences between introverts and extraverts is actually part physiological-- specifically that extraverts access speech from short-term memory, while introverts access speech from long-term memory, thus explaining why extraverted people tend to be "quicker" with their words.

Of course, the above only explains some of the "base mechanics" of high sensitivity, not the reason why I believe it is so important to educate and spread the word about high sensitivity as a trait.

A significant part of my "calling" in life involves HSPs, and helping this particular group of individuals understand themselves a little better. I am an HSP, myself, as well as 25+ year student of psychology. And I know-- both from interacting with others, and from learning about myself-- that being highly sensitive is NOT "just in my head," as many health/mental health professionals would prefer to think.

Based on the estimates made by Dr. Elaine Aron, who's behind much of the current research on sensitivity, 15-20% of the population fit the description of a "Highly Sensitive Person." Using those numbers, there are at least 45 million people in the US alone, who fit the HSP description-- and yet, on a GOOD day maybe... maybe one million are aware that the strange "quirks" and moods, and their desire to find time alone, their tendency to get easily overwhelmed by external stimuli are all the biproduct of high sensitivity, rather than depression, anxiety, sensory integration disorder, SAD or some other "illness."

Even if you're not an HSP, odds are you know someone who is.

Are you a highly sensitive person?

If you don't know, here's a quick and easy "sensitivity self-test." Take the quiz... and post a comment to let me know how it went, and if the outcome was surprising, or "what you'd expected."

First, as seen above, highly sensitive people represent a very large group. This is not just an issue about "a handful of people" with some strange psychological condition.

The most important issue, however, is that some of the natural manifestations of high sensitivity are "lookalikes" when put side-by-side with anxiety disorders, depression, shyness, social phobia, ADHD and various other conditions which are "medicalized" by our society and treated with pharmaceuticals and other treatment methods. However, as long as the nature of high sensitivity is not broadly known, millions of people are being ineffectively treated for (mis)diagnosed "conditions" that are nothing more than natural manifestations of a highly attuned nervous system.

I should know. I was repeatedly told to "get help" for Social Anxiety. And yet? I never disliked or feared people-- in fact I like the company of people. Social situations do not make me anxious. They merely exhaust me, very quickly... for no reason other than I take in a lot more stimuli from my environment than most people, and thus wear out more quickly. And I've come to understand that it's about how I process information from my environment, not about a "disorder." If most therapists "had their way with me" my brain would not only be dulled by some medication, I would still be getting exhausted around groups of people!

And that, in a nutshell, is why I continue to spread the word about high sensitivity as a trait, and why I continue to do my part to help HSPs around the world become more informed.

There are some who may still not "see the point." They'll agree that perhaps there's "something" to high sensitivity but there's no reason to care because "it isn't going to kill you, and it doesn't cost society anything." Typically, those who argue this are very pragmatic folks who are somewhat suspicious of things that can't be "measured," "counted," or "seen."

In return, I ask why we "bother" to spead awareness of such things as Dyslexia, or ADHD. They don't "kill you," either. And typically get the reply that spreading awareness about these helps reduce billions of dollars of wasted education, and later lost productivity in the workplace.

To which I ask "And this is different from billions of dollars being wasted on the medical and psychological treatment of what's actually something that falls within the range of normal human experience... exactly HOW?"