Sensitive
This week I was told by a new doctor that I have sensory processing sensitivity. Another description is that I am a highly sensitive person or HSP. This isn’t a medical condition but rather just another innate way of being. It is a personality trait that seems to be inherited. 20% of the population has it. Curious, and skeptical if I’m to be honest, I did some reading on this. I took a test that I passed with 95% accuracy. Yikes. Guess it kind of nails me. Reading on I saw much of myself in the descriptors of this trait.
People with HSP tend to process their experiences more deeply. Okay, this sounds pretty cool. I am a deep processor! But wait, ALL of their experiences. Of course, included in this are loud noises, bright lights, and strong smells but also subtleties in the environment like faint background noises, coarse fabrics, and other people’s moods. We startle easily. We are more sensitive to pain. We avoid violent movies. Our nervous system becomes so overloaded that we often need to retreat to a private place just to get relief from the stimulation.
HSP affects our behavior as well. Just having a lot going on can put us in a bad mood. We especially don’t like having a lot to do in a short amount of time. We don’t like to be watched or rushed. We are detail-oriented and try hard to get things right. Thus, we do not take criticism well. We are conscientious and courteous and have a hard time understanding why other people aren’t. We try to arrange our lives to minimize upsetting or overwhelming situations. We are stressed out by change, even small ones.
While we have compassion in spades for other people we tend to lack it for ourselves. We have high expectations for ourselves and tend to blame ourselves when someone is disappointed. We struggle to make boundaries with loved ones, feeling it is easier to give up our own needs than disappoint someone. And if we have an intense emotional reaction we feel badly about that too. We feel the feelings of others around us and are more affected by news, injustice, and violence. Our stress levels tend to run high. We tend to be depressed and suffer from burnout.
On top of all of that, we feel like the town weirdos. Our culture carries a bias against they trait, perceiving sensitivity as a weakness. In other cultures, where the trait is considered a strength, people with the trait are not as prone to depression and cope with stress better.
This revelation that I have this trait is pretty overwhelming. Reading about it has given me a lot to process. That kind of makes me laugh. Of course, I will pull this knowledge into my deep inner world and mull it over. Wish me luck!
