They tear up at phone commercials. They brood for days over a
gentle ribbing. They know what you're feeling before you do. Their nerve
cells are actually hyperreactive. Say hello to the Highly Sensitive
Person—you've probably already made him cry.
By
Andrea Bartz, published on July 05, 2011 - last reviewed on May 20, 2013
Settling into a chair for coffee with a friend, Jodi Fedor feels her heart begin to pound. Tension creeps through her rib cage.
Anger
vibrates in her solar plexus. But she's not upset about anything. The
person across from her is. Fedor soaks up others' moods like a sponge.
On
a walk through her neighborhood in Ottawa, Canada, her attention zeroes
in on the one budded leaf that hasn't unfurled; it brings a lump to her
throat. The cawing of a far-off crow galvanizes her attention. An
abandoned nest half-hidden amid the treetops fills her with awe.
Less
lovely stimuli can have equally powerful effects. As a child, a casual
schoolyard taunt led to "sobbing and histrionics." Nowadays a small
slight can ricochet through her entire body "like I'm actually wounded."
Fedor
is sensitive—an adjective usually preceded by too. "I'm like an exposed
nerve," she says. "At its worst, my sensitivity turns me into an
emotional weather vane at the whim of my
environment." But at its best, it's a gift, a fine-tuned finger on the pulse of every flutter of her surroundings.
The Highly Sensitive Person has always been part of the human
landscape. There's evidence that many creative types are highly
sensitive, perceiving cultural currents long before they are manifest to
the mainstream, able to take in the richness of small things others
often miss. Others may be especially sensitive to animals and how they
are handled. They're also the ones whose feelings are so easily bruised
that they're constantly being told to "toughen up."
Today, science
is validating a group of people whose sensitivity surfaces in many
domains of life. Attuned to subtleties of all kinds, they have a complex
inner life and need time to process the constant flow of sensory data
that is their inheritance. Some may be particularly prone to the handful
of hard-to-pin-down disorders like chronic fatigue syndrome and
fibromyalgia.
Technology is now providing an especially revealing window into that
which likely defines them all—a nervous system set to register stimuli
at very low frequency and amplify them internally.
We
all experience shades of sensitivity. Who isn't rocked by rejection and
crushed by criticism? But for HSPs, emotional experience is at such a
constant intensity that it shapes their
personality and their lives—job performance,
social life, intimate relationships—as much as
gender
and race do. Those who learn to dial down the relentless swooping and
cresting of emotions that is the almost invariable accompaniment to
extreme sensitivity are able to transform raw perception into keen
perceptiveness.
Dan Nainan, a full-time stand-up comic based in
New York, gets tunnel vision after every show: "A thousand people stop
by and say they enjoyed it, but one person says something negative and I
take it so personally," he says. "It's led to some fights and has
almost come to physical blows." He appreciates the irony in hating
criticism yet voluntarily getting in front of a packed auditorium every
night. "In a regular 9-to-5, no one's walking up to you and yelling,
'You're terrible!' "
The Outside, Amplified
Highly
sensitive people are all around us. They make up about 20 percent of the
population, and likely include equal numbers of men and women. All the
available evidence suggests they are born and not made.
You would likely spot them by their most visible feature, their overemotionality. Shari Lynn Rothstein-Kramer, who owns a
marketing
firm in Miami, Florida, cries almost daily. The sight of a beautiful
outfit or exquisite handbag can choke her up. She recently found a note
from a neighbor on her windshield that read, "
Park in the middle of your space!!" and teared up on the spot. She had to
persuade herself not to let it ruin her day.
The
proverbial thin skin of HSPs covers a highly permeable nervous system.
Gentle ribbing or an offhand jab can leave them brooding for days. But
just as likely, an unexpected compliment or kind exchange can send their
mood soaring, while the sight of a dad playing adoringly with his child
can bring on tears fueled by a rush of warmth.
A news segment
about a disturbing event—a death, a rape—can upset them deeply. Reading
about a recent gang rape, New York actor and writer Jim Dailakis became
"overwhelmingly emotional. I couldn't stop thinking about what that poor
woman went through and how it affected her loved ones. I felt sadness
mixed with unbelievable rage toward her attackers." Given their extreme
ability to sense and internalize the moods of those around them, the
presence of an agitated person, even a stranger with whom they never
interact, can make them uneasy.
HSPs often have a heightened sense of
smell
or touch and, say, zero tolerance for itchy fabrics or sudden
sounds—reflecting their low threshold for sensory input. They complain
about things no one else notices; a colleague's deodorant or a scented
candle gives them headaches. And there's that damn light buzzing in the
otherwise quiet office. An hour or two into a party or other
sensory-rich event and they've withdrawn to a corner, a prelude to
announcing they need to go home.
Above
all, HSPs are defined by their internal experience. "It's like feeling
something with 50 fingers as opposed to 10," explains Judith Orloff, a
psychiatrist and author of Emotional Freedom. "You have more receptors to perceive things."
Highly sensitive people are often taken for
introverts, and, as with introverts, social interaction depletes them. But in fact they react strongly to
everything
in their environment. As a result, they need and typically seek extra
processing time to sort out their experience. About one in five HSPs are
actually
extraverts, social sensation seekers who derive pleasure from chatty interactions. But they, too, draw unusually heavily on
cognitive horsepower to digest their experiences.
Rothstein-Kramer
considers herself a highly sensitive extravert. "I'd even go with
'gregarious,'" she says, chuckling. "When people are positive, it
inspires me to be more outgoing and energized." But negative
interactions send her spiraling south: "People give me the highest highs
and lowest lows."
In general, the heavy cognitive demands on all
HSPs predispose them to a more reactive than boldly active stance in
life. All that sensory input consumes psychic resources for thinking
before they take action. Any risks they face are carefully calculated.
Delicate Subjects
The
notion that there is a whole category of people whose nervous systems
overreact to ordinary stimuli grew out of the personal experience of
psychologist Elaine Aron. In 1991, she began seeing a psychotherapist
for help coping with her intense response to a medical issue. On Aron's
second visit, the therapist nonchalantly suggested that Aron's outsize
reaction to a minor physical problem was "just because you're highly
sensitive."
"I had noticed I was different," she says, "but I
didn't have a way to conceptualize it. The term stuck with me, and I set
out to see what we really mean by 'sensitivity.'" The short answer:
nothing like the acute emotional responsiveness she had in mind. An
in-depth search of the literature turned up only an occasional reference
to chemical or
medication sensitivity and vague references to sensitivity as a key dimension of mothering.
Aron's
search led her to the work of Ernest Hartmann, a psychiatrist at Tufts
University best known for his dream research. Around the same time, he
was solidifying the concept of boundaries as a dimension of personality
and way of experiencing the world. Life, he observes, is made up of
boundaries—between past and present, you and me, subject and object. And
people differ in the way they embody and perceive boundaries.
In
his schema, people with thin mental boundaries do not clearly separate
the contents of consciousness, so that a fantasy life of daydreaming may
bump right up against everyday reality. It's as if those with thin
boundaries have porous shells that allow more of their environment to
penetrate and "get" to them—and into their
dreams.
Hartmann's concept of the thin-boundaried seemed to suggest that there
indeed exists a group of people who take in a whole lot more than
others.
Too, Aron saw intimations of highly sensitive people in
Jerome Kagan's now-classic research delineating infant temperament. A
Harvard psychologist, Kagan had found that about 10 to 20 percent of
infants begin life with a tightly tuned nervous system that makes them
easily aroused, jumpy, and distressed in response to novel stimuli. Such
highly reactive infants, as he termed them, run the risk of growing
into "inhibited" children, who tend to withdraw from experience as a
defense and are at high risk for anxiety.
Kagan says his "high
reactives" have only one specific kind of sensitivity—"a sensitivity to
events in the environment that imply a new challenge." And
brain
imaging studies show that their reactivity reflects a distinctive
biological feature: a hyperresponsive amygdala, the brain center that
assesses threats and governs the
fear
response. Unexpected events—from a blizzard to a pop quiz—set off the
alarm system embedded in their naturally touchy amygdala, keeping them
on the constant lookout for danger.
Relieved to find indications
that there existed people governed by sensitivity, Aron was disappointed
that the feature, however defined, was associated only with pathology.
As a psychologist, she says, "I decided to start at the ground and see
what people who identify with the word think of it." Thirty "grueling"
three-hour interviews later, she was on her way to creating a 27-item
questionnaire that is the benchmark for sensitivity. "I have a rich,
complex inner life." Check. "I am made uncomfortable by loud noises."
Check.
Born to Be Mild
Advancing neuroscience research
suggests that the kind of emotional sensitivity Aron had in mind might
be linked to specific variations in
gene expression in the nervous system, notably genes related to production of the neurotransmitters serotonin and
dopamine.
One
gene variation, the short-short allele of the serotonin transporter
5-HTT, has long been associated with a vulnerability to depression and
anxiety. Recent data indicate that the very same gene variant brings an
array of cognitive benefits—including better, and more profitable,
decision-making
in gambling situations. Aron suspects the allele may be present in HSPs
and could account for their tendency to assess risks thoroughly.
"It's hard to imagine this trait enduring in the gene pool if it led only to negative emotions like
depression," Aron says. "The problematic outcomes are just easier to observe than more positive interactions with the environment."
Brain
imaging studies suggest real differences in the brains of HSPs versus
everyone else. Cortical areas linked to attention and processing
perceptual data show higher activation in response to all kinds of
stimuli. Further, the possibility of reward sparks an outsize response
in the reward circuit, and fear-related regions are particularly stirred
by threats.
In his own research on thin-boundaried people, Tufts' Ernest Hartmann has found a strong link to
creativity
that Aron believes applies to HSPs as well. Of hundreds of student
artists and musicians he has studied, nearly all test positive on his
thin-boundaries questionnaire. Many fewer do among those who are able to
make a profession of the arts—suggesting that it takes more than
practice to make it to Carnegie Hall.
A 2003 study reported in the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
found that the brains of creative people appear to be far more open to
incoming stimuli than those of the noncreative. During a simple task,
they experience little latent inhibition—they do not screen out
irrelevant data from consciousness and more of their brains are highly
activated from moment to moment.
Their extreme responsiveness to
all
situations, Aron believes, makes HSPs prone to anxiety and depression
in the face of a distressing situation. But it also makes life richer;
sights, sounds, flavors, images of
beauty are more vivid. It's as if HSPs alone see the world in high-def.
A Basis in Biology
Yet
another facet of sensitivity is the focus of independent research by
Michael Jawer. A decade ago, Jawer was an investigator for the
Environmental Protection Agency looking into reports of sick building
syndrome and preparing air-quality guidance for building owners. Why, he
wanted to know, did only a handful of people complain about indoor
environmental conditions?
"Some said that in everyday life they've
been disabled by exposure to colognes, paints, pesticides, trace
elements in the air," he says. "And some went on to tell me they'd been
emotionally sensitive for many years. Perhaps the same factors that were
disposing certain people to complain about their environment suggested a
broader aspect of sensitivity than just the emotional kind."
When
he surveyed people Aron had identified as HSPs, he found unusual
susceptibility to an array of conditions long thought to have a
psychosomatic component. Much more than others in the population, they
suffered from migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue
syndrome, allergies, and fibromyalgia. Jawer felt the findings point to
wide-scale biological differences in HSPs.
"Take migraines," he
says. "We know they're triggered by a number of things in the
environment—sights, smells, even changes in the weather." Moods, too,
can act as a catalyst: "Strong feelings, even ones people don't realize
they have, can bring migraines on," says Jawer. He believes HSPs are
unusually touchy to both emotional and tangible irritants—to
mean-spirited comments as well as pollen or dander in the air.
Behind it all, says Orloff, is likely a hair-trigger flight-or-fight response. A lower threshold of activation of
stress hormones
would leave the body flooded with cortisol and adrenaline. Chronically
elevated stress hormones are linked with a host of health problems, from
heart disease to decreased bone density to impaired
memory.
To
Aron, the evidence adds up to a distinctive personality type. The HSP's
touchy nervous system leads to a touchy temperament. Like the princess
sensing the pea below her tower of mattresses, HSPs perceive the
slightest sensory or emotional provocation, then respond with a flurry
of brain activity that begets an outsize reaction—rumination, tears,
histrionics, on one hand, or unbridled enthusiasm on the other. Their
personalities may run the gamut from moody to dramatic—all the product
of their unique biology.
Missing Men?
In
crafting her questionnaire, Aron was determined to include only those
questions men and women answered in equal proportions and calibrated it
so that 20 percent of males and females registered as highly sensitive.
But once she started administering the test to the general population,
far fewer than 20 percent of males came up HSP-positive. Where did the
guys go—or were they never there to begin with?
Aron insists that
males and females are born highly sensitive in equal numbers—but some
men grow up actively hiding it. "They don't want to identify as
sensitive."
Kagan's "reactives," too, were male and female in equal measure—at 4 months of age. But "the male peer group is very harsh with
shy,
timid boys," he explains, and by young adulthood, the highly reactive
males were very difficult to pick out from the non-reactive population.
The
neural basis of sensitivity appears no different in men and women. But
the resulting behaviors—tearing up in joy, getting upset by a ribbing,
feeling overwhelmed at a concert or sporting event—may violate even
contemporary Western standards of masculinity. HSP males may look
effeminate to potential mates. (No, there's no evidence that HSP males
are disproportionately homosexual.)
"In North America, in
particular, we expect boys to be tough and to be risk-takers," says Ted
Zeff, a San Francisco psychologist whose in-depth interviews with more
than 30 highly sensitive men in five countries resulted in a book,
The Strong, Sensitive Boy.
"Boys are told to hide all emotions other than anger. This is
especially hard on sensitive boys, who have to repress their natural
tendencies."
New York's Jim Dailakis admits "I definitely hide my
sensitivity from certain people. Wearing your heart completely on your
sleeve leaves you open to ridicule."
Double-Edged Effects
Internalized
by a highly sensitive child, ridicule can snowball into depression.
Likewise, a "Nice job!" atop a book report might not seem like a
game-changer, but to a sensitive child a little encouragement can have
outsize effects, motivating a child to reproduce that behavior—say, by
studying well for the next test. School and
parenting
practices can dramatically shape the development of highly sensitive
children, who can thrive spectacularly in a mildly encouraging classroom
or struggle endlessly in a slightly discouraging one, while a
non-sensitive child would wind up about the same regardless of slight
variations in the environment.
The possibility of opposite
outcomes—downward spiral or rocketing success—underscores the
double-edged nature of sensitivity. Neither flaw nor gift, it is,
rather, an amplifier of an environment's effects. Sensitive people who
happened to have troubled childhoods may wind up with high rates of
anxiety and depression, but HSPs who were loved and encouraged as
children can grow into well-adjusted adults.
"You Won't Make Me Sound Crazy, Will You?"
Fedor
and Rothstein-Kramer both ask the same question, out of the blue,
mid-interview. Connoisseurs of small slights, study partners who
cannot
focus with that stupid jackhammer roaring outside, HSPs are subject to a
constant influx of criticism exhorting them to toughen up or to grow
cojones. That message—that they're somehow unacceptable as they are—resonates with intensity.
Aron
would like to see HSPs focus more on what they have to offer. They make
compassionate friends who truly care about others; they channel beauty
from the world into art and music; they notice things others miss.
Ensconced in safe environments and steeled against the negativity of
others, they can flourish.
HSPs inhabit a teeming world of vibrant
colors, sharp smells, striking sounds, and powerful tugs at their
emotions. "I am, and I always will be, extremely aware of my environment
and the people within it," Fedor says. As CEO of a successful beauty
company, she surrounds herself with supportive people. "I tried
toughening up, rooting myself in taxing situations," she says. "Then I
realized I was spending my time coping instead of thriving. Now I know
that I can choose to respond or to let something go." For her, it's a
purer way of savoring this piquant world. —
Andrea Bartz
Tips for the Touchy
Highly
sensitive? "You've probably gone through life assuming you're like the
other 80 percent of people," Aron says. "The truth is, you need a whole
different instruction manual." Here are a few adjustments you can make
to sync your life with your mode of sensory processing.
- Designate downtime.
Your brain works overtime processing input and soaking up others'
moods, so it needs a chance to recover. "Limit stimulation when you
can," Aron suggests. "Turn the radio off when you're driving. Use a sleep mask and earplugs at night." Meditation
is also a powerful way to tamp down stress hormones. Orloff prescribes
quick, three-minute meditations during the day: Sit quietly, put your
hand over your heart, deepen your breathing, and focus on something
beautiful—a picture of your child.
- Talk yourself calm.
Sensitive people aren't doomed to spend life reeling from rejection.
It's possible to rein in a response before it spirals down to
depression. Fedor carries a checklist in her wallet and runs through it
when she feels under attack: "Is this about me? What is the intent of
the other person? Am I reacting because this brings out fear in me?"
Similarly, Rothstein-Kramer asks herself, "How can I interpret this
situation in a different way?" "Practice controlling your reactions,"
she says; "eventually a little dig won't throw you."
- Change your interactions.
Kindly but firmly cut off energy drains. Say your friend is midway
through her umpteenth rant about her job. "You have to lovingly but
matter-of-factly say, 'I see you're going through something; when you
want to get into solutions, I'm here for you, but right now this is hard
for me to listen to,'" Orloff explains. "Tone of voice is everything."
- Arm yourself.
Sometimes, you'll be forced into a situation that sucks you dry—a
conference you must endure for work, a business lunch with an
insufferable kvetch. Protect yourself: "Visualize a shield around your
body, keeping negative input out," Orloff says.
- Rewrite history.
Think back to the decisions you've regretted and the things you dislike
about yourself: "Very often, they have to do with sensitivity," Aron
points out. The surprise party where you wound up crying in your room
and the promotion you turned down because it involved too much pressure
make much more sense through the lens of your sensitivity. Acknowledge
this.
Dealing with Delicate People
Since 20 percent
of the population is highly sensitive, "you're probably working with or
are even friends with one—you just didn't realize it," Aron says. Now
that you know the hallmarks of this personality, adjust your behavior to
make your interactions smoother.
- Skip the tips.
HSPs are mighty sick of hearing, "You really shouldn't let it get to
you" from well-meaning friends. They experience it as a put-down, a
suggestion that they've done something wrong. Say something more
reassuring—such as, that whatever situation is causing them stress will
improve shortly.
- Modify your view. In a close
relationship, you may discover you've been making wrong assumptions
about your partner. You may hear things like "I never liked going to
those sporting events or concerts," Aron warns. Forgo the temptation to
respond with grief or anger. Just accept it.
- Respect their space.
A common mistake HSPs' loved ones make: hovering. "They promise their
partner an hour of recharge time," Orloff says, "and then they hang
around waiting for you to come out." Better to tell them, "Fine, go
replenish, I'll be out mowing the lawn"—and do it.
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