What makes people sensitive

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Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Mental Health. Written by Juli Fraga — Updated on April 18, Share on Pinterest. Being an HSP affected my childhood. Being an HSP affected my relationships. Being an HSP affected my college life. Read this next. It is important to remember that being an HSP does not mean that you have a diagnosable condition. It is a personality trait that involves increased responsiveness to both positive and negative influences.

High sensitivity applies across a few different categories. There are several traits or characteristics common to HSPs, according to the researchers who identified this personality trait:.

For a more thorough or official identification, the Arons developed a personality questionnaire to help people identify themselves as HSPs. Sensory processing sensitivity is also sometimes confused with a condition called sensory processing disorder, although the two are believed to be distinct.

It is less common to be a highly sensitive person, and society tends to be built around people who notice a little less and are affected a little less deeply. Highly sensitive people may benefit from finding ways to cope with the stresses they often face.

This is true for those who recognize themselves as highly sensitive as well as those who have a loved one who is more sensitive than the average person. Being an HSP comes with both advantages and challenges. It is possible to be too easily offended by people who mean no harm or who are trying their best to be kind. It is also possible to overreact to daily stressors or relationship issues, particularly if you become emotionally aggressive as a response.

It is more that you perceive them more easily. Or, you may be affected more deeply by negative experiences, which is not necessarily a weakness. Some of the ways that being an HSP might impact your life include:. If you know how to manage the unique features of being an HSP, you can make it more of a strength and less of a challenge in your life.

Not surprisingly, highly sensitive people tend to get more stressed when faced with difficult situations. Social stress is perceived as more taxing to most people than other types of stress. This kind of stress can be particularly difficult for someone who can perceive many different ways that things could go wrong in a conflict, for example, or can perceive hostility or tension where others may not notice it.

Specific things that can be significantly stressful for the highly sensitive include:. Not everyone loves being too busy, but some people thrive on the excitement and exhilaration of a busy life. HPSs, on the other hand, feel overwhelmed and rattled when they have a lot to do in a short amount of time, even if they technically have enough time to get everything done if they rush. The need to juggle the uncertainty of maybe not being able to make it all work and the pressure of such situations feels overwhelmingly stressful.

Highly sensitive people tend to pick up on the needs and feelings of others. They hate letting people down. Highly sensitive people tend to be their own worst critics. They feel responsible for the happiness of others, or at least acutely aware of it when there are negative emotions floating around. HSPs may be more prone to being stressed by conflict. This can also lead to misinterpreting unrelated signals as signs of conflict or anger. Highly sensitive people can be prone to the stress of social comparison as well.

They may feel the negative feelings of the other person as well as their own feelings, and they may experience them more strongly and deeply than others. Emotion contagion is thought to be the basis on which empathy—an understanding of how someone is feeling and a sharing of their emotion—is built. There is research suggesting a link: Singer has found that people who are more susceptible to emotion contagion also score higher on empathy questionnaires.

Singer has not studied people with SPD. But Elysa Marco is receptive to the idea that over-responsive SPD kids and adults fall at the extreme end of a spectrum of general sensitivity to the environment that includes other people. But highly sensitive people and animals generally approach situations, including social interactions, more cautiously. They notice more about their environment, and can use that information to help them to survive and, ideally, thrive.

In difficult environments, they do badly. But in supportive environments, they actually do better than dandelions. Both Aron and Marco admire this work. Those who pay close attention to their environment—notice more, take more in—will do better in some circumstances, while bold, adventurous, thrill-seeking types will be more likely to succeed in others. The observation of more-sensitive, environmentally aware and also bold, less-sensitive individuals in a wide range of animals, from birds to fish, supports this idea.

But where do people with SPD fit in? Marco thinks that some of her over-sensitive patients sit on the extreme end of the orchid spectrum.

Aron is not so sure; her feeling is that they are different in kind. People with SPD who are over-responsive are more distracted by sensory input than able to use it to garner useful information about their environment, she argues.

Boyce is not convinced either. While sensory sensitivity is a hallmark of an orchid child, he thinks there are other differences in orchid brain functioning — differences that mean they process information about their environment more deeply. Once a patient is diagnosed, the next step is treatment—not to remove the sensitivity, given its potential benefits, but to make living with it less traumatic.

At the moment, occupational therapy is often used to design specific programs depending on the symptoms. Treatments can also include drugs for anxiety or those used in ADHD, but other options may be on the way.

With colleagues, Marco is involved in work on a computer game, called Evo , designed to help train attention. While these are all distinct diagnostic labels, they apply to groups of symptoms that often overlap.

For Rachel Schneider, recognizing SPD as a distinct disorder is essential, because it would cut the number of people who grow up, as she did, not understanding what is wrong with them—and being dismissed, or worse, as a result. At the start of , he tells me, he finally summoned the courage to describe his everyday experiences to his mother.

The large sunlit hall is already packed with representatives from local cultural institutions. Then she goes into the hall, overcomes the reflections and the anxiety, and starts to speak. By providing your email, you agree to the Quartz Privacy Policy.