In the workplace, HSPs are often the highest performers, yet the first to burn out. They can struggle in relationships, as they lean towards people-pleasing. “When you notice all the little hurts that happen with other people, how can you not?” points out Granneman. But the story is not a pessimistic one, she insists. The ability to connect is of huge value and higher sensitivity is linked with creativity, brilliance and higher IQ. The trait is shared by pioneers across science, business and the arts – anyone who notices details others don’t, makes connections they can’t. “I knew an HSP painter who saw 20 different shades of blue on a wall where others saw just one,” she says. p.198 – Because the cognitive brain is in charge of language, the mere process of putting your feelings into words is one way to activate this part of your brain. Are you easily overwhelmed by such things as bright lights, strong smells, coarse fabrics, or sirens nearby? This book so far is a mess. It's mixing up meanings of "sensitive" as if they're all interchangeable, and throwing in political stereotypes and even some religious new-agey stuff. This book by James Williams seeks to help adults understand the world from a highly sensitive child’s perspective. It aims to help HSP children grow and thrive despite their difficulties. Understanding the Highly Sensitive Child also provides readers with clear and concise guides which makes information easily digestible.

People can also draw inspiration from the men interviewed in this book who have learned to live well with high sensitivity in their lives.p.150 – Depth of Processing – Sensitive people don’t just take in more information; they do more with it. p.214 – To a less-sensitive person, this dark side of empathy has a simple solution: Dial it down. Sensitive people cannot shut off their empathy any more than they can shut off their physical senses or their deep thinking.

Elaine sees the success of The Highly Sensitive Person as cause for celebration: “We’ve done it ourselves, almost entirely by word-of-mouth. And not surprisingly, since we are 15 to 20 percent of the population – that’s fifty million in the United States. Highly sensitive people are real, we exist, and we’ve proven it. That alone is something to celebrate.” Another cause for Aron and her fellow HSPs to celebrate is the acceptance into mainstream psychology of the HSP personality trait. After numerous in-depth interviews, as well as surveys of over one thousand people, Dr. Aron’s findings have been published in Counseling Today, Counseling and Human Development, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Brain and Behavior, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience and the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, as well as in chapters of various books such as The Handbook of Temperament. Here are some of the things that sensitive people report as being challenging in their marriage and friendships:

a b Pluess, Michael; Belsky, Jay (2013). "Vantage Sensitivity: Individual Differences in Response to Positive Experiences" (PDF). Psychological Bulletin. 139 (4): 901–916. doi: 10.1037/a0030196. PMID 23025924. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 26, 2016. Putting your spouse’s, children’s or friend’s needs ahead of your own, to the point of exhaustion, burnout, or disconnection from yourself p.39 – Being sensitive, in other words, isn’t some rare fluke, reserved only for artists and geniuses. It’s about one out of every three people in every city, workplace, and school. a b c Wolf, Max; Van Doorn, G. Sander; Weissing, Franz J. (2008). "Evolutionary emergence of responsive and unresponsive personalities". PNAS. 105 (41): 15825–15830. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0805473105. PMC 2572984. PMID 18838685. "Such differences in responsiveness (also termed coping style, reactivity, flexibility, plasticity) have been documented in many organisms including ... humans" (n. 15 citing Aron & Aron (1997, SPS) and n. 16 citing Belsky et al. (2007, differential susceptibility)). Boterberg et al. (2016) cites Wolf et al. (2008) for the statement: "research in evolutionary biology provides evidence that the trait of SPS can be observed in over 100 nonhuman species."