Elaine Aron has a doctoral degree in clinical psychology and a thriving psychotherapy practice. She is the first therapist to tell HSPs how to identify their trait and make the most of it in everyday situations. An HSP herself, Aron reassures others that they are quite normal. Their trait is not a flaw or a syndrome, nor is it a reason to brag. It is an asset they can learn to use and protect. When I must compete or be observed while performing a task, I become so nervous or shaky that I do much worse than I would otherwise. Some of it makes me laugh. One correspondent claims their main challenge is: “Every aspect of life! It’s all too much!” Maria, meanwhile, feels other people’s feelings, to the point it makes her sad. But her main problem is “Noises. NOISES.” At chapter 5 the only thing remotely helpful it's said is to advise to mute commercials when watching TV as commercials are intended to be highly stimulating. Everything else so far either doesn't apply to me (even though I scored high on the test included), is insulting and generalities to non-HSP people, contradictory or obviously false.

As knowledge about my trait changed my life, I decided to read more about it, but there was almost nothing available.I thought the closest topic might be introversion.The psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote very wisely on the subject, calling it a tendency to turn inward.The work of Jung, himself an HSP, has been a major help to me, but the more scientific work on introversion was focused on introverts not being sociable, and it was that idea which made me wonder if introversion and sensitivity were being wrongly equated. PRAISE FOR DR. ELAINE ARON AND HER GROUNDBREAKING CLASSIC THE HIGHLY SENSITIVE PERSON “Elaine Aron’s perceptive analysis of this fundamental dimension of human nature is must reading. Her balanced presentation suggests new paths for making sensitivity a blessing, not a handicap.” —Philip G. Zimbardo, author of Shyness “Enlightening and empowering, this book is a wonderful gift to us all.” —Riane Ensler, author of Nurturing Our Humanity “Shy people fear being judged or rejected, whereas highly sensitive people have a keen awareness of their environment, frequently becoming overstimulated by it.” This title kept me engaged for about one third of the book. After that I started skimming, and when I had to force myself to keep going I said "Hey, what's up with that, I might as well be reading something fun."At the same time, each chapter raised at least one point I either hadn't considered before, or had considered at length but in some other context. So I think it's worth a read if you take the quiz and any of the personality traits apply to you.

Kaufman, Scott Barry (May 4, 2015). "Shades of Sensitivity". Scientific American. Archived from the original on December 8, 2015. Kaufman explains Smolewska et al. (2006). From Wolf et al. (2008): coping style, reactivity, flexibility, plasticity, and differential susceptibility. Psychologist Elaine N. Aron has produced several books on the subject of highly-sensitive people. This appears to have been her first and is, I suspect, her most commercial. In it, she attempts to introduce the theory that there exists a distinct set of human beings who are genetically wired with a heightened sensitivity to all things sensory. Unlike the introvert, who purportedly thrives in isolation and opts for solitude or smaller groups when given the choice, the highly-sensitive person has trouble withstanding the cacophony of the wider world and is constitutionally compelled to seek sanctuary when confronted with an abundance of stimulation - whether she wishes to or not. The distinction is a subtle one, and made all the more difficult to draw by the author's freshman approach to this sort of presentation. Much of the material has been dumbed down for the layman, couched in wildly-contradictory terms, and richly romanticized. Again, first book. One assumes lessons have been learned. 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, and the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

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Do not overschedule yourself. Allow time to think, to daydream. Keep your expectations realistic. Do not hide your abilities. Be your own advocate. Support your right to be yourself. Accept it when you have narrow interests. Or broad ones. From "'The Power of (Shyness)' and High Sensitivity..." (2012): (re introversion) 30% of HSPs are social extroverts. Okay, I get it; we're affected more than most. I have enough imagination that I don't need things spelled out for every aspect of life.

If you have ever felt like life is too overwhelming and all you want to do is crawl into a cave and hide away from it all, this book might be for you.Ellis, Bruce J.; Boyce, W. Thomas; Belsky, Jay; Bakermans-Kranenburt, Marian J.; van Ijzendoorn, Marinus H. (2011). "Differential susceptibility to the environment: An evolutionary–neurodevelopmental theory". Development and Psychopathology. 23 (1): 7–28. doi: 10.1017/S0954579410000611. PMID 21262036. S2CID 9802873. Archived from the original on July 4, 2016. "DST and BSCT began with a focus on child-developmental processes, whereas SPS started with a focus on cognitive processes in adults" (p. 10). The Arons (1997) recognized psychologist Albert Mehrabian's (1976, 1980, 1991) concept of filtering the "irrelevant", but wrote that the concept implied that the inability of HSPs' (Mehrabian's "low screeners") to filter out what is irrelevant would imply that what is relevant is determined from the perspective of non-HSPs ("high screeners"). [13] Attributes, characteristics and prevalence [ edit ] In defining the Highly Sensitive Person, Dr. Aron provides examples of characteristic behaviors, and these are reflected in the questions she typically asks patients or interview subjects: a b "The Highly Sensitive Person In Love with Elaine Aron". WebMD Live Events Transcript. Archived from the original on March 17, 2018. Transcript published October 2007 or before. Echoes from the past?And how about this well-meaning warning: "You're just too sensitive for your own good."

Who wouldn’t want to be HSP?” says Fergus Kane, clinical psychologist at the Maudsley, when I throw him the hot potato. “It’s an almost entirely positive set of attributes.” One possible downside, he says, might be missing a diagnosis in another area. Overstimulation overlaps with conditions such as ADHD and autism – female autism in particular is little understood (sensitivity researchers maintain there are key differences) – and a diagnosis might lead to alternative interventions, from meditation to medication. There is a non-clinical value to self-identification, Kane adds, understanding how we interact with the world, and having compassion for ourselves. I also take severe issue with the quiz itself. It specifically refers to being "in" or "out" and whether the quiz taker leans too far in one direction or another. According to this quiz I am just on the cusp of being inside too much. But the wording of the question or her decision of how to score it is problematic. I do not see the issue of spending most of my time inside or alone, nor do I see a problem with stopping with my activity if I feel a little too overwhelmed to continue and need a break. Being out more often won't help me be happier or somehow make me less sensitive. a b c Boyce, W. Thomas (2016). "Differential Susceptibility of the Developing Brain to Contextual Adversity and Stress". Neuropsychopharmacology. 41 (1): 141–162. doi: 10.1038/npp.2015.294. PMC 4677150. PMID 26391599.People identify to varying degrees and for some, it’s simply the most available term. “I didn’t know it was A Thing. Creative people are just more porous. HSP sounds better,” muses bestselling author Jojo Moyes. “It’s helpful not to feel like a weirdo because I worry about the last baked bean left on my plate.” From "The Clinical Implications of Jung's Concept of Sensitiveness" (2006): (re autism) HSPs are very aware of social and emotional cues and relate well socially once familiarity is achieved. While Kagan associated this temperament with fearfulness and worry, connecting it to the amygdala (the “fear centre” of the brain), today we know it’s a healthy trait. Dozens of researchers have confirmed this finding, most notably Elaine Aron, arguably the founder of the field of sensitivity research. (In fact, the fearfulness that Kagan observed in some of those high-reactive children largely went away by adulthood.) Now the same trait Kagan studied is known by many names: highly sensitive people (HSPs), sensory processing sensitivity, biological sensitivity to context, differential susceptibility, or even “orchids and dandelions” – sensitive people being the orchids. Recently, there has been a move to bring these theories together under a single umbrella term: environmental sensitivity. 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.