Sensitive People in an Insensitive World

[Gaby]

I took that quiz a few years ago and scored over 20. I re-did it and scored 9. Some things are still positive, but also, if I managed to "face it" more often than not, I checked it negative.

“A call to wholeness rather than perfection might be the only way to get the message. This is a very individual matter. If we’ve stayed in, we’ll be tempted out or finally forced out. If we’ve been out, we’ll have to go in. If we’ve armored ourselves, we’ll finally have to admit to our vulnerability. But if we’ve been timid, we’ll start to feel all wrong inside until we’re more assertive. In respect to Jungian attitudes of introversion and extraversion, most HSPs need to be more extraverted in order to become more whole.”

“In general, anything that has been our particular specialty has to be balanced by its opposite, what we are bad at or afraid of trying."

Although I recognize that there is something to the HSP personality, in retrospect, some of the HSP elements described in the book strike me as a brain chemistry imbalance.

 

[Guardian]

I think that a person should answer "yes" to the question even if they do not allow the stressor to affect their behavior. I did. There were a number of things that I don't really like and which can cause internal "bother" but I don't necessarily show it. One thing that I've never been able to find a way to deal with is the effect of walking into a mall or store which can make my head spin and my heart palpitate. It's especially strong in stores where the electronics are on display right at the front so I'm pretty sure it is the EM pollution.

That's exactly what I meant by "trick questions" I have custom earplugs that only let in the human voice range to wear in loud places, silk clothes when I have to go to the mall, special sunglasses for florescent lights, etc. plus a wide variety of personal techniques to deal with stressful situations.

I think I'll retake the test and see what I get when I'm not wearing my "I have to leave the woods now" armor.

 

[Bluestar]

Scored an 18. Some of the questions I answered no to because I have built up a resistance to them, though at times it can still bother me.

A really big clue for me came many years ago after camping for about ten days with no electrical stimulus and then went into a supermarket. The fluorescent lights, noise of the people and energy of the place made me dizzy. Had to stop and take a few deep breathes and eventually was feeling better to go shopping.

When I was a small child could not handle loud noises. When any type of siren from an emergency vehicle passed I had to cover my ears and look away. I seemed to know automatically that somewhere someone was in trouble or hurt and I could not handle it. As I got older I remember forcing myself to look and listen to the loud siren. Just got used to it. A good thing because I grow up in New York City :)

Somethings we just get used to and as other have said, we build up shields to protect ourselves.

In agreement with Laura's post stating

It really is a rather imprecise test, to say the least and some things on it are not bad traits at all.

The questions were good for me to look over myself and evaluate how I handle them. Thanks.

 

[Beau]

I scored a 12. A lot of these things I've learned to deal with in the last few years, so I think I would score a bit higher if I had taken the test 3 or 4 years ago. I would really agree that it is an imprecise test though.

 

[SolarMother]

Thank You Gonzo! Getting the hang of it now! :D

And I thank you as well, Gonzo, that was very clear--bear with me, mods, as I try it out.

 

[SolarMother]

I think that a person should answer "yes" to the question even if they do not allow the stressor to affect their behavior.

In this case it's 23 for me.

Back up to 25 for me.
how to look at sensitivity--having more of it is positive as Manumase said, or having less of it is better??

 

[Buddy]

...how to look at sensitivity--having more of it is positive as Manumase said, or having less of it is better??

Maybe it depends on the 'source' of the sensitivity and how it gets expressed? Sensitivity that is really trauma-based hyper-viligance to a nasty look directed at you (for example) is different to sensitivity to real-time contempt directed at you just because you understand something so well, you don't see the point in continuing to 'beat a dead horse', so-to-speak, just because everyone else is doing it.

In this example, I'm referring to conventional educational settings involving kids with a wide range of intelligence and intuitive abilities being treated all the same, of course. :)

 

[Masamune]

I think that a person should answer "yes" to the question even if they do not allow the stressor to affect their behavior.

In this case it's 23 for me.

Back up to 25 for me.
how to look at sensitivity--having more of it is positive as Manumase said, or having less of it is better??

I think it depends on the situation. If you are wanting to be very socialable or be a public speaker or be a soldier then it may be more positive to be less sensitive. But if you want to understand people better, be a counselor, care taker, etc. it would be beneficial to be more sensitive. I personally think it is good to be sensitive because I think it is about perceiving more in your environment than other people. I like the added perceptions of others feelings or energy that others may not pick up on.

I think it is a balance also because being too sensitive can be debilitating. This is talked about in the HSP book. The non sensitive and the sensitive are both very valuable to society.

Also imo the test questions are asking if these things relate to you, not which ones of these have you not learned to cope with. I think this is about one's physical nervous system not psychology.

I am not an expert on Dabrowski but doesn't his theory state that the more sensitive the person is the greater the potential for personal evolution?

 

[Buddy]

I'm essentially in agreement with Masamune, yet it appears to me that two dissimilar things are being combined to produce a 'type' that's being billed as "highly sensitive person", verses its implied opposite: insensitive. Does anyone else see this?

I mean, it's the normal ability and response Jung refers to as "innate sensitivity" that is the human birthright due to a sophisticated nervous system, combined with typical (often narcissistic programming maybe (?) in some cases) responses of "negative" feelings due to situational stressors. At least that's how it looks to me, although I could be missing something.

 

[SolarMother]

...how to look at sensitivity--having more of it is positive as Manumase said, or having less of it is better??

Maybe it depends on the 'source' of the sensitivity and how it gets expressed? Sensitivity that is really trauma-based hyper-viligance to a nasty look directed at you (for example) is different to sensitivity to real-time contempt directed at you just because you understand something so well, you don't see the point in continuing to 'beat a dead horse', so-to-speak, just because everyone else is doing it.

In this example, I'm referring to conventional educational settings involving kids with a wide range of intelligence and intuitive abilities being treated all the same, of course. :)

This is where I took off to based on what you said..
I may be off here, but with your latter example, the way I see it, is someone who used to be easily manipulated (by a real-time look of contempt) and perhaps back down, but now instead has that 'toughness' or objectivity to stand alone while everyone else is 'beating a dead horse.' So, if I understand you correctly, this is when scoring lower on the sensitivity test is a good thing.
Then there is a person who has a higher score because of your first example of the trauma-based hyper-vigilance to a nasty look approach to life.
Then there is someone who scored low because they cannot feel anything--numbed instead of objective? So, in scoring higher, this individual feels better about having more sensitivity.


I think it depends on the situation. If you are wanting to be very socialable or be a public speaker or be a soldier then it may be more positive to be less sensitive. But if you want to understand people better, be a counselor, care taker, etc. it would be beneficial to be more sensitive. I personally think it is good to be sensitive because I think it is about perceiving more in your environment than other people. I like the added perceptions of others feelings or energy that others may not pick up on.

I think it is a balance also because being too sensitive can be debilitating. This is talked about in the HSP book. The non sensitive and the sensitive are both very valuable to society.

Also imo the test questions are asking if these things relate to you, not which ones of these have you not learned to cope with. I think this is about one's physical nervous system not psychology.

I am not an expert on Dabrowski but doesn't his theory state that the more sensitive the person is the greater the potential for personal evolution?
What Bud said about the different 'types' of sensitivity helped me in my wrestling with the answer to this last question of yours, which I was asking myself... Not that there IS an answer!

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Also imo the test questions are asking if these things relate to you, not which ones of these have you not learned to cope with. I think this is about one's physical nervous system not psychology.

I am not an expert on Dabrowski but doesn't his theory state that the more sensitive the person is the greater the potential for personal evolution?

Kind of. Dabrowski says that development is next to impossible without the presence of certain "overexcitabilities", which are biological in nature (but have psychological effects). These are psychomotor, sensual, emotional, intellectual, and imaginational. The first two, to the exclusion of the last three cannot lead to development. Those with the most developmental potential have all of them. Emotional is the most important. Dabrowski developed various diagnostic techniques to assess a person's level and potential. They included a physiological test (of reflexes, heart rate under various conditions, etc.), projective tests, autobiography, word prompts. The thing is, a person can be highly "sensitive" and have practically no potential for development (level II - unilevel disintegration). So Aron's test here is flawed on several levels. For one, it focuses mainly on the physical overexcitabilities. Ideally, there should be a test for each form of OE. But even that can be unilevel (i.e. fails to distinguish between a sensitive person with no ability to control their sensitivity, and one who does). Laura highlighted some of those distinctions in her last post.

 

[Buddy]

This is where I took off to based on what you said..
I may be off here, but with your latter example, the way I see it, is someone who used to be easily manipulated (by a real-time look of contempt) and perhaps back down, but now instead has that 'toughness' or objectivity to stand alone while everyone else is 'beating a dead horse.' So, if I understand you correctly, this is when scoring lower on the sensitivity test is a good thing.
Then there is a person who has a higher score because of your first example of the trauma-based hyper-vigilance to a nasty look approach to life. Embarrassed
Then there is someone who scored low because they cannot feel anything--numbed instead of objective? So, in scoring higher, this individual feels better about having more sensitivity.

That's close enough if it sums up similar to this:
It's sort of like being in a "I was afraid that might happen" mode vs "Why are you treating me like that...I've done nothing wrong" mode, though each side looks completely justified to both observers.

Since, in daily life, I often find myself bridging the ADHD/ADD perspective with the non-ADD perspective, perhaps this will clarify my own comments:

On the one hand we have the HSP presentation which shunts the ADHD folks aside as being "possibly the opposite", according to Ms. Aron - and for reasons non-ADDers seem to find hard to explain.

On the other hand, from the ADD perspective, things often look the reverse of the way non-ADDers say they are as indicated in a comment made to a SOTT article, which happens to be helpful here:

As a response to this statement (which I forgot to actually quote):

Although it is not known what the actual environmental influences are, Hart and her colleagues suggest that it could be related to aspects of the classroom and homework environment. If researchers can figure out what these environmental influences really are, they may be able to help children with ADHD do better in school.

I wrote:

[...]
In a classroom context, here's ADHD in a nutshell:
[...]
The teacher gives the class 100 simple arithmetic examples. The [ADHD] child does the first few, and by watching what he (it's usually a he because boys are expected to be more robotic than girls - they're more vulnerable to boredom addiction) is doing, he grasps the principle of the operation.

This is an understanding based memory, which is with him for life, and which will immediately suggest itself in any life situation where it is useful. After that, the child sees no point in doing the remaining examples, and looks out of the window.

The teacher then claims the child is too stupid to remember to keep doing the pointless examples, and the child responds that since he now understands the principle, he can't see the point of doing any more. The teacher then perversely pretends that the child has said there is no point in learning, and eggs on the rest of the class to ridicule the unfortunate child on this basis.

So, from the non-ADD perspective, this child possibly looks rebellious and disrespectful and emotionally provoking, etc. While from the ADD perspective, the teacher and fellow students appear to be unfair, unreasonable and unnecessarily demanding and emotionally provoking.

The only way to solve this problem is to bridge the gap by trying to show how things look from multiple perspectives in order to encourage understanding and find some kind of workable solution. :)

 

[davey72]

I think Elaine Aaron is on to something and that a certain percentage of the population is born with a high sensitivity, both physical and emotional/empathic. The earliest memory I have of physical sensitivity is being given a pair of nylon pyjamas for the first time and being completely unable to wear them due to the static electricity they caused. If I hold an active mobile phone I feel a kind of 'dead' sensation in my hand. So Laura's sensitivity to EM pollution makes perfect sense to me. This nervous system sensitivity leads to heightened susceptibility to psychological wounding during childhood, which can easily lead to someone being labelled later in life as having a psychopathological condition, which it is to a degree. When I was younger I thought there was something really wrong with me because I couldn't do the things my friends did, which required a tough-guy thick-skinned attitude to do. But now, thirty years later, I have come to appreciate the many positive benefits of the condition, and I've learnt (and continue to learn) to cope with the internal over-arousal caused by certain situations. EE has helped enormously with that.

I agree with Schema Therapy that self sacrifice can often be linked to emotional deprivation which has affected the HS person perhaps more deeply than it would the non-HS person. This could lead to self-sacrifice which is more the product of a lack of boundaries rather than conscious self-sacrifice, simply because the emotional deprivation causes the HS person to believe that they are not worthy of being. After all, the external family environment caused them to feel unworthy of love as a child, so as an adult they do not feel worthy of having legitimate being-boundaries. However there is a kind of self-sacrifice which is conscious and is not born out of emotional wounding. That kind is very noble and should not be confused with the pathological kind. So I think that the condition of high sensitivity has pathological aspects, and healthy, positive aspects. The trick is to discern between the two and to create a safe inner space for the positive aspects to grow, a strategy to heal the fallout of the negative aspects, and to find safe, externally considerate ways to express the positive attributes.

I think that's an awesome attitude towards it. Hopefully i can become as grounded with it as you seem to be.


Mod's note: Edited to fix the quotation boxes.

 

[Neil]

I got a 12, so I thought I was pretty well-rounded. However, when I use Laura's method of including all of the minor "internal bothers," it jumps to 23.

 

[rylek]

Well my 'before' score is 23, 'after' is 10 or so.

I agree with Schema Therapy that self sacrifice can often be linked to emotional deprivation which has affected the HS person perhaps more deeply than it would the non-HS person. This could lead to self-sacrifice which is more the product of a lack of boundaries rather than conscious self-sacrifice, simply because the emotional deprivation causes the HS person to believe that they are not worthy of being. After all, the external family environment caused them to feel unworthy of love as a child, so as an adult they do not feel worthy of having legitimate being-boundaries. However there is a kind of self-sacrifice which is conscious and is not born out of emotional wounding. That kind is very noble and should not be confused with the pathological kind. So I think that the condition of high sensitivity has pathological aspects, and healthy, positive aspects. The trick is to discern between the two and to create a safe inner space for the positive aspects to grow, a strategy to heal the fallout of the negative aspects, and to find safe, externally considerate ways to express the positive attributes.

My thoughts exactly.