Highly sensitive person — legit category or vanity diagnosis?

February 28, 2013 5:09 PM

My therapist has suggested that the concept of a highly sensitive person might be a helpful way for me to frame my understanding of myself, but I am very torn. On the one hand I recognize myself in a lot of the description; on the other hand it feels like a very uncomfortable kind of "I am not awkward, I am special!" kind of thing.

I will of course be talking to her about this more, too, but I am interested in people who may have thoughts on this dilemma that I don't.

The context of this is a breakup with an ex where one of the many problems was he thought I was overreacting / being not stoic enough in situations where I was pretty genuinely uncomfortable and I wound up not being able to tell if I was/am crazy or if he was really not understanding. And then there are questions like this where people seem to think that having intense feelings is just a function of not growing up? But my therapist tries to say that trying to repress it mostly just leads to anxiety and other unhappiness and that it is ok to feel that way.

So now I am just not sure whether I think it is helpful or if she is well-meaning but also maybe not right? I know I need to ultimately sort it out myself but I am interested in other thoughts.

posted by anonymous to human relations (24 answers total)

This seems like an odd use of the term, because in my understanding (though IANAP) "highly-sensitive person" is (usually) understood to be referring to sensory perception, not emotions--it's used by and about people who may have some degree of SPD or related disorders/symptoms. You may need to ask her to clarify a bit what she means in this context.
posted by kagredon at 5:18 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

LEGIT!!! This is a phenomenon that psychologists and psychiatrists say happen in around 20-25% of people. It has to do with sensory perception AND emotions.

Elaine Aaron wrote an on the subject.
posted by fireandthud at 5:29 PM on February 28 [4 favorites]

Everyone has intense feelings. Some people express those feelings in ways that make the feelings a thing that other people must deal with, even if the feelings are not about them - that is, it becomes or is perceived to become a non-consensual imposition of your feelings in a way that makes other people responsible for them.

People don't grow out of feeling things intensely, but some may change the way they express those feelings and their expectations of how other people respond to them. That may well be a function of age and experience.
posted by rtha at 5:30 PM on February 28 [10 favorites]

This is not to say one experience is "better" or "worse" - just that there are variances in how people feel emotions and people's tolerance levels and depth of feeling.

Some people think being highly sensitive is a special asset; an HSP can be really perceptive and good at reading emotions. Other people perceive it as a downfall; an HSP that hasn't learned to regulate their emotions regarding external stimuli is branded an "over-reactor" or a dramatic person.
posted by fireandthud at 5:34 PM on February 28

I don't know if this will be helpful or not, but a friend was just recently involved with a man who names himself a highly sensitive person (your definition - not kagredon's, also described more thoroughly in this book) -- and through our conversations I learned more about HSP so I could try to better understand what she was going through in terms of her interactions with him. Background aside, the biggest takeaway for her was that his framing of himself as a person with HSP had helped him better understand how to manage when he became overwhelmed with emotion. He'd learned a certain set of techniques or approaches to, well, life and human interaction, and tried to set both his and others' expectations (of him) accordingly. It was difficult for my friend to come to grips with but that aside, perhaps what your therapist is getting at is it might be valuable for you to examine how and when you become emotionally overwhelmed as a way to better set yourself up so that those situations are mitigated earlier in the interaction.
posted by hapax_legomenon at 5:36 PM on February 28 [3 favorites]

I found reading about this as a category helpful in understanding some of my own challenges (hey, it turns out not everyone is driven to madness by tags in clothing SCRATCHY HORRIBLE). It's descriptive, not prescriptive, and it's an informational tool that you might find useful. Or not. But it's a category based on lots of clinical observation, as fireandthud said.
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:37 PM on February 28 [5 favorites]

Sorry to be leaving comments all over this thread!

Elaine Aron's book can be found here at Amazon. Check it out and see if any of it resonates with you.

Yes, all people experience varied emotions. Sometimes these emotions are high and sometimes they are low. The argument for highly sensitive people is that these emotions exist on a much broader spectrum; the highs are very high and the lows are felt deeply.
posted by fireandthud at 5:38 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

I do think that it can be more helpful to frame this as "sometimes I have highly sensitive reactions to sensory and/or emotional stimuli" rather than "I am a highly sensitive person" but psychologists have to sell books, too, so sometimes reductionism wins.
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:40 PM on February 28 [5 favorites]

This interesting article deals with highly sensitive individuals possessing a DRD4-7R variant of a dopamine-processing gene called DRD4. In short, they are more vulnerable to all kinds of stimuli which leads to problems in difficult environment but gives them bigger potential in a loving and caring family, or so goes the theory.
posted by hat_eater at 5:40 PM on February 28 [5 favorites]

I haven't read all of the replies, but my husband is a HSP as it relates to environmental stimuli. He is so sensitive to it that it seriously affects his ability to be out in the world. I have never heard of it applied to emotional characteristics, but IANAT.
posted by michellenoel at 5:44 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

I found reading about this as a category helpful in understanding some of my own challenges (hey, it turns out not everyone is driven to madness by tags in clothing SCRATCHY HORRIBLE)

This is exactly me. Being able to reframe situations so that I am aware more contextually that while something may be annoying to me, it may be the stimulus in general and not "I hate this restaurant" or "My friends are jerks" and has helped me help myself calm down without turning it into everyone's problem.

It's easy to think that the way you view the world is the way everyone views the world or that some sorts of input have the same effect on everyone. Understanding that I'm just especially... perceptive sounds so twee, but that if there's a weird funny noise that someone else barely notices, it may be driving me crazy, for example.

I feel like the drama AskMe you linked to is a different thing. That's wanting to wrap other people up in your feelings as a condition of being with/around you (that's how I interpreted a lot of people's definition of drama) and that's the not-grown-up part. Liking intense experiences or disliking them is a different category than everyone being in a noisy bar, but only a few people's emotional energy is being sapped just by being there. So just like it's good to know you may be an introvert because then you can build in time for recharging after big social situations, HSPs can build in various sorts of downtime based on whatever stimuli strongly affect them and help themselves do better in more situations where other people who may not feel like they do are also interacting.

So I see it as more of a relative thing than an absolute thing. You learn about how you are relative to other people and then you can decide what you want to do about that. This just gives you a sort of umbrella term for a lot of things that go together with a lot of people that you may not have known go together in you, and that can help you understand yourself. Your feelings are whatever they are, basically. How they manifest in the outside world is something you can work with if you decide to and this is a tool to help guide your decisions.
posted by jessamyn at 5:49 PM on February 28 [6 favorites]

One of the (many!) things I took from therapy was that a diagnosis is only as good as the information it gives you, which is only as good as the coping tools you develop. Know I am an introvert who values quietness and who has an anxiety disorder is only good because it comes with the knowledge that I have a finite amount of emotional energy to spend on large events/lots of people, that no amount of 'time alone' will help if people are hollering up and down the corridors and SVU is blasting through the walls, and that this will manifest in a number of anxiety driven ways like emotional meltdowns, alogia, insomnia, suicidal ideation and anti-social behaviours. And all of that is good because I know I need to build in alone-and-quiet time when visiting certain people, that we need to schedule parties/events quite carefully, that I need to prepare, that if I begin to stop speaking, or stop coping with small things that we need to enact crisis management now, before I walk out of the gathering, before I yell at someone for touching me unexpectedly and so on.

A diagnosis doesn't automatically come with coping strategies.

Those traits you recognise? That is the important part of what the therapist is sharing. The diagnosis may or may not fit but those traits are the ones that are going to require coping skills to deal with life as it is.
posted by geek anachronism at 6:11 PM on February 28 [7 favorites]

I think it's helpful if you use it as a motivation to find better coping skills.

I think it's unhelpful if you use it as an excuse to avoid using or developing any coping skills.
posted by jaguar at 6:12 PM on February 28 [21 favorites]

HSP can relate to emotions, but 85% is just perceptual rather than psychological; it's not a hand-wavy thing 'cause it can be quite clearly observed if it's there (at least, you would know it's there all your life because basic environmental stimuli which have 0 effect on others somehow bother you). It's not vanity so much as pretty useless (in my opinion) to talk about something like 'sensitivity' when it comes to feelings, and I say this as a sensitive person (in both ways). Everyone's 'sensitive' in their own crazy little ways. Being HSP just means this includes stupid things like sunlight being too bright for you, people talking being jarring if it's too near, heat being too hot and cold being too cold, along with what some may consider 'overreacting' (example of real overreaction: if people walk too close to me, I get angry when I'm stressed especially). I mean like passerby. Just walking by.

When you really can't regulate yourself in any way, this is a problem (usually it's something you can improve with CBT or other therapy). A HSP isn't the same in that it doesn't require therapy, in that no therapy can do much (except perhaps meditation and lifestyle changes can help). Anyway, I can see how confusion can exist since 'very sensitive' is also colloquial. Primarily, HSP is a neurological issue that may have psychological consequences 'cause everything does. But I don't even know if it's a 'problem' or a 'disease' to be diagnosed, as such. It just means you're born with your senses set to 11, like so your body-hair feels a bit like whiskers, for example.



Anyway, it has nothing to do with being stoic or not (how to you act stoic-- or not-- when sunlight kinda hurts your eyes?). I'm pretty stoic, for example, and not overtly emotional. My affect is almost flat pretty often. I am very much a HSP. Being expressive (or not) has little to do with perception or feeling.

That said, other people's expectations and labels on your feelings-- when they go against your own-- are bullshit. It's that simple. Say fie, fie on anyone saying you should react like X. Anyone who tells you how you 'should' react at any given time is themselves way in your face and overfeeling it, whatever it is. There's no normal/abnormal way to react (if it's not interfering with your life, if it's 'your normal', if you're not homicidal, etc). A lot of people think the way they react is 'normal' and anything less is insensitive and anything more is drama. I mean, jeez. People usually have reasons for their triggers. Finding out those reasons is a lot more productive than labeling the symptoms as problematic.
posted by reenka at 6:24 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Here's what I know about it.
First of all, there are people who find sensory stimulation oppressive. I'm most familiar with this phenomenon in children and recently had a discussion with an occupational therapist who treats such children through progressive desensitization.

This from the email she sent me:
Poorly integrated Moro reflex -- Moro is the startle reflex that appears when the baby is born. It serves to begin respiration outside of womb {baby hits cold air, head jerks back, limbs fly out, baby takes a deep breath and cries}. When baby is a tiny infant, Moro helps it keep from suffocating when laying on its stomach before it develops enough neck control to move its head {oxygen decreases, baby startles, head flies back, airway is cleared, baby can breathe}. Moro integrates at about four months, right around the time the baby acquires head control and can roll over. If not integrated, and still present in the system, Moro is the first responder to every sensory experience the child has. The child's nervous system responds to most every day sensory events by startling, then flooding the child's body with stress hormones and adrenaline.

The child is therefore in chronic fight or flight state caused by this neurological immaturity/ physiological response. Child is in state of hyper vigilance. This makes the skin, especially the light touch system, hypersensitive. Skin is constantly informing child that clothing is too scratchy and irritating, textures like glue, lotion and toothpaste are off putting, food is disgusting, smells are noxious, other people in his personal space are threatening him, etc. Child responds by becoming emotionally rigid and controlling, avoiding affection, becoming super picky about clothing, and requiring a great deal of assistance in order to transition between activities.

In addition, here is the blog of someone who treats this condition.

This seems to be a separate state of affairs from emotional sensitivity (though they are sometimes found together). Judging emotional sensitivity is difficult because the amount of complaining (e.g. drama) is not necessarily in proportion to what the person experiences.

There are two ways of dealing with emotional sensitivity. The first is to attempt to become less sensitive by becoming less aware. This is, in my opinion, the wrong way to deal with it.
It's the equivalent of coping with a difficult reality by becoming out of touch with it.

The other way is to become more tolerant and less reactive to it. Just because a person is experiencing something, doesn't make it necessarily problematic or force some kind of response.

If the first way is "I'm not afraid of anything" style bravery, the second is "Feel the fear but do it anyway" style bravery.

To apply this to what you were discussing above, some people don't feel awkward because they are turned off. They lack the awareness or empathy to feel awkward. Others can tolerate feeling awkward and deal with it, though not comfortably. My own opinion is that comfort is overrated and is responsible for a lot of turned off sociopath-like assholes.
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:31 PM on February 28 [3 favorites]

People manifest "highly-sensitive" traits in myriad ways. It seems like regardless of whether you are referring to emotional sensitivity or hyper-sensitivity to stimuli - and it isn't quite clear which is plaguing you - causing 'drama' is a way to escape the situation and potentially soothe the distress through acknowledgment. It's one of those things that under some circumstances feels involuntary, but may look intentional to someone else. If afterward someone feels devastatingly embarrassed, is apologetic and truly want to change hi/r outward reaction... it's probably not deliberate. And if it is, s/he's got other problems.
posted by infinite joy at 6:46 PM on February 28

Just take the self-test. Roughly speaking, people scoring in the top 15-20% are presumed to be the top 15-20% most sensitive--tautological in one sense though debatable as a coherent category of traits.

There's nothing really great or snowflakey about a high score though. I mean, let's put it this way: I like Proust and tear up easily over emotional scenes in movies and whatnot, but score in the middle; my wife scores pretty high, and there are vast swathes of media, food categories, and other environmental experiences she can't bear. If you could pick, you wouldn't choose the high score.

It's probably not great science, because who knows exactly what's getting lumped together in a self-assessed bunch of ill-defined qualities, but that's social psych / psych of personality in a nutshell, really. And if you feel like it helps you get a handle on what makes you stressed and what calms you, perfect.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 7:11 PM on February 28

Explore it, it won't hurt.

Meyers-Briggs might be a little easier to take than straight up exploring HSP. Look at the results and then reconsider (hint: INFP or INFJ are good indicators of HSP).

And remember, there are scales of HSP. Learning a couple of HSP coping techniques might be all you need. Oh, and don't date guys like that anymore. I actually have more to say about that, but will save for a private message if you're interested. I think your therapist was well intentioned based on what you said about your boyfriend alone.
posted by icanbreathe at 8:47 PM on February 28

i think it's a humane and charitable diagnosis - it's basically saying you need to be aware that your reactions aren't going to line up with a lot of other people's, but you're not mentally ill or sociopathic or anything. it's like a diagnosis with a cure that suggests itself, gently. highly-sensitive? better take great care of myself, be very alert for typical mental or external states that set me off, etc.. i think it's a pretty cool more-or-less informal, non-shaming diagnosis
posted by facetious at 9:08 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

But I don't even know if it's a 'problem' or a 'disease' to be diagnosed, as such. It just means you're born with your senses set to 11, like so your body-hair feels a bit like whiskers, for example.

I can appreciate that this may be true for many people, but I also think that it can be somewhat limiting and essentialist. Sensory sensitivity can be a consequence of hypervigilance due to PTSD, for example. If someone does have these reactions due to past trauma, then treating the sensitivity as an innate trait that's "just how you are" may make it harder to recognize as associated with a treatable condition.

I don't at all want to imply that sensitivity always must be a sign of some other problem. I do want to say that different people are different and the same experiences can mean different things depending on people's experiences.
posted by medusa at 9:21 PM on February 28 [4 favorites]

The HSP thing isn't so much a diagnosis as a biggish idea that looks at the development of a certain physiology in the context of a given culture, as others have said. It's not crap - I think it makes a kind of sense, and Elaine Aron reasons from what I assume are valid and reliable studies. The book is meant to be validating for people who've grown up feeling like misfits in their families and culture. I guess your therapist right now would like for you to feel better about and accept the 'sensitive' parts of your personality/behaviour, given your recent experience. And that's no bad thing.

If I remember right, there are at least a few pages connecting HSPness with attachment theory, which might help with thinking through difficult patterns (but is not a diagnosis, and in any case, I think the point of therapy is to learn to live more comfortably in your skin, and to find a way to do more of the things you want and less of what you don't. You get there by talking things through, making them clear. A diagnosis can be a starting point, but it's not necessary [or in my opinion even desirable for most people]).

As for 'repression' - do you agree with your therapist that that could be relevant? Can you name, and feel your emotions, or at least tolerate them? Do you have insight into why they're there? Or do you find yourself tangled up or surprised by them a lot of the time, or find moods hard to shake, or struggle to understand why you feel things? Or, do you find ways to numb or avoid feeling emotions that might be too strong (with e.g. TV, internet, exercise, alcohol, drugs)? I mean it's down to you - if that kind of stuff is ringing bells, and you trust your therapist, see where it takes you.

That other question you linked to is about people who get kicks out of making problems for themselves and others, because they don't know how to live differently or are bored.
posted by nelljie at 10:54 PM on February 28 [2 favorites]

From the OP:

Thanks so much, everyone — your answers are both very helpful and very cheering.

To answer just a few things: My therapist raised HSP in regards to perceptual as well as emotional things. There are noises and physical discomforts that make me kind of crazy and my ex generally gave the impression he thought I was being a a baby. I also sometimes have the standard social worries about everyone hating me, etc.

To respond to nelljie — that is pretty much my list of avoidance techniques and I have often been known to say things like "I have a lot of feelings inside right now" and then imaine a picture of a tornado or the cloud that follows pigpen and that is all. Then I have a whisky and take a nice hot bath and read instead.

Finally, thanks hat_eater for the wired article. It definitely resonates.

posted by taz at 12:50 AM on March 1

One big difference I have noted is that being in a state of menopause has brought this aspect [too much too much need a break] down quite a few notches - the sense of overwhelm and the feeling of being on a merry go around haven't been there for at least a couple years as opposed to how much "I need to withdraw" time I used to require.

If you are a woman, track the pattern of your sensitivities against your monthly cycle.
posted by infini at 10:51 AM on March 2

I first read Aron's The Highly Sensitive Person shortly after it came out and had an "oh, yes, that's me exactly isn't it?" experience.

Since the "ah me, I am such a delicate sensitive flower who must be catered to" interpretation is… distasteful… to me (not to mention unproductive), I usually explain it to people along the lines of "I have trouble with too much sensory stimulus. It's like a filter problem, or something. You know how most people can be in a noisy place and just filter out the noise? I can't do that. It registers on me the whole time."
posted by Lexica at 5:25 PM on March 2