Are you a HSP? Highly sensitive person?

[HSP2022]

Apparently 20% of people are classified as a highly sensitive person.

I'm certain I fit the criteria but do any of you?

Is there a way to get absolute clarification?

Do you just accept that's how you are or have you been able to change aspects so you are not as highly sensitive to certain things?

My friend is a highly experiences clinical psychologist. She says it's absolutely a thing and should be factored in. However I don't think you can self diagnose.

I think it's a rather unfortunately named thing though. It sounds snowflakey.

Self diagnose is all you can do! Unless you’re suggesting your highly experienced clinical psychologist friend diagnoses people with HSP after hearing their symptoms such as deep connection to art and finding violence disturbing.

I got 15 on the test and don't consider myself sensitive. If I met someone like you OP I would consider you self absorbed or self obsessed. This is just a fancy word for that isn't it?

I'm surprised by the lack of balanced responses here. The concept of being 'highly sensitive' is relatively new but well-researched by Elaine Aron and related to a deeper type of sensory and cognitive processing, putting in the same ball park as other forms of neurodiversity. It hasn't been fully 'proven' because few behavioural or cognitive traits are - the body of research has to be developed over time, which is why we previously had no understanding of things like dyslexia, ADHD, etc.

Having a more easily stimulated nervous system is far from being a 'special snowflake'. Like most individual differences, it has as many disadvantages as it does advantages, but understanding it can help HSPs (and non-HSPs) play to the positives and manage the negatives. I think the concept can be particularly useful in understanding children with different temperaments, especially in learning environments.

I'm also a psychologist and agreeing with your friend.

You can self-diagnose, though. Elaine Aron has a test you can find via google.

It is stressed that it is a collection of common personality traits rather than a diagnosable condition. Elaine Aron suggests there are both advantages and disadvantages to having these traits.
I appreciate that some people may love a label, to somehow feel more special than everyone else. This can be irritating for others, especially if they use it as a perceived excuse for difficult behaviour. I have encountered such people.

However, other people I have encountered have quietly explored the HSP theory and then adjusted their lives to accommodate what they have learned in the hope that life won't be as tiring/difficult.
If the theory around HSP helps anyone to live a more comfortable and enjoyable life I think that is a positive.

It’s not that new. There’s certainly time for it to have been studied far more extensively than it has been and accepted as part of mainstream psychology if it was considered to have great merit.

it’s also worth considering the background and motivations of Elaine Aron herself. She is Jungian, and of course has a vested financial interest in pushing her theory as true. She alone does not give it any particular gravitas.

And no one is saying greater or lesser levels of sensitivity aren’t a thing. Of course they are, there are natural variations across the species. That’s normal. What’s being said is that it’s not a special trait or a condition in it’s own right.

Self reporting alone is a hugely unreliable means of diagnosing anything. Fuck, you can claim astrology is true if you base it that.

Can people stop with saying its a neurodiversity!
Don't compare something that isn't a proven condition with actual diagnoses such as ASD and ADHD. It's offensive!
The "symptoms" people are discussing are within the variation of the normal human experience.

85% of autistic people don't/can't work
The rate of suicide in autistic people is 3 times higher than average
70% of kids with ASD are bullied due to their autism

It takes the piss to say that because someone gets upset by violence, considers that they understand art deeply and has self diagnosed themselves with HSP that they are neurodiverse.

This!

This. Complete with pseudo-diagnostic abbreviation label. But I guess that means we're both thoroughly insensitive, hey @Eastangular2000?

🤓

I think it is a real thing and I've known a few HSP including my sister. However of those, most I would not say were empaths as they are so busy being sensitive and trying to manage their feelings (or expecting others to help manage their feelings) that they don't have much capacity to think about others.

Being an empath does not mean that you're more sympathetic to others and help them in any way. It means (in my experience) that you make other's trauma or stress all about you. Example - an acquaintance breaking down and sobbing on the floor because my dog died. She didn't know my dog. But apparently she expected me to comfort her because 'I'm an empath and I feel your grief more than you do!'

But these people aren't talking about a sensory processing condition. Most of us are aware that those exist, often alongside conditions such as autism.

They're saying they feel and appreciate more deeply, and their only evidence appears to be a complete insensitivity to the feelings of others, an assumption that they know what others feel and can quantify it (how?) and the fact that they are less able to cope than others. The idea that a person who can cope cannot also feel is so insensitive, ignorant and offensive that I don't know where to start with it.

Nor am I convinced by the fact that someone in America wrote a self-help book for people who have a desire to define themselves this way.

I think you are confusing empath with narcissist

Indeed. 20% of the population in the US is around 50 million people you can aim your book at.

she doesn’t appear to be associated with any clinical institute, and the main gist of her website is ‘if these catch-all traits apply to you, which they are designed to do, buy my book! Here’s a link’.

Yeah @ReneBumsWombats agree with what you say. I just did one of the self-tests on the HSP website. I scored19, so you now all have to bow down to me as an Extremely Highly Sensitive Person. I am clearly so feeling and responsive that there should be a special category for me.

It’s rubbish, basically. The self-test is very bad. It’s like reading a horoscope reading or prediction.

Not arguing with that whatsoever but it was a self proclaimed diagnosis on her oart!

From my experience, people who proclaim themselves “empaths” often do display the traits so often classed as “narcissistic”. Which is ironic, really.

I’ve also found that those who proclaim themselves “highly sensitive” or some such really mean that they are using it as an excuse for not addressing their reaction to things. If you find your reaction to things is excessive, perhaps address that in therapy rather than calling yourself “a highly sensitive person” and expecting everyone else to have to accommodate you.

This really is like one of those awful quizzes in Cosmo that we used to do as teenagers....'answer 10 questions to see if you're popular' or 'find out what your star sign says your life will turn out like'
Most of us grow out of things like that when we realise it's just generalised bollocks (fun, but still bollocks)
The issue is when grown adults are still doing these quizzes (albeit on Google with a pseudo scientific title) and believing it can tell them something about them to make them special. Then, once they have self diagnosed how special they really are they expect the wider population to go along with their specialness. The problem then occurs when the wider population pisses themselves laughing at special persons self diagnosis and tells them to get a bloody grip. Special person then gets upset and insists it is all true as Dr Google told them so in a quiz.
And on it goes.
If I ruled the world, my first decree would be to ban the word 'empath'. No, you do not feel my feelings as they are mine (you emotional vampire). Just because you display your feelings by making a scene and acting like a petulant child sobbing at every news article doesn't make what you feel anymore real than for anyone else, you just have to act those feelings out for sympathy. Just because the majority of us can keep our feelings private doesn't mean those that can't are special, it means you need to work on why you need an outward display of every basic emotion you have.

I’ve also found that those who proclaim themselves “highly sensitive” or some such really mean that they are using it as an excuse for not addressing their reaction to things. If you find your reaction to things is excessive, perhaps address that in therapy rather than calling yourself “a highly sensitive person” and expecting everyone else to have to accommodate you
This 100%

Also, this need to feel special or to have a label that 'excuses' certain personality traits/reactions makes it super easy for ANY adult to squeeze themselves to fit ANY checklist 🤷‍♀️

Good advice to think about therapy if you find your reactions to things excessive. But sometimes people can't see this for themselves. Do you find your reaction here to be excessive btw? It seems people who show emotion trigger you? Perhaps a therapist can help you with that.

What about BrightYellowDaffodil's post do you think is excessive?