Highly Sensitive People (Or Empaths)

[Renarde1975]

Hey all. Interested in people's views on this one.

I'm a writer and a few days ago, I stumbled on this article in The Fail (I know, I know - judge away! )

It's here.

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6637825/Curse-highly-sensitive-person.html

The author, Mel Collins, asserts that 20% of the population are more emotionally sensitive than most. I would assert that what she is calling Sensitivity, I would call it Empathy, and in greater quantities than most of the population. Saying that, the 20% figure does seem to be rather high and I'm wondering how she arrived at that figure.

Hence why I'd like people's views, if you can.

Collins gives a handy checklist of how to diagnose a HSP which I think is rather good. However, if she has arrived at that figure through a questionnaire then there are problems with it. The same problems that also present in the NPI study of 4% of the population are Narcs.(The real figure is more like 17%).

Really like peoples' thoughts/views on the subject.

I think this might be the other way around as empathic traits that you are describing are hard-wired at conception. This is why NPD sufferers can never be cured; they can never get that strand of affective empathy 'injected' into them.

Presumably this is what the book claims? Or do you have evidence to prove this 'hardwiring' of what is after all a subjective experience? I take it you're not presuming to diagnose me with a condition on an Internet chat forum?

Thank you @Renarde1975 It's a horrible diagnosis though. That or EUPD - so much stigma, esp from some health professionals. I was threatened with being sectioned recently, despite assuring them I was safe!

Anyway for you.

@Mook

No idea what the book contains. I'm just posting for opinions on the authors' checklist.

Can I just clarify, what do you think I'm saying to you?

Anyone else thinking of this thread?

That's what immediately sprang to my mind too. The unhinged woman screaming in the Sistene Chapel.

She wasn't an empath though, she was batshit crazy.

@Mook

Outside expression doesn't tell you that does it. Same with the experience of pain.

Yeah, actually it does or how on earth would we know if someone is happy/sad/worried (insert any other emotion) by facial expression/body language alone?

And yes, I am on another forum where plenty of Empaths say they feel other people's emotion as their own. That is what makes them Empaths. The very definition in fact.

I certainly wouldn't say that my background was abusive in any way. Quite the contrary.

When I say dismissive, I think it was primarily a coping strategy for my dad. My mum suffers with crippling anxiety and some of her worries are rather ridiculous. I think my dad sometimes feels that dismissing her fears is the best way of helping her see that there is nothing to worry about, whereas I can see that she needs to have her fears acknowledged before she can even begin to consider whether or not they are valid. My Dsis just doesn't seem to notice stuff much!

My dd has always been unbelievably perceptive and empathetic. Even as a toddler, she could tune into other people's emotions with remarkable insight and she had an incredible ability to understand the emotional factors that might underlie certain types of behaviour. It used to freak us out a bit. It makes her very good at making and keeping friends, which is lovely, but it also means that she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Crying at art isn't unheard of - I do it and I may well done it next week when I go to the National. I cried when I was on the Bridge of Sighs in Venice looking down the Grand Canal. But it was a few discreet tears.

Screaming though? Yeah, that's batshit right there. . Actually, it's attention grabbing.

I would describe myself as highly sensitive to other people’s emotions so I guess that’s empathetic? It’s a pain sometimes to be honest as I can’t switch off from other people’s emotions - I can’t relax if I feel people are tense around me or be happy if I sense that other people aren’t. I’d love to be able to switch it on and off!

@Hip Very intresting! No, you're right. You can't switch it off. Its tricky.

This is actually a real thing. It's also called Sensory Processing Sensitivity. Here's some information (below) on it from the Psychologist who "discovered" it in the 90s. Interested to see it here as I only came across it a few weeks ago and think it might possibly apply to me.

I would have a look at the website below as I don't think the article describes it very well.

hsperson.com/about-dr-elaine-aron/

I think you're saying 2 things : 1. Empathy is hardwired (I don't think this is conclusively proven, happy to be corrected). And 2. Empathetic features can be 'heightened' by experience. In which case I don't know what you mean by 'you've got it the wrong way round' when I say growing up with a BP parent made me prone to read a room eg.
I reacted sensitively because I thought you were saying I was born an 'empath'. But I suppose you were actually saying everyone except people with particular disorders are born empaths and it's a degrees thing. I don't think I agree about this but in either case this 'empath' condition is not something than can really be pinned down. But as I said, if its helpful, why not?

This is very interesting. I pick up on people's emotions, even during just a fleeting, superficial social interaction, and have done so for as long as I can remember. Like a PP, I can find it very exhausting and even paralysing at times. It's like I'm constantly on high alert to and absorbing people's moods. Sometimes I just need to lie down in a dark room to escape. I am also an introvert and a very private person who would never "intrude" on other people's unspoken feelings but I do often worry about people after I've seen them, having picked up on their inner pain. Very sadly there have been two occasions in recent years when I have sensed something very worrying, which has then become reality just a few days later. In both cases the person in question was no more than a casual acquaintance so there's no explanation for how I could have "known".

My 4 year old sibling became very, very ill and eventually died when I was a baby/young toddler which obviously had a devastating effect on my parents and wider family. I am sure this must have had a massive effect on my brain development and reading of emotional cues.

@Mooks Thanks for claryfying.

There is very little research into what Empathy actually is although I did read the other day that 'Empathy' is about to go into the DSM VI which makes me incredibly angry. Empaths are not fruitbats - we are not mentally ill nor is a disorder. Just like the narcs, we could never be cured of it. Ever. (If cured is the right word)

I'm saying that these are all ideas and concepts and I think the only thing we can say with any certainty is that we don't really understand what's going on.

We do know that people who are strongly empathic in nature attract NPD sufferers and very often multiple times. A very very common strand is that Emps come from abusive backgrounds (hence my Q to @Alexa). That cannot be a coincidence, surely?

I can't click on the link because it's the Daily Mail and I hate them.

I think being an 'empath' has become a bit of a buzzword and I think that figure is too high. I don't believe anyone who says they are an empath unless they are vegan.
There is no way anyone can truly claim to feel things to such a heightened degree and happily chew on an animal which did not want to die and fought for its life.

Children growing up in an atmosphere which feels unsafe become hypervigilant. They are constantly alert for other people's moods.

Hypervigilance can look like empathy, or HSP.

However, they don't necessarily get it right and actually when they feel safe can be oblivious to the needs of the people around them- they don't often feel safe though.

I recognised myself in the HSP category. I'm not intrusive though, because the other person's irritation with me would be painful! I can't feel comfortable when there is tension in a room, it makes me feel queasy.

@mook I have always felt the same and put it down to having a bi polar parent. It's like you develop a sense for when things are not right. Even before I understood my parents illness I could pick up on the subtle changes in tone and behaviour long before other family members could and would know something wasn't right and sure enough a manic episode would follow.

I can usually pick up on a mental illness or disorders within minutes of meeting someone it's just a subtle feeling.

As to whether I am more empathetic than others I don't think I am. Being able to sense something is not the same as being able to empathise in a way that is good for the other person.

Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by my own feelings that I am fuck all use to the person actually experiencing the reality of it.

Its something I am working on.

I agree with you mysweetaudrina. Moreover, the feelings are not always correct.

@pickle Children growing up in an atmosphere which feels unsafe become hypervigilant. They are constantly alert for other people's moods.

Hypervigilance can look like empathy, or HSP.

Now THAT is a very intresting point.

@Audrina I have always felt the same and put it down to having a bi polar parent. It's like you develop a sense for when things are not right. Even before I understood my parents illness I could pick up on the subtle changes in tone and behaviour long before other family members could and would know something wasn't right and sure enough a manic episode would follow.

I recognise that totally. I had it with my M who is either schizophrenic or BP1 (unbelievably and after three hospitalisations she has never had a diagnosis or more probably, she hasn't told anyone). I would become hyper aware and I too knew when she was about to 'tip' over into full blown psychosis. I lived on my nerves between the ages of 13 and 19. She had one approximately every two years, you see.

You gave the example of being upstairs and you knew something bad was downstairs as the mood had changed? That's an example of contagion empathy. Not many people have developed it

Of course many people have developed it, why do you think we have such saying as “you could cut the atmosphere with a knife” etc?

I believe the whole Empath thing is nonsense. I hated them in Star Trek and I hate them in RL.

"I can't feel comfortable when there is tension in a room, it makes me feel queasy."

@picklemepopcorn that's the interesting thing, though, isn't it? What would be a room full of tension to you (and probably me) would not be filled with tension to my DH, who is so laid back and relaxed that he was once asked by a boss to "at least fake a panic" over a deadline they had to meet. He wouldn't notice any tension and would be quite, quite comfortable.

I'm not sure about the term "empath" or "highly sensitive people". I think often, the unease that comes with sensing that all is not well with someone is not necessarily about that person, but rather a need in the person who senses it, to have everything "ok", because it is destabilising when there is an air of tension.

It's actually a selfish need for harmony that drives the apparent act of selflessness and giving, to try and help the person who is "off-base", so that everything returns to the status-quo and the feelings of unease will abate.

I'm not criticising, because I most likely fit the criteria for the HSP myself, but I'm aware that many of my feelings are anxiety driven rather than altruistic when I actually analyse them objectively and critically.

@Fission

Ahh hang on. First we need to define the sphere of reference. If you walk into a room say, just after an argument between people, you will primarily see the visual reactions such as body language/facial expression etcs (cognitive)THEN you may or may not sense the emotion.(affective)

Contagion is when you CANNOT see the other people, hence the upstairs sensing downstairs is valid and yes, not many people can do it. That is rare.

I'm even querying if it is actually empathy at all.

@Lougle

You are saying some really interesting things. I too have (only recently) had that 'Is there any such thing as a truly altruistic act' debate with a friend. I don't think there is you see but he did.

2. You experience emotions to a much stronger or deeper extent than other people.
How would you know this? If I am deeply moved or hurt by something, my response is to keep it to myself, to try to appear as expressionless as possible as I don't want other people knowing about my most intimate feelings. It's private. So the person next to me who bursts into tears at a painting might think I was a totally emotionless lump, when that is very far from being the truth. How would anyone know if they felt things more strongly than anyone else, without being able to read minds?

Contagion is when you CANNOT see the other people, hence the upstairs sensing downstairs is valid and yes, not many people can do it

Rubbish. You can hear when things quieten down, when movements become fast even from upstairs. There are many background sounds we don’t take notice of untill they step out of rhythm.

@Fission

We'll have to agree to disagree on this. Thank you for your input though.

And to everyone else who has contributed today. Really fascinating reading your stories.