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.

'Read the room' is a catch phrase in our family - we use it frequently with our two teenaged DC.

@TyneTeas wins the thread. I've been searching for the Screaming Sistine thread!

Another one here with a (properly) narcissistic parent who claims to be Too Empathic to Cope. Also labelled me as "special" and highly empathic from a very young age. I'm amazed I grew up to have friends, because I know I've been intensely hard work my whole life.

I'm trying to shuck off that self-image now, very hard. What I am is hyper-vigilant. I try to make positive use of it where I can and work past it the rest of the time. But I really believe there are HSPs and that life is very hard for them. Not their fault in the slightest that it's also an easy (and useful) concept for manipulative people to appropriate.

The 20% figure comes from the research of Elaine Aron, an American Psychologist. She has several books on the subject (including 'The Highly Sensitive Person') and lots of information about what she terms 'HSPs' on her website. hsperson.com

I score highly on her validated tool, and have found the book helpful to understand myself better, especially as regards my career as a doctor, for which is has pros and cons.

@Malteser Thanks for that - that is a very intresting piece of information. I can now go back and read her research. Hope she produced a peer-reviewed paper.

@LaRicca . Why wouldn't anyone want to be friends with you? Someone has told you that I think...

@Golden - THAT is a fab phrase! I will appropriate!

That writer knows nothing about Empathy

This is the problem with the word "empath", the standard sci-fi trope is that empaths can receive and send emotions via magical woo woo, hence the story is about that, not empathy.

I read some of the screaming sistene thread and did not find it funny in the slightest, it's the perfect example of why sensitive people don't usually like talking about it, 40 pages of mocking and finger pointing.

OP, I think that HSP is more than just empathy, though it is a part of it.
I think it is not that HSPs necessarily have 'more' empathy, but that they are more affected by the empathy they experience.

I found the article very interesting. I am new to learning about all the names and phrases. But I do have a question. (sorry if I am being stupid) Can you not be a little bit of everything? Like a 50/50 split of being E and N?

@Elle Kind of. Everyone has narcassitic traits including empaths. Only the Ns though lack affective empathy which is why they are unencoumbered through lack of consience when they manipulate.

Thank you @Renarde1975 -- much appreciated :)

@Starry I understand your viewpoint on 'The Screaming Sistine'. But it is a very bizarre OP. Even for MN. Cube of Poo? Penis Beaker?

As to SF, yeah...I get that too. Betazoids and remote emotion sensing. It's all very fantastic and fun. But, many people, and its usually women, know in their hearts when something is 'not right.

Many people post in Relationships. Most are geuine. Some, however are narcs. Unaware of course. Seeking sympathy/empathy from us all. Wasting our time. Indeed, I've just reported a very serious thread because I percieve the poster is 'putting it on the dog'.

I say; that's very serious as it detracts from posters who are geuinely fighting for their lives.

Such is the internet, sadly.

No worries @LaRiccia x

That writer knows nothing about Empathy; mirroring back negative emotions is the very opposite of empathy.

That's because there's nothing to know. The self-help idea of empathy is pop-psychology nonsense, by and large. The kind of thing that self-identified 'empaths' intuit is generally as obvious as Star Trek's Deanna Troi saying 'Captain! I sense hostility!' when some alien species is actually engaged in trying to blow up the Enterprise.

Any novelist does what a self-diagnosed 'empath' does, without congratulating themselves on their sensitivity.

And LeGuin's story makes some excellent points in an unsentimental way -- genuine extreme empathy would be a form of torture, like having no eyelids, and it would have a disastrous effect on your relationships with other people.

Nah @Parth. Your words negate other's own experiences and the incredible trauma they gave faced in their lives.

You are, of course, entitled to your own views but I do question why you feel the need to essentially negate other's valid views/experiences on this thread?

If you think its all a lot of rhubarb, then fine. But to continually engage? That's not really an intellectual POV is it? it's emotionally driven.

Why are you so keen to say all of our experiences are bollocks? I'm VERY curious on this point.

As a teen and into my early twenties it was a form a torture, even though I don't believe the label of empath.

I won't reappear my stories, from earlier in the thread. But I spent a lot of years running myself ragged because other people's feelings were more important than my own. I would put myself out because I felt if I didn't and the person asking me was upset, that would make me feel bad and I hated it.

I finally got to a point where I realised that I had to stop prioritising everyone else, all the time. It didn't go down well with my mother or my husband. It eventually led to end of my abusive marriage.

I have found a balance now where sometimes others come first, sometimes I put myself first. Depends on the situation and what's going on at the time. I have learnt that me saying no doesn't make me responsible forbtheor feelings

@renarde thank you for explaining :)