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Are we Highly Sensitive People?

WereBear

WereBear

License to Weird
V.I.P Member
Well, of course we are, but I wondered how many of us are familiar with the psychological distinction, shared by 20% of the population?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_sensitivity

Sensory processing sensitivity (SPS, a personality trait, a high measure of which defines a highly sensitive person or HSP),[1][2] has been described as having hypersensitivity to external stimuli, a greater depth of cognitive processing, and high emotional reactivity.[1] The terms SPS and HSP were coined in the mid-1990s by psychologists Elaine Aron and husband Arthur Aron, with SPS being measured by Aron's Highly Sensitive Person Scale (HSPS) questionnaire.[1] Other researchers have applied various other terms to denote this responsiveness to stimuli that is evidenced in humans and other species.​


It would seem that all of this is part of the Autism Spectrum, too?

There's a test on Dr. Aron's website that I scored very high on.

http://hsperson.com/test/highly-sensitive-test/

And for several years I figured this explained my sensory status.
 
I don't think it's a complete overlap. I've gone to a lot of HSP meetups because they're the only kind of group gathering where I don't ever get sensory overwhelmed from people talking too loud or over each other or too quickly. Interpersonal sensitivity gets brought up a lot in my experience. Not general emotional reactivity but specifically reacting to and being able to detect subtle changes in other people's emotional state - stuff that I absolutely can't relate to and I'm not sure most of us can. But it's always been a little strange to me because the technical definition of HSP emphasizes more about the physical senses than empath abilities.
 
I also started my journey thinking i was an HSP, I still have her book in my collection...but yeah, even though I can detect subtle changes in mood, I can't figure out WHAT those changes ARE or WHY they're there....
 
I loved those two posts, DogwoodTree . Especially this:

The following are normal everyday behaviors among neurotypicals: lying about their feelings; avoiding sensitive subjects that are glaringly obvious; leaving important words unsaid; pretending to like things they don’t like; pretending they’re not feeling an emotion that they’re clearly feeling; using language to hide, obscure, and skirt crucial issues; attacking people who frighten them without ever realizing they’re full of fear; stopping all forward progress on a project without ever realizing they’re full of anger and grief; and claiming that they are being rational when huge steamy clouds of emotion are pouring out of them. Neurotypicals are often emotionally exhausting.

According to my evaluator, I have high abilities in picking up subtle cues and knowing how to respond to them. In trying to figure out how I do it, we discussed how I read books on body language and built a vocabulary of that as well as spoken speech. But this makes me think I am also an empath.

No wonder I come home from a day at work involving meeting lots of strangers completely exhausted.

I just have more input. And I try to figure it out. It really is great to know all these things form a pattern, and that there are strategies I can use to cope with it.

My Cognitive Behavioral Therapist and I are trying to gear this down: I am probably over-processing these encounters where I am not needed the full spectrum of my powers :) Using that as a working theory, anyway.

Geez, even when we are good at something, we pay a price!
 
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Interesting that you ladies all considered HSP along the way, some before HFA. I too bought the book and the workbook and found it had some similarity with my way of perceiving the world. Interesting too that my spouse thinks of highly sensitive people as female, when he is quite sensitive himself, yet somewhat in denial of those aspects of self.
 
I've long thought the non-empathic autistic line was a crock of proverbial. Any time spent with a bunch of office receptionists will teach you that.
 
garnetflower13 said:
Not sure I understand what you mean?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I didn't explain myself very well.

I've always been very aware that there is a wide variety of different people in the world, some with different abilities, cultures, habits, and beliefs - perhaps that is part of growing up different, or in a medical household, don't know . I often thought what it would be like to be bind or deaf, or in a wheelchair, or a native inhabitant. So I find it really weird that those of us on the spectrum are accused of having no imagination or empathy. I have found that a lot of neurotypicals have very little awareness or empathy for anything outside their own experience. Some of them grow out of it, but others never do. I've found receptionists, especially, spend a lot of the day gossiping about the person who just walked out of the room, only to smile sweetly to their face.:eek:
 
In a society like the US, where at least a third of the country embraces rampant racism, sexism, and anti-science, it takes a lot of brass nerve to claim they are more empathetic than we are.
 
Ah, yes now I understand, pax. And I agree with WereBear about the nerve that some display about empathy. They only empathize if everyone else in the room is doing it.
 
The current Dali Lama has said that empathy is a combination of imagination and compassion. We've got both!
 
A lot of those questions have to do with sensitivity to external stimuli, so I'm not really surprised someone on the spectrum would score high.
 
SameStars said:
A lot of those questions have to do with sensitivity to external stimuli, so I'm not really surprised someone on the spectrum would score high.
Click to expand...

What intrigued me about the concept is how much it does overlap Aspieness: the introversion, sensitivity to input, and the need to get away from it in a controlled environment.

The brain has so many compartments. This must be one of them.
 
Now I'm confused, I scored 19 in this test but I am definitely an aspie. If a person has so much hypersensitivity, shouldn't they have aspie traits.

Also, I have never been able to tell if I'm hypersensitive to pain or hyposensitive.
 
The problem is there are different live issues on empathy.....as a autistic you can feel deeply but not prosess it in time to express it properly.
In very intense social situations the color of memories can be repressed for a time as a repressed memory, this has happened to me. I had a very bad chaotic courtship go bad, my mind barfed up missed details from events for almost 8 months.
And some autistics just can't read subtle emotions at all sometimes so seem cold in lack of response, but really just didn't know something was wrong.

But in the NT world lack of a proper timely empathic response, is translated as lack of caring....they want you to say "Oh! you poor thing, that is terrible , I feel bad for you" they really want you to say it.

Learning to spot such situations, and have a stock sympathetic phrase ready...helps allot.
 
What seems to happen with my boyfriend is he has issues with cognitive empathy but is a sensitive person who is empathetic to others' emotions.

For example, I had an accident which was entirely my fault. He came out and was very supportive. He helped me deal with the guy I rear-ended.

A few weeks later when the guy called to ask for extra money for repairs on his car in addition to what insurance had paid him, The man made a veiled threat to me. I had researched and found out he was an ex-con which made me feel unsafe.

My boyfriend was unsupportive about this because he believed the accident was my fault, that I should give the man some extra money. I could not grasp how cold and, in my mind, irrational he was being

I truly was speechless and could not understand how detached he was. It's like he was sticking up for this creep over me.

It wasn't until I became so frustrated and hurt that I broke down sobbing, then I saw something click with him. His demeanor changed. Immediately hugged me. At that moment I could tell that the emotion affected him and that's what got through.

Up until that point he was in logical mode because I had been in the wrong. And the man had his car damaged by no fault of his own. So the victim was the guy. Looking at it in black and white, that was correct.

That experience really opened my eyes. My boyfriend has admitted that he has trouble putting himself in other people shoes. I think it's more of a cognitive challenge than emotional.
 
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