Highly Sensitive personality trait was first researched by Dr. Elaine and Aaron in 1991. All of her findings have been published in various articles and in her book, “The Highly Sensitive Person”. According to her researches, 15-20% of the world’s population is consists of HSPs.
Being a Highly Sensitive Person creates many advantages such as high analytical power, creativity, intuitiveness, understanding others emotions deeply, empathy for others and the environment, and many more, on the other side, disadvantages such as feeling overstimulated, misunderstood by others, easily getting overwhelmed, etc.
They feel theirs and other’s emotions more intensely and process them deeply. Following are the traits of Highly Sensitive Persons:
1. Feel deeply and emotionally reactive: Often this kind of person considered extremely reactive and they feel emotions very deeply. They like to process things on a deeper level. They are very intuitive and analyze deeply to figure things out.
2. Caring and understanding other person’s feelings: HSPs often care a lot about others. They know how to put themselves in other person’s shoes. So, when others feel pain or in distress, HSPs can also feel the same and can connect with others easily.
3. Take longer time to make decisions: HSPs find it difficult to make decisions and take longer time because they tend to analyze all pros and cons attached to the situations. For an instance, these people even take time to decide the menu items to order in a restaurant even though they already know what to order.
They often feel overwhelmed and paralyzed while making life decisions such as where to stay and career-related decisions, as they weigh all pros and cons and fearful of taking a wrong decision.
4. Paying attention to small details: They often find minute gaps or errors easily which is difficult for others to find such as finding minute bugs in software if someone changes the nail paint or a tiny crack on a lamp that was not there initially.
5. Having good manners: They care about others’ feelings, hence always try to make things convenient for them and think a lot about other’s convenience. They often feel bad if people get hurt because of their actions. They always think about how their actions can affect others. They put a lot of effort even into the smallest actions, such as making sure they put an item back to its place when they are shopping, to prevent troubling a staff member to do it.
6. Prone to depression and anxiety: HSPs are prone to develop depression and anxiety easily especially if they had gone through many past negative events in their lives. Their mental system is developed more alert and fight and flight response is way too high which protects them from any potential danger.
It’s crucial for highly sensitive people to have good parents who support and nurture their sensitivity in the right way. If they ashamed their sensitive children for being sensitive, it prevents them from understanding and using their sensitivity.
If parents protect their sensitive child too much, it becomes difficult for the children to make the transition in life and adapting to new situations.
7. Difficulty in watching horror/violent movies or shows: HSPs often find it difficult to watch any such type of movies because they are overstimulated by them. Their nervous system would be much happier if they turn it down thinking what’s best for their mind.
8. Work well in a team environment: HSPs specialty is to think deeply and this works well in a team environment as they can analyze people’s strengths and weaknesses very well and thus utilizing everyone’s talent is easier to figure out.
They can identify pros and cons effectively when it comes to decision-making. However, they may not pretty comfortable making decisions themselves. Instead, they may like to play the role of someone who negotiates rather than the person who has to take action. Still, with the right amount of encouragement and good practice, HSPs can become exceptional leaders.
Strengths of Highly Sensitive Persons (HSP):
1. Caring and compassionate: They care about people more than others. HSPs are most often the kindest and gentlest people you will ever meet. They can understand others need more deeply and react accordingly
2. More empathetic: they show empathy with others when they are in need. Being an HSP, allows you to understand others deeply and put yourself in other’s shoes. This makes them understand people more deeply and connects with them easily, also helps in understanding different point of views.
3. Good Listener: A lot of HSPs have this great quality. They are good at pickup others’ facial expressions, body language, gestures, body language, and so on. This makes them more attentive and responsive to others, which also makes them better friends, partners, and sources of emotional support.
4. Conflict resolution: They are good listeners and empathetic, these qualities make them good mediators, who can resolve issues quickly. They like a calm atmosphere and not feel great in conflicting situations, so they try to resolve the issue by playing the role of mediator.
5. Creative: These people are the most creative persons and it has been proved by multiple pieces of research. They excel in fields like painting, designing, filmmaking, photography, writing, etc. They thrive when they work in their favorite field.
6. Integrity: They are probably the champion of integrity and upholding their word at the office. While these traits are important to creating harmony and likability, HSPs can be easily peeved by difficult co-workers who don’t share the same traits or values.
Leave a comment