The murmur of a crowd that overwhelms you, the lights of a show that blind you, or the excessive discomfort that touching certain objects makes you feel. Do these sensations sound familiar to you? Chances are you are then a highly sensitive person or HSP. This is a term coined in the 90s by psychology doctor Elaine Aron and defines those people with deeper thinking and sensory processing about everything that happens around them. It is a hereditary personality trait and it is estimated that 20% of the world’s population possesses this character.
Although the senses of highly sensitive people seem more heightened, what happens is that their nervous system processes stimuli more intensely. Furthermore, these individuals develop high levels of empathy, which allows them to accurately detect the feelings and needs of others and, in turn, be affected by the negative emotions or events that people around them go through. Their high capacity for perception directly affects the emotional state of the PAS.
Highly sensitive people tend to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information their brain processes throughout the day. By capturing environmental stimuli more deeply, these people become easily saturated. This can cause fatigue, stress, or even a mental block at times when they receive too much stimulation. This is the main reason why HSPs arrive so tired at the end of the day.
HSPs easily identify verbal or behavioral patterns that indicate criticism or rejection. In the same way, they empathize much more with the problems that their loved ones may bring to their attention in everyday conversation. That is why there comes a time in the routine of highly sensitive people when what they want (and need) most is to isolate themselves and rest for a while to immunize themselves from what is happening around them.
The tendency to saturation of highly sensitive people can lead them to be ‘offside’ in many situations of daily life, especially in the world overloaded with stimuli in which we live. Spending an afternoon in a shopping center or strolling through the city during rush hour is something that ends up exhausting them. Hence the importance of guaranteeing those moments of solitude and rest, which serve to compose themselves and can be used to carry out calmer activities such as meditation or reading.
