Highly sensitive: To be or not to be? that is the question

Since the initial publication of the book by Dr.. Elaine Aron on the high sensitivity (in 1995 in the United States), the issue was gaining ground in the media. Thus, the terms "high sensitivity" and "highly sensitive people" have become quite popular, especially in English-speaking countries.

This widely publicized in newspapers, magazines, blogs, television and other vehicles, generated much greater awareness by the public, as well as a series of confusions and doubts about the real meaning of these terms. One of the most important concerns the understanding of what constitutes "high sensitivity". Would it be a category in which we would have people who are highly sensitive and others are not (being or not being the title of this article)? Or is it more like a scale where we find less people and more sensitive? One cause of this confusion lies in the fact that, in everyday language, the word "sensitive" also means "understanding", "kind", "careful" etc ..

Now both people highly sensitive as others may have these qualities and this hinders the scientific understanding of the term. Dr.. Elaine Aron reveals aware of this problem.

She says much thought as to how to name this feature. I knew I did not want to repeat the mistake of confusing it with introversion, shyness, inhibition and a whole collection of inadequate labels awarded by other psychologists. None of these terms captures the neutral aspect of owning more receptive to stimulation. And I thought it was time to fight the pejorative vision that has the HSP adopting a term that can be used in favor of them. In an attempt to clarify briefly the meaning that she and her colleagues attribute the term, Dr. Elaine Aron created a list of four characteristics that it considers essential in order to qualify someone as a HSP (highly sensitive person), they are:

1 - Process the very profound way information (give turns to a theme, ruminate, think well before making a decision ...);

2- Feeling easily overstimulated (to receive an excess of information and pay close attention to everything, quickly tiring than others);

3 - Having an intense emotional and great empathy (the point of having difficulties in establishing limits for others);

4 - Have very receptive senses, capturing even unconsciously, the subtleties of their environment. Although it is very emphatic about these features, Dr. Aron warns that the way they are expressed varies from person to person and also according to the time. Depending on the occasion, and as so is feeling, a highly sensitive person may be far less empathetic than other than HSP.

As commented: When are calm HSP can even enjoy the advantage of realizing more delicate nuances, but they are overexcited, often state in HSP are not at understanding or sensitive. On the contrary, often not HSP are the most comprehensive truth in highly chaotic situations. We can say that the high sensitivity is a double-edged sword that can both make life richer, how can hinder it enough to broaden the tendency to problems like stress over stimulation, among others. Among those identified as highly sensitive there are marked differences in the way they integrate this feature in your life. In principle we could distinguish at least three different groups:

First, those who know they are more sensitive than most, but do not feel uncomfortable because of that. For them it is normal to be so, and his life and work are organized in a way that suits your sensitivity.

Another group, perhaps larger than the first, is formed by people from an early age they feel they are "different" from others. However they managed through a personal development work as therapy or coaching, integrate and channel their sensitivity and lived the positive feature.

Finally, we have that group of people who, in some way (through an internet search, a friend or a therapist) learned of the existence of the high sensitivity and found that its characteristic is normal and shared by many other people not being any "problem" or "disorder".

This discovery is often experienced as a moment of relief, though, quickly, the person understands that know about the high sensitivity is not enough to rid him of the troublesome that this feature (not worked) can bring. For those people who, although they are informed of the high sensitivity, they nevertheless suffer with unbridled empathy, over-stimulation, shyness and difficulty in establishing boundaries between other typical problems of HSP. They have to deal with the feature on a daily basis and reorganize life in order to respect and preserve its sensitivity.