A Highly Sensitive Person's Life
When you feel joy, discomfort, emotions, and empathy intensely
A few years ago, never would I have used the word “creative” to describe myself.
Creative people were painters, sculptors, poets, architects, designers. That’s not me.
I grew up thinking that being creative or artistic was sort of a waste of time-creativity wasn’t practical or of real value. Creative people were dreamers. I wanted to be a person who got things done!
Of course, I eventually realized this was a dumb way to think.
I’ve mentioned several times about how my husband Jim has tried to understand my high sensitivity.
At first, he didn’t buy into the idea at all. Slowly, over time, I could tell he was accepting it more. He was able to observe, realtime, my visceral reactions to things that I’d told him about re: HSP. [Read more…]
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Episode 17 of the Highly Sensitive Person Podcast is brought to you by the word sensitive.
A blog reader, Mike Voss, gave me the great suggestion that maybe the moniker Highly Sensitive Person could be changed to something without the word sensitive, because it’s such a loaded word. How about Highly Sensory Person? I like that better.
Actually, the more technical name for the trait HSPs possess is Sensory Processing Sensitivity, or SPS.
In this show, I discuss how the word sensitive might turn off male HSPs and how I denied being HSP at first because I didn’t like the word “sensitive”, either. Oh, did I mention it’s kind of a rant?
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Episode 16
of the Highly Sensitive Person Podcast is about High Sensation Seeking HSPs. You have no idea how many times I had to edit myself saying that mouthful of words incorrectly in this episode.
HSPs are careful and evaluate everything around them thoroughly. But those who are also High Sensation Seekers crave excitement, arousal, and new experiences (not necessarily extreme stuff like skydiving or bungee jumping, mind you.) How can those two traits co-exist in the same person?! I think it’s an interesting concept.
Mentioned on this episode: Take the test to see if you are a high sensation seeker
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Us HSPs pick up on the emotions of others, including pain and sadness. It can stay with us and bother us more than others.
There are tons of examples I could talk about, but one popped into my head the other day. It was something I haven’t really thought about in over fifteen years, and it was interesting to examine it all over again in the lens of high sensitivity. [Read more…]
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Episode 15
of the Highly Sensitive Person Podcast is about control. It wasn’t until I started writing about all my HSP stuff that I realized so many of the things that bothered me were about a lack of control. From working in a cubicle, to a fear of flying, to drop-in tennis, I outline the sneaky ways needing control is in my life.
Mentioned on this episode: What would Aristotle do? The fear of losing control
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Bamboo forest outside Kyoto, Japan
I grew up in Michigan then lived in New York, where winters are freezing and snowy and summers are hot and humid. Now I live in San Diego, in Southern California, which has arguably the best weather in the country. There aren’t discernible seasons: it’s nice year-round, with little rain and temperatures that never approach freezing. [Read more…]
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Episode 14 of the Highly Sensitive Person Podcast is about empathy, which is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another being. I talk about wondering if Muay Thai fighters are lonely or sad…and crying about the tragedies of people I don’t think I have a right to be that sad about.
Mentioned on this episode: Dr. Elaine Aron’s empathy brain study
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Highly sensitive people are often deeply moved by beauty in art and nature. This is a pretty cool aspect of being an HSP.
In Episode 12 of the Highly Sensitive Person Podcast, I talk about interesting stuff like Stedhal Syndrome and the beauty threshold.
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Podcast music attribution: By the Coast (2004) (Antony Raijekov) / CC BY-NC 2.
Random Story Time!
Something happened a few days ago that I think nicely illustrates the difference between a highly sensitive person (me) and a non-HSP (my husband Jim).
Jim and I were invited to a Rosh Hashanah dinner at a friend’s house. She told us to bring two loaves of challah bread. [Read more…]
Simply learning about what it means to be an HSP can change the way you see yourself and your place within the world.
