Learning I was a highly sensitive person was pretty life changing. It gave me access to tools and resources that drastically improved my life.
It also helped me understand myself in a new way. I was empowered to build a life that supported my natural strengths and felt much more comfortable and justified setting boundaries around necessary situations.
The awareness of highly sensitive people is growing, but it’s yet to become a commonly understood characteristic.
As a result, this post aims to breakdown what it means to be a highly sensitive person and why it’s important to embrace your sensitivity.
What is a Highly Sensitive Person?
There’s a lot of layers to this answer. (Entire books have been written on this topic.) But for our purposes in this post, I’m going to simplify it and give you resources if you want to dig into this subject even more.
According to psychologist Elaine Aron, who pioneered the research on HSPs in the 90s, high sensitivity is a character trait that exists in about 20% of the population. It’s not a disease or a disorder.
This trait is actually innate. It’s tied to a collection of genes and has been found it in over one hundred species.
It can best be understood by the acronym, DOES.
D is for depth of processing
HSPs process information and emotions more deeply than non-HSPs. As a result, HSPs may take longer to make a decision or respond to a situation or conversation.
There has also been more recent research that found the HSP brain is actively processing information even when at rest!
O is for overstimulation
Part of being an HSP means that your nervous system is naturally more sensitive to sensory stimulation. Because of this, HSPs are often overstimulated much more easily than non-HSPs.
Additionally, HSPs are often more prone to overwhelm as a result of intense situations/environments/conversations, or prolonged overstimulatation.
This is different from sensory processing disorders. A person with a sensory processing disorder may also feel overstimulated, but they can also under-react and respond inappropriately to stimulation or have a hard time identifying what stimulation to give their attention to.
E is for Emotional Reactivity and Empathy
The research has also said that HSPs are known to have a stronger response to both positive and negative experience compared to non-HSPs.
So if you’ve ever felt like you’re “sadder” than someone else in a given situation or cried more easily, you’re not crazy or overreacting. You’re actually feeling the situation more intensely.
HSPs are also often extremely empathetic. Mirror neurons in the brain are a large contributing factor to empathy in humans. Essentially, these neurons can “mirror” an emotional response in us when we observe it in another human being.
The mirror neurons of HSPs have been found to be more active than in non-HSPs. In some instances, HSPs not only understand how someone is feeling, but also end up feeling the very same emotion.
S is for Subtle
HSPs naturally notice subtitles.
This can be small shifts in an environment or a person’s appearance. But it can also be picking up on someone’s unintentional non-verbal cues, subtle mood changes, or how trustworthy someone is.
These subtleties may feel very obvious and natural to an HSP, but they’re things others often aren’t naturally aware of.
HSPs are also often highly intuitive as a result of this. Our ability to lock into these subtle energy shifts proved us with valuable information about a person, situation, or environment that others have to work much harder to access.
Learning to trust our intuition can be a powerful tool for HSPs!
Are you curious to find out if you’re an HSP? You can take the self-test here!
For more on this, check out Dr. Aron’s book, The Highly Sensitive Person. I used it as the primary source for this section.
You can also check out the Highly Sensitive Refuge.
Why it’s important to embrace your sensitivity
Being highly sensitive can come with it’s struggles and pitfalls–especially in a world that devalues and minimizes this trait. But I believe if you can learn to embrace your sensitivity, you’ll be unlocking your superpower.
And I don’t mean this in an superior/egotistical way. I believe everyone has superpowers. We all have gifts and skills that come more naturally to us than others.
If you’re highly sensitive, learning to understand this characteristic and see it as something that makes you powerful and unique can be life changing.
I also think when you’re dealing with a skill that has been misunderstood and demeaned, reclaiming it as the strength that it is can be an important part of healing.
Research has shown that highly sensitive people are highly intuitive, unusually creative, and make great leaders, parents, and entrepreneurs. (You can visit Dr. Aron’s blog for the most updated research on many of these topics.)
So, learning to embrace, respect, and celebrate this part of yourself can be the key to unlocking your full and true potential.
(And PS–part of respecting this part of yourself includes making changes and modifications to your life and events to accommodate your sensitivity. You’re not weak for meeting your own needs. This is how you nurture and support yourself.)
Want to unlock your unique highly sensitive gifts? Consider a tarot reading!
My favorite thing about reading tarot for others is that it’s this magical place we’re both of our intuitions meet. As a reader, I use my intuition to tell you what messages I see in the cards. As a client, you use your intuition to decide how this ties into your life.
The goal here isn’t to dictate your future It’s to help you better understand how you can create the life you want to create. You can also gain clarity and insights about any given situation.
I’ve also found tarot to be incredibly helpful in creating a life that’s in line with my highly sensitive needs.
You can then take the information from your tarot reading and apply it to your life however your intuition tells you to. You are never bound by anything that comes up in a tarot reading. If your intuition tells you something is not right for you right now, it’s likely a message that will be more relevant in the future.
As a whole, the experience will help you heighten and enhance your intuition and allow you to tap into one of the best parts of your highly sensitive self.
Here are 7 ways a tarot reading can help Highly Sensitive People.
Foreshadow Intuitive Tarot offers a Guidance for Highly Sensitive People Reading designed to give you the guidance and empowerment you need to embrace your highly sensitive gifts and live your life with confidence!
This reading can be customized to meet you where your at in your highly sensitive journey. It can also be structured to help you gain the insights and guidance you need as you navigate your unique experience.
For more on my Tarot philosophy, you can can check out the About page.
If you’d like to know even more about me, my own highly sensitive experience, and how tarot supported me, you can read my story here.
Are you a highly sensitive person? What aspects of this experience have you embraced? Which have you struggled with? Tell me about it in the comments!
