Elaine Aron

Stating that hypersensitivity is an asset rather than a flaw, a guide for the one out of every five people who is highly subject to his or her surroundings offers coping methods while explaining how to benefit from sensitivityrelated personality traits. Reissue.

How to Thrive when the World Overwhelms You

The Highly Sensitive Person

Sarah White

As you reparent your body, the first thing to realize is that the more it avoids stimulation, the more arousing the remaining stimulation becomes. 

The way to come to tolerate and then enjoy being involve in the world is by being in the world. 

nanafark

«For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour.... To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion, “Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?” There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game.... One should not search for an abstract meaning of life.»

Emma Hak-Kovacs

These two factors- liking certain things about the other and finding out the other person likes you-give me an image of a world admiring each other, someone else to confess their love. This image is important for HSPs to keep in mind because one of the most arousing moments in one's life is either confessing or receiving a declaration of affection. But if we want to be close to someone, we must do it! We must endure all the risks of getting closer and being close, including speaking up.

Ask yourself if the sun rises in the east. Then see how you feel about your “wrong" answer. Because, of course, you are wrong. The sun does not rise. The earth turns. So much for personal experience. We cannot trust it, or so it seems. We can only trust science. Science has triumphed as the Best Way to Know Anything. But science is simply not designed to answer the big spiritual, philosophical, and moral questions. So we almost behave as if they must not be important. But they are. They are always being answered, implicitly, by a society’s values and behaviours — whom it respects, whom it loves, whom it fears, whom it leaves to languish unhoused and unfed.

Taryn

In other words, sensitivity, or responsivity as these biologists also called it, involves paying more attention to details than others do, then using that knowledge to make better predictions in the future. Sometimes you are better of doing so, other times it is a hard waste of energy. 

Further, when a past experience was very bad, an HSP can overgeneralize and avoid or feel anxious in too many situations, just because the new ones resemble in some small way the past bad one. The biggest cost to us of being highly sensitive, however, is that our nervous systems can become overloaded. Everyone has a limit as to how much information or stimulation can be taken in before one becomes overloaded, overstimulated, overaroused, overwhelmed, and just over! We simply reach that point sooner than others. Fortunately, as soon as we get some downtime we recover nicely. 

The way to come to tolerate and then enjoy being involved in the world is by being in the world. 

Our culture has an idea of competition in the pursuit of excellence that can make anyone not striving for the top feel like a worthless, non- productive bystander. This applies not only to one's career but even to one's leisure. Are you fit enough, are you progressing in your hobby, are you competent as a cook or gardener? And family life - is your marriage intimate enough, your sexual life optimal, have you done all that you can do to raise excellent children?

Perhaps imaginary figures, characters in books, or nature itself calmed and supported you enough; your trait may have made you happier than other children with this solitude. 

The Highly Sensitive Person quotes

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