You might be a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) if you resonate with the acronym D.O.E.S.
D
Depth of Processing
Your body takes in far more quantity and quality of emotional and sensory data than others. You see the world in high def and high res, like Blu-ray in a DVD-ish world.
Since you take in a lot more stimuli, there’s a lot more stuff to digest. Since you run everything through a very fine sieve, it takes more time and energy to process it all.
What others might dismiss as unimportant, you find replete with significance. You are drawn to the arts and have a rich inner world where you can retreat into and get lost in for hours. Authentic, meaningful conversations are life-giving, while small talk is annoying.
You tend to (overly) think and feel before you act, so you find yourself procrastinating often and doing poorly under pressure and deadlines. (The upside is, you’re super thoughtful, conscientious, and deliberative. You make things count.)
O
Overstimulation
Your nervous system is overloaded from all the sensory or emotional input that feeling overwhelmed, foggy, or frazzled is normal.
You find yourself withdrawing away from the chatter, lights, and noise towards quiet, darkened spaces so that you can decompress in private.
It’s not that you are “being antisocial”, but that you’re backlogged by all the stuff your body has taken in. You need more time and space to process it all before you’re ready to reengage the world.
E
Emotional Reactivity & Empathy
Your emotions run very deeply. Your highs are REALLY high and your lows are REALLY low.
You are also easily affected by other peoples’ emotions, like a sponge absorbing their feelings as your own.
You have strong empathy: no words are needed for you to intuitively sense how someone else is doing. You find yourself reacting almost immediately to them before you consciously know what's happening.
Your window of tolerance is smaller than others’: you can readily get knocked off emotional balance. Everyone else seems to have “thicker skin,” whereas you seem to bruise easily. You have been described as being “too sensitive” or “too emotional” or just “too much” over things that are “not a big deal.”
S
Sensitivity to Subtle Stimuli
You are keenly aware of your surroundings and are readily overwhelmed by strong sensory input: colors and lights, sounds, texture, smells, tastes, etc.
You pick up on the subtleties in your environment that others don’t notice - the misaligned picture frame, the humming fridge, the dusty floor, the scratchy tag on your shirt collar - and it bothers you until it’s taken care of.
The World Needs Highly Sensitive People
If you resonated with these, you may be a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) along with 20% of the population. In The Highly Sensitive Person, Dr. Elaine Aron (who coined the phrase) explains that although the HSP trait is not a disease or a diagnosis, HSPs are more likely to be misunderstood or judged because they are in the minority.
Because of their neurological wiring, HSPs experience the world differently in ways that are neither inherently better or worse. HSPs take in greater quantity and quality of input and process it more thoroughly (like through a fine sieve). HSPs tend to think hard before they act (whereas non-HSPs tend to act, then think).
As a result, HSPs are more insightful and empathic while also easily overloaded and stressed. HSPs make excellent advisors, thought leaders, and healers, which are what this world desperately needs.
Want to learn how to lean into your HSP superpower?
How is Therapy for HSPs Different?
My name is Joanne Kim, and as a Highly Sensitive Person myself, I get that sometimes it’s just frustrating trying to teach others to slow down for me so that I can keep up, or to explain that there just is a ton going on inside of me that’s just not apparent to non-HSPs.
It feels blah to constantly explain (or justify) myself to others when I don’t even know half the time what’s happening inside of me.
This can happen in therapy spaces, too. A good number of HSPs may have tried therapy before, but felt dismissed or turned off by their therapists who were:
talking way too much, inundating them with all these complicated, abstract concepts (we call it “psychobabble”)
rushing them to take action or impatiently pressuring them to “just get over it” (Argh!! If we knew how to do that, we would have done it already!)
too distant and “heady”, not giving enough space for feelings
not picking up on nuances in emotions or facial expressions that are hard to put into words
Need a space to breathe?
In my HSP-friendly therapy space, you be unhurried and invited to be yourself, as you are, wherever you are, however you are.
In therapy, you will:
Find out how to take care of yourself in ways that you specifically need, not in ways that you feel like you “should.”
Learn how your HSP experience shapes your lifestyle and relationships and create room for your specific needs, too.
Work with (not against) the HSP trait so that you can create a rich and vibrant life.
My HSP-Friendly Office
Ready to meet your Highly Sensitive Therapist?
Joanne (OliveMe Counseling) and Melinda (Inviterra Counseling) are Enneagram therapists who love helping people grow beyond their reactive patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing. Listen to part 4 of their 4-part series as they discuss the Head Triad and their central emotion of fear.