empathic. adjective. able to understand how someone feels because you can imagine what it is like to be them.
A highly sensitive person (HSP) is a neurodivergent individual who is thought to have an increased or deeper central nervous system sensitivity to physical, emotional, or social stimuli.1 Some refer to this as having sensory processing sensitivity, or SPS for short.
If you're a highly sensitive person, you have a heightened awareness of the stimuli around you, which can be good or bad. HSPs tend to be bothered by violence and can easily be overwhelmed, which leads them to avoid certain situations. Highly sensitive people can also be very creative and have a deep level of empathy.
The three subtypes of highly sensitive people include Aesthetic Sensitivity (AES), Low Sensory Threshold (LST), and Ease of Excitation (EOE). Before we explain what each of these means, it's important to note that HSPs can fit into more than one subtype, each subtype has its own characteristics.
What is emotional sensitivity and how does it manifest? When you're emotionally sensitive, you experience emotions more intensely than others. Your feelings of love, joy, happiness, anger, sorrow, and fear are stronger than average. If you aren't able to manage your emotions, you struggle every day to cope.
INFJs are highly sensitive to the words and deeds of those close to them. INFJ is regarded as the most sensitive personality type. Some estimates suggest that 80 to 90% of people who test as INFJs also test as highly sensitive people, because the traits of the two overlap so much.
There can be many things going on when someone says you are too sensitive. But they generally mean you are too easily hurt or bothered by things, or you're overacting to something. If someone says you are too sensitive, they could also mean: You need to toughen up.
HSPs aren't a personality type in and of themselves, but their qualities do overlap with some of the traits that we use in our 16Personalities framework. With those traits, we can determine which personalities are most likely to belong to people who are highly sensitive.
Learn the 6 Sensitivity Types: Mental, Emotional, Physical, Chemical, Social & Energetic.
Sensitivity And Emotional Intelligence
The good news is that highly sensitive people aren't more or less emotionally intelligent than others. They just use emotional intelligence differently.
Gaslighting Tell #3: You're Convinced You're “Too Sensitive” Gaslighters insist that their victims are paranoid and hyper-sensitive. If you've been told that enough times about yourself, odds are you'll start to believe it. Abusers will often use gaslighting as one of many abuse tactics.
The reality is that the narcissistic personality is by definition hypersensitive, emotionally dysregulated, and delusional. Telling you that you are too sensitive when you react to being belittled, criticized, or attacked is a classic form of narcissistic projection.
10. You're too sensitive. This can come from both narcissistic parents or partners. They say this because they don't want to acknowledge that their words hurt you, so they make it your fault.
Recent research suggests that roughly 30 percent of people are highly sensitive — less than 1 in 3 — and some researchers put the number as low as 15 to 20 percent.
1. Jealousy. The dictionary defines jealousy as "feelings of worry over the potential loss of something valuable." In business, experiencing jealousy is fairly common, but those feelings are amplified if you're a highly sensitive person.
1. ESFJ. People who fit the ESFJ personality type can usually be recognized by their big hearts and kindly manner. ESFJs are warm and welcoming and their love of tradition means they value good old-fashioned manners highly.
According to Dr. Elaine Aaron, author of The Highly Sensitive Person, sensitive people tend to cry more easily than others. “Sensitive people can't help but express what they're feeling,” she told the Huffington Post.
When highly sensitive people (HSPs) confide about love, there is notable depth and intensity. They fall in love hard and they work hard on their close relationships. Yes, sometimes non-HSPs sound similarly enthralled and confused by love, but on the average, HSPs have a more soul-shaking underlying experience.
“You're being too sensitive” — in the wrong hands — is almost always an insult. While, yes, sometimes an emotional response to a situation may be incommensurate, it's a sentiment that too often passes as a legitimate argument or, worse, concern.
Being sensitive isn't a negative personality trait that should be frowned upon or seen as weak—sensitive people are often richly empathic, and feel with other people. Empathy is different from sympathy and fosters connections that can be hard to make.
It is said that highly sensitive women experience a lot more orgasms in their lives than other people. That's true. But perhaps they do not so much have more orgasms, as researched, but rather a greater ability to have multiple orgasms and to experience any sexual act very intensely.