HSPs like to handle their emotions in silence. Highly sensitive people don't like the thought of burdening others with their problems. Because we can feel others' emotions and pain, we know how heavy it can feel. We often prefer to handle things alone because we must process them before verbalizing them.
To stay well, your self-care as an HSP needs to look different than most. One of our important pieces of wellness comes from having daily unstructured alone time where you are not taking in anything new and giving your brain and sensitive nervous system time to rest and restore.
Highly sensitive people (HSPs) need daily downtime that is alone, unstructured, and unplugged.
HSPs understand, in a way that few people do, that there can be a deep peace in being alone and being able to be alone. Being alone doesn't have to equal loneliness. Often, being alone gives you time to process emotions, contemplate your path, recalibrate your life.
Highly Sensitive People Need More Sleep Than Others
While sleep is important for everyone — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends at least seven hours for adults 18 and older — it is that much more crucial for highly sensitive people.
One of the main reasons that HSPs might feel lonely is that their interactions and relationships are lacking substance — and our constant sense of being an “outsider” only makes this worse. Unless we can stop withdrawing and get the meaningful interactions we crave.
HSPs often struggle with overthinking, feeling like an imposter, and feeling like they are always doing something wrong.
Highly sensitive people may be more affected by certain situations such as tension, violence, and conflict, which may lead them to avoid things that make them feel uncomfortable. You might be highly touched by beauty or emotionality. Highly sensitive people tend to feel deeply moved by the beauty they see around them.
Stress & Sensitivity Can Worsen With Age for HSPs. Here's How to Prevent That. If you are a highly sensitive person (HSP) you might be growing larger stress centers in your brain without even knowing it, and if you don't do anything about it, they will become even bigger.
Bjelland noted a belief that all empaths are HSPs, but not all HSPs are empaths. Dr. Orloff said that an empath indeed carries all of the attributes of an HSP but with more developed intuition and a sponge-like ability for absorbing emotions. "You turn up the volume going from HSP to empath," Dr.
Biologically speaking, highly sensitive people pick up on more stimuli within and around them. Studies have shown that the HSP brain is more active in areas related to attention, emotion, action-planning, decision-making, and having strong internal experiences.
Due to traits of their personality, heightened empathy or childhood conditioning, many highly sensitive people have repressed anger, and do not know how to deal with their emotions healthily.
Sensitive people often feel “something is wrong” with them because they have been shamed for their sensitivity. They are called “too sensitive,” inhibited, or fearful. Sensitive people have a higher likelihood of having low self-esteem.
Unfortunately, many HSPs become more stressed and are more prone to anxiety disorders. They have a hard time with conflict and tend to avoid confrontation. This can be challenging in the workplace or at home. They also feel responsible for others' expectations, which makes it harder to let people down.
For HSPs, who exist in a world that doesn't always understand our needs and neurodivergence, dating can be especially overwhelming. The uncertainty makes the process inherently risky, especially for people who experience feelings on a more intense level than most.
Someone who knows how to have an authentic connection — they like deep conversations about feelings, emotions, and aspirations. Superficial relationships made up of small talk hold no value to highly sensitive people.
Trauma affects highly sensitive and intense people more intensely. Like any other of your reactions to stimuli, as a highly sensitive person (HSP) your trauma reactions are also more intense than most. As a result, many HSPs have used trauma splitting, or structural dissociation, as a way to cope.
Aron, the trait of high sensitivity, found in 20-30% of the population is likely to have nothing to do with a child/person on the autistic spectrum. In the DSM sensory processing sensitivity (the formal name for HSP) it is not associated with autism at all.
Overstimulation, or sensory overload, is when your senses are just completely overloaded with information, making it difficult (or sometimes near impossible) to fully process the information you are receiving. This type of overstimulation is often seen in what we often call highly sensitive people (or HSP for short).
Most highly sensitive people display rare strengths in key areas of emotional intelligence, also known as emotional quotient (EQ) — the ability to recognize and understand emotions in themselves and others. These strengths including self-awareness and social-awareness.
HSPs' emotions are extra vivid due to a part of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). The vmPFC is involved in emotion regulation, especially the vividness of emotions. The emotional vividness is not of a social nature (unlike mirror neurons).
Most HSPs are either INFJs or INFPs — the ones that don't tend to be ENFJs or ENFPs. Whether you're one or both, it's important to know what stresses you, what overstimulates you and what makes you feel calm, relaxed and happy.
The brains of sensitive people can grow and change in ways that may allow for more creative associations. Sensory intelligence. Sensory intelligence means taking in more information from your environment and making good decisions based on that information—a defining characteristic of highly sensitive people.