The Highly Sensitive Person

You might also let them see the questionnaire at the front of this book. Ask them if they or anyone else in your family has this trait. Especially if you find relatives with it on both sides, the odds are very good your trait is inherited.

But what if it wasn’t or you aren’t sure? It probably does not matter at all. What does is that it is your trait now. So do not struggle too long over the question. The next topic is far more important.

Learning About Our Culture— What You Don’t Realize WILL Hurt You

You and I are learning to see our trait as a neutral thing—useful in some situations, not in others—but our culture definitely does not see it, or any trait, as neutral. The anthropologist Margaret Mead explained it well. Although a culture’s newborns will show a broad range of inherited temperaments, only a narrow band of these, a certain type, will be the ideal. The ideal personality is embodied, in Mead’s words, in “every thread of the social fabric—in the care of the young child, the games the children play, the songs the people sing, the political organization, the religious observance, the art and the philosophy.” (#litres_trial_promo)Other traits are ignored (#litres_trial_promo), discouraged, or if all else fails, ridiculed.

What is the ideal in our culture? Movies, advertisements, the design of public spaces, all tell us we should be as tough as the Terminator, as stoic as Clint Eastwood, as outgoing as Goldie Hawn. We should be pleasantly stimulated by bright lights, noise, a gang of cheerful fellows hanging out in a bar. If we are feeling overwhelmed and sensitive, we can always take a painkiller.

If you remember only one thing from this book, it should be the following research study. Xinyin Chen and Kenneth Rubin of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and Yuerong Sun (#litres_trial_promo) of Shanghai Teachers University compared 480 schoolchildren in Shanghai to 296 in Canada to see what traits made children most popular. In China “shy” and “sensitive” children were among those most chosen by others to be friends or playmates. (In Mandarin, the word for shy or quiet means good or well-behaved; sensitive can be translated as “having understanding,” a term of praise.) In Canada, shy and sensitive children were among the least chosen. Chances are, this is the kind of attitude you faced growing up.

Think about the impact on you of not being the ideal for your culture. It has to affect you—not only how others have treated you but how you have come to treat yourself.

SHEDDING THE MAJORITY’S RULE

1. What was your parents’ attitude toward your sensitivity? Did they want you to keep it or lose it? Did they think of it as an inconvenience, as shyness, unmanliness, cowardice, a sign of artistic ability, cute? What about your other relatives, your friends, your teachers?

2. Think about the media, especially in childhood. Who were your role models and idols? Did they seem like HSPs? Or were they people you now see you could never be like?

3. Consider your resulting attitude. How has it affected your career, romantic relationships, recreational activities, and friendships?

4. How are you as an HSP being treated now by the media? Think about positive and negative images of HSPs. Which predominate? (Note that when someone is a victim in a movie or book, he or she is often portrayed as by nature sensitive, vulnerable, overaroused. This is good for dramatic effect, because the victim is visibly shaken and upset, but bad for HSPs, because “victim” comes to be equated with sensitivity.)

5. Think about how HSPs have contributed to society. Look for examples you know personally or have read about. Abraham Lincoln is probably a place to start.

6. Think about your own contribution to society. Whatever you are doing—sculpting, raising children, studying physics, voting—you tend to reflect deeply on the issues, attend to the details, have a vision of the future, and attempt to be conscientious.

Psychology’s Bias

Psychological research is gaining valuable insights about people, and much of this book is based on those findings. But psychology is not perfect. It can only reflect the biases of the culture from which it comes. I could give example after example of research in psychology that reflects a bias that people I call HSPs are less happy and less mentally healthy, even less creative and intelligent (the first two are definitely not true). However, I will save these examples for reeducating my colleagues. Just be careful about accepting labels for yourself, such as “inhibited,” “introverted,” or “shy.” As we move on, you’ll understand why each of these mislabels you. In general, they miss the essence of the trait and give it a negative tone. For example, research has found that most people, quite wrongly, associate introversion with poor mental health (#litres_trial_promo). When HSPs identify with these labels, their confidence drops lower, and their arousal increases in situations in which people thus labeled are expected to be awkward.

It helps to know that in cultures in which the trait is more valued, such as Japan, Sweden, and China, the research takes on a different tone. For example, Japanese psychologists seem to expect their sensitive subjects to perform better, and they do (#litres_trial_promo). When studying stress, Japanese psychologists see more flaws in the way that the nonsensitive cope (#litres_trial_promo). There is no point in blaming our culture’s psychology or its well-meaning researchers, however. They are doing their best.

Royal Advisors and Warrior Kings

For better and worse, the world is increasingly under the control of aggressive cultures—those that like to look outward, to expand, to compete and win. This is because, when cultures come in contact, the more aggressive ones naturally tend to take over.

How did we get into this situation? For most of the world, it began on the steppes of Asia, where the Indo-European culture was born. Those horse-riding nomads survived by expanding their herds of horses and cattle, mainly by stealing the herds and lands of others. They entered Europe about seven thousand years ago, reaching the Middle East and South Asia a little later. Before their arrival there was little or no warfare, slavery, monarchy, or domination of one class by another. The newcomers made serfs or slaves out of the people they found, the ones without horses, built walled cities where there had been peaceful settlements, and set out to expand into larger kingdoms or empires through war or trade.

The most long-lasting, happy Indo-European cultures have always used two classes to govern themselves—the warrior-kings balanced by their royal or priestly advisors. And Indo-European cultures have done well for themselves. Half of the world speaks an Indo-European language, which means they cannot help but think in an Indo-European way. Expansion, freedom, and fame are good. Those are the values of the warrior-kings.

For aggressive societies to survive, however, they always need that priest-judge-advisor class as well. This class balances the kings and warriors (as the U.S. Supreme Court balances the president and his armed forces). It is a more thoughtful group, often acting to check the impulses of the warrior-kings. Since the advisor class often proves right, its members are respected as counselors, historians, teachers, scholars, and the upholders of justice. They have the foresight, for example, to look out for the well-being of those common folks on whom the society depends, those who grow the food and raise the children. They warn against hasty wars and bad use of the land.

In short, a strong royal advisor class insists on stopping and thinking. And it tries, I think with growing success in modern times, to direct the wonderful, expansive energy of their society away from aggression and domination. Better to use that energy for creative inventions, exploration, and protection of the planet and the powerless (#litres_trial_promo).

HSPs tend to fill that advisor role. We are the writers, historians, philosophers, judges, artists, researchers, theologians, therapists, teachers, parents, and plain conscientious citizens. What we bring to any of these roles is a tendency to think about all the possible effects of an idea. Often we have to make ourselves unpopular by stopping the majority from rushing ahead. Thus, to perform our role well, we have to feel very good about ourselves. We have to ignore all the messages from the warriors that we are not as good as they are. The warriors have their bold style, which has its value. But we, too, have our style and our own important contribution to make.

The Case of Charles

Charles was one of the few HSPs I interviewed who had known he was sensitive his whole life and always saw it as a good thing. His unusual childhood and its consequences are a fine demonstration of the importance of self-esteem and of the effect of one’s culture.

Charles is happily married for the second time and enjoys a well-paid and admirable academic career of service and scholarship. In his leisure time he is a pianist of exceptional talent. And he has a deep sense that these gifts are more than sufficient to give meaning to his life. After hearing all of this at the outset of our interview, I was, naturally, curious about his background.

Here is Charles’s first memory. (I always ask this in my interviews—even if inaccurate, what is recalled usually sets the tone or provides the theme of the whole life.) He is standing on a sidewalk at the back of a crowd that is admiring a window filed with Christmas decorations. He cries out, “Everyone away, I want to see.” They laugh and let him come to the front.

What confidence! This courage to speak up so boldly surely began at home.

Charles’s parents were delighted by his sensitivity. In their circle of friends—their artistic, intellectual subculture—sensitivity was associated with particular intelligence, good breeding, and fine tastes. Rather than being upset that he studied so much instead of playing games with other boys, his parents encouraged him to read even more. To them, Charles was the ideal son.

With this background, Charles believed in himself. He knew he had absorbed excellent aesthetic tastes and moral values at an early age. He did not see himself as flawed in any way. He did eventually realize he was unusual, part of a minority, but his entire subculture was unusual, and it had taught him to see that subculture as superior, not inferior. He had always felt confident among strangers, even when he was enrolled in the best preparatory schools, followed by an Ivy League university, and then took a position as a professor.

When I asked Charles if he saw any advantages of the trait, he had no trouble reciting many. For example, he was certain it contributed to his musical ability. It had also helped him deepen his self-awareness during several years of psychoanalysis.

As for the disadvantages of the trait and his way of making peace with them, noise bothers him a great deal, so he lives in a quiet neighborhood, surrounding himself with lovely and subtle sounds, including a fountain in his backyard and good music. He has deep emotions that can lead to occasional depression, but he explores and resolves his feelings. He knows he takes things too hard but tries to allow for that.

His experience of overarousal is mainly of an intense physical response, the aftermath of which can prevent him from sleeping. But usually he can handle it in the moment through self-control, by “comporting myself a certain way.” When matters at work overwhelm him, he leaves as soon as he is not needed and “walks it out” or plays the piano. He deliberately avoided a business career because of his sensitivity. When he was promoted to an academic position that stressed him too much, he changed positions as soon as he could.

Charles has organized his life around his trait, maintaining an optimal level of arousal without feeling in any way flawed for doing so. When I asked, as I usually do, what advice he would give others, he said, “Spend enough time putting yourself out there in the world—your sensitivity is not something to be feared.”

A Reason for Great Pride

This first chapter may have been very stimulating! All sorts of strong, confusing feelings could be arising in you by now. I know from experience, however, that as you read and work through this book, those feelings will become increasingly clear and positive.

To sum it up again, you pick up on the subtleties that others miss and so naturally you also arrive quickly at the level of arousal past which you are no longer comfortable. That first fact about you could not be true without the second being true as well. It’s a package deal, and a very good package.

It’s also important that you keep in mind that this book is about both your personal innate physical trait and also about your frequently unappreciated social importance. You were born to be among the advisors and thinkers, the spiritual and moral leaders of your society. There is every reason for pride.

• Working With What You Have Learned •

Reframing Your Reactions to Change

At the end of some chapters I will ask you to “reframe” your experiences in the light of what you now know. Reframing is a term from cognitive psychotherapy which simply means seeing something in a new way, in a new context, with a new frame around it.

Your first reframing task is to think about three major changes in your life that you remember well. HSPs usually respond to change with resistance. Or we try to throw ourselves into it, but we still suffer from it. We just don’t “do” change well, even good changes. That can be the most maddening. When my novel was published and I had to go to England to promote it, I was finally living a fantasy I had cherished for years. Of course, I got sick and hardly enjoyed a minute of the trip. At the time, I thought I must be neurotically robbing myself of my big moment. Now, understanding this trait, I see that the trip was just too exciting.

My new understanding of that experience is exactly what I mean by reframing. So now it is your turn. Think of three major changes or surprises in your life. Choose one—a loss or ending—that seemed bad at the time. Choose one that seems as if it should have been neutral, just a major change. And one that was good, something to celebrate or something done for you and meant to be kind. Now follow these steps for each.

1. Think about your response to the change and how you have always viewed it. Did you feel you responded “wrong” or not as others would have? Or for too long? Did you decide you were no good in some way? Did you try to hide your upset from others? Or did others find out and tell you that you were being “too much”?

Here’s an example of a negative change. Josh is thirty now, but for more than twenty years he has carried a sense of shame from when, in the middle of third grade, he had to go to a new elementary school. He had been well enough liked at his old school for his drawing ability, his sense of humor, his funny choices of clothes and such. At the new school these same qualities made him the target of bullying and teasing. He acted as if he didn’t care, but deep inside he felt awful. Even at thirty, in the back of his mind he wondered if he hadn’t deserved to be so “unpopular.” Maybe he really was odd and a “weakling.” Or else why hadn’t he defended himself better? Maybe it was all true.

2. Consider your response in the light of what you know now about how your body automatically operates. In the case of Josh I would say that he was highly aroused during those first weeks at the new school. It must have been difficult to think up clever kid stuff to say, to succeed in the games and classroom tasks by which other children judge a new student. The bullies saw him as an easy target who could make them appear tougher. The others were afraid to defend him. He lost confidence and felt flawed, not likable. This intensified his arousal when he tried anything new while others were around. He could never seem relaxed and normal. It was a painful time but nothing to be ashamed of.

3. Think if there’s anything that needs to be done now. I especially recommend sharing your new view of the situation with someone else—provided they will appreciate it. Perhaps it could even be someone who was present at the time who could help you continue to fit details into the picture. I also advocate writing down your old and new views of the experience and keeping them around for a while as a reminder.

2 Digging Deeper Understanding Your Trait for All That It Is (#ulink_d36aa063-61cb-50f3-8944-3decfaef55b3)

Now let’s rearrange your mental furniture and make it impossible for you to doubt the reality of your trait. This is important, for the trait has been discussed so little in the field of psychology. We’ll look at a case history as well as scientific evidence, most of it from studying children’s temperaments, which makes it all the more fitting that the case history is a tale of two children.