In this post: Have you heard the term Highly Sensitive Person or HSP? What does it mean? And are you one? That’s what we’re talking about in this post: I’m sharing what a Highly Sensitive Person is, signs you might be a Highly Sensitive Person, benefits of being a Highly Sensitive Person as well as downsides you need to watch out for, plus I’m sharing two fun methods to help protect your energy as a Highly Sensitive Person. Let’s dive in!
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Hi, beautiful. How are you? It’s Sarah here from Proud Happy Brave and today I wanted to talk about what is an HSP and I’m going to share some signs that you might be one yourself.
What Is A Highly Sensitive Person Or HSP?
So the acronym HSP stands for Highly Sensitive Person. It’s a term that was first created by Elaine Aron, a psychologist who noticed that some people responded with extra sensitivity to external and internal stimuli. In other words, they’re extra sensitive to what’s happening around them and what’s going on inside of them.
A highly sensitive person’s brain processes things on a deeper level.
This includes things like emotion, thoughts, and sensory inputs.
Signs You Might Be A Highly Sensitive Person
🙋♀️ You are extra sensitive to sights, sounds, noises, smells and/or tastes
One of the biggest signs that you are an HSP is that you get easily overwhelmed, or startled even, by sensory inputs. So things like sights, sounds, noises, smells and tastes. So for example, if I hear a loud noise, I’ll often physically jolt because I have an automatic response and extra sensitive response to that noise.
You can be particularly sensitive in one of these senses or several of these. You don’t have to be sensitive to all of these to be classified as an HSP.
It’s like how, I most definitely am HSP, but I don’t feel like my taste buds are particularly sensitive. So, there can be some differences as to what you are sensitive with and what you are.
🙋♀️ You get overwhelmed easily
Another sign that you might be an HSP is that you get overwhelmed easily when you feel busy or stressed and feel like you’ve got too much on your plate.
You might even just shut down and be like, “No, nothing’s happening. I’m not doing anything” because you’ve got too much overloading your senses that makes you want to shut down.
🙋♀️ You feel things deeply
You might feel things really deeply. You might have even been called sensitive as a kid and you might take things really personally.
I feel like a lot of us do take things personally to a degree, but you might’ve really taken it on board as gospel and really mulled over it and kept on thinking about what happened or what was said.
🙋♀️ You feel the need to withdraw from crowds
If there’s a lot going on around you, you may feel the need to withdraw. Similar to the need to withdraw when you’re feeling busy and stressed, it can become just too much for you to deal with and so you want to go and hide.
When there’s too much happening, you want to reduce that because it all becomes overwhelming and you can’t process everything all at once.
🙋♀️ You are in tune with other people’s emotions
As a highly sensitive person, you might also be highly in tune with other people’s emotions.
You might be able to pick up immediately how someone is feeling, what their mood is, and you might even feel that as if you are experiencing other people’s emotions and feelings as if they are your own emotions and feelings.
I think the level at which HSPs experience this can vary, but it can be a telling sign that you are an HSP.
(If you experience this to a high degree, you may also be an empath – learn more about this here.)
What Does Being An HSP Mean?
So what does this all mean? Why does this happen? Why, why do HSPs have this extra sensitivity?
Elaine has found that it’s because our brains are wired a little bit differently and there are actually some studies that have also shown it could be genetic. So, being a highly sensitive person isn’t something that can be changed, but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
(Sidenote: when I first learnt I was an HSP, I burst into tears because I didn’t want to be ‘different‘ from everyone else, but since then I’ve learnt that it’s actually a really valuable trait that can be a superpower.)
There are 15 to 20% of the population who are highly sensitive people, so if you’re an HSP, you’re part of a small but strong crowd. It just means that you process things a little bit differently, a little bit more sensitively and a bit more deeply.
And when you embrace your HSP tendencies, you can pick up on a lot of things that other people can’t because you are extra sensitive.
Benefits Of Being An HSP
🙌 You are considerate of what other people are feeling
Because you can sense other people’s moods, you can be wonderfully kind and thoughtfully supportive of what others are going through.
This means helps you to have strong relationships with others because you’re more aware of how your actions impact others.
I believe this is an amazing gift to have because it counteracts the “dog eat dog” mentality that seems to be prevalent nowadays.
As someone who believes in treating others as we wish to be treated ourselves, I think HSP’s ability to tap into feeling empathy for others is an incredibly valuable benefit.
This ability can also make you a wonderful counsellor or coach.
🙌 You have great attention to detail
Highly sensitive people can be very detail-orientated because our deep thinking brains can notice the smallest details.
You can pick up on subtle differences and focus on analysing things with a fine-toothed comb to search for errors and other details.
This is a great trait for when you need to concentrate and it allows you to excel in certain career roles such as editors, proofreaders, researchers, scientists etc.
🙌 You can help others to feel strong emotions
Because you naturally feel things so strongly, you can tap into these emotions in creative ways to help others to feel these emotions in themselves as well.
For example, as an artist, you can create artworks that evoke certain emotions, or as a writer who uses words, or musician who uses various tones, or even a speaker who uses their passion for a topic to convey their message.
You can use what you’re feeling to convey real emotion that moves others to feel things right alongside you.
This can be a really powerful gift when, a lot of the time, people are just going through the motions of life without letting themselves feeling anything much.
You can help others to experience love, laughter and passion through your creations and words.
Related Posts:
- 6 Benefits Of Being A Highly Sensitive Person
- 8 Reasons Being Highly Sensitive Is Actually A Good Thing
- 14 Advantages Of Being Highly Sensitive
Downsides Of Being An HSP
🥱 You can burn out easily
Being an HSP means that you use more energy than not HSPs because your brain is processing at a higher level.
I can’t remember who said it, but I heard someone say that it’s like you’re a computer and you’re running 20% harder than all the other computers because you’re dealing with these extra details and you’re sensing things on a higher level. So it’s like you’re running 20% harder.
This means that you’re at risk of burnout, which can be really bad. As someone who has been there several, you don’t want to go there if you can avoid it. It can take you months to recover.
If you try to function at the same pace as everyone else, you’re heightening your risk of burning out.
🥱 You can’t operate at the same pace as non-HSPs (not for long periods anyway!)
This was a hard lesson for me to learn because I felt like if I couldn’t push as hard as everyone else, I felt like I was unproductive and lazy.
Often it feels like other people are go, go, go. They always seem to be doing a million and one things at once.
I felt like there was something lacking in me because I couldn’t do that. And, it wasn’t until I identified that I was the HSP, that I realised what was going on. I then had to come to terms with the fact that, okay, that’s fine for them, but no, I can’t function like that.
I need to be more intentional with including time for rest and recharging. And this means that I need to be more intentional with my work time as well so that I can work smarter and not harder to get the important things done.
I’m definitely still a work in progress at that 😂, but it’s definitely helped me to have that awareness around why I react to the way I do and kind of why I get tired before other people get tired.
🥱 You need to be intentional with resting & recharging
So, as mentioned above, it’s hard for HSPs to operate at the same levels as non-HSPs so you need to be intentional with taking time out to rest & recharge.
Knowing that I need to do this means that I can then tailor my day and what I do around that more and be more sensitive to that, and actually find things that work with that rather than trying to just keep on pushing, and pushing to do things that aren’t going to work for me as an HSP.
There’s power in having that knowledge and then making sure that you do work around that.
Ways To Protect Your Energy As A Highly Sensitive Person
Because the main downsides of being an HSP are related to feeling tired or drained of energy, I wanted to give you a couple of ways that I have found that help protect my energy as an HSP.
💭 The Bubble Method
One of my favourite ways to protect my energy is by imagining a protective bubble around me. And this is great for anyone to use to protect themselves from negativity.
So, I imagine that I’m surrounded by a protective bubble that nothing negative, nothing bad can get through. Only positive stuff can get through to me, anything negative or bad or overwhelming just bounces right back off.
It’s a bit woo woo because I’m just imagining this bubble, but I have found it to be really effective. It makes me super intentional about not allowing any negativity in.
I find this is really good for when stuff is happening around you, like anything negative or overwhelming and you don’t want to take it on and let it affect you or drain your energy.
💓 The Overflow Method
My second method is what I’m going to call the overflow method because what I do is I fill myself up with love and positivity and let myself really feel those feelings – so much so that I imagine myself overflowing with this love and positivity, and that it’s actually overflowing onto everyone around me and everyone benefits from all this love and positivity flowing out of me.
This really gives me a really good boost in my mood and my energy.
It feels kind of strange that it would, because when you think about giving, that feels like it would be draining, right? But I think it’s because of the positive feelings that I’m feeling and generating that I find it actually has the opposite effect.
I find it actually boosts my mood and boosts my energy because I’m just letting these positive feelings flood me.
So this one can be good if something’s happened and it’s trying to create a negative feeling inside of you and you want to push it out with this love and positivity.
And it can also work once again for negativity around you because you can imagine it kind of like as if it’s paint spreading out and covering everything all over.
I let it cover all the negativity with my own love and positivity and I imagine everything is changing for the better.
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Conclusion
So I hope you find those useful. Let me know how you get on with them. I have heard other people have found the bubble one helpful but this is the first time I’ve shared the overflow one. So let me know if you find that helpful as well.
And I hope that hearing this and maybe identifying yourself as a highly sensitive person helps you to have that awareness that you can then use to your advantage.
I know for myself, it really has changed my life for the better.
Even though I burst into tears when I first found out, since then, it really has allowed me to understand myself better and adapt my life to suit my HSP tendencies. And that feels so much more in alignment for me than trying to do what I see other people doing and it not working for me.
I hope the same is true for you!
Enjoy the rest of your day. I’m sending you so much love!
Sarah xo
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