Highly Sensitive Person(s)

It wasn’t until after the birth of my second child, that I found out about the personality trait of high sensitivity or being a highly sensitive person (HSP). With one-month old Maeve nestled cozily in her sling, Elaine Aron’s book, The Highly Sensitive Child called to me as I browsed the parenting shelf at Borders.

 

Sensitive? Yes. At three weeks old, a slightly too intense look from her grand father would send her eyes and mouth a-quivering into tears. Waiting too long to nurse or be changed would trigger tears as well. From the start, she seemed highly in-tune to the nuances around her. She could almost instinctively read my body language, my cues, and my energy; but the real magic didn’t happen until I began utilizing my own sensitivity in reading her cues and anticipating her needs in the same way. Once this mother-daughter dance began, she rarely needed to cry and thus rarely did.   

 

Sensitive? Yes for both of us. To put it mildly, the book was a game changer for me and my daughter. It is not an overstatement to say that it revolutionized my life.

 

After a lifetime of hearing: You’re too sensitive. You’re paranoid. Stop feeling so much. Hurry up! You’re taking too long. Why can’t you just be more aggressive? I finally held a useful model and lens for understanding my own sensitivity and my often misunderstood experiences in the world. It felt like being seen and heard, as though for the first time. 

 

And so I’ve spent the last few decades on a journey—learning the art of coming home to myself and my high sensitivity. The further I walk this HSP path, the more I am coming to realize that my soul and the work that I do is all the richer for leaning into my sensitivity rather than away from it. Being a highly sensitive person is an invaluable gift that I get the privilege of using every day in my holistic naturopathic practice.

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