The Highly Sensitive Trait

highly sensitive people

Explore, learn, and grow in the light of your sensitivity

What is High Sensitivity?

Are you confused by the idea of "highly sensitive people" or looking to learn more about it? You're in the right place!

Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) is commonly refers to those with Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS - the term used in scientific research).

HSPs have nervous systems that process sensory stimuli more deeply and react more intensely than average. However, responses to the same stimuli can vary significantly between individuals.

Sensitivity is a natural trait that exists alongside other personal characteristics, and understanding it can help us navigate life more effectively.

Unsure if you have sensory processing sensitivity? Use the self-test on SensitivityResearch to explore more. For a more comprehensive result, the SPS-Q Monitor is a good option (available in multiple languages).

Why Do We Care About This Stuff?

Why do we talk about high sensitivity in The Haven?

What inspired me to go from writing about music, songwriting, and creativity to high sensitivity and the nervous system? How the heck did that happen?

I share more in this video...

The HSP Owner's Guide

Do you ever wish an instruction manual existed for your (or other people's) highly sensitive temperament?

The pace, values, and pressures of modern life can feel out of step with the natural rhythms and needs of highly sensitive people. As an HSP, you process information deeply and absorb subtleties others filter out. Without space and time for it, this depth of processing can lead to a more significant impact from overstimulation.

What if you had a guide to help you understand and work with your sensitivity, rather than feeling overwhelmed?

The Highly Sensitive Person's Owner's Guides aim to provide that.

Drawing on scientific research, anecdotal evidence, and more than a decade of working with highly sensitive people, these guides are informative, practical, and supportive, no matter where you are in your relationship with your sensitivity.

Maybe, you don't identify as a highly sensitive person yourself, but you would like to understand more about the trait because you have HSPs in your life. This is a great way to do that.

The two Highly Sensitive Person’s Owner’s Guides are resources to help you align your mind and body with the elements of life that matter most to you.

Part One: Understanding High Sensitivity

Discover the unique traits of a highly sensitive temperament and learn why you may experience certain aspects of life with greater intensity.

Part Two: Understanding Other Parts of Yourself In Light of Your High Sensitivity

Explore how your sensitivity interacts with other traits—both innate and learned. This guide includes prompts to help you recognise and work with your strengths, limitations, preferences, beliefs, and values in light of your heightened sensitivity.

Sign Up To Receive The HSP Owner's Guides

Drop your email address below to receive these two free short guides (or if you are a Haven Member, you can login to access them):

The HSP Owner's Guide (Dive Deeper Articles)

These posts unpack and elaborate on elements of the HSP Owner's Guides. I will be adding more over time.

Hypervigilance and High Sensitivity (The HSP Owner’s Guide)

Moral Sensitivity (The HSP Owner’s Guide)

Social Sensitivity and The Highly Sensitive Person (The HSP Owner’s Guide)

Differential Susceptibility (The HSP Owner’s Guide)

Mental Sensitivity (The HSP Owner’s Guide)

Physical Sensitivity (The HSP Owner’s Guide)

Rewriting Our Story Through The Lens of Sensitivity

One of the first things I instinctively did when I understood myself through the lens of high sensitivity was to go through a creative writing process...

Rewriting the old story gives us a way of reconnecting with who we are in the experiences and decisions we might have lost or neglected ourselves. It allows us to identify why we might have made particular choices and the autonomic nervous system context surrounding reactions in certain situations.

In essence, rewriting through sensitivity is about healing the story we hold within; allowing our sensitivity to rise and become part of the whole it belongs to. By reframing, rewriting, and reconciling, we invite the past into the present in a newly integrated way, so our many parts can work together.

Reframing helps us develop new and fresh perspectives on past experiences. We might remember times when something in us felt out of place. Maybe something was going well, and someone poured a cold bucket of water on it.

Reframing invites healing and forgiveness (of ourselves and others). Forgiveness can allow us to let go of the grip our unprocessed stories might have on our present freedom.

It can even be a fun, humourous, and playful way to think about who we are in light of our sensitivities!

A Reframing Practice

You've read the articles, taken the tests, and watched the videos about high sensitivity. You recognise yourself in the descriptions. Now what? This is an important question to consider because it's easy to get stuck in knowledge-hoarding or even regrets and wishes that you'd learned about it earlier in life.

That's why I recommend taking a creative approach to embracing and integrating your sensitivity to collaborate with it (rather than fight against it) as you write the next chapter of your story.

VIDEO | Rewriting Our Story Through The Lens of Sensitivity

AUDIO | The Reframing Practice

AUDIO | Instrumental Music

The Gentle Rebel Book

The Gentle Rebel book was originally shared in 2014. I had written it as a way to creatively (and playfully) process life through the lens of high sensitivity.

I hope you find some encouragement from it to inspire you on your journey.

PDF Version

Audio Version

The Gentle Rebel Book (Companion Videos)

I revisited the book in 2018 when I re-shared it on The Haven. I made the following videos at the time. They focus on different senses and experiences through my highly sensitive nervous system, with a few practical nuggets and titbits along the way!

Noise

Texture

Smell

Transmarginal Inhibition

Lighting

Being a Gentle Rebel

Sensitivity Archive

The full archive of articles, discussions, and resources to raise awareness and understanding of sensory processing sensitivity to help us proactively design life in partnership with our natural temperament.