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 -Â 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.
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...
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.
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.
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!
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.
Are You Overwhelmed By Too Much Information?
The past few years have carried an exceptionally concentrated flow of difficult news. It can feel like too much information to hold at any one…
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What is Sensory Processing Sensitivity?
When I first saw the term, “Sensory Processing Sensitivity” I looked straight past it. It was around 2011 when I had recently started reading about…
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Do You Find It Unsettling To Feel “Seen” By Others?
I don’t know about you, but I find it strangely unsettling when I feel seen by the world around me. Have you ever had one…
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A Voice of My Own
There’s a particular moment from my childhood that lives vividly in my memory. A group of boys in my class at school decided to block my path and insist that I say a word as loud as I possibly could. It seemed important to them that I prove I had a voice.
I remember being scared and confused. I also remember holding my ground and (silently) refusing to do it until they gave up and walked away. But this was one of the first times I realised that my natural state was not a good fit for the world I lived in. I was too quiet, too sensitive, too… not like everyone else.
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Sensory Processing Sensitivity in Men (with Bill Allen)
I had the pleasure of speaking with Bill Allen on the podcast. Bill is the author of Confessions of a Sensitive Man, a thoughtful and…
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Inner Relationship Focusing and Deep Sensitivity (with Emily Agnew)
I had the opportunity to speak with Emily Agnew—founder of SustainablySensitive.com, musician, and a practitioner of Inner Relationship Focusing and Inner Bonding. Our conversation explored…
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Sensitivity, Masculinity, and Men’s Mental Wellbeing (with Tom Falkenstein)
I had the pleasure of speaking with Tom Falkenstein, psychotherapist and author of The Highly Sensitive Man, for an extended episode of The Gentle Rebel…
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The Gentle Rebel (Book)
Do you feel deeply affected by bright lights, loud noises, or tense atmospheres? Have you been told you’re “too sensitive” or need to “toughen up”?…
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Choosing The Highly Sensitive Creative Life (with Jacob Nordby)
Recently on the Gentle Rebel Podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jacob Nordby, author of Blessed Are the Weird. For highly sensitive people,…
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Collective Narcissism and Highly Sensitive People
The term narcissism is thrown around frequently—often as a way to dismiss those who think differently or challenge our views. But while individual narcissism can…
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