Are You Highly Sensitive?

Do you often feel overwhelmed by your environment or the people around you? Has anyone ever called you shy – or worse: “too sensitive”? Do you care deeply about EVERYTHING? You may be a Highly Sensitive Soul – a person of deep empathy and high intensity, with powerful intuition, awareness, and intelligence.

Being Highly Sensitive, you have a uniquely perceptive sensory system. You are therefore more sensitive to emotions, energy, environmental conditions such as lighting or sound, other people, excitement, and stress. As a result of constant stimuli, you may feel easily overwhelmed or unable to cope. Things can be particularly confusing when others seem unperturbed by the same experiences. For example, your friends might be able to shop all day, go out to dinner, and then head to a loud party. For you, that would be unbearable.

Research psychologist Dr. Elaine Aron, author of The Highly Sensitive Person, has studied high sensitivity extensively. Her research shows that being sensitive is a personality temperament or trait, one usually inherited. According to Dr. Aron, up to 20% of the population is Highly Sensitive.

How To Tell If You Are Highly Sensitive
Being Highly Sensitive comes with a number of gifts, as well as challenges. See if any of these Highly Sensitive qualities resonate strongly with you.

1. You are deeply affected by all aspects of your life. As a Sensitive Soul, you have great emotional passion, intensity, and depth. You may have been told that your emotions are “too much.” You are sensitive, caring, and easily affected by the energy and emotions of others. These qualities make it easy to lose touch with your needs and desires.

2. You have heightened perceptive skills. A Sensitive Soul is intuitive, highly aware, and keenly observant of the subtleties of your environment, including energy, light, noise, smell, texture, and temperature. You may also be empathic or even psychic. Your perceptive skills operate in the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual realms. You tie together things you see into complex and original concepts. This makes you a visionary.

3. You have a lower tolerance for stimulation than others. Because you receive so much information from your surroundings, your threshold for what’s “too much” is significantly lower than for those around you. This means: a) You may be seen as shy or timid; and b) You may feel uncomfortably dissimilar to others because you respond so differently to stimulation.

4. You are highly conscientious and thorough in all your undertakings. A Sensitive Soul makes a great employee. You concentrate intensely and process multi-source information. However, you require privacy, uninterrupted time, and little or no pressure in order to do your best work.

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