Exposing HSP

I thought I would take a moment, or several, to shed some light on an issue that is important to me. It's not a moral issue. Rather, it's a mental, or emotional one, called HSP, or "Hypersensitive Personality".

I always thought it was just a habit, not an inherited "thing". Experts say it is NOT a disorder, but honestly, it feels like one to me.

I never put any psychological thought into it until this past week, in which I had a lot of emotional difficulties with my professor and my thesis proposal presentation. I talked to many people about it, friends, colleagues, and virtually every one of them said the same thing: "Don't take things so personally". It was at that point that it hit me: Something is wrong with me.

That statement really bothered me, because it implies that I choose to react in an emotional way. It implies that "normal" people can switch off their emotions. Well, unfortunately for me, I can't do this. Believe me, if I could wake up one morning and stop being hypersensitive, I would.

This evening, I spent over an hour reading on HSP, and quite appropriately enough, the articles I read made me cry. I never knew there was writing about this, and it made me feel like I was normal, like I wasn't alone. If you don't have HSP, and can't relate to it, I envy you. Truly. The articles say being hypersensitive is a gift and blessing. I wish I saw it that way, because to me, it is incredibly oppressive. Crying over everything makes me feel stupid, because it isn't logical. When I left my thesis presentation, as I was fighting back tears, this was the mantra going through my head: Don't cry, it's stupid. Stop taking things so personally all the time. This is ridiculous. So people constantly telling me to stop taking things personally is not going to enlighten me, or fix my issue, because it can't be fixed. It's just the way I am.

The following 2 quotes describe me perfectly, and explain this problem better than I can:

"The trait of Highly Sensitivity causes them to process and reflect upon incoming information very deeply. It is not that they are "afraid," but that it is in their nature to process incoming information so deeply. Highly Sensitive People may even sometimes need until the next day to have had enough time to process the information fully, reflect upon it, and formulate their response. "

"Pearl S. Buck, (1892-1973), recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938, said the following about Highly Sensitive People:

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this:

A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.


To him... a touch is a blow,
a sound is a noise,
a misfortune is a tragedy,
a joy is an ecstasy,
a friend is a lover,
a lover is a god,
and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - - - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating." -Pearl S. Buck"

(2 quotes taken from http://healing.about.com/od/empathic/a/HSP_hallowes.htm)

So that's basically HSP in a nutshell. I am perfectly aware that it is very annoying to be around people with HSP, because it also means they are highstrung and defensive all the time. But unfortunately, I don't yet know how to fix it. I'm not even sure it can be fixed. But I do know that I do not choose to be this way.