The Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)

By Emily Wilson (she/her)

I’d like you to imagine living with all your senses on high alert. Paired with a vivid and rich inner world where all your emotions are magnified. Sensory Processing Sensitivity is another name for Highly Sensitive. This personality feature involves a deeper cognitive processing of physical, social, and emotional stimuli, in addition to a heightened sensitivity of the central nervous system.

Being highly sensitive indicates that your nervous system is more susceptible to all types of stimuli. This includes visual cues like lights and auditory cues like music. Individuals who are Highly Sensitive are also more perceptive than the average person, including social cues like voice tone or subtle body language.

Highly Sensitive people experience external and internal stimuli to a more intense and deeper level than a non-Highly Sensitive person.

What is sensory overload?

When your senses are overstimulated, it is known as sensory overload. External stimuli in your environment cause this overstimulation to occur, when your senses gather more data than your brain can handle.

For instance, being exposed to really loud music may overload your sense of hearing. If you’re exposed to intense fluorescent lighting, your vision could also feel strained.

The following are some of the most typical causes of sensory overload: loud noise, certain textures, crowded spaces, strong smells, stress, and fatigue.

When I experience sensory overload, every little thing around me is suddenly intensified by 1000x and usually, it comes without warning. I’m not quite sure what triggers sensory overload for me, it’s different every time. But I think tiredness is my main one. This can happen if something is too loud, too bright, smells too strong, lots of people are talking at once, or there are just lots of emotions happening around me. If one of these senses are triggered, it starts a domino effect of everything being too much when just a minute ago it was all fine.

What does sensory overload look like?

Loud traffic noises may be too much for some people to handle. Some people could feel overstimulated by multiple discussions at once. When exposed to specific food textures, some people may become agitated. Some people would rather remain quiet and use their hands to block out loud noises or bright lights.

Some things that can cause sensory overload are; multitasking, feeling rushed, when we don’t have any downtime, when our feelings are minimized, and when our space is cluttered. Every Highly Sensitive person reacts differently but there are a few reactions which are common, like the urge to cover your ears and eyes, restlessness, extreme discomfort, panic, and physical, mental and emotional exhaustion.

How I cope with sensory overload

I find I need to have a set night routine. I notice that making sure I have alone time at the end of each day helps me get though the next day a little bit easier. This can be as simple as finding a show you like to watch by yourself. I usually watch Netflix, with dimmed lighting and a cup of peppermint tea in bed at the end of each day. This helps me unwind from the busyness of the day and everything that I process. I personally think this is a very important thing for me to do as a Highly Sensitive person, and I have control of my surroundings and environment at this point.

Why it’s so hard to explain sensitivity

The truth is that many children who are Highly Sensitive are told they are broken even when they are totally normal, and this stigma continues into adulthood. The largest difficulty might simply be the problem of perception. People that are Highly Sensitive have unique experiences with the world. Noises that seem like background to most sound intrusive to Highly Sensitive people. And to those who are extremely sensitive, everyone’s feelings that they believe they are hiding are on full display. For Highly Sensitive people, even tastes and textures can feel ‘louder, ‘busier,’ or ‘more salient’.