8 Signs You Are a Highly Sensitive Person?

In equal measure, it is estimated that highly sensitive people make up around 20% of the worldwide population, men and women.

High sensitivity is not a defect or disease but simply a trait like hair colour, left-handedness or having freckles. Most people analyse information using the left-brain hemisphere, while highly sensitive people mainly use the right hemisphere.

That is why highly sensitive people are interested in other topics, think differently, and deal meticulously with their collected information. But unfortunately, this requires an extra effort to process all the information and often adds a degree of difficulty in decision-making.

Each highly sensitive person has different degrees of sensitivity and develops multifaceted characteristics with personal paths and experiences.

However, there are common traits for highly sensitive people.

Here are some of them:

Overthinking: Their extremely detailed mental analysis gets them a much wider amount of data to be processed, so they need a greater reflection upon what happens and surrounds them. This constant overthinking, if not guided, complicates or blocks a healthy analysis process. It can lead to difficulties in decision-making, low self-esteem, eating or sleeping disorders, anxiety, panic attacks, problems in personal and professional relationships etc.

The sensitivity of the 5 senses: Their senses are often more potent, and they perceive subtle nuances that escape others. They can, therefore, feel disturbed by sounds that are too loud, solid flavours or smells, and artificial lights.

Feeling odd or different: Having their way of processing information, they certainly have their vision of what happens around them and a different reaction. Depending on education, culture and the family environment, since childhood, they often receive comments such as: "You are too sensitive!", "You think too much" or "How can you think like that?" or "How could you think about it?" etc. All this increases the sense of diversity and inadequacy and, in some cases, can make them feel misunderstood, alone, and null.

Deep emotions. They get overwhelmed in front of a movie or an emotional situation (romantic, painful, stressful). They tend to have "easy tears" or feel easily overwhelmed by what they live internally.

Strong sense of honesty, justice, and extremely high standard: An overly sensitive friend, colleague or employee is invaluable because you can always count on his sense of justice and honesty as well as their self-imposed high standards. However, they demand the same from the people around them; so, when the expectations are disregarded, they live a profound disillusionment, loss of esteem, and misunderstanding.

Empathy: They can tune into the emotions of people around them, even if they are strangers, and perceive how they feel. However, if they do not learn to remain grounded and listen to themselves, they can get confused and cannot tell the difference between their emotions and the one of the others.

The need for regular silence or some time in solitude to recharge: Especially after spending time in groups or with difficult or negative people. Their sensitivity leads them to "quickly load up too much data", silence and loneliness are often their quickest way of "cleaning up what doesn't belong to them," like a computer clearing the contents of the cache or trash.

Being available to help others, often forgetting one's well-being: Their empathetic ability and emotional experiences lead them to put themselves in the other's shoes and try so hard to avoid hurting other people. As a result, they tend to help anyone who may need physical help, emotional support or listening, often failing to set boundaries or clarify their needs or desires in the professional and personal spheres.

An example at work: They often tend to offer their help to colleagues in difficulty to the point of regularly overworking.

An example in personal life: Sometimes sensitive girls struggle to clarify that they are not involved in someone courting them. Girls believe they have been straightforward, but the need to be kind and not cause pain leads them to send contradictory signals and find themselves pursued by in-love guys who think they have a chance.

These are just some of the common signs of sensitive people. Several books speak extensively of the various facets of highly sensitive people, and several psycho tests can help identify them. However, the psycho test from Elaine N. Aron in her most famous book "Highly Sensitive People" is still one of the best and most exhaustive, although she says: "no psychological test is accurate".

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