If you recognize these 6 things, you might be highly sensitive
At the end of the year, we look back at our most read articles. It may be that you missed these, so you can enjoy reading them again now. Under a blanket on the couch, for example. And of course, team Amayzine wishes you the most beautiful days, and may 2023 be a great year for all of us.
You can't handle a lot of hustle and bustle very well, but you also don't really know why. Being highly sensitive is more common than you think.
Highly sensitive people can tolerate external stimuli a bit less well; as a result, they are more easily distracted or tired. Sounds, smells, and conversations come to HSPs (HSP stands for ‘Highly Sensitive Person’) more intensely and loudly. They also often hear background noises much louder and can filter them out less effectively. If a car drives by outside while they are inside working behind the laptop, they get distracted immediately by the sound. They notice a lot of what is happening around them.
Not the same
It's important to know that you don't do it on purpose or that you just ‘become’ this way. It is an innate personality trait, a piece of temperament that makes you who you are, psychologists and researchers say. So you can't just suddenly have issues if you've never had them before, but you can recognize yourself in this. And the older you get, the more you notice that you find it a bit too much to process everything you have to do in a day. HSPs can also be particularly good at worrying about life. They look for meaning behind everything: why does this happen? Why does this happen to them? They doubt everything, and that makes an ordinary day extra tiring.
‘High sensitivity is not the same as high sensitivity,’ says psychologist Elke van Hoof. ‘These terms are often confused, but there is an important difference. High sensitivity is about the number of stimuli that enter the brain. High sensitivity, on the other hand, is an emotional response that occurs in many more people, for example, in people with autism or bipolar disorder, in people who have experienced trauma, as a warning sign for burnout. Therefore, someone who is highly sensitive is not necessarily highly sensitive.’
What you can do if you think you are affected by this is to first go through this checklist. Because if you recognize all 6 of these things in yourself, you might be highly sensitive:
- You get tired and overstimulated quickly, especially when you are around other people.
- You can't filter sounds, smells, and colors well; everything hits you hard immediately, and you are therefore easily distracted.
- You look for a deeper meaning in everything. afterwards.
- You get tired faster than others.
- You panic faster than others, get scared more easily.
- You are always aware of your surroundings; you immediately notice what others think, feel, and do.
What can you do if you are affected by this in your daily life? Take time after a social activity to come back to yourself. Dinner with friends? Nice, but then recharge a bit. So, have an evening with nothing planned. An evening on the couch with yourself, you need that too. You can't ask too much of yourself, because then you really get overstimulated. Take your breaks, every day again. This way, you enjoy your own life the most, sensitive or not.
