Are You a Highly Sensitive Person?

Many people suffer from being easily drained and depleted, feeling overwhelmed, being on an emotional roller coaster or running on low energy. They know that if this goes on for too long they risk burning out or becoming ill. What they don’t know is that these ‘symptoms’ are very common amongst highly sensitive people. The majority of these people, though, haven’t considered themselves as being highly sensitive. The label ‘highly sensitive’ often has a bad reputation, being perceived as a weakness while the many gifts and talents of sensitivity are often overlooked. Or, even more common, they are taken for granted!

The type of intelligence and intuition that comes with high sensitivity is, by those who have it, often perceived as something ‘normal’, and highly sensitivity people assume that everybodyfeels or thinks in the same way. And even those people who do recognize themselves as highly sensitive, don’t always know what to do with it. And there is a lot that can be done – and a lot that can be discovered!

Christiane’s Story

I have only detected my level of sensitivity over recent years. I would frequently find myself feeling so exhausted or overwhelmed after so-called normal life situations that I would wonder how I would survive the next one.

• I dreaded the next business meeting. They felt so harsh to me and I wondered why other people didn’t seem to feel as ‘bruised’ as I did.
• I started hoping I wouldn’t run into a particular, chronically negative, neighbor who would constantly complain to me because I would feel so drained after getting dumped on by her.
• I started to avoid dinner parties where people would tease, gossip, complain or exchange shallow conversation because I would end up going home not feeling recharged, but depleted.

It made me feel so lonely and I would ask myself “Why can I not just enjoy myself? Why am I such a weirdo??”

When I started to pay more attention to how I felt during and after each meeting and encounter I started to become aware of my sensitivity and, over time, I learned some quick and simple tools that made my life so much easier (and more effective!). Through this process, I discovered that there are gifts to being highly sensitive that can become such a joy and can truly enrich your life.

If my story rings a bell and has got you thinking about your own experience, why not take this short, 11-question quiz that will help you evaluate whether or not you, too, are a highly sensitive person.

Are You a Highly Sensitive Person? Take the Quiz

Do the following things happen to you? (Answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’)

1. You feel drained after a conversation, even a casual one.
2. You walk around feeling ‘unprotected’ and wonder how you can protect yourself better from the world.
3. You walk around ‘very guarded’ as you deliberately try to protect yourself and not show too much of yourself.
4. You find your job, your environment, your daily life ‘gets to you’ so much that you don’t know how to recover from it at the end of the day.
5. You feel overwhelmed with information, emotions and energies coming at you from people, conversations, emails, news or movies on TV, maybe even background noise or electrical machines.
6. You sometimes ‘hit a brick wall’, realizing you have let other people take way too much of your space and energy.
7. You often have a feeling of what is going on in others – even when they try to hide it. You ‘feel’ everyone around you and sometimes feel overwhelmed by it.
8. You sense when someone is pretending or lying.
9. You find things painful that other people find normal, for example, while they talk aggressively or tease laughingly, you feel irritated or hurt.
10. You feel stuck when people around you are being insensitive, harsh or energy-draining, and don’t know how to get away from the situation.
11. You would love your relationships, work place, and the entire world to be more harmonious, joyful, peaceful and cooperative and you cannot easily be content with ‘this is just how things are’.

If you said Yes to seven or more questions you are most likely a highly sensitive person.

If you answered five with a Yes then you are probably a highly sensitive person but are maybe not as alert to it and the effect it is having on you. You could try taking these questions into your daily life and see whether you detect more of these in everyday situations.

Highly sensitive people might feel a bit lost in this world, and maybe even really desperate at times, thinking “I can’t cope with my life, it feels overwhelming. But what are my options? I can’t just stop going anywhere – and I don’t want to – but how can I survive in this world?”

So if you know that you are highly sensitive – or suspect that you may be – it is really important to learn about your sensitivity and what you can do with it. There are so many tips & tricks to discover that will help you live your life more easily and effectively.  And once you learn to ‘survive’ better in your environment, you can then discover how your sensitivity can help you thrive in the world, be a lot more successful and also live your life more joyfully.

If you know (or suspect) you are highly sensitive, we have a lot more information and tips coming for you in future articles!

If you want to learn more but don’t want to wait  you can buy our book, Your Energy in Action! ‘Energy Balancing’ for Daily Living, which talks a lot about how highly sensitive people can work with energy to recover quicker from irritating or energy-draining situations and encounters.

Finally, we love to hear your experiences and thoughts so please do use the comments box to share your stories, thoughts, tips and questions about being highly sensitive.