The term Highly Sensitive Person was coined by the Psychologist Elaine Aaron in the mid-1990s, an experienced researcher who has written several books on this topic, for example 'The Highly Sensitive Person', The Highly Sensitive Child', 'The Highly Sensitive Person in Love' and ‘The Highly Sensitive Parent’.

In a nutshell, research shows that HSPs are more aware of subtleties in their environment, therefore take in more information and process incoming stimuli (physical, social and emotional) more deeply.

Being highly sensitive is a trait, like introversion or extraversion, which means one is born with this trait or not and against unfortunately still popular belief it is not something that a person can be ‘trained out of’ or ‘toughened up from’. About 20% of humans -and also of many other species- are born with the trait of High Sensitivity and the numbers are equally distributed between males and females. HSPs are often introverted but can also be extraverted.

Some examples you might recognise from your own life are:

• Are you easily bothered by scratchy clothes and frequently cut the tags out of your clothing?

• Do you find bright lights, noises and smells overwhelming?

• Do you need to rest and recover in a darkened room or another quiet, private setting after busy days, social activities or outings to busy shopping centres?

• Do you avoid violent and upsetting movies and TV-Shows?

• Do you remember being perceived as a sensitive child by your family?

To find out if you or your child might be Highly Sensitive you can complete the self-test as per Elaine Aron, which is on her website ( https://hsperson.com/ ) .

Once a person recognises themselves as a HSP it opens the door to navigating life in a new way and to recognise the gifts a sensitive disposition can offer.

If you are interested in finding more about High Sensitivity or would like some support, I would love to hear from you.