Reflection
The Highly Sensitive Person: An Invaded Strength, and How to Inhabit It
A woman came to see me and said: during COVID, I felt normal. I no longer had to leave my house, to be invaded by sound, to be overwhelmed by emotion. That sentence says almost everything about high sensitivity: the person is not ill, they are invaded. And when the world turned its volume down, she finally felt at home.
Let us begin with the strengths
High sensitivity is almost always discussed through its difficulties. I want to begin with the opposite, because it is what I see first in my consulting room. The highly sensitive people I meet, those the American psychologist Elaine Aron first described as highly sensitive persons, are deep thinkers. They are very creative, often gifted in art. They have strong intuition and empathy. They make good leaders, and they are excellent in the caring professions. On one condition: that they manage to contain the sensitivity, because it is a spectrum, and everything depends on where you sit on it and what you have learned to do with it.
Why they come to see me
They come almost always for one of two reasons: they feel overwhelmed by life, or they are burnt out. Behind those two doors the picture is constant. Strong emotional intensity. Difficulty setting boundaries. They feel other people to the point of absorbing their states: an emotional sponge, taking in everything that crosses a room. Criticism and rejection hit them very hard, far harder than others. Many struggle with imposter syndrome. They are perfectionists, and they overthink.
And there is one life moment that often brings them to me: the arrival of a child. The newborn is the one thing in the world that cannot be filtered. Overwhelmed, they stop feeling good enough, and the imposter syndrome settles in exactly where they most wanted to be the best of themselves.
A word, and a place in the world
Part of the work is simple and profound at once: there is a word for what they live, and there is a place in the world for the highly sensitive. Since COVID, hybrid working, two or three days at home, has genuinely helped them: they are often excellent employees at home who suffer in the open-plan office. One client told me: in the office I wear my noise-cancelling headset, and I manage. Dim or natural light helps too. These are not gadgets: for someone who is invaded very quickly by their environment, they are physical boundaries, while the psychological ones are being built.
The work: regulate, set boundaries, choose your life
There is never one thing that works for everyone; the work is to find what works for you. Grounding practices help: breathwork, mindfulness, somatic work, which bring back into the body what is overflowing in the head. Learning to set boundaries between yourself and others: this is the single biggest piece of work for the sensitive person, the one that changes everything. And choosing work that meets your values, rather than speed, superficiality and productivity for their own sake: a sensitive person in an environment that contradicts their values exhausts themselves twice.
The sensitive child within
In depth, with Jungian analysis or Internal Family Systems, we work with the sensitive child inside. I often invite the person to imagine that child: how would you speak to them? How would you calm them? How would you create a space where that child can play? Art therapy serves this work too, because the sensitive person is often gifted exactly there. What was lived as a weakness to be tamed becomes, when it is welcomed, what it always was: a sensitivity, which is to say an instrument.
High sensitivity well inhabited is not fragility: it is depth of reception. The work is not to feel less but to be less invaded; not to become like others, but to build the life in which that reception becomes what it knows how to be: thought, art, intuition, care.
I see highly sensitive people, in English and in French, at Harley Street in London, in Paris, and by secure video. See also imposter syndrome, burnout, and, on the dark side of this receptivity, narcissistic abuse, whose victim of choice is precisely the empathic, highly sensitive person, and, on the dark twin of this same temperament, borderline personality. Book a consultation.
To locate yourself: the highly sensitive person test in ten questions.
When overwhelm becomes panic: The Panic Attack, understanding and calming it.
Download the free guide: this essay is part of the book The Hold: Recognising Narcissistic Abuse, Understanding the Fear of Abandonment, and the Way Out, with seven art therapy exercises. Download it freely (PDF). No sign-up, no email: it is a gift.
When the empathy itself becomes the burden: Hyper-Empathy and the Mental Load.
