The Highly Sensitive Person
by Elaine Aron was published nearly 10 years ago and it has changed the life of thousands of readers. Just imagine, a highly sensitive person (HSP) may think of herself or himself as an inborn introvert, neurotic or shy person, or as if she or he has some sort of problem and when a non-HSP psychologist or even when the average non-HSP person describes sensitive individuals according how they “look like”, they usually describe them wrongly as introverts, shy people, timid, neurotics, etc. But this is not necessarily true for the HSP and actually, some non-HSP can be described that way too.
What happens is that a person has a sensitive nervous system, this can probably be inherited and it actually occurs in about 15-20% of the population. What this means is that a HSP is more aware of subtleties in the environment and it also means that they are understanding and aware. Most people have these qualities, but HSP may observe more subtle nuances, specially when they feel good, calm and alert. Elaine Aron describes this observance of the subtle like this:
“This greater awareness of the subtle tends to make you more intuitive, which simply means picking up and working through information in a semiconscious or unconscious way. The result is that you often “just know” without realizing how. You “just know” how things got to be the way they are of how they are going to turn out.”