How to know if I'm a highly sensitive person

In the 90s, Dr. Elaine Aron created the term of Highly sensitive person (PAS), which explains in detail in his book "The gift of sensitivity". Highly sensitive people are those who can capture positive and/or negative emotions and sensations. These types of people more than guide themselves for reason, They are usually guided by their instinct, which they have extremely developed and use it to make almost all kinds of decisions in their life. It is said that between 15 and 20% of people without sex distinction have this type of personality, but, ¿How to know if I'm a highly sensitive person?, ¿What factors influence?.

In this psychology-online article we discover you How to know if I'm a highly sensitive person, So we are going to solve all your doubts about this issue so that you can finally determine if you are effectively a highly sensitive person and/or learn to identify the people who are.

1. Characteristics of highly sensitive people
2. Difficulties of highly sensitive people
3. Signs to know if you are a highly sensitive person

Characteristics of highly sensitive people

The main characteristics that identify highly sensitive people are the following:

• They process the information deeply. Highly sensitive people tend a lot to reflect and internalize their thoughts and emotions. They are very introspective people who tend to give their affairs many and analyze each situation in detail to reach a good conclusion.
• Tendency to feel overestimulated. Another characteristics of highly sensitive people are that they process a lot of sensitive and emotional information at the same time for what they have to feel overestimulated. So being in environments where there are many stimuli causes them discomfort and makes them lose their mental and emotional balance. It is for this reason that PAS people prefer to meet in quiet places where there are few stimuli.
• They are very empathic and emotional. The nervous system of this type of people is scheduled to feel everything with more intensity. That is why so many negative and positive stimuli will be experienced with greater intensity. The person can deeply perceive and experience their emotions and sensations as well as those of other people, which makes it more empathic since it easily puts itself in the shoes of the other.
• They are sensitive to subtleties. They have a great capacity to perceive the changes that occur in their environment, however small they are. As well as they are able to perceive changes in the emotional state of other people.

Difficulties of highly sensitive people

When a highly sensitive person He doesn't know how to manage his emotions in a healthy way, It is very likely that you face different types of difficulties that can appear throughout your life.

Between the main difficulties to which people who are highly sensitive can face are the following:

• They can have the feeling not fitting With others due to their condition of being highly sensitive. Which in the worst case can lead to the person being isolated more and more.
• Because they experience positive and negative emotions more intensely, they can be too much criticism sensitive, Which if they know how to manage it well, it ends up deteriorating their self -esteem little by little.
• Difficulty To others because by feeling rejected and finding deteriorated self -esteem, they can be doing their best to try to please others.
• They can appear Problems in the workplace Due to the overestimulation that is regularly presented in the works and the great need to work individually and with the minimum stimuli.

Among other problems related to the lack of acceptance of their own personality, not learning to manage their own emotions and put aside the advantages they have depending on their individual situation.

Signs to know if you are a highly sensitive person

Below is a small test That although he cannot guarantee you 100% that you are a highly sensitive person, responding positively to most statements is an indicator that you have a more likely to be one of them.

• I enjoy the time alone than being accompanied (a).
• I usually cry very often.
• I am an extremely intuitive person.
• I take everything very seriously.
• I am a very important person, so I know myself quite well (A).
• I prefer to work alone than as a team.
• I consider myself a very intense person, I usually live negative and/or positive emotions with great intensity.
• I am very hurt by the criticisms that others can do of me.
• When I make a mistake, I keep thinking about him and I have it all day in my head.
• I stressed too much when I am surrounded by many people.
• I consider myself a very creative person.
• I usually avoid watching or listening to bad news and I don't like films where there is some kind of violence.
• I am a very empathic person.

If you want more information about emotional hypersensitivity, we recommend you perform the following sensitivity test.

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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