Highly Sensitive People share a natural biological trait known as sensory processing sensitivity or environmental sensitivity which is associated with high awareness of their internal and external environment. Simply put, you notice everything happening inside and around you.

That sensitivity is characterized by an increased depth of processing (things are more intense), and increased emotional reactivity, (your nervous system reacts more strongly) to both positive and negative stimuli or environments.

Those characteristics are classified in 3 ways :

• Ease of Excitation: You’re easily overwhelmed by external demands, multi-tasking, and time constraints or internal demands like being hungry or tired. 
• Low Sensory Threshold: You get overwhelmed by stimuli like smells, sounds, lights, and textures, meaning your nervous system can get easily saturated by stimuli and situations other people don’t mind or can’t notice at all. 
• Esthetic Sensitivity: You appreciate and connect deeply to beauty, art, nature, and music. Beauty will make you feel peace, and you are impacted negatively by unaesthetic environments. 

Although being too sensitive is seen as something negative, being highly sensitive is a personality trait that brings both strengths and challenges to its people. Want to learn more? Listen to Ep 161: Are you really TOO sensitive?

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Are you part of the 20% of the population that is HSP? Take this quiz to learn what is your sensitivity profile.