Feb 24
This is a live report from my living room as the guy installs (or tries to install?) my internet. Unlike the last guy, who said my cable jack wasn’t useable for him and he’d have to make a hole in the house to pass a new cable through, this one seems to think the cable jack will work. He’s testing it out as we speak. It’s awkward sitting here with a stranger three feet away but because the apartment is tiny and Minx and I shoved all the mess into the adjoining rooms to make way for the installation, there’s kinda nowhere else to go. Probably the guy is used to working with people around.
Now, I know I said I wasn’t very technically-minded but I do have grave misgivings about the internet coming through the same cable jack I share with the whole house – especially since the last tech guy said he couldn’t do that. I asked this dude to confirm for me that using the cable jack would give internet only to me and not the whole house and he gave me a very noncommittal-sounding yes. Hmm.
In other news, it’s so early that Minx hasn’t left for work yet. Secret inappropriateness gives me a total girl-boner so a few minutes ago I opened the bedroom door – blocking the gap with my body – so I could ogle Minx getting dressed for work while the unwitting internet guy was in the next room. Minx caught on immediately (or maybe it was just his own kink for secret inappropriateness) and spread his bathrobe to do an extended naked shimmy for my viewing pleasure. Goddamn I love that boy. 
Anyway. While I wait for the mighty internets, I guess I’ll tell you guys about that book my friend recommended, The Highly Sensitive Person. I’ve read most of it at this point, and it’s good, but it raises some issues for me.
The Highly Sensitive Person posits that some people (about 20 percent of people, to be precise) have nervous systems that process sensory input in a different way. These people are more sensitive to pain, more easily startled by loud noises, etc. This totally describes me.
The book says that HSPs are more stimulated by sensory input than non-HSPs…which would explain why the sound of a fork falling on the floor seems as jarring to me as a police siren passing very close would be for someone else – and why a police siren passing close to me makes me feel like one gigantic jangled nerve.
[Okay, the internet guy did have to drill a hole through the wall...but I'm connected now! And I've copied-and-pasted the beginning of this entry from Word and now I'm typing the rest into my blog like a normal person. Yay!]
Don’t confuse overstimulation with anxiety, the author cautions. Sure, maybe you’re in a crowded, chaotic place and your heart is beating fast or whatever, but that’s not fear, that’s just overstimulation. Uh-huh. Okay. Well, here’s a question: if I get so “overstimulated” that I’m short of breath and my heart is pounding and every instinct in my body says it’s not safe here get the fuck out get out now, how exactly is that not “anxiety”? And why is it so important to differentiate between the two, anyway?
Likewise, the author goes on and on about how being highly sensitive is a totally different thing from being shy. Apparently I’m not “shy”, I just get overstimulated from talking to new people and prefer to hang back for a bit, stay quiet, and absorb the scene for a bit before contributing. The author never explains what she believes shyness is, but I guess we can infer that’s it’s something other than being a bit reticent with new people. For the record, though, I looked it up online at Merriam-Webster’s website (wondering if my own definition of the word “shy” might be inaccurate) and it says, among other things:
So it’s sounding a lot like “shyness” does indeed mean all the things I think it means.
I think the author is too hung up on reframing the HSP thing in terms that aren’t baggage-laden. A good idea in theory, but when you say “Don’t worry, you’re not anxious or shy or anything!” it reinforces the idea that there’s something inherently wrong with anxiety and shyness – something inherently vile and “broken” about shy and anxious people. Why put it that way – especially when shyness, anxiety, and being highly sensitive all seem to be variants of the same fucking thing?
It seems to me that the most important thing for the book to communicate to HSPs is that there’s an actual physiological reason why we feel so anxious overstimulated all the time and that this same physiology also comes with a lot of good stuff. And indeed, the author does say all of this, repeatedly. It’s just that she also seems super-obsessed with giving every aspect of our sensitivity a special name to set us apart from, you know, those freaks over there. And I’m not cool with that.
Could you please maybe write about some of the good things of HSP, too? Because this totally sounds like me (and would explain why I spend most of my days with earplugs because I honestly don’t understand how anybody could stand all those sounds of city life without them). Of course I probably already know where this is going (sensitive, bla, much input other people overlook, appreciation of stuff other people don’t notice blabla artistic bla), but it would still be nice.
Yeah, all the stuff you said, plus sharper intuition (because of all the stuff we notice on a subconscious level) and a greater sense of spirituality.
The biggest benefit to me personally has been my SuperSkin – the tiniest caress anywhere on my body is just ridiculously pleasurable to me. I used to assume it was just a chick thing but guys kept telling me they’ve never seen anything like it.
So even though my sensitivity has a fairly huge negative impact on my life, it also makes me feel like my arm (or nose or shoulder or foot or wherever) is having an orgasm if Minx so much as breathes on it. Therefore, even if I could somehow trade and be “normal”, I don’t think I would.
Awesome that you have Internet again!
I have a similar issue with a similar book, The Introvert Advantage. The author is VERY CONCERNED to distinguish introverts from loners.
Which… actually, I don’t like people very much, in aggregate. I like individual people, but I am absolutely not thrilled to meet someone new as a default and would often rather spend time alone than with people I don’t already like/am interested in them.
Reading the damn thing was pretty much exactly like well-meaning high school acquaintances determined to bring me “out of my shell” except with the acknowledgment that I have limited energy for socializing.
So, was the premise that “loners” don’t like people whereas “introverts” are just slower to get to know people, or…?
Sometimes I feel like I like “people” as a whole – or at least I believe that just about anyone would have something to teach me or a cool fact to share. Yet somehow this doesn’t translate to me being outgoing or social. I never know what the hell to say to people and can never figure out how to actually access the part of them that I would find interesting or informative. Most of the time I just don’t seem to “click” with people. So in the end, I prefer spending time alone or with my pre-established friends, too.
The thesis seems to be that introverts like and need people too, it’s just that socializing drains an introvert while it refreshes/energizes an extrovert.
That’s true enough of me, but… I still don’t like or need most people. I enjoy socializing on my own terms with people who’ve caught my interest, but I have a very damn high threshold for lack of socialization before I start to feel lonely, and even then it’s lack of stimulation more than anything.
Huh. I’m not gonna say I don’t need people at all, but I only really feel like I need my actual friends (not “people” as an abstract concept). I certainly don’t thrive on “meeting new people” for its own sake. As long as I have a handful of people who’ll listen to me when I’m upset and understand my jokes when I’m being weird, I’m good.
I remember when Minx and I first got together, one of my friends accused me of never being around “because you have a boyyyyfriend now.” I snapped back, “I fell out of touch with you for months at a time when I was single and you know it.”
And it’s true, too.
I guess the difference is that some non-HSPs could learn to be shy and anxious without needing hipersensitivity — they just feel afraid of things all the time because they learned to as a survival strategy. HSPs would be those who were born with the kind of nervous system that makes it easy to choose that strategy, but they would not be the only ones. Nature and nurture.
I’m reading this book too!! *wave*
I don’t really have all that much to add, because you speak a lot to my own thoughts. I just kinda disregard the many many many “THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU AND YOU ARE NOT ANXIOUS OR SHY”‘s… because overstimulation (which does happen to me a lot) creates anxiety when the situation is not quickly resolved. Or for you, it sounds like you panic. But I definitely agree that she appears to associate “shy” and “anxious” negatively, and wants to create something she feels as positive instead – this would be some fallout of HER being an HSP – she feels attacked when described by those words.
overstimulation (which does happen to me a lot) creates anxiety when the situation is not quickly resolved. Or for you, it sounds like you panic.
Do you see panic as being a different feeling from overstimulation, then? I’m trying to sort this all out…I suspect I do in fact have anxiety as well as hypersensitivity but I’m not sure what the difference is, if any.
she feels attacked when described by those words.
Oh, for sure, and I can understand why the author would want to adopt different words to describe the condition. But I think the book would have more credibility if it were written from a more distanced and scientific perspective – i.e. if the author’s own psychological scars weren’t so clearly on display.
My biggest reaction to being overstimulated is to get irritable and not want to be touched/push away. If I were in a store where I started to get overstimulated (like being at the mall, especially Mall of America), I would first appear crabby at all the people and internally blame them for my discomfort, and if I didn’t calm down or leave or have the situation otherwise resolved, I would start to feel like I’m suffocating. I’m able to recognize most times that I’m not going to die and therefore fight the OMG GTFO NOW!!! urge, but I’m not perfect and sometimes I do lead that to panic and basically shove my way out of the store. I relate the feeling of suffocation moreso with anxiety and panic than I do with overstimulation. That’s not to say my experience is your experience! When babies are overstimulated, they turn or pull away, get angry, or cry, or all three! Depends on the person
I feel like the hypersensitivity is related to your threshold for anxiety and overstimulation, so while the two are not the same thing, they are definitely related in my book. For example, my bf has a high threshold. He only gets claustrophobic in literally tiny spaces, or on RARE occasions, such as if my anxiety is being felt by him. However, you’d never be able to tell by his outward appearance. He does not view going to the mall as a potentially terrifying experience, and being in a crowded area does not automatically equal an opportunity for hyperventilation. Having a low threshold makes you more sensitive. I am sensitive to smells, so I naturally hate being in a place with a lot of bodies, because I tend to get a lot of negative smells up my olfactory receptors. The thick air causes me to feel like I can’t breathe (and that every person nearby is disgusting), and the cycle begins anew. I also have really good hearing, so if I’m in a crowded area I’m at risk of being overstimulated because I hear so many conversations at once, and if I’m bombarded by loud noise for too long I also get that way (I also watch the tv on a super low volume).
Maybe you experience that with having such sensitive touch receptors – does person bumping into you appear to affect you more than the average person? According to that entry about that guy hitting you on the street (seriouslywtf), it does – though that is an extreme situation regardless of your sensitivity. I imagine that while I don’t like being touched by strangers, my skin is still less sensitive than yours, but may be more sensitive than others.
I totally agree with you that if the book had a more scientific or objective approach that it would be more credible, but in the author’s view, you can’t formally test this, because it IS kinda based on your own perspective and matter of opinion. It can’t be coldly categorized and examined. It’s similar to how difficult it is for people to be diagnosed with disorders without there either being disagreement or dual diagnoses – what one psychologist sees, another might not. Or they may be having a good/bad day when they are interviewed. Or they lie. Human nature makes this type of thing hard to empirically test ad yield accurate results.
But things like pain thresholds etc. can be tested, and there is a whole instrumentarium of statistical tools and ways to ask questions that have been developed by the social sciences to get as ‘hard’ as possible data even on internal phenomena like this. Not saying I’m a firm believer in those methods, but at least it would be possible to try, and maybe not get complete BS. And some things can be tested quite simply – I know for a fact that I hear frequencies most people past twenty to not hear anymore, because I held my ears in pain when a 16 kHz sound was played in the lecture hall we were in, and nobody else even heard anything. And perception thresholds in general can be tested quite well.
Ah, it would just be nice if I could tell people some kind of accepted diagnose as an explanation for my behavior instead of them or me just resorting to the usual I’m a freak/rude/arrogant/demanding/whatever. Something that would immediately make sense to others.
You can’t just say, “I’m sensitive to loud noises”? or “noises I perceive as loud”?
People have witnessed me jumping at loud or sudden noises my whole life and generally dismiss it as me being “crazy” or “high strung” or “neurotic”. They assume that the noise sounds the same to me as to anyone else but I’m choosing to react to it like a drama queen, or something.
I agree with Oona that it would be way better to be able to concretely say, “noises that you find easy to ignore actually sound louder to me and I have some test results here that prove it.”
…Or, failing that, schools need to educate kids about different types of brains, learning styles, etc. from a very young age so that adults don’t go around thinking everyone’s mind works the same way.
Nobody questions it when someone else has a bigger appetite than them or a smaller bladder or a different sex drive; it’s common knowledge that these sorts of variances occur in humans naturally. It needs to become common knowledge that variances in perception occur, too.
Nobody questions it when someone else has a bigger appetite than them or a smaller bladder or a different sex drive
Sure they do. People get crap for all of those cases, as long as the variance is noticeable enough.
Well, okay, I’ve had people roll their eyes over differences like that. But nobody ever accused me of faking any of them. Nobody’s ever said, “You’re peeing every half hour just to get attention!” and nobody’s ever refused to take a rest stop because they figured I could get over this whole “having to pee” thing if I tried hard enough.