The Highly Sensitive Person [Paperback]

Elaine N. Aron Ph.D. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2, 1997

Are you a highly sensitive person?

Do you have a keen imagination and vivid dreams?  Is time alone each day as essential to you as food and water?  Are you "too shy" or "too sensitive" according to others?  Do noise and confusion quickly overwhelm you?  If your answers are yes, you may be a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).

Most of us feel overstimulated every once in a while, but for the Highly Sensitive Person, it's a way of life.  In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Elaine Aron, a psychotherapist, workshop leader and highly sensitive person herself, shows you how to identify this trait in yourself and make the most of it in everyday situations.  Drawing on her many years of research and hundreds of interviews, she shows how you can better understand yourself and your trait to create a fuller, richer life.  

In The Highly Sensitive Person , you will discover:
* Self-assessment tests to help you identify your particular sensitivities
* Ways to reframe your past experiences in a positive light and gain greater self-esteem in the process
* Insight into how high sensitivity affects both work and personal relationships
* Tips on how to deal with overarousal
* Informations on medications and when to seek help
* Techniques to enrich the soul and spirit

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Are you an HSP? Are you easily overwhelmed by stimuli? Affected by other people's moods? Easily startled? Do you need to withdraw during busy times to a private, quiet place? Do you get nervous or shaky if someone is observing you or competing with you? HSP, shorthand for "highly sensitive person," describes 15 to 20 percent of the population. Being sensitive is a normal trait--nothing defective about it. But you may not realize that, because society rewards the outgoing personality and treats shyness and sensitivity as something to be overcome. According to author Elaine Aron (herself an HSP), sensitive people have the unusual ability to sense subtleties, spot or avoid errors, concentrate deeply, and delve deeply. This book helps HSPs to understand themselves and their sensitive trait and its impact on personal history, career, relationships, and inner life. The book offers advice for typical problems. For example, you learn strategies for coping with overarousal, overcoming social discomfort, being in love relationships, managing job challenges, and much more. The author covers a lot of material clearly, in an approachable style, using case studies, self-tests, and exercises to bring the information home. The book is essential for you if you are an HSP--you'll learn a lot about yourself. It's also useful for people in a relationship with an HSP. --Joan Price

Review

'This remarkable book speaks clearly to highly sensitive people. It gives a fresh perspective, a sigh of relief, and a good sense of where we belong in society.' JOHN GRAY, author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 251 pages
• Publisher: Broadway Books (June 2, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553062182
• ISBN-13: 978-0553062182
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (167 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #897 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > Self-Help > Self-Esteem
  • #86 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling

More About the Author

Elaine Aron, Ph.D., is recognized internationally as one of the leading scientists studying the psychology of love and close relationships. Dr. Aron's research on love, conducted with her husband, Dr. Art Aron, has been featured in the New York Times, Time, and National Geographic. She is the author of The Highly Sensitive Person, The Highly Sensitive Person in Love, and The Highly Sensitive Child. She has lived in many places all over North America, from a geodesic dome on Cortes Island to an aging southern mansion on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, and now divides her time between New York and San Francisco.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

209 of 214 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you've ever been told, "You're too sensitive," read this, June 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Highly Sensitive Person (Paperback)

In this unique book, research psychologist Elaine Aron breaks new psychological ground by defining a personality trait inadequately explored in the past, a trait that an estimated 15-20% of the U.S. population carries. The trait manifests in a highly sensitive nervous system present from birth and probably inherited, much like other personality traits or physical features. Highly sensitive people, or HSPs as Aron calls people who possess this trait, are much more sensitive to nearly everything they experience -- from the sensory characteristics of objects and events, to the subtleties of inner feelings and relationships between people. As a result of this heightened awareness to everything in their environment, highly sensitive people in our culture are often told, "You're too sensitive for your own good," and are admonished to develop a "tougher skin." Ms. Aron discusses the ways in which people with this trait have frequently been mislabeld in the past, often branded as "shy," "introverted," or "neurotic," even by professionals. She goes to great lengths to define and describe the sensitivity trait as it influences an individual's life, providing both research evidence and personal anecdotes from the scores of people interviewed for her work. The evidence illustrates that being a highly sensitive person is both a blessing and a burden, depending upon a number of different factors in the life history of the individual. Possessing this trait can make life challenging at times but Ms. Aron, herself an HSP, emphasizes that being sensitive is not a psychological disorder or a personality flaw to get rid of. The sensitivity trait is merely a part of an individual's personality. Being highly sensitive need not limit a person's enjoyment of life, but it will impact everything from relationships with others to the work one chooses to do. THE HIGHLY SENSITIVE PERSON is less self-help and more self-acceptance, however, Aron offers suggestions! for contending with the highly sensitive nautre in order to thrive in a society that often fails to appreciate this trait, particularly in boys and men. If you are or know a highly sensitive person, this book offers constructive insights that will bring new perspective to the past, the present, and the future.

280 of 293 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly sensitive people are an asset- not defectives., February 12, 2003

By 

OAKSHAMAN "oakshaman" (Algoma, WI United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Highly Sensitive Person (Paperback)

I truly wish that this book would have existed 30 or more years ago. Almost everthing traditionally written on this subject has been tacitly negative. The highly sensitive, or introverted, personality type was automatically assumed to be defective to some degree for their failure to "adapt" to the extroverted "norm." I think that this is because most traditional American psychological thought has been fundamentally industrial and military psychology- the subject is always supposed to adapt to the environment and never the other way around. Those who cannot adapt are identified and disposed of. That is certainly how military psychology has always been practiced. This book is the first to demonstrate that highly sensitive people are both "normal" and have many valuable traits. Indeed, they excel against extraverts in most areas that make people truly "human." Not only that, but in other cultures without an unnatural majority of extraverts, the sensitive person was seen as the ideal friend and citizen.

I especially appreciated the explanation of the biochemistry of "over-stimulation." When sensitive people are forced to interact in unnatural evironments the cortisol levels in their bloodstream increases, making them even more sensitive to their environment than they usually are. Unless they can withdraw, or otherwise calm themselves, it is a virtual certainty that they will overreact. This means that they will act contrary to their usual conscientious, reasonable, and understanding normal behavior in order to escape. Needless to say, inspite of the fact that this reaction is virtually out of their control, this overreaction is dealt with harshly by society- and by employers. Inspite of the fact that highly sensitive people are the most conscientious, hard-working, competent, and even gifted, of employees 99% of the time, this absolute physical need to escape to a less stressful environment can ruin their lives. They are labeled as freaks, as not being "team players"- and as "unemployable." I know this, for like the author, I was also born a HSP. This means that in an unnaturally extraverted society I often find myself wishing that I had not been born at all- inspite of my gifts, inspite of the shear injustice of it all....

251 of 263 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A path-breaking book, May 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Highly Sensitive Person (Paperback)

My husband bought this book for me because he'd read about it and thought that I might be what Aron terms a "highly sensitive person" (HSP). Like many of the other reviewers here, I was amazed to discover that Aron described, and explained, many of my own traits and experiences: sensitivity to noise and dislike of hubbub (strong characteristics of American culture); stress and fatigue from brief and ordinary, though intense to me, social interactions; the ability to sense other people's moods and what is going on below surface interactions more so than others seem to; and the feeling of being the only one who experiences the world as I do. Aron's study is grounded in solid research and persuasive scientific explanations, as well as in her personal experiences and those of numerous subjects she interviewd. This is a path-breaking book that not only validates the experiences of sensitive people but gives specific, thoughtful advice for understanding ourselves, coping in the world (in a variety of situations, including one's job), and making the most of our senstivity. I suspect that the opinionated rants found among some of these reviews are from non-HSPs who don't get it, because HSPs are by nature more thoughtful (rather than boorish and angry) and would offer well-considered, fair assessments of the book. Thank you, Dr. Aron, for giving us this wonderful book.