Empaths, Introverts and Highly Sensitive People WTH? Part 3: The Highly Sensitive

In my last two columns I spoke about the differences between empaths and introverts. The two are often used interchangeably, but are actually not the same.

While there is some crossover. Empaths seem to have a way of FEELING, while intro-verts tend to have a way of BEING. An empath experiences the emotions of others. An introvert tends to be quiet by nature and enjoys spending time alone.

A personality type that has been getting more attention lately is the Highly Sensitive Person or HSP. The addition of this third group will either muddle things even further for you, or completely clarify things. For me, it was the latter.

While I tend to pick up on others energies and can generally "read a room," I don't con-sider myself an empath. While I love my alone time, and get anxiety spikes in large groups, I don't consider myself an introvert.

I suddenly started hearing the term "highly sensitive person" a lot.

I'll admit, I inwardly rolled my eyes the first few times I heard it. I thought, "great another woo-woo term for a sub-set of folks who feel that they are 'different.'"

But, then I began to investigate.

According to Wikipedia (the new gold standard for information) a Highly Sensitive Per-son is someone…" with sensory processing sensitivity" (or SPS if you have ADD). "SPS is a temperamental personality trait involving an increased sensitivity of the cen-tral nervous system and a deeper cognitive processing of physical, social and emotional stimuli...

...the trait is characterized by a tendency to 'pause to check' in novel situations, greater sensitivity to subtle stimuli, and the engagement of deeper cognitive processing strate-gies for employing coping actions, all of which is driven by heightened emotional reac-tivity, both positive and negative."

High sensitivity is survival strategy hard-wired into the anatomy of some beings. Yup, it's not only humans who have this characteristic.

Clinical Research Psychologist and author of the book "The Highly Sensitive" Elaine N. Aron says, “the HSP subset is 15 to 20 percent of the population, not only human, but most or all higher animals, whose nervous systems are designed to perceive subtleties and to process them deeply."

She goes on to say, "...because of their strong empathy and emotional responsiveness highly sensitive people often enjoy a special connection with animals".

I gasped. It wasn't a flaw or a condition. It was simply a trait. A trait that had uncon-sciously dictated almost every decision that I have ever made.

I swear it was as if the sky parted, a beam of light came down, and the angels started to sing.

This was me! I found my label!

Which brings me to the most important question of this three-part series on empaths, in-troverts and highly sensitive people.

Why are labels so important, anyway?

The label itself meant nothing to me. The description of the label, rocked my world.

If enough people have this trait, to warrant giving it a name, then I can't be all that weird, right? The quirks, preferences and personality characteristics that I always resisted because I thought there was something wrong with me, are all on the human personality spectrum. (HPS...I just made that up!)

For the first time, maybe ever, I realized I didn't need to change, try harder, be different, or force myself to overcome my idiosyncrasies.

I realized that I am ok, the way I am!

Some people cling to their labels. For a long time I was one of them. It's the ego's way of trying to differentiate its human body as different or special.

This time around the label didn't make me feel special. It also didn't define me. In fact, learning that there is a group of people who are highly sensitive, made me realize fi-nally, that I'm not only normal but perfectly fine in my imperfect human-ness, as are we all.