Are You a Highly Sensitive Person?

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Around 40 percent of the population have unusually sensitive nervous systems.

Being highly sensitive can make life hard and can lead to bullying and hurtful name-calling.

But sensitivity also brings great gifts like being thoughtful, intuitive and attuned to others.

I was always a big, strong kid, but not a tough one. That was partly because my well-meaning father, who was a pacifist, essentially told me to turn the other cheek: "Just walk away," was his advice for handling bullies. Which was fine, but didn’t much help in the dog-eat-dog world of my primary-school playground. Being a big, sensitive boy made me a magnet for the gang of kids who terrorised me, making my 11th year a truly horrible one.

Throughout that awful, traumatic year, I hated my dad for giving me such terrible advice. And I hated my sensitivity, wishing I could be like those tough kids, who were always the bullies, never the bullied. Throughout my childhood, I longed to be something other than I was: harder, cooler, more confident. Not the insecure, introverted child and adolescent fate had deemed me to be.

As I trained in psychotherapy and began seeing clients, this jaundiced view of my sensitivity gradually changed. I came to welcome the gifts my highly sensitive brain and nervous system offered, as did those I was helping. But my eureka moment came when I first read The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You, by Elaine Aron.1 I vividly remember how I felt when reading this........

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