#8: The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You by Elaine N. Aron

 

Before reading this, I had suspected that I might be a highly sensitive person (HSP), but I wasn't entirely sure of that because I can be quite insensitive at times. After reading this, I have come to realise I am definitely an HSP...and that those "insensitive" behaviours are often just acts of self-preservation e.g. keeping my contact with other people - with a couple of exceptions - to a seemingly abnormal minimum, being direct (read: blunt) in communication to avoid others overthinking, experiencing almost-extreme annoyance by seemingly innocuous things like noisy people in the background, etc.

The HSP is a goldmine full of practical advice that I'm sure anyone who considers themselves to be sensitive could benefit from implementing. The advice covers a range of topics from individual and interpersonal settings to career and spiritual settings.
The most interesting piece of advice for me was to avoid the self-fulfilling prophecy of negative labels - especially that of  "shy" because people who label themselves as "shy" tend to unconsciously perform lower in most levels of life, compared with those who do exhibit shy behavioural tendencies but do not label themselves as such (instead opting for a term like "socially avoidant").

Obviously, not everything in The HSP applies to me because we are nuanced human beings and not labels/archetypes...but I did feel especially called out when the author said that as much as we may want to spend the rest of our lives alone, we should not because it will only hurt us further (as illustrated by an example of a man who abandoned society to go meditate in a cave alone forever, but came back after 30 days because he drove himself mad due to his rich inner life).

Rating: 8/10