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Elaine N. Aron Books

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“How discouraging to watch your friends enjoying something you are too afraid to try. Do not underestimate such discouragement. It can be just as present in adulthood as you see friends taking on careers, travel, moves, and relationships that you would fear. Yet deep inside you also know you have the same or more talent, desire, and potential.”

DesireTalentFriendsPotentialAdulthoodDiscouragementInsideUnderestimationSensory Processing SensitivitySps
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“Even without overt sexual abuse, all young women are known to experience a descent into low self-esteem at puberty, probably as they realize their role as sexual objects. The highly sensitive girl will sense all the implications even more and make self-protection a higher priority. Some overeat to become unattractive, some overstudy or overtrain so they have no free time, some pick one boy early and hang on to him for protection.”

WomenGirlsHsp
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“You want to have some professional boundaries. Especially at work, you need to spend more time with the less sensitive, who can be a great balance to you, and you to them. Develop outside of work the more intense sorts of relationships that offer you the emotional depth you seek.”

EmotionRelationshipBalanceSensitiveBoundary
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“And while a difficult past may seem at first to hamper our living our life's purpose, sometimes it serve the purpose, too. Or it is the purpose—to fully experience and understand a certain kind of human problem.”

PastPurposeUnderstandingLivingExperienceDifficultySensory Processing SensitivitySpsLife S PurposeHuman Problem
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“In short, you do not have to take the job that will create excessive stress and overarousal. Someone else will take it and flourish in it. You do not have to work long hours. Indeed, it may be your duty to work shorter ones. It may not be best to advertise it, but keeping yourself healthy and in your right range of arousal is the first condition for helping others.”

StressHelping OthersGenerositySensitivityVocationHighly Sensitive PersonHspBurning OutOverarousal
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“Envy can wake us up to one of two truths: We want something and better do something about it while we still can, or we want something and just cannot have it. […] If your envy is strong and you decide you want to do something, you probably can.”

WantEnvyDecisionsSomethingTruthsWaking UpSensory Processing SensitivitySpsHigh Sensitivity
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“Anything done to the body will change the mind. We expect this to be the case with drugs specifically designed for that purpose. But we forget that our brain and therefore our thoughts can also be changed by sleep, exercise, nutrition, environment and the state of our sexual hormones, to name a few factors we can often control ourselves. It is equally true that anything done to the mind will also change the body - meditation, telling our troubles to a friend, or even just writing them down.”

PsychologySelf Help
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“Our culture has an idea of competition in the pursuit of excellence that can make anyone not striving for the top feel like a worthless, non-productive bystander. This applies not only to one's career but even to one's leisure.”

CultureCompetitionExcellencePursuitIdeaAnyoneSensory Processing SensitivitySpsBystanderHigh Sensitivity
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“We make it especially hard for others to observe our trait when it means we are observing and not "behaving," at least at first. Further, we are so responsive to our environments that we can be something like chameleons when around others, doing whatever it takes to fit in.”

ObservationWhatever It TakesFitting InResponsivenessEnvironmentsSensory Processing SensitivityBehavingHigh SensitivityChameleons
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“Some of you may be struggling with discovering your vocation and feeling a little frustrated that your intuition is not helping you more. Alas, intuition can also stand in your way because it makes you aware of too many inner voices speaking for too many different possibilities.”

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“You and I are learning to see our trait as a neutral thing—useful in some situations, not in others—but our culture definitely does not see it, or any trait as neutral. The anthropologist Margaret Mead explained it well. Although a culture’s newborns will show a broad range of inherited temperaments, only a narrow band of these, a certain type, will be the ideal. The ideal personality is embodied, in Mead's words, in 'every thread of the social fabric—in the care of the young child, the games the children play, the songs the people sing, the political organization, the religious observance, the art and the philosophy.' Other traits are ignored, discouraged, or if all else fails, ridiculed. What is the ideal in our culture? Movies, advertisements, the design of public spaces, all tell us we should be as tough as the Terminator, as stoic as Clint Eastwood, as outgoing as Goldie Hawn. We should be pleasantly stimulated by bright lights, noise, a gang of cheerful fellows hanging out in a bar. If we are feeling overwhelmed and sensitive, we can always take a painkiller.”

CultureTraitsSensory Processing SensitivitySpsHigh SensitivitySocial FabricClint EastwoodMargaret MeadThe TerminatorGoldie Hawn
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“But now you know the specific cause of your difficulty with [certain tasks] and can explore ways around the overarousal they create. So there's really very little that you can't do if you find a way to do it in your own style.”

CreationDifficultyExplorationCauseFindingSensory Processing SensitivitySpsOverarousalYour Own Style
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“[Introverts] are also more flexible in a sense, in that sometimes they must do what extraverts do all the time, meet strangers and go to parties. But some extraverted people can avoid being introverted, turning inward, for years at a time.”

SometimesTimeDanceFlexibilityIntrovertsSpsHigh SensitivityTurning InwardExtraverts
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