HSP. That’s my new label. Highly. Sensitive. Person.
Now I’m not a fan of labels. Feminist, INTJ, ENFP, foodie, etc. Sometimes these labels can be constricting or they come laden with expectations by the person who labels us. I think my label would look a little like this:
But we all have the need to categorize, create hierarchies. It’s how we differentiate ourselves from others and understand ourselves in relationship to one another. When I came across The Secret Life of a Highly Sensitive Person, things that I’d suspected or learned to cope with were finally articulated. I found a label that helped me sort out what was going on inside.
I’m not going to list out all the things that make an HSP an HSP. You can find plenty of articles that do that — including the one I posted above. But an HSP is exactly what it sounds like: someone that is extremely sensitive to external influences and it manifests both mentally and physically.
I find too much sound overwhelming. I’ve had to learn how to accept honest criticism. I’ve been trying to lighten up. Some music moves me to the core of my being. Sometimes food makes me cry. Caffeine (even a single cup of tea) has been a finely choreographed dance that I keep stumbling through. One small bad thing can impede me for hours to days.
I notice anyone that breathes in any way audibly. I’m keenly aware of other people and their movements. A slight tightening of the lips and I can tell which way the mood has skewed. I cried for the entire length of the movie, “My Name is Khan.” In a public theater. It’s a 3 hr movie with an intermission.
My life suddenly makes much more sense. This tells me why I love happy television and movies (on repeat). Why my ASMR flares when I’m happy or distressed. Yes, I also have Auto Sensory Meridian Response — which I always thought was normal until one day I found a write up that said, “no, this doesn’t happen to everyone.”
But all of this existed before I had the label, and with HSP, I’d already been working on coping mechanisms. I had to realize that I wasn’t as broken, stupid, or ugly as I heard in my head. I had to hide a little bit of the serious part of myself. I had to let things flow off of me if not impermeably then without gouging pieces of myself.
The thing I learned that helped the most, before I knew this label existed, isn’t something you’ll see in the other articles or blogs. They always seem to want to make you feel good about yourself and blow some sort of brightly colored smoke up your butt. And with a highly sensitive audience, I get it.
But thing I learned from the culmination of most of my relationships (romantic and not) is that they just don’t care as much as you do. They don’t care as much about you as you care about them. They may like you, they may even love you, but they will rarely care as much as you do. And that’s okay.
That’s when the healing can begin, because while it hurts initially, it’s how we’re built. The chemicals firing in our brains are simply different. So to save yourself, you’re going to need to accept that and then choose your path. Do you teach yourself not care as much? Turn to page 45. Do you continue to give as much as before with the hopes of meeting people that reciprocate? Turn to page 80.
But now I know why my undergrad roommate hid a can of soda for me in our room, assuming that in my keen observance I would immediately find it. Or how I attune to really private introverts. And why I end up screaming in frustration when others fail to have empathy for the least capable and sometimes the lesser deserving. We’re just human, labels or no — we’re not labels with a human vessel for transportation. I just hope there’s enough space on my label to put, badass old lady one day.
