Everyone picks up stimuli from their environment, but the degree to which they do so varies. Can you intensely enjoy a gentle breeze on your face, or be incredibly irritated by the clicking sound of a pen? Then you may be highly sensitive. And this is true of many people, because “our sensitivity follows a normal distribution,” explains psychologist Corina Greven. “The majority of people have an average sensitivity, but there is also a group of people who are highly sensitive, as well as a group that is low sensitive.”
High sensitivity or sensory processing sensitivity (SPS), the term used by scientists to describe this trait, has only recently become an object of study. In 1997, psychologist Elaine Aron was the first to publish on the topic, and since then, there have been approximately 100 publications on SPS worldwide. “We still know very little about the experiences and thought patterns of highly sensitive individuals,” explains Greven, who was appointed Professor of Environmental Sensitivity in Health last year precisely to promote additional research in this area. Together with her co-investigator Sharell Bas and Professor by Special Appointment of Giftedness Anouke Bakx, she recently published the results of the first qualitative study on how highly sensitive individuals describe and experience this trait.
Noise-cancelling headphones
Together with Assistant Professor Mariëtte Kaandorp (I.M.) and Master's students Zoë de Kleijn and Wendeline Braaksma, Bas, Greven and Bakx conducted 26 interviews with highly sensitive individuals and used the results to distil a number of features that are characteristic of SPS. “What clearly came forward is that highly sensitive people feel strongly connected to others, and have empathic abilities and attention for other people,” explains Bas. “For example, one respondent indicated that they could immediately see whether someone was troubled about something, while another was quick to pick up what their colleagues liked or disliked.” Respondents also reported having to think and reflect a lot, for example weighing all options before taking a decision, as well as having a need for depth and meaning, including a preference for in-depth conversation over small-talk.
But high sensitivity can also cause discomfort and problems. “Many interviewees suffered from stress and fatigue. In their experience, this was not a consequence, but an inherent property of SPS,” says Bas. The respondents did mention a number of methods for dealing with this. Bakx: “Briefly retreating to a quiet environment or putting on noise-cancelling headphones, for example.” “One of the interviewees also said that you can recognise a highly sensitive person because they wear sunglasses even when the sky is overcast,” adds Bas.
Valuable colleagues
Although highly sensitive people are more sensitive to both positive and negative stimuli, the majority of the respondents said they were ultimately happy to have this trait. “It was in any case striking how uniform the participants were in their answers,” says Bakx. “To conclude, we organised an online meeting in which we shared our results with the interviewees, using among other things quotes from the interviews. One person kept thinking the quotes were theirs, because of how recognisable they were.”
Another striking thing was that many people only discovered that they were highly sensitive quite late in life, in their twenties or thirties. “This study lays a foundation, but there is still much to discover about SPS,” emphasises Greven. “For example how high sensitivity works in children, how you can prevent stress and fatigue, and how people can benefit from the positive aspects of SPS.”
And it is important that more people learn about SPS. “For example in education,” says Bakx who, in her position as Lector at the Fontys School for Child Studies and Education also supervises teacher training students. “Once teachers become more aware of it, they can not only signal high sensitivity in their pupils, but also where possible better key into their needs.” Increased awareness can also have a positive impact in the corporate sector. Bas: “In a stimulating environment like an open plan office, highly sensitive employees can become overstimulated, but they are of great value in the collaboration with colleagues.”
Photo: Christopher Burns via Unsplash