The Gift and Cost of High Sensitivity

I discovered recently that these beautiful heart shapes leaves blanketing woodlands and graveyards were lesser Celandine. They produce beautiful sunshine yellow, star shaped flowers in spring and a few brave flowers have been open and blooming since the end of January. When contemplating these solitary, early celandine flowers on a walk, they appeared to me like 'look outs' - the first to notice that conditions were right, indicating to the rest that the coast was clear to flower, thrive and shine.

There are 'look-outs' in the human population too, people who are sensitive to small changes socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically... who notice sooner than the rest when it is safe (or dangerous), healthy (or toxic). Dr Elaine Aron has a named this as the trait/gift as high sensitivity. In her book 'The Highly Sensitive Person' or HSP's for short, Dr Aron says they 'are intuitive visionaries, able to see the big picture, creative, aware of and thoughtful to the needs of others, good influences on the social climate, vigilant with quality, highly conscientious, loyal, able to pick up on subtleties in the environment and in interpersonal communications, and are often gifted. In short, they are ideal employees'. They make up 20% of the population and this trait is thought to exist because it gave us an evolutionary advantage, HSP's were the first to notice dangers and raise the alarm. And it's not just in humans, studied have shown the highly sensitive trait exist in mammal populations too.

In healthy environment HSP's will thrive, in unhealthy environments they will struggle. I like to think of them as indicator species in the human world. Indicator species are biological indicators that reveal the health of an environment, and the levels of pollution and toxins in that environment will be revealed by their presence or absence. Or to use another analogy, HSP's are like the canaries used in mines to detect poisonous, invisible and odourless gas to protect the miners. And how did canaries raise the alarm? They stopped singing..... But sadly, unlike the miners, who sensibly responded to the canaries to save themselves, highly sensitive people are often ignored, labelled 'over sensitive', told to grow a thicker skin, punished or scapegoated when they fail to thrive and raise the alarm. People love HSP's when they benefit from their gifts but not so much when that same gift highlights toxicity they don't want to face/deal with/sort out. This super strength of sensitivity can therefore be both a blessing and curse and is a trait/gift they cannot switch on and off. Instead they must learn to manage this gift in order to survive and learn to thrive.

One of the ways I have learnt to manage my high sensitivity is to spend time, plenty of time in nature and find myself and God, who seems to whisper through the wild and restores my soul psalm 23. And on this solitary wander, I was thankful for the lesser celandine, which reminded me that I notice things, am sensitive and responsive and in the right environments, I can thrive and shine.