Why sensitivity is your SECRET SUPERPOWER
For years, Hannah Walker endured criticism for being fragile and ‘over-sensitive’. Then she discovered that feeling things acutely is not a weakness – it’s a strength
Iguess you’re just a little too sensitive. This remark has been made to me by boyfriends, bosses, friends, taxi drivers, strangers at bus stops. Each time it has stopped me short: a slap of shame, a sudden brick wall, a shower running ice-cold mid hair wash. After each encounter, I would think, at what point was it that I showed too much sensitivity? Have I embarrassed myself? Even if it was said kindly, it didn’t feel like a compliment and I didn’t take it as one.
We live in a society that does not value sensitivity. So undervalued is it, in fact, that many people consider it a guaranteed path to failure. Nowhere is this more obvious than in employment, where sectors with sensitivity at their heart – teaching, nursing, social work – are often badly paid. The story we buy into is that the tough succeed, while sensitivity is inconvenient, messy and embarrassing.
I tried to hide mine.
But then something fundamental changed.
In 2015, I had my daughter. It didn’t take me long to realise she was (and still is) just like me. I realised that if I felt bad about being highly sensitive – and about her being highly sensitive – that she would learn to feel bad about it, too. I had to change the story. Was there, maybe, another way of looking at this? Could sensitivity, in fact, be a positive trait?
When my daughter was little, I took her to playgroups, where she would always sit back and observe. Sometimes, she would remove herself from the circle entirely, watching to see what the rules were and if this might be something she would like to do. I remember taking her to a group where the children had to choose a musical instrument. All the kids rushed in, but even when I carried her up to choose, she hid her face in my neck, then looked at the people and began to cry. Everyone was watching, so I picked her up and carried her out, not even stopping to put our coats on.
Walking home I was angry as I felt the under-the-skin prickles of familiarity. Memory upon memory of being in a classroom, workplace or social environment and being unable to throw myself in and just do it. I don’t work that way; nor does my child. Growing up, I heard my mum say quite a lot of negative stuff about herself. She never criticised me for my sensitivity, but she did criticise herself. I am so proud to be made of the same stuff as my mum, but I believe things might have been different for her if she had been given an understanding of her sensitivity, her difference, earlier in life – and that’s what I decided to do for my daughter.
So, I started researching and discovered the psychologist Dr Elaine N Aron. She coined the phrase highly sensitive person (HSP) in 1996 in a book of the same name. She explains that sensitivity is a trait, not a disorder. It is genetic and found in equal measure among genders and personality types. One in five people have this trait: 15 to 20 per cent of any population could be labelled as such
(some studies suggest up to
‘THE STORY WE BUY INTO IS THAT THE TOUGH SUCCEED’
Think you might tick the highly sensitive box? Rather than see it as a shortcoming, it’s time to give sensitivity the credit it deserves, says Hannah (right). Here’s why…