The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

This may be the best book I have read in years. Maybe a decade. I was a year and a half into a very stressful job with a bully boss when I found this book -- I'd heard about it for years but thought the title sounded girlie and wimpy so I hesitated to read it. I don't like gooey, emotional, sappy stuff. Well guess what... no sap here. Or at least so little sap that a person who doesn't like sappy didn't really notice. Instead I found a smart, astute, science-based book which explained to me why I was slowly dying at my job, why I could not sleep at night, and why I was so stressed at work that I literally could not stomach my sandwich at lunch but would almost throw it up every day (but I could eat at home) -- I was operating at a level of physical stress which was impossible for a highly sensitive person to sustain, and yet I was somehow sustaining it. (I am very stubborn.) Once I actually looked at myself, looked at my actual situation, stopped blaming myself for being "weak" and "broken" and "not tough enough" and stopped trying to be what I am not, I saw clearly that I was ignoring my physical body's symptoms of extreme stress and hurting myself bad. Reading this was a wake up call at a time in my life when I really needed it, and gave me enough confidence to finally stand up to my impossible to please, bullying, manipulative boss and just quit. I am going back to school and retraining to become a software developer so that I can work in an environment that won't kill me. Not everyone is the same; everyone has different physical tolerances. If you find yourself "too sensitive" etc, give yourself a break. You are not a clone of the extrovert next to you. Pay attention to your body and read this book. IF YOU ARE AN EXTROVERT, PLEASE READ THIS BOOK. If you are NOT highly sensitive, please read this book!!! I wish to God every human being would read this book so people could finally start understanding each other, and society in general would stop hurting those among them who are not built with the same nervous system that the 80% majority of humanity has!!!! This has nothing to do with race boundaries, religion, nationality... this is all about pure genetics and how our species (in fact how over 100 species on this planet) function. It's ground breaking work.

Great book to learn about yourself. I have ADHD and since having a baby, I have become very sensitive. I know hormones take a part in that as well. This taught me a lot about myself and how to manage being hypersensitive. There is also one on being in a relationship as a hypersensitive person loving a non-hypersensitive person but also how to love someone who might be as equal hypersensitive as you are. She breaks down her research and you get insight from everyone's point of view, how you see the world differently and how you navigate the world. There is also a workbook with this one, I didn't get a chance to purchase it with this.

I'm writing this review motivated by the negative reviews I read. I think this book has been misunderstood. Like I said in the title it's about self acceptance. I don't know how it's been marketed because I figured I was a highly sensitive person myself and I looked for material to read about it in order to educate myself and not to find help (I don't need help). I think some people went for this book looking for a '10 step cure for over sensitiveness' and got disappointed. First of all THERE IS NOTHING WRONG with highly sensitive people. We are just different, what makes me happy is what makes ME happy not what makes YOU or HIM or HER or my mother, my father, my boyfriend happy. That's something this book as helped me accept and understand. Just because we don't conform to the society's rule doesn't mean there is something wrong with us and that's the biggest problem an introvert or a highly sensitive person have. I advocate to think of highly sensitive people as we all should think of people with special needs or example. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG TO BE FIXED we are just different. Like Elaine mentions in the book, highly sensitive people have many traits that can be useful to society. We are just misunderstood and mistreated which leads us to believe there is something to be fixed, which makes us go look for the idealistic '10 step' book. Those books by the way, when it comes to personal problems, hardly ever work. That's because individuals are that, individuals we are all different and have to learn who we are and learn to deal with ourselves. This book is very insightful and has helped me see that there are other people out there who are like me, that I'm not the freak society makes me, that I don't need professional help because there is nothing wrong with me. It explains what a highly sensitive person is, how it's different than being an introvert or just shy and why we are that way. Some people might be sensitive in other ways and have not identified with this. We are a minority after all. I think this book does society a great service just by helping us highly sensitive to understand ourselves and be able to function to our full potential. I just didn't give it a five star because the writing could indeed use some help, a few typos here and there but overall it's easy to understand.

great book

Very helpful book for understanding why some people - roughly one-in-five - is extra-sensitive to life events. This is neither good nor bad, it just is. These events may be loud noises, busy and noisy meetings, and more.

I always knew I was different. But never knew I was a highly sensitive person. A must read!! Clears up alot of questions you've probably lived with your whole life. Just knowing you're different.

This is an amazing book. It explains me in a comprehensive way that no other book on my self-help journey has quite been able to. Not only am I highly sensitive, I am also score highly on sensation seeker traits. This explains a lot. I found the book to be so on the mark and insightful it was at times uncomfortable. Like many highly sensitive people, I have attempted to deny my sensitivity due to being told off for it as a child and people trying to correct it out of me or put me down for it like I was doing it on purpose and like it was something I was able to change. This book is very supportive and gives practical tips on how to handle the prejudice people like me have and do face in a non-highly sensitive culture. The only trouble for me with it was that even though the author promotes the good qualities inherent in the trait, I did find it hard to deal with the fact that I cannot ever change this about myself. I know it's all about self acceptance... but having pretended not to be so sensitive all my life, felt like it was something to deny if 'accused' of being that way... and being brought up to believe I could change this about myself... well it's made me feel a bit bleak in spite of the author's positivity about the specialness of the trait. On the one hand it's good to know that there is nothing wrong with me. But on the other hand I think I preferred thinking there was something wrong with me because that gave me hope that I could be fixed. Anyway, I thought others should be aware of that possibility in reading the book, not to put them off reading it, but instead to prepare them that they may need good support from loving caring people around them while coming to terms with certain key ideas in the book. Having said all that, I think it was essential reading in my case. I also found it so useful and good to read that I immediately bought the author's other book The Highly Sensitive Person In Love. I feel like these books are giving me what I kept trying to get from my mother, who loves me very much but is not highly sensitive herself and has been baffled by my troubles through life and despite her desire to help has not been able to offer me advice that works for me or relates to my experience of life. This book has been a Godsend from that point of view. I wish I had been told that I was hyper-sensitive, etc by people who didn't tell me off for it or always mention it as a negative thing. I wish I had read these books when I was 18 and starting to feel a bit alienated from people, I think it would have saved me from a lot of heartache and also from a breakdown I had at that time due to living as if I wasn't highly sensitive. It would have helped me have confidence in refusing to do things that are easy for non-highly sensitive people but traumatic to someone like me. This book heals all the times when I suffered and was told by people around me that I was over-reacting or exaggerating and not helped at times when I needed it the most as a result, simply because my experience differed from theirs in similar situations. If anyone has ever called you hyper-sensitive (*and especially if they have ever called you 'too-sensitive' which is even more critical and rejecting) then you need to read this book. Think of it this way, it's as if you are a cat who has been raised by dogs right now. You need to know that you are a cat, not a loser-dog. It's time to start rewarding our own strengths and appreciating ourselves and to stop trying to pretend we are the same as non-sensitive types despite all the pressure on us to conform to that ideal... or we can all just move to Sweden :-)

Very delayed shipping over a month. I almost cancelled this book. Lucky to them I really needed it. Seller replies so late on shipping follow up. Book material was so thin papercopy it is! I am happy with the content of the book though. Price is reasonable same as other books i bought. Lots of information and knowledge learned about HSP.

Highly recommended!

This book helped me a lot to understand myself and my son.