I'm a Highly Sensitive Person. Here's How I Stopped Fighting It.

Early on in my relationship with my partner, we met some friends for an evening drink in London where he lives. We’d drunk various beers in various places around Covent Garden, played Bananagrams, laughed until our sides ached. Until it got late and we left for home — our friends to north London, us to south.

As a highly sensitive person, this is where I hit a snafu. As we left, it was also kicking out time for the theatres, so hundreds of people swarmed the streets, all hoping to get a quick tube home. Some of the tubes weren’t running at all, the others were like Tesco on Black Friday — intimidatingly crowded.

Thankfully, my man’s one of the most understanding people in the known universe. Let’s avoid the crowds and get an Uber instead, we thought, except half the swarm was thinking the same. We stood for what seemed like days down a little side street off Leicester Square, and it was busy. Tuktuks blaring music and lights, cars and taxis honking at a slow crawl, people — mostly drunk and some belligerent — everywhere. It started to rain. A homeless guy asked us for spare change. I was doing my best to breathe deeply through my overwhelming anxiety.

Eventually our Uber arrived. We quickly tumbled in and watched from our rain-spotted windows the crowds start to dissipate as we left the area, the lights of London as we crossed the Thames. It took me a while — I didn’t have the skills then as I do now — but my anxiety started to dissipate eventually, too, and I’ve learned my lesson: don’t hang around London’s West End at kicking out time.

Me and my big bro circa 1995. Think I was currently making my way through a bowl of chocolate raisins. Still love them.

I’ve been told I’m too sensitive since I was about eight years old.

As a child, I had various adults tell me to either buck up and stop being so emotional about everything, or, more rarely, to protect my sensitivity because it’s a gift. Regardless, I knew I was sensitive and that being sensitive isn’t all that helpful to anyone.

It was only recently — after my therapist confirmed it and I started learning more about it — that I began to embrace it as a superpower (although it didn’t feel much of a superpower that night in London).

I began learning nervous system regulation about five years ago, and there’s no wonder it changed my life: as a sensitive person, nervous system regulation helped me see the overwhelm in those kinds of situations and better navigate it. And navigating it has also made me realise that it’s not a weakness: more reactive doesn’t equate to worse regulated, and certainly doesn’t mean we’re fragile.

👉 Read this next: Nervous System 101

Being an HSP — a highly sensitive person — rather than being a laughable trait of eye-roll-inducing snowflakes (as was portrayed on the Hawaiian version of White Lotus, although it was quite funny), it means we’re just more tuned in, both to bad things and good. Not only do busy and loud environments, messy ones, full schedules, and conflict feel heavier and deeper for us, but we get more from art, literature, connections, and other positive experiences.

We’re like the human equivalent of one of those finely-tuned satellites scanning space for extra-terrestrial communication. As the researchers say: we’re tuned in, for better and for worse.

That night in central London was just a particular moment where my dial was turned up to max and there was no off switch. But it’s the same system that takes in so much good stuff.

As highly sensitive people, we also have perks:

• We get more from positive things, like training, therapy, and kindness.

• We’re noticing machines, and better at spotting the details.

• We’re prone to massive empathy, which will basically heal the entire world, no big deal.

• We likely have higher curiosity, creativity, and appreciate aesthetics more.

• We get more of a mood boost from being outside.

• We’re likely to be kinder and more fair.

• We’re likely to be natural leaders.

If you’ve ever been told you’re too much or too sensitive, you need to know: you’re not fragile or broken, you’re just tuned in.

Sharing the practical stuff on Sunday: three things a sensitive system does unusually well, and the two-minute experiments I use to work with them.

With love,

Chloe 🧡

I’m a writer, joy philosopher, nervous system guide, and yoga teacher. Here to make our world a more joyful place.

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