Friday, February 29, 2008 . 2/29/2008

I was thinking that maybe I am a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) but the thing is, I don't even know if it's a real condition or not. I can't find any legit scientific sites that acknowledge it (I don't know how credible this site is); most, if not all sites that mention HSP include "woo" such as spiritual healing etc. The Highly Sensitive Person is said to be pretty spiritual after all. But other personality traits include being overwhelmed easily and being very sensitive to stimuli such as noise and activity, which describes me. If the condition is real then I'm guessing a lot of people take HSP as being "supernatural" because it means picking up small environmental stimuli or whatever that many people don't notice.

Uhg. I don't know. Maybe it's just introversion. If anyone's reading this then any information will be helpful, thanks.

Oh yeah, and I tried searching for it on ScienceBlogs.com and it came up with this guy who seems to just be exaggerating normal annoyances (except for maybe the first two points).

Labels: Personal

2 Comments -

From what I've seen, this HSP thing is a Jungian concept, and most Jungian concepts are a bit dated and have been either considered to be inherently flawed or have been overhauled and either assimilated by or merged with other, more established and less wonky psychological concepts.

HSP sounds to me like an generalized anxiety disorder with some hints of mild asperger's syndrome and mild autism at worst. I don't think there's anything spiritual about it, except that people with psychological disorders tend to gravitate toward holistic and spiritual practices as an attempt to treat their own problems, rather than their disorder being a byproduct of being a more spiritual being.

Overall, I'd try to do some careful research into both general anxiety disorders (I know you mention social anxiety a lot, but there're tons of branches to anxiety with different qualities, causes and symptoms that sometimes don't seem like anxiety) as well as this HSP thing and Jungian concepts.

By  Anonymous, at 10:58 AM  

Thanks for that. And yeah like I said, I think it's probably just introversion/anxiety if anything, but I think HSP describes it fairly well.

By  Drae, at 2:40 PM  

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