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A highly sensitive person is someone whose nervous system takes in more and processes it more deeply: the noise, the mood in the room, the edge in someone’s voice, the beauty in a song. It isn’t a disorder or a diagnosis. It’s a trait, and it gets much easier to live with once your body has somewhere steady to land.
Maybe it sounds like this. You walk into a party and within ten minutes you know who’s fighting, who’s lonely and who’s had too much to drink, and by the end of the night you’re wrecked. People have told you your whole life to toughen up, stop taking things so personally, stop being so dramatic. And a part of you believed them.
I know the sensitive one from the inside. When Teale and I moved to Hawaii and the ocean became our playground, I could swim only as far as she was near. The little windsock at the end of Waikiki might as well have been the edge of the world. I asked her to stay on my left side, the side I breathe on. It wasn’t about technique. Every breath, I needed to see her. Her presence settled my whole system and made the ocean less overwhelming.
Years later, when we paddle the two-person canoe miles offshore and the waves get big and the world disappears behind wind and spray, it’s Teale who gets overwhelmed. I sit behind her, talking to her, grounding her, helping her trust the rhythm. We take turns being the anchor.
On land it still gets us. On a trip home to Dublin, as happens when we push past our capacity, we squeezed in one more dinner. Everyone was tired, hungry and overstimulated. I made a careless joke, Teale answered from the hurt, and we spent the meal seething at each other.
None of that is weakness. It’s what a nervous system does when it takes in a lot and hasn’t found the floor yet.
Before I explain any of it, try something. Read the next sentence slowly, let the out-breath go, and notice what happens in your body as you read it. There is nothing wrong with how much you feel. Don’t argue with it and don’t agree with it. Just notice where it lands, the chest, the throat, the shoulders, and whether something in you softens or braces. Stay with that one more breath. That’s the place we’ll work from.
What’s really going on
If something in your chest loosened at that, notice it. If a voice said “yeah, but”, notice that too. That voice has been protecting you for a long time.
The psychologist Elaine Aron coined the term “highly sensitive person” in the 1990s. Her work describes a trait, sensory processing sensitivity, that most estimates put at around one in five people. You notice more, you feel more, and you need more time to come down afterwards. It isn’t the same as being shy or introverted.
What the research pages usually leave out is this. The trait is what you were born with. What happened to the trait is a separate story. In my book I describe the body as the first ledger, the original place where instability gets written down. Some experiences get completed: someone held you, named what happened, helped the feeling move all the way through. Others stay open, still demanding energy.
A sensitive child in a steady home learns that big feelings pass. A sensitive child in an unsteady home learns to scan. So when grown-up you walks into a loud room and your whole body goes on alert, your nervous system isn’t malfunctioning. It’s doing what an honest record keeper does, broadcasting the old open entries: this isn’t finished.
Then the shame arrives. Sensitive people get handed one of the two coins I write about more than anyone: you’re too much. Too emotional, too intense, too dramatic. Most of us built protector parts on top of that coin. The one who goes quiet and takes up no space. The one who pleases everybody so nobody gets upset. They kept you alive inside systems that didn’t reward sensitivity or slowness or truth.
So your sensitivity isn’t the problem, and neither are you. You make sense.
Need to talk this through right now? Figlet is an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, or right now. It runs this loop with you on the Self ground.
The loop, on your situation
Coaching is how we go from where you are now to where you want to go. We only address the past when it emerges in the present. So take one moment this week when it all got to be too much, a room, a comment, a day, and walk it through this.
Get ground in your body first
Feet on the floor. Look around and name three things you can see. Let one breath out last longer than the breath in.
What happened
One plain sentence, the way a camera would have seen it. “My manager said we need to talk and walked off.” Not “everyone thinks I’m useless.” Just the moment.
Where it lands in the body
Ringing ears, buzzing skin, heat in the face, a heaviness behind the eyes. Stay with it for one breath, with permission to stop any time. And now what do you notice?
Who’s driving
Is it the scanner, checking every face for danger? The pleaser, already rehearsing an apology? The one who wants to disappear? Notice which coin is in your hand: too much, or not enough. Name the part kindly.
Trace it
Only as far as today needs. Where did you learn your feelings were too much? Who rolled their eyes, who went cold, who needed you to be the easy one?
Feel it and tell someone
Under the overwhelm there’s usually something simple: hurt, fear, grief, or a longing to be met. Let it be what it is. Then tell one steady person, in one sentence: “That got to me more than I showed.”
One creative action
Do one small thing that gives your system what it actually needs. Leave the party twenty minutes early on purpose. Walk outside. Put on headphones.
How to live as a highly sensitive person, honestly
The usual advice is good: know your triggers, protect your downtime, say no more often, build calm into your home. It works much better once you stop treating your sensitivity as a defect to manage.
Find your anchor, then go further. I could only swim as far as Teale was near. That’s not something to hide. It’s coregulation: another nervous system, steady enough to lend you its ground.
Stop arguing with the too-much voice. You won’t win a debate with a protector. My teacher Aftab Omer called that critical inner voice the Gatekeeper, and he taught that you get curious about it instead of fighting it, the way the Friend in you would: “What do you need right now?”
Use the sensitivity on purpose. The same wiring that floods you in a crowd lets you read a room, catch a friend’s sadness before they say it, and be moved by music until you cry. That’s not a consolation prize. It’s a gift that needs a container.
Complete the old entries. You can’t rewrite the record, but you can complete it in the present. When you finally get the thing you needed then, being met instead of being told to toughen up, your sensitivity comes down. You become harder to trigger and easier to be. If you’re not sure whether this is the trait or something else, read why am I so sensitive.
One thing to do tonight
Before bed, turn off the overhead lights, put your phone in another room and lie down for five minutes with one hand on your chest. Say quietly, out loud, “There’s nothing wrong with how much I feel.” Notice what your body does with that sentence. If it softens, stay there. If something argues, just notice who’s arguing.
Would therapy help with this?
For most highly sensitive people, coaching is the right size of help.
But if the overwhelm has turned into constant anxiety, panic attacks, shutting down for days, or a feeling that you can’t function at work or at home, please talk to a licensed therapist where you live. The same goes if sounds, textures or lights are unbearable in ways that make you wonder about autism or ADHD; a qualified professional can help you sort that out. If you’re thinking about hurting yourself, call or text 988.
The path
What I’ve just walked you through is the Empathi Method. For an individual, it’s built on my Proof of Work of Being Human protocol: building sovereign ground inside yourself. On the Self ground, that means a body steady enough that feeling a lot no longer means falling apart.
There are two ways to keep going. You can start now with Figlet, an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, on the Self ground, the night the world is too loud. Or you can get on the list for the book and the live program with me, where we do this work together.
Figs O’SullivanFiglet Life Coaching
Get help now
Figlet is an AI coach, there at 2 in the morning or right now. It runs this loop with you on your actual situation, as often as you need. It’s coaching, not therapy. The list hears first about the book and the next live program with me.
Proof of Work, Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027. Not sure which ground is hurting? Take the two-minute Ground Check.
I go deeper into this in my book, Proof of Work (Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027).
Common questions
Is being a highly sensitive person a disorder?
No. It’s described as a personality trait, not a mental health condition, and there’s no official diagnosis. It can sit alongside anxiety, and some of its signs look like autism or ADHD, so if you’re unsure, a qualified professional can help you tell the difference.
What are the signs of a highly sensitive person?
Getting overwhelmed by noise, crowds, bright lights or a packed schedule; feeling other people’s moods strongly; being deeply moved by music, art or nature; needing time alone to recover; taking criticism hard; and noticing small details other people miss.
Is a highly sensitive person the same as an introvert or an empath?
Not quite. Many highly sensitive people are introverts, but some are extroverts who simply need more recovery time. “Empath” is a popular word rather than a research term, and it overlaps mostly with the empathy side of high sensitivity.
The ideas of the Gatekeeper and the Friend come from the teaching of Aftab Omer at the Institute of Imaginal Studies, where I trained.
