Part of writing a book proposal is finding comparative titles. When I submitted my initial draft to my agent, Lucy, I’d listed energy books like Caroline Myss’s Anatomy of the Spirit. Lucy started looking for comp titles of her own and found a book called Sensitive: The Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person in a Loud, Fast, Too-much World by Jenn Granneman & Andre Solo.
I call myself an Intuitive, but I knew Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) was an interchangeable science term for some of my experiences. (Psychic, Empath, Witch, Seer all feel equally interchangeable to me as well. Intuitive has a friendly, modern quality so I like that one.) I had not done a deep dive into the HSP resources though, and when we settled on Lucy’s suggestion as a comp, I checked it out from the library.
That night I read.
And read.
And read.
And read.
HSP is a genetic predisposition that gets amplified by your environment when you are young. Just like I am genetically pre-disposed to be tall, I am genetically pre-disposed to HSP traits. I grew tall because my parents excelled at meeting my physical needs, other factors in my environment reinforced the need for the HSP gene to function at the highest capacity.
HSPs process information differently than the majority of the population. (About 30% of people are estimated to be HSPs.) We do so through: empathy, creativity, sensory intelligence, depth of processing, and depth of emotion. This means we take in more information & process it to a degree most people only tap into occasionally.
Sensory intelligence comes into play regarding physical environments. Do you remember the movie Bourne Identity? In that the main character is a spy with amnesia. He doesn’t remember he’s a spy, but when he turns up on shore, he notes, “I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of that gray truck outside.” Even though he didn’t remember anything, his body still knew to analyze the environment on a deep level and find ways to mitigate danger. HSP’s do the same thing, unconsciously and continuously.
Depth of processing is about how we think about things. Think of when you wanted to learn something & studied really hard with a really deep dive. You know how when you’re done, you’re exhausted? That’s a HSP brain’s default depth of processing setting. We’re subconsciously studying and synthesizing all the information around us, deeply, all the time. Physically it’s exhausting. (It’s nice to have an explanation for why I always needed more sleep than anyone else I know!)
We can’t turn it off. It’s just how our brains are wired. It’s also not a dysfunction—our brain is functioning the way it is supposed to we’re just routing more power into the invisible operating systems like mirror neurons. HSP isn’t something you get diagnosed with, because it’s not an illness.
This book. Those studies. It was like they had studied me specifically.
Lucy and my book proposal had handed me the final piece of a puzzle—I could explain what I experience to other people. And, because scientists have researched HSPs I had additional clarifying vocabulary and scientific validity I could hand to those who didn’t believe me.
Here was scientific proof. I wasn’t crazy.
Because that had been one of the hardest parts of these past few years—not knowing who I could talk to as I tried to understand my upleveled HSP experiences. Some people handled the topic great, but there was plenty of spoken (& un-spoken) judgement from others.
When people look at and treat you like you’re crazy, a part of you always wonders if you are.
Now, four years and nine months after those first predictions, this book showed me I just had a refined skill-set 70% of the population wouldn’t understand from personal experience. Science had confirmed my experience was valid. I wasn’t broken.
I closed the book with so many questions finally answered, and wanting to tell everyone I knew. But there was still one huge question left unanswered. Why had my HSP turned up its volume over those past four years?
All I’ve got on that note is a theory, but it feels like a strong one—I’ll tell you all about it in the next post.