High Sensitivity
Elaine Aron, a clinical psychologist, has written extensively about
Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs), a term she coined based on interviews or consultations with thousands of individuals. Aron describes HSPs as: “born with a tendency to notice more in their environment and deeply reflect on everything before acting…They are also more easily overwhelmed by ‘high volume’ or large quantities of input arriving at once.”
While some HSPs report having at least one sense that is very keen, their entire bodies process information more thoroughly than other people. HSPs are thus more affected by pain and various medications, and have more reactive immune systems and more allergies.
HSPs are also highly empathetic, feeling their own emotions and paying heed to others’ most intensively. They tend to have rich inner lives, with complex, vivid dreams. They can come across as highly perceptive, creative and intuitive when able to surmount what often is a natural inclination toward shyness, fearfulness, stress, and withdrawal.
Thick boundary people “strike
us as very solid and well organized; they keep everything in its place. They are well defended. They seem rigid, even armored; we sometimes speak of them as thick-skinned.” At the other end of the spectrum, thin boundary individuals are “especially sensitive, open, or vulnerable. In their minds, things are relatively fluid.”
Other characteristics of the thin boundary personality type are:
- A less solid or definite sense of one’s own skin as a body boundary
- An enlarged sense of merging with another person when kissing or making love
- A penchant for immersing oneself in something – whether a personal relationship, a memory or a daydream
- Sensitivity to physical and emotional pain, in oneself as well as in others
- An enhanced ability to recall dreams but also a tendency to experience nightmares
Thin boundary individuals, Hartmann proposes, are unusually sensitive from an early age, so they react more intensively to the usual traumas and difficulties of childhood. They are easily hurt, with intensely emotional memories carried into adulthood.
Over-Excitabilities
Kazimierz Dabrowski (1902-1980), a Polish physician interested in personality development, studied 'gifted' individuals and noted five recurring traits. These he termed ‘over-excitabilities’:
- Psychomotor – a surplus of energy, restlessness, curiosity
- Sensual – a strong reaction to sensory stimuli; pronounced aesthetic awareness
- Imaginational – strong visual thinking, vivid fantasy life, remembers dreams, enjoys poetry or metaphorical speech
- Intellectual – intense focus on particular topics, enjoys questioning and complex reasoning, problem solving
- Emotional – heightened emotional reactions, need for strong attachments, empathetic, difficulty adjusting to change
'Over-excitability,' the translation of Drabowski's concept into English, is meant to convey the sheer abundance of energy possessed by gifted individuals and manifested in these areas. He believed that, by virtue of such energy, they not only think differently from their peers, they also register perceptions more intensively and feel things more deeply.
Elaine Aron, a clinical psychologist, has written extensively about Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs), a term she coined based on interviews or consultations with thousands of individuals. Aron describes HSPs as: “born with a tendency to notice more in their environment and deeply reflect on everything before acting…They are also more easily overwhelmed by ‘high volume’ or large quantities of input arriving at once.”
While some HSPs report having at least one sense that is very keen, their entire bodies process information more thoroughly than other people. HSPs are thus more affected by pain and various medications, and have more reactive immune systems and more allergies.
HSPs are also highly empathetic, feeling their own emotions and paying heed to others’ most intensively. They tend to have rich inner lives, with complex, vivid dreams. They can come across as highly perceptive, creative and intuitive when able to surmount what often is a natural inclination toward shyness, fearfulness, stress, and withdrawal.
Thick boundary people “strike us as very solid and well organized; they keep everything in its place. They are well defended. They seem rigid, even armored; we sometimes speak of them as thick-skinned.” At the other end of the spectrum, thin boundary individuals are “especially sensitive, open, or vulnerable. In their minds, things are relatively fluid.”
Other characteristics of the thin boundary personality type are:
A less solid or definite sense of one’s own skin as a body boundary
- An enlarged sense of merging with another person when kissing or making love
- A penchant for immersing oneself in something – whether a personal relationship, a memory or a daydream
- Sensitivity to physical and emotional pain, in oneself as well as in others
- An enhanced ability to recall dreams but also a tendency to experience nightmares
Thin boundary individuals, Hartmann proposes, are unusually sensitive from an early age, so they react more intensively to the usual traumas and difficulties of childhood. They are easily hurt, with intensely emotional memories carried into adulthood.
Over-Excitabilities
Kazimierz Dabrowski (1902-1980), a Polish physician interested in personality development, studied 'gifted' individuals and noted five recurring traits. These he termed ‘over-excitabilities’:
Psychomotor – a surplus of energy, restlessness, curiosity
- Sensual – a strong reaction to sensory stimuli; pronounced aesthetic awareness
- Imaginational – strong visual thinking, vivid fantasy life, remembers dreams, enjoys poetry or metaphorical speech
- Intellectual – intense focus on particular topics, enjoys questioning and complex reasoning, problem solving
- Emotional – heightened emotional reactions, need for strong attachments, empathetic, difficulty adjusting to change
'Over-excitability,' the translation of Drabowski's concept into English, is meant to convey the sheer abundance of energy possessed by gifted individuals and manifested in these areas. He believed that, by virtue of such energy, they not only think differently from their peers, they also register perceptions more intensively and feel things more deeply.
But yeah, if i find anything concrete which sheds more light on this, i'll post it.