The Highly Sensitive Person in Love: Understanding and Managing Relationships When the World Overwhelms You

You need ample permission to turn off some of your sensitivity to the needs of others. This is not selfish—for example, it could make your partner a far happier person. When you try to behave like a non-HSP and help everyone whom you sense needs it, you are bound to succumb to overarousal.

HSPs who are also HSSs need special help finding their optimal level of arousal. You are easily bored and easily overwhelmed. You are often in conflict about going out or staying home, doing more or doing less, and it isn’t just about wanting to be like the non-HSPs around you.

So if you compare, for example, HSPs and non-HSPs who had the same level of troubled childhood, the HSPs would be more depressed, anxious, and shy as adults, and would struggle with insecurity in relationships, as described in this book. However, with a good enough childhood, they do not have these problems and can function better than others. Whil

Research indicates that those who stick to traditional male-female roles on the average have the least happy marriages and are less responsive to marital therapy.

what’s called “feminine” is simply “normal human.”

we can have special difficulties with the other gender—mistrust, fear of rejection, misunderstandings. These have to be faced before going any farther in this book.

For example, often non-HSPs think everyone should enjoy noisy restaurants or “small talk,” and someone who doesn’t is just being fussy, difficult, or demanding. No, this difference makes noisy restaurants and trivial conversations fine for some, but almost unbearable to those who are highly sensitive. Again, this trait is real.

average gender differences have declined with each generation. We all need to express our feelings

When mothers overprotect sensitive girls, these girls grow up feeling they will always need this kind of overprotection—later a man’s protection—and gladly give up their authority for it. Sensitive sons, loved less by their mothers, grow up expecting to be loved less by everyone unless they can somehow hide their sensitivity.