Are You Highly Sensitive Blog

Love the Kid You Got – Love the Kid You Are

Incredible joy and deep challenges. I didn’t choose a complicated, intense, amazing kid. The world chose me for him and it was right. UNIQUE is the word of the day. Every highly sensitive person and youth is unique. There are as many ways to be sensitive as...

HSPs, Love, and Relationships

Making Relationships Work Even When a Cave Sounds Good February is LOVE month. HSPs and Love, in particular.  These two things go together well, and also sometimes it’s not so smooth. This blog has FIVE pieces of curated (for HSPs) relationship wisdom plus a...
Vacation Strategies: Highly Sensitive Youth

Vacation Strategies: Highly Sensitive Youth

Core Elements to an Ideal HSY Vacation What makes an ideal vacation for sensitive youth? Sure, it’s important to weave in some family rituals. But maybe the best vacation is about no pressure. Freedom + Time = Ingenuity  This photo, Winter 1978: Alane and Skoshi,...
Holiday Stress Prevention for the Highly Sensitive Family

Holiday Stress Prevention for the Highly Sensitive Family

You think you got stress? The day after Thanksgiving, searching for a lost Apple pencil in my parents’ couch, we uncovered a nest of Fiddleback Spiders (aka Brown Recluse). Yep, poisonous spiders, and one literally crawled over my 21 year-old son’s bare foot....
IT’S MY PARTY AND I’LL CRY IF I WANT TO

IT’S MY PARTY AND I’LL CRY IF I WANT TO

This is the quintessential HSP birthday song, isn’t it?  It’s My Party (Lesley Gore 1963), or for the young crowd, Melanie sampled It’s My Party and made Pity Party in 2015. It’s My Party came out the year before I was born, but my highly sensitive parents, both born...
HSP, What Are Your Gratitudes?

HSP, What Are Your Gratitudes?

Are you living your best life? Are you happy more often than not? I know a few things that are guaranteed to help. At Are You Highly Sensitive, I talk to HSPs every single day. Often I ask them for their gratitudes. Research shows that a daily gratitude practice will...
Are We Highly Sensitive People Pleasers?

Are We Highly Sensitive People Pleasers?

Loving Detachment Might Be the Solution Highly sensitive people can struggle with the concept of loving detachment because of our strong empathy. We sometimes become overly focused on others to the detriment of our own well-being. This can lead us into habits of...
The Four D’s for Navigating Fear

The Four D’s for Navigating Fear

Fear looms large in the lives of many highly sensitive people, young and old. It turns out we can slide into fear because of deep processing, you know, thinking A LOT. Fear has its roots in your brain. In fact… We aren’t actually afraid most of the time....
Three Tools for a Life Redesign

Three Tools for a Life Redesign

Through the past three decades, my friend, Elaine Aron, has taught us that people with finely tuned nervous systems and brains, like ours, need only five simple things to thrive in this world. I call them The HSP Five to Thrive. You know my mantra about this: It’s...
Did You Grow Up Feeling Wrong?

Did You Grow Up Feeling Wrong?

Did You Grow Up Feeling Wrong? Are you highly sensitive? I bet you are, and I imagine you have known it forever. I grew up hearing repeatedly that I was too (damn) sensitive. In fact, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t think there was something wrong...

Wondering if you are highly sensitive?

Listen to a short talk on it.