Elaine Aron, PhD | Highly Sensitive People

Hey, so if you've ever heard the term highly sensitive person, or maybe even been called highly sensitive, maybe even recoiled just a bit when that happened, you'll be deeply moved by the work of today's guest, Dr. Elaine Aron. She first identified high sensitivity as a distinct character trait more than 25 years ago, introducing the term highly sensitive person to describe someone is easily overwhelmed by strong sensory input, subtleties in environment, and other people's moods, and deeply feels pressures and overstimulation, but also processes the world very differently. Since its publication in 1995, her preeminent book on the subject, The Highly Sensitive Person, has gone on to become an international bestseller translated into 30 languages. She's also the author of The Highly Sensitive Parent and many others. Really credited for first recognizing high sensitivity as an innate trait and pioneering the study of highly sensitive people. Since 1990, she's established the Foundation for the Study of Highly Sensitive Persons, maintains the website and online research hs-person.com, and has published numerous scientific articles on sensitivity in the leading journals in her field. And it turns out today's conversation was also personal because in many ways I have discovered I am a highly sensitive person, but I also discovered so much more about the way I move through the world, how this trait reveals itself in life, its relationship to introversion and extroversion, which was really surprising to me, and how you can be both highly sensitive while also being what she describes as high sensation, which I'd never heard before, but explained so much about the way I interact with the world. And maybe it'll help you too. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

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Good Life Project is sponsored by Gab Wireless. So our executive producer Lindsay was telling me about juggling weekday routines with her two young kids, and she wanted them to play outside and gain independence but still have a reliable way to just check in. So she got her 9-year-old a Gab watch 3E and said it really hit the sweet spot. He can tap to call or send a simple message, and Lindsay can see basic location info without any of the endless apps that steal attention. This isn't about control, it's a gentle, practical step towards independence. Think of it as slow technology connection at the right pace so kids learn freedom and parents keep peace of mind. Mornings feel less frantic, quick neighborhood trips feel calmer, and the everyday logistics that used to just nag at her headspace have eased. So if you want a straightforward tool that keeps kids connected without social media, give Gab a try and see how family life shifts for the better. Visit gab.com/goodlife and use the code Good Life for a special offer. That's gab.com/goodlife, or just click the link in the show notes. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card members can earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases wherever they shop. This means you could be earning daily cash on just about anything. Like a slice of pizza from your local pizza place or a latte from the corner coffee shop. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app to see your credit limit offer in minutes. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com. So, you know, it's funny, I was first exposed to your work probably the way a lot of people was, which is Susan Cain is actually an old friend of mine.

Oh.

So when she wrote the book Quiet, I sort of had an inroad into your work And both her book and your work, I just kept reading more and thinking to myself, I'm seeing so much of myself in all of this work. And it is so explanatory and forgiving on so many different levels. So I've been actually looking forward to having this conversation for a number of years now.

Good, good.

And then recently, just, I don't know how I missed this, that you've actually been collaborating with your husband for, I guess, decades now in really related work. And, you know, I stumbled upon his work, I think, when a lot of people saw the piece in Modern Love in the New York Times a number of years back.

Yes, the 36 questions. That just went crazy, just viral, and people wanted to get a copyright and write books and everything, and we said, "No, let it, just let the people have it." And I've got it sitting over here, I'm about to send it to somebody in Israel. We've got the Hebrew version. I mean, it's everywhere. There was somebody made this thing in San Francisco up on top of a mountain with a trunk with all the 36 questions and 2 chairs there. It was like a performance art thing sort of. I mean, there's been a musical made of them. There's a beautiful Amnesty International, I think it is, of people of different cultures, a refugee and a person in that country connecting with tears in their eyes. I mean, It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. And I just have to say, before we even get into the whole definition thing, my husband is not highly sensitive in the sense of the inherited trait that I'm talking about, but he is so sensitive and kind. And so I like to be sure that people understand that I'm not talking about that sensitive people are always wonderful, or that if you're not highly sensitive, you're a jerk. You know, it's, it's anything but that. Anything but that.

Yeah, and I love the notion that you've both been, um, you have your own work, you have your own focuses, but you come together and been collaborating for so long. It reminds me a lot, you know, we had, I'm sure you know, Julie and John Gottman on the podcast a little while back.

Yes, yes, they're wonderful.

And they have what seems like a similar relationship. You know, she's very clinically focused, but then, you know, really explores the research side. John came from a much more experimental focus, and together they create magic.

Yes, I remember going to a conference that he was at when he first started his research, conference on close relationships, when the field was just beginning as a research field. He's a sweet man. It's similar, and it doesn't mean that the relationship is always wonderful, but I think it means you have the tools. And, you know, we made a movie, Sensitive: The Untold Story, and then we also made a movie called Sensitive and in Love, which is a feature-length story. And then I'm saying we because Will Harper is the director, but I've been always very involved. Then there's one called Sensitive Lovers that Art and I did. It's a silly title. Sometimes I haven't agreed with the PR decisions, but it's us talking about certain scenes in that film. And it's, of course, it's someone highly sensitive and someone who's not. And of course, him with all of his research expertise, and I'm a clinical psychologist. I retired from practice recently, but I have that expertise. So, and I always say that if it hadn't been for my husband, all this wouldn't have happened because I figured out the trait But he's the researcher who said, well, let's research this. So, so that meant creating a measure. And I interviewed people, created the items, and we gave it to lots of people and got— refined it down to something that had some validity and reliability statistically. Right now, we're actually with some collaborators now revising that scale because it's 25 years old. And I've learned a lot more since then. Everybody's learned a lot more. The research now is— there's over 100 studies just using that scale. And lots of people are researching it in other ways. But mostly myself and Michael Pluies, who's in the UK, and he's just building an empire around— he calls it environmental sensitivity, but he uses the same measure, our measure. Environmental sensitivity is a nice name. It used to mean here like chemical sensitivity, smells and stuff, but I think it's a nice name.

Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like language really matters in this context.

It really does. And this term has been called shyness, which it's not, and it's been called inhibitedness, which that was Jerome Kagan at Harvard, but he thought he was doing something neutral. But would you rather have an uninhibited child or an inhibited child? I mean, it has a connotation. Sensitive has its own connotations, which is a problem, although I find it interesting that it has both a positive and negative connotation, whereas most words we have two adjectives that, like persistent and stubborn, so a positive and a negative, or impulsive and spontaneous. But sensitive is like, is it good or is it bad, or can it be nothing but neutral, but just a trait? And that's the way I like to think of it, simply a trait. It's a survival strategy that developed in many species, at least 100 species. So it's not just human. And I like, in terms of language, to say I didn't discover a new trait. It's just we didn't have the right words for it. And even introversion, since 30% of sensitive people are extroverts, that leaves kind of those extroverted sensitive people in limbo because If we equate introversion with something close to sensitivity, then they're— what are they? Well, we know they're highly sensitive.

Yeah, that, that all makes a lot of sense. Let's, let's talk about what we actually mean when we're talking about— when we use this phrase highly sensitive person or environmentally sensitive, but for our conversation, why don't we just stick to highly sensitive person?

Yes.

What are we actually talking about? I know that, um, I guess it was in '96, and this is what you were referencing, um, you came out with the first sort of assessment And it seems like over the years that has distilled down to these 4 key aspects. Would that be the best way to sort of step into understanding?

I think so. I might elaborate a little bit on them, but I think when we finish the new scale, we hope those 4 factors will be there. When you do a factor analysis, it's kind of like throwing all the balls up in the air and hoping they land where you want them to, all the items. So to me, the key part of the trait is the one that I didn't include in the first scale because I didn't realize it because it's so under the hood. And that's the depth of processing. Sensitive people reflect before they act. That tends to be so that shows itself as thinking a lot about the meaning of life, having trouble making decisions, just seeing the consequences of their actions. So they tend to be more conscientious. More perfectionism because they have a clear vision of what they want, they've really thought it through, and then if they can't get that, they're frustrated. So there's a lot of ways that it's there, and yet, like when temperament is assessed in children, you can't see very easily depth of processing in a child. You see being afraid or being eager or being difficult or whatever, but depth of processing, we have kind of found a way to measure it in children, but it took understanding it in adults first. And so That's been a good approach to it. And we know, again, everything I'm going to say we have research on. We know that the brain processes things in a quote "deeper way" if you're highly sensitive. And then the next one, oh, it's the only negative part about the trait, that's being easily overstimulated. And so sensitive people need more downtime to recover from a highly stimulating day. They get more physiologically aroused. And this has consequences for performance because, for instance, if you've rehearsed something over and over and then you go to perform it in front of an audience, the stimulation from the audience makes you perform less well. So everyone works best at their optimal level of arousal, and sensitive people are aroused, you know, their optimal level is lower than the average person. So for some people, They're only at their best when they're performing, but for sensitive people, it's often they're not at their best unless they've done a lot of preparation. Like when I did my dissertation defense, I went to the room where I was going to do it the day before, and I had a small audience, and then I imagined 3 terrible things going wrong. I said, "Let's assume 3 things will go wrong." And then during the defense, I said, "Oh, there's number 1, somebody forgot to turn on the recorder. There's number 2." So, and overstimulation doesn't have to be a big problem, but I'll go on and come back to that a little bit. So then the next one is E for emotional responsiveness and also empathy, because emotional responsiveness in a social situation is empathy. But the emotional responsiveness I feel is key to the depth of processing because we don't process anything unless we care about it. That's why we have people take tests, because maybe they won't study if they don't have to perform eventually. And that's how we, like, remember a phone number. We do it if we really need to remember it. We process it until we've got it in our brains. So it's our emotional responsiveness that pushes the depth of processing, and also processing something deeply may bring up emotions as well. I call it emotional leadership because sensitive people often, you know, feel things before other people do. Like maybe they'll cry first or they'll get afraid first or they'll get angry first. And generally that's what everybody ought to be feeling, but they haven't figured it out yet. Not always, but that's often true. And then the last one is sensitive to subtleties. So there's being bothered by things that are very intense and then really picking up on things that are very subtle. And that would be like scents and beautiful, beautiful things to look at, or subtle cues that you can get from people that other people don't notice. So we seem very intuitive or very aware of what's going on sometimes because of noticing subtleties. So those are the 4, and then I'll just add another one that is key: DS, differential susceptibility, which is Michael Zeller's big contribution In my research, I wanted to show that sensitive people were not more neurotic than other people. It depended upon their childhood. So I sort of showed that vulnerability, that they're more depressed, more anxious, more shy if they've had a difficult childhood. But I didn't think to look on the other end. And it turns out that sensitive people in a good environment, good childhood or positive environment where they work or whatever, they do better than other people physically, emotionally, socially. They kind of are high performers. So that's one of the little things about whether someone's sensitive or not is whether they've had really a good supportive environment in their lives. I might say that like Michael Zeller, he's been doing this research for a long time, but he wasn't sure whether he was highly sensitive. And we finally— he said definitely, and he realized that because he's a white male Swiss with a PhD and a wonderful childhood that just— there wasn't much. He just, you know, he sailed ahead on his sensitivity without it being any kind of an obstacle. And we don't see the high-functioning sensitive people very much because they're functioning so well. People just admire them for all of their accomplishments. And what we do notice are the people who are anxious or depressed and and talk about their sensitivity, or we realize they're sensitive from other cues, and then that's kind of the stereotype that comes along with the trait. But it should be that way because actually it turns out in the research that sensitive people pick up more on positive stimuli than other people, a lot more. So a kid in a good environment is just soaking up any little nice thing from the teacher or the parent. So that's my extra 2 letters, differential susceptibility.

Yeah, I, I love that. It's, it's fascinating to me also. It— I had this strange vision pop into my mind when you added that, which is I almost looked at the first 4 as the, um, like the 4 letters of, of, uh, you know, like a genome. And then this addition is almost like the epigenetics that either turns it on or turns it off or modulates it.

That's exactly what people are thinking about, is epigenetics. Exactly. Precisely.

Yeah, you know, the first one that you mentioned, depth of processing, is fascinating to me also. I've seen you make an interesting distinction, I think it's related to this, between calling and craft in the way that this sometimes shows up.

Yes, you can look at the work that you're doing as drudgery, craft, or calling. And of course, drudgery is where you're just waiting for the hours to pass. But people sometimes do drudgery their whole lives because of the perks, you know, like vacations and pay and all that. Craft is when you're really good at something, which gives a certain satisfaction. For many people, craft becomes drudgery once they've mastered the difficulties of it. And then calling is just the thing that really just is— we can go on and on about what that means, like Joseph Campbell talking about that. And so following your bliss, that idea. So sensitive people in particular seem to be really miserable if they're not able to do their calling. I think drudgery just doesn't work for them, and that's because of that depth of processing, seeing the consequences of your life, the meaning of your life, all the way out to the end. I just had a conversation with someone today who had no clue about what I was talking about in terms of meaning in life. She's just kind of, you know, letting things go. And I thought that was really fascinating. She didn't want to have to make a difficult decision about that, and she's enjoying her life. So, and she's not highly sensitive.

Yeah, I mean, there's something to that, right? There's, on the one hand, you know, if you have this trait, I feel like it gives you access to a certain depth of consideration, insight, wisdom, existential exploration that may make for a richer experience of life. And on the other hand, that very same thing can potentially lead you to a certain amount of struggle that those who are not wired the same way won't necessarily have, simply because of that difference.

Right, right. I imagine there's a lot of midlife crises more among sensitive people who suddenly saying, I mean, that can happen to anybody, but feeling, well, what am I really— am I really accomplishing what I want? I've done what I could, and I've mastered my craft, but is this my calling? And I think it's important— many people can do their calling and not be making their living that way. There's lots of artists and musicians who have a day job and still are pursuing their calling, but it's It's pretty important. I want to be careful, and it's important to me that we not portray sensitive people as better than others. We need both types. And human beings have a terrible time with seeing two groups as equals. We just have an in-group, out-group instinct. We know this because if you— the social psychologists And watching my husband do social psychology, and he does a lot of intergroup studies too. If you have people count off in a circle, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, and the 1s go to one end of the room, the 2s go to the other, almost immediately, if you give them an implicit measure, they feel their group's better. And they haven't done anything. And this is, you know, this goes back to the research on chimpanzees where we know that they'll They'll fight the other group, and it's a part of our survival instincts, but it really makes it hard for us to treat differences as equals, and to see, not just to value differences, but really to be sure that we can hold them as equals, and that's an effort. And I tell sense to people that we need to be the pioneers in being able to do that. But because they have felt inferior for a long time, there's a natural tendency to swing to, oh, oh, all the good things about us.

Yeah, I'm curious, what is— and thank you for making that point, I think it's, it's an important one— what is the, the feeling of inferiority? And what, why would that be something that highly sensitive folks so often experience? Because it seems to me that, you know, Like you said, that there are, there are benefits and there are challenges, you know, the same as with if you're not highly sensitive. What would make it so that somebody would tend to default towards this sense of there's something wrong or there's something that has to be fixed or I'm less than?

There's lots of reasons for that. Let me just throw in, just to make the mix even more messy, is there are equal numbers of men and women, but it's especially hard for men, as you can imagine, I was just talking to somebody the other day, I can't remember, but it was just about how important it was not to seem sensitive when you're in school, not to seem weak, not to seem feminine. It's just so important. So I think the root cause of that is that being a minority, somebody's going to either put you up or put you down just for being different. We don't know, again, how to deal with difference except to decide that it's better or worse. I think it's more of a problem in some cultures than others. I think North American cultures, North, South America, Australia, New Zealand, I say they're the immigrant cultures because immigrants kind of self-selected for toughness and value toughness for dominating their new environment. Most parents had no idea of, I mean, no one had a term for their child's sensitivity. Until 25 years ago. But even sometimes it was valued, but most of the time parents are afraid of having a child that's different. I coined this term because it certainly applied to raising my sensitive son: if you want to have an exceptional child, you have to be willing to have an exceptional child, which means they're not going to be like other children. And that's so painful for parents because they suffer and they struggle and especially with sensitivity, you know, they just feel everything so deeply and everything is new, so it's overstimulating. So parents didn't understand what the trait was, teachers didn't, pediatricians didn't, and so the labels just fell left and right. I like to tell the story of my nephew and my son. I was present, both of them highly sensitive, happened to be present at my nephew also, first day of preschool. And they're standing at the back of the room watching the other children play and amazed. They'd never seen so many children, so many toys. And teacher walks up and says, "What's the matter? Are you shy? Are you afraid?" And there goes this label onto this child. And of course you don't want to be shy or afraid, so you plunge in and ignore your feelings and manage. But inside you feel there's something, some imposter thing, or that You're covering up something. And I think very often people don't even know what it is that they're covering up until they hear the term, and then they say, "Oh, that explains what I've been fighting all my life, my feeling there's something different about me." And so, yeah, it's a strong issue. And we do see the self-esteem problem even in people with otherwise good childhoods. And it's easy to kind of fix. You start reframing. You start thinking back to the times when your self-esteem was really blasted, and almost always it has to do with your sensitivity.

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I've noticed also that numerous times You have described it as not a tendency, not a preference, not a style, but a trait, which has a very specific connotation. I'm curious about that.

Yes, it really means that it's innate. That's, to me, the most important part of it. Sometimes when people try to explain temperament, they talk about it as an innate style because it shows up in everything you do. Like in my book, The Highly Sensitive Person in Love, I did the first scientific survey of temperament and sexuality. I wanted to find out whether sensitive people were different in their sexuality, their preferences, their comfort zone, their behaviors. And there were definite differences because it goes everywhere with you, whether it's school or work or parenting. That's temperament. And you can't get rid of it. You certainly can modify your life and modify your behavior so that it— so that you get only advantages from it. That we expect that from highly sensitive people, you know. Come on, you can do this.

Yeah, I mean, understanding this I think is also so helpful because when you realize that this is a part of you, it's not something that is even really capable of being changed. And we, we as a general rule We hate to acknowledge that because, you know, the great vision is that all parts of us can change and evolve and grow.

That's right.

And yet, that's— it's not true. You know, a lot of it can, but, you know, I can't practice my way into different color eyes, or I can't practice my way into certain— you know, there are certain things that are simply innate about us. And I think sometimes we cause more suffering than benefit by trying to make that not so and trying to change what's not changeable.

That's right.

And that piles on to whatever you may already be feeling as a highly sensitive person.

Right. And then I couldn't change myself, and then I must be really rotten. And that happens in therapy where therapists try to get sensitive people to change in certain ways. And then whose fault is it? It's not the therapist's fault, of course. It's also a problem in relationships because, of course, we often feel, well, if you really love me, you'd change. But people can't change their temperaments. So that's a piece that you get when you get your partner.

Yeah, when you think about the way that it often shows up, you know, oftentimes all we can really see is behavior. But, you know, the work that you've done over the years also says, well, it's not just the way that we interact with the world, it is the brains. Like, the way that your brain function is measurably different, very measurably different.

And that's That's important. I think one of the things we have is sort of a 5 to thrive thing for sensitive people. And the first one is believing your trait is real. So it's important to have that research and to be able to say the brains function differently, that somehow we right away are interested in that. I'll give you one example that I just love this study, but it's a little hard to explain. It's known that people from a collectivist culture like Asian cultures, and the United States was what they were comparing, individualistic cultures, actually perceive things differently. Like if you give them a task to pay attention to the context or to pay attention to a single aspect, people from a collectivist culture pay attention easily to the context and not as well to the single aspect. And these are like boxes with lines in them. And so we know that, and we know that what happens in the brain is your brain shows more activation on the task that is more difficult for you. So we have a kind of a habit. Art was doing this study at Stanford, and we always throw in, if we can, the Highly Sensitive Person Scale. We say, listen, if you want a publication, we promise you there will be an individual difference. And psychology is not very interested in individual differences because all of science and medicine has been the same way. We want to know in general how people operate. We want laws of nature kind of things. We don't want exceptions. So it turns out that sensitive people doing that same task from both cultures, their brains were not working harder on the one that did not belong to their culture. It was as if they could see the correct answer without having their culture affect it. Now, we don't know how this applies in real life, but it's got to have implications. It's just that ability to see past those things. And I imagine it— I remember having people write their experiences as highly sensitive parents. And this highly sensitive father was in Asia with a new baby, and he had one of these baby carriers. And at that time, I don't know where he was, he was in a fairly sophisticated city in China, I think. So people were not carrying babies around on them, on their bodies. And he didn't let it bother him that people stared at him and pointed at him. But then he found about 6 months later, a lot of people were carrying their babies around on them. The men, not just the women. So it's a kind of leadership again that you can not be carried along by your collective experience as much. We don't know how this actually applies because our sense of people are sensitive to being stared at and feeling embarrassed. That might alter their behavior when it comes down to being a conformist or not.

Yeah, on the one hand, it's almost like you're receiving more information or different information. Yes.

And that's part of the problem of overstimulation. Right, right. You're receiving more information.

But on the other hand, you may be more sensitive to how you're perceived in the way that you respond to or process that information. So it might not be, you know, on the surface, observable by others that this is all going on sort of beneath the surface, you know, underneath the hood.

It's a very invisible trait. And on the HSP scale, there's 27 items, and there are people who answer no to every item, and then there's people who answer yes to every item. And we all live in the same world. And that's pretty astounding when you think of people saying, you know, of course, we're not surprised that they don't mind violent movies or they're not affected by caffeine, But to say you're not conscientious and you're not affected by other people's feelings, I mean, we just all live in the same world.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting when you look at the items on the scale, and I realize this is all being revisited now. Before we came on air, you actually asked me if I was a highly sensitive person, and I said, my answer was something like partially. Just through this conversation, the more I really think it through, I think actually that partially was not an entirely honest answer. I think entirely is probably more the true answer. But what's fascinating to me is that even in conversation with you, there was clearly something in me that was hesitant to just own it. And I'm somebody who's grown up in an environment where I wasn't punished for being that way. I was, you know, I grew up in a place where my, you know, like in a very craft-oriented, you know, like raised by a lot of women around me, raised by a lot of people who are in touch with emotions. Not that there's necessarily that parallel, but raised by people who were openly sensitive, raised by people who were open to the artistic, the nuanced, the empathic side of life. And even so, and I like, I feel like I'm pretty comfortable being that way in the world myself. And even so, there was something in me that when you asked me that question, I didn't just immediately own it. I'm wondering about that, actually.

Yeah, that's a good thing to wonder about. I'll add one other thing that I always get interviewers on this one. There is a trait called high sensation seeking, which is almost unrelated. That is, you'd be surprised that a highly sensitive person could be a high sensation seeker, and yet Many of them are. And that doesn't mean that they're extroverts, because there's high sensation seekers who climb mountains by themselves, you know, to get away from people. So, but I think it's an ideal thing for an interviewer because you're curious, you want to talk to new people all the time, and then the sensitivity makes it possible to be a good interviewer and to know what your audience would want to hear. So I think it's a very common combination in people who do the kind of work you do.

It's interesting you bring that up. I hadn't been aware of that, but, um, that's actually me as well. Uh, you know, I, I will go out for a hike somewhere and I'll push myself physically, emotionally. I will want to be, you know, in the most vivid experience, um, I can. And I very often love being there alone. You know, it's fun to share it with other people, but there are certain things that I love to do simply because I love the experience of being in solitude and in intensity simultaneously.

Yes. Yeah. High sensation-seeking, sensitive person. I think sensitive people— I mean, for myself on a hike, I enjoy going with my husband, which I usually do, but I really love going alone because I experience it differently. For one thing, you have no responsibility about whether the other person is enjoying themselves or going to stumble or anything like that. But you just perceive things without interruption and distraction. Just perceive all the subtleties and take it all in. And of course, can set your own pace and be as tough as you want to be, go as far as you want. No, it's— sensitive people do need solitude, I think. Downtime when they can process. Because when you're on a hike, for instance, you can mull over a lot of things, not even fully conscious of doing it. But you know how it is, it just kind of all turns over in your brain, and all of a sudden you have an idea sometimes that, "Oh, that's the solution to that," or "That's the question to ask," or "That's the person to ask to interview." Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that makes so much sense to me. It's really resonating. For a lot of years of my life, I also, I was a mountain biker, and I would ride alone most of the time, and I would ride very quickly in trees and very windy technical trails because of the intensity of the experience.

Yes, yeah. And so that's really important that, that we not exclude those highly sensitive people who are seeking intensity. Some people say it's like one foot's on the gas and one foot's on the brake. It's like This is too much, but I want to do it. And it's also, for me, I'm very easily bored. And that's just, I have to kind of squash that feeling when I'm with people and we're chit-chatting or whatever. But it's, you kind of think that you'd, those things wouldn't bother a sensitive person in the sense, well, if it's not interesting, I'll just kind of drop out of the conversation and chill. But no, it's, If I'm going to be with other people, I want it to be interesting.

Yeah, I hear that. You also made a really interesting distinction, which is that, you know, you can be highly sensitive, high sensation, and also be introverted. But, but it's not necessarily— there is no thing that says all highly sensitive people, or all highly sensitive and high sensation people, also tend strongly towards introversion, which I think for a lot of people probably sounds a little counterintuitive.

Yeah, it's the whole extraversion or high sensation seeking or both. Yeah, it is very counterintuitive. If you go back to the crux of the trait is depth of processing. It's not being overstimulated. It's not about avoiding stimulation. It's about finding the best resources that others didn't notice. I mean, that's the way it is for animals. It's like— and someone's done a computer simulation of this— that if you have— imagine a patch of really good food or a patch of food, and depending on how good it is and how sensitive the animals are, some will find that patch and eat it and others will not notice it. And not noticing is fine if there aren't any especially good patches of grass. In fact, it's the easy way to get through life is assuming that there's not— there are not big differences between now and next time. So picking up on subtleties, I like to use the example of a horse race. If you're really good at watching horses, you can pick winners, not all the time, but pretty well. But if you're paying attention to the color of the jockey's outfit and you decide to bet on red the third time because it won twice, that's not Not a good idea to have been paying attention to that. But the analogy I like best is that, because this is true of me, if you know a shortcut, it's only a shortcut if nobody else knows it. So there can't be very many sensitive people because then there'd be no advantage for anyone. If all the animals found the good patch of grass, then the trait would just disappear because it would have no advantages. And it sort of implies that we have to keep getting more sensitive in order to enjoy that advantage. And people say, well, in this culture, isn't it terrible to be highly sensitive? I say no, because even searching the internet for something, my intuition, my observational skills or whatever, I find what I need much faster. I used to say that about being in bookstores. I find the right book without having to look at every single book. I don't know how I do it, but we take a long time observing sometimes, but other times we know exactly what we want and we don't have to observe at all because we already know. We get the cue, "Oh, there's an opportunity. I'll go for it." And that others, like, you know, if you know exactly what a really perfect peach looks like when you're shopping, you just take those peaches. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to learn about it. But you know exactly the subtle signs.

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I wonder if you've seen this show up. As you were speaking, part of me was imagining a scenario where, you know, somebody is either in a conversation with other people or maybe in a meeting room with a team at work or, you know, some similar situation. And they're all looking for a solution, an innovative, a creative new idea, a new way to solve a problem. And if you are wired in this way, I wonder if there's ever this dynamic where you see data that maybe others don't see, and you see a way that the pieces of the puzzle go together in maybe a way that others don't see, but you simultaneously understand and read a more nuanced social and power dynamic in that room which then makes you less inclined to share it even though you're seeing it.

Well, you've just exactly described something that I have described many times. And if you don't say something, then you begin to feel odd. You know, I mean, that you're not doing what the right thing is because you're not giving them the best solution, or you're simply not part of the group because you know things that they don't know. Do you think you're better than them? Do you think you're worse than them? You know, it's a complicated thing. And what I tell people, by the way, is go to single members of the group ahead of time and win them over to your perspective before there's a group meeting. Because what's often happening is you're shaming someone by showing them what's wrong with their idea or that they didn't think of it. So the group dynamics are very precarious for sensitive people. Or you give them little hints and let them sort of sniff their way to the solution, but then often you don't get any credit for it because they think they thought of it. The good leader is the person who takes people where they were about to go anyway. And anything else, they're not going to go with you because it's too far out. And then you get criticized and seen as annoying or stupid or whatever. So it's very tricky. And that's sort of brings up whether or not organizations can learn to make better use of sensitive people. It's interesting, they're learning to make use of people on the autistic spectrum, that they can have these really phenomenal abilities. The idea of understanding highly sensitive people, one of the problems I've seen is that employees do not want to admit to being highly sensitive. You know, just, you know, that little twinge, I'm going to be seen as not quite as good. And that's, that's there. We hope we can solve that in time. This interview is a good— another little step.

Yeah.

And it's interesting, your hesitancy. And if you have any more insights about that, that'd probably be really good to share.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm probably going to take a little bit of time to think about that and to unpack it. But just thinking about it in real time with you, I wonder if there's something in me that still feels a sense of social judgment, you know, even though it's just me and you. You're the person who's literally been researching this for, for, you know, like a tremendous amount of time, um, and yet there's something that didn't just want to show up entirely as that, as that person. And, and I'm somebody who's very tapped into that side of myself. I love the fact that I lead with that myself. I love the fact that I hang out in the back of a room and read the social dynamics, and I can almost feel the power in the different corners and the nuance of the conversations and the nonverbal signals. I view that as a genuine asset. I like that. And yet there was something about the quote label that still gave me pause.

Well, perhaps, I mean, and people have complained about the term sensitive, perhaps it is the label that some of the men have been saying, finely tuned nervous system. I didn't choose highly reflective or something, because it didn't apply to animals and I was thinking biologically. But certainly feel free to use any term you want.

Yeah, because I'm completely comfortable with the description of the trait.

Right.

So it's interesting, but I definitely am going to noodle on that a bit more, um, because it, it did catch me. You know, it occurs to me also that this has got to have been affected in some really meaningful ways by the last year and a half.

People have often asked me how highly sensitive people would be faring during the pandemic, and I've always said, I don't know, because it's so much, you know, that saying we all heard about, it's not that we're all in the same boat, we're all in the same flood. We're all in the same ocean, but the weather's different for different people. And I think many sensitive people have appreciated the pandemic in certain ways, being able to work from home. And if you're an introvert, not as many social engagements, not as much stimulation in general. But if you're living with someone who's difficult and you're at home with them all the time, or you've got little children that you don't get any break from, or if you lost someone, you know, the circumstances are so varied. So probably It's this differential susceptibility thing again. In good environment, they're doing better than other people. Poor ones, they're doing worse.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Um, the— you know, I've had many conversations because I'm just a curious person, and I think a lot of people around me have, have this similar trait. And it does seem like everybody's unique life circumstance, in addition to the environmental circumstance that we're all simultaneously moving through. It's like these two layers that play into, um, how you respond as a highly sensitive person. And, and also that other overlay of high sensation, which I really hadn't been focused on until you shared it. I have to imagine now that I'm thinking about that, you know, if you are a high sensation person and you have now had to spend a tremendous amount of time in a confined environment with a confined way to interact, it can, you know, like a constrained set of stimuli That's got to play into it in different ways as well.

Yeah, we certainly discovered some new trails that we hadn't been on before in Marin. I was desperate for new places to hike, and that's the entertainment we had. Yeah, what I wonder about too is how much sensitive people took care of themselves because they saw, you know, this is a good place where being sensitive might mean a better survival strategy. You know, really paying attention to what you're doing and the subtle signs of safety or danger. And I also wonder how, you know, the Spanish flu in 1917-18 is amazing how people forgot about it. And of course this one will not be so easily forgotten because everybody will write a novel about it or something. But the sense of it could happen again may be I knew about this was going to happen because I listen to science shows and read science stuff. And all the virologists were saying that definitely there'll be a mutation that can spread through the air and it'll be a disaster. And so I wasn't too surprised. I hate to tell you, but now the scientists are saying that certain deadly fungi that we don't have any medicines for are out there. And I don't like to say that very, very much to people, but the closer we live with other people and things travel around the globe, it's just another reality that we face. And I just think sensitive people are going to be conscious of this as a dramatic event that could happen again or something else like it. Sweeping around the globe in this way. I imagine that sensitive people have been more aware of climate change earlier than other people were. Those are interesting questions to research.

Yeah, and especially if you're processing a lot, and as you shared, you know, more subtle stimuli, and those stimuli are related to the big existential questions, can get a little bit scary, but at the same time, maybe real enough to inspire concerted action in a way where you might not have acted before.

Well, that's where one little piece of my work in my mind is empowering sensitive people to speak up. Because I'm sure we're the ones who didn't like secondhand smoke. I'm sure we've been speaking up about climate change. So noticing these things gives the rest of humanity a real advantage if we can speak up and say what we see. Might be coming. In positive ways too. I've been wandering off of the subject of sensitivity to study the subject of enlightenment and awakening. And this is just a huge thing going on in a small segment of society, but it's growing. Since about 1996, those who are sort of in the know have seen a lot more people suddenly or after a long time of some practice suddenly having this enormous change. I do not want to talk about it in terms of sensitive people being more likely, even though I think they probably would be. But I don't want to do that research because I don't want to foreclose other people, you know, sort of say that it's less likely for them. I want everyone to go for that if that's their interest. But it's a positive, potentially positive change in humanity. Just as we're watching all this darkness, we also see some possibility for something. And I say that as a scientist, not in a woo-woo, you know, well, I just channeled somebody who said, don't worry, consciousness is changing. No, I take it very seriously. My data collection.

So, so now I'm really curious about this, you know, is my experience with words like enlightenment and awakening has generally been wrapped around Eastern philosophy, Buddhism, and in that context or in Hindu context, it normally references a state that, you know, in some way, shape, or form, quote, removes you from a cycle of suffering so that there is, and also a certain amount of ego detachment. But so now I'm really curious how How do you define— when you use the word enlightenment or awakening, what are you actually talking about?

It's super complicated. But I think in terms of personal experience, the importance of the ego reduces. There's less thinking about oneself. There's an increase in equanimity, which is the biggest change. Just not reacting to small things or big things. With the same amount of fear. And there are stages to it too. But most people feel, you know, a greater compassion, a greater caring about the world. So they don't remove themselves from all social action or something like that. But they do perhaps choose carefully what they do, that it's not an intense emotional reaction. I'm going to go out there and do such and such. It's a long-term thinking about the best strategy and what's realistic and what's not. And seeing it sometimes quite differently from a much bigger perspective. And the interesting thing to me is that there's a sort of You know, it was part of sort of monks and monasteries and people living in caves for so long. And then all of a sudden meditation became something that anybody could do. And then along with it, I'm very familiar with Transcendental Meditation because I've been doing that for 50 years. And, you know, Maharishi came and said, oh, TM, you know, meditation for householders, you can do it all the time. And when you When you learn it, the last lesson they talk about the higher states of consciousness. I don't think many people pay any attention to that. But now there has been this burgeoning and meditation of all sorts has come up, but they all tend to be a lot like TM in that don't make an effort, don't strain, just come back to whatever you're doing. And then all of a sudden people are talking about awakening and enlightenment. And I see it as kind of a modern technology and modern look at it. There's a man, Jeffrey Martin, who's done all this research on it, interviewing a lot of people and then kind of honing down on the traits. Steven Taylor wrote a book on it called The Leap. There's a wonderful website called Buddha at the Gas Pump where Rick Archer interviewed over 600 people that are enlightened or have something important to say on this subject. And he says he can't keep up with it. I mean, he used to be looking for people to interview, and now they're begging. And he says he's not taking any more applications because there's so many. And so something is going on that's quite fascinating to me. And I woke up one day to the realization that the word spirituality and the word sensitivity have the same problems. Like, No, it's both good and bad. I was talking to a friend today and we were saying, I think talking about your sexuality is easier in some circles than talking about your spirituality. Like, don't go there. That would be really embarrassing.

Right. It's like you create an uncomfortable environment when you talk about spirituality or sensitivity.

Right. Which will it be? Right. I guess it's my sensitivity that's honed in on this thing creeping into our world. It's gonna be big soon, I predict. But people right now don't have much of a sense at all of what it means.

Yeah, that's so fascinating that you're seeing that. You know, what I've seen, and maybe it's speaking to a similar phenomenon, is over the last decade, the pursuit of psychadelic molecules as a way to touch into that state. And it's not necessarily, you know, people want to tune out or get high or just like live a baked life. They're looking for a particular state that is more expansive.

[Speaker:DR_LISA] That's right. In fact, Aldous Huxley, who wrote about the perennial philosophy, sort of bringing that term into— it goes back to the Middle Ages, That whole— it's a kind of a description of mysticism. That's a bad term. But anyway, he turned to psychedelics because it seemed easier, and his Buddhist teacher, Hindu teacher said, "Oh, you know, that'll make you enlightened for a few hours and then you'll be back to being totally stupid." But yes, and there are people who do get these big, big visions. A friend of mine said, you know, I just I understand that I'll be like out 1,000 miles looking down on myself and I'll understand my whole life and I want that experience. It'll make me more creative. And I said, okay. I kind of believe that it is. There is neuroscience on this too, and there are fundamental brain changes, but I don't know whether they're permanent when you take psychedelics. Perhaps sometimes because There's this weird thing of people becoming enlightened just suddenly, overnight practically. That's pretty unusual. And there must be brain changes that happen for them too, but it's permanent.

Yeah, how fascinating. I mean, obviously it's a near impossible task.

Maybe we'll have to do another interview on this subject. Right. We've strayed a little bit, haven't we?

That's a whole rabbit hole we can start to go down.

It's definitely a whole rabbit hole. Oh, definitely.

You know, I wanted to touch, to kind of circle and touch on one other thing before we wrap our conversation, because, you know, a solid bit of your more recent work has been around highly sensitive parents and parenting.

Oh yeah.

And as a parent, and who I feel is highly sensitive, and, you know, maybe with a kid who's wired similarly, I'm super curious about how this shows up with parents and how it shapes the way that we parent, the way that we live, and also the way that we relate to partners in a parenting relationship.

Well, there's not very much research on it, but there is some. My husband and I did surveys of sensitive and non-sensitive parents. So that's self-report. But, and from that, we found that they reported themselves to be a set of questions that we ended up calling creative, attuned, creative, parents. They also found parenting, compared to other parents, they also found parenting more difficult than other parents. And the third question, the third issue you brought up is that it did not cause their relationship with their parenting partner to be any worse, which I thought was interesting because I think it's the ability to see the big picture enough to know, well, right now my partner's being a jerk, but that's because we're both so overstimulated and can't figure out what to do, that kind of thing. Or, you know, in the long run, this person is a good person. So it's nice that it didn't go there for people, although I certainly— I interviewed people too, and there were certainly some people who got divorced because the problem is for the sensitive parent is they're so highly stimulated. And some mothers said that they didn't feel like or raising their grown husband and dealing with his distress at the same time as dealing with their child's distress, just threw him out of the house and said their relationship was much better. But those were exceptions. But then there's two other studies that have been done, not so positive, because they rate parenting on this sort of, you know, it's three styles of parenting: authoritarian, which means shut up and go to your room, permissive, which means do whatever you want, I'm out of here. And authoritarian, authoritative, which is setting boundaries but listening and then set the boundaries, kind of. And authoritative is considered to be the best. And sensitive parents tended to be one or the other of the not good types. And you can imagine if you're overstimulated, it's either go to your room and shut up, or I don't care what you do, I'm gonna go lay 'Go lay down and rest.' It takes energy to do that authoritative kind. And my bottom line in my book was that highly sensitive parents must have help. They cannot parent full-time. They're better off going back to work and putting their child in childcare if they can afford it. You know, in the US, childcare is expensive. In Britain, it's expensive. But like in Scandinavia, you have that option of childcare at a very young age and doesn't matter about your income. And I think, you know, ideally you're sharing with a partner, but you can't both have jobs, and you can't just have one person working and the other person home all the time. It's just— parenting is hard work. They're finally doing studies on parenting and burnout for everyone, but for a sensitive person especially, parenting young children, especially more than one child, it's very difficult. My daughter-in-law and her Her mother has a PhD in child development and daughter-in-law's a psychiatrist. And they could afford this. They had a rule: no one's alone, alone with a child at home. There should be at least a housekeeper in the house or somebody there because it's too hard with little children, little children. So, I'm very firm about that. And people say, well, I'd have to take out of my savings. And I say, if that savings for your child's college education, You better spend it now because the child may not be doing so well by college age if you're losing it all the time.

Yeah. I mean, and that also brings up the conundrum in that if you don't have means, if you don't have a certain amount of resources, of privilege, of access, and you find yourself in this scenario, it's a tough place to be.

It is. And I have a ton of Suggestions for people, you know, ways to take brief timeouts and ways to settle down, and also ways to look for help that you think there isn't any, but there are, you know, parenting groups where people share. And maybe you have to take in someone from your extended family that you wouldn't maybe, but you need that for child care. You know, you have to make some compromises sometimes to get that help. But that's one of the problems, is sensitive parents have this vision of perfect parenting and they're trying to do it. And sometimes they feel quite ashamed of needing help and spending money on help because they see other parents not needing that. But it's one of those things that comes with DOES. It's that big fat zero, that big fat O. And you see the depth of process and the emotional attunement and the sensitive to subtle needs of your child before they show any fever, you know when they're sick, that kind of thing. But all the gains are lost if you're overstimulated.

Yeah. I want to zoom the lens out for a moment and then we'll come full circle. And maybe bridging these two big ideas, highly sensitive people and our brief sojourn into transcendence. That state that I think so many of us aspire to, especially now, especially after the year and a half, as you shared, one of the defining elements of that state is a sense of equanimity, a sense of no matter what comes my way, I'll be okay. You know, the ability to let things— to acknowledge reality but also let it move through you rather than grasp, suffer, and collapse underneath the weight of it. So if we bridge those two things for a highly sensitive person, who would love to spend as much of their daily hours, their life, with as much of this experience of equanimity as possible, is there one— maybe not one. I can tell by your face, you're like, "No, the answer is no. There's no one thing." But how do we do that? What is the most readily available bridge or set of practices?

I was laughing because I was going to sound like an advertisement, because I do think I do think it's hard to even, you know, sound like an advertisement, but I do think that Transcendental Meditation is the most efficient method. And it's kind of become a little passé. People are doing mindfulness and all this because you can learn that on the internet. You just click on mindfulness meditation and there's how to do it. TM, you have to go and learn. But that's because, well, some of it is organizational. The problem is it's very effortless and goes straight for the transcendent, but it's not easy to learn to be effortless. Like if you're focusing on your breath, that's easy to do. We all can do that. But being effortless with a mantra, because it's not about focusing on the mantra at all, it's about transcending that and going beyond that. There's a guy here in California who's pretty popular. Adyashanti, and he teaches a med— there's a few other people. I think it's a Zen meditation technique originally, which is actually just letting everything be, but focusing on that pure awareness, that stuff that's behind, because that is the most restful state of the nervous system, is to be beyond thoughts. Now, you're not going to get there easily, and that's one of the good things about TM instruction is they make it very clear that there are no good meditations. Because in a sense, if you're highly aroused and you can go from 10 to 7, that's better than a meditation from 3 to 0 arousal. Because if you can get that down when you're up there at 10 and you can get it down, and your meditation may be nothing but thoughts, but you still have settled the nervous system. And all of that, all those kinds of details of meditation really It really helps to learn. And I should say that the organization is really good now about if people don't have the money, that they have various ways of helping people out. So I think it's the most efficient kind of downtime. And that's 20 minutes twice a day. But if you don't get it twice a day, you don't get in twice a day. But if it means getting up 20 minutes early to meditate, fine. And with TM, if you fall asleep, that's fine too. It's not like— Sit up straight. Yeah. You know, you have to go quickly to a very quiet state. And of course your mind's going to be racing, but you have to settle it down some as quickly as possible in the time you have. And once children are a little bit that they can be left alone, then you can train them that this is something that you're going to do. And they can have some special treat during that time, watching some video or something they don't get to watch usually. Or you can meditate with them in the room if you can think of a way to keep them amused. I have a great parenting story. I didn't have to parent very much alone with my child, but there was a while when my husband was going out and this— people just laugh and laugh at the story. He told me, fill the kitchen with toys, close the door so that he can't leave the kitchen, and climb on top of the refrigerator. And I'd go up there, he would not know I was there. He didn't And I would sit up there and journal and meditate and rest. So there's always the top of the refrigerator.

Right. Meditation by any means necessary.

Right.

That's too funny. Yeah, I have about a decade-long practice, not TM, it's more of a breath-centered practice.

Right.

But what I've learned over the years is that there is a pause between the exhale and the inhale. And you can, over time, teach yourself how to linger in it longer. And that pause, for me, is the stillest, most profound experience of my day. And I savor it every morning when I have the chance to visit it.

That pure awareness, however you get to it, whatever form of meditation, if you get to it and you understand that that's what you should savor, Then just think of that 24 hours a day. That's enlightenment. That's all it is. And it gets like a light that gets brighter and brighter and brighter as time passes.

That sounds pretty good to me.

That's very simple. That's all it is. And that's every tradition. That's all it is. You know, it's the presence of God. You can call it that. But it's God without any attributes. It's just pure, pure divine presence. That's what everybody describes it in all the traditions. And so now we have means to do it. And I do think it sometimes takes some retreats and things like that added in because, you know, we build up stress and we have to have some longer breaks from it, but it does happen.

Yeah, and I'm glad about that. And it feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation today as well. So sitting here in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase "to live a good life," what comes up?

Oh, it's definitely find that pure awareness and live your life with it there in the background, close at hand, right there at the same time. I have no doubt about that.

Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet you'll also love the conversation we had with Susan Cain, the author of Quiet, about the power of introverts. You'll find a link to Susan's episode in the show notes. And even if you don't listen now, be sure to click and download so it's ready to play when you're on the go. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app so you'll never miss an episode. And then share the Good Life Project love with friends, because when ideas become conversations, that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time.

With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank Guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One Cafés are open 7 days a week to assist with your banking needs.

Yep.

Even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com/bank. Capital One, N.A., member FDIC.

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