Copyright

This book is not intended to be a substitute for an assessment by or advice from an appropriate professional. It contains general information regarding high sensitivity and is purely educational in nature.

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First published in the US by Citadel Press 2020

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FIRST EDITION

© Elaine Aron 2020

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Source ISBN: 9780008376536

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Version 2020-03-11

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Are You Highly Sensitive? A Self-Test

1. A Deeper Look at What It Means to Be a Highly Sensitive Parent

2. Coping with Overstimulation: The Proper Care and Appreciation of a Highly Sensitive Parent

3. Getting Help: Yes, You Need It

4. Depth of Processing: Making Decisions, from Buying the Healthiest Bread to the Purpose of Your Life

5. Enjoying and Regulating Your Greater Emotional Responsiveness

6. Navigating the Intensified Social Contact: From Teachers and Other Parents to Well-Meaning Relatives and Health Professionals

7. Sensitive Parents and Their Partners: The Issues and Some Tools

8. More on Sensitive Parents and Their Partners: Making Progress on the Tough Problems

Source Notes

Acknowledgments

List of Searchable Terms

Other Books By

Praise

About the Author

About the Publisher

Dedication

To all hardworking parents:

We would not be here without you.

And especially to the highly sensitive ones,

for your depth of parenting.

Introduction

ALL PARENTS FIND PARENTING DIFFICULT. According to our research, highly sensitive (HS) parents, at least in English-speaking countries, find it even more so. But the great news is that these HS parents also reported being more attuned to their children in many ways.

So the question now is are you highly sensitive? If you aren’t sure, please turn to the self-test here and see. If you are highly sensitive, that all-important attunement can be your greatest asset as a parent. The goal of this book is to help you use it to make your parenting less difficult and more joyful. (Just to be clear: This is not a book about parenting highly sensitive children, which is covered in The Highly Sensitive Child. This book is about being a parent who is highly sensitive, regardless of the temperament of your children.)

All parents are short on time, highly sensitive or not. But if you’re highly sensitive, you have to be even more careful than other parents about your time. According to research, as a highly sensitive person (HSP), you are more easily overstimulated. So in addition to the time it takes to parent, you need more downtime. Without this downtime, you get irritable and just plain miserable—and there goes that attunement. This book tries to be mindful of your precious time by focusing on what you need most. The first chapter is crucial if you have any doubts about the reality of your trait. I always say HSPs need to feel convinced they have it, but for an HS parent, it is fundamental. Chapter two, on coping with overstimulation, is also necessary, given that overstimulation is the one downside to having the trait. Chapter three is intended to help you realize what I am convinced of: that HS parents need help raising our children rather than trying to tough it out, as we may see others do. Chapter four is on making decisions. We HS parents express more than others that one of the most difficult issues for them is wanting to make the best decisions when there are many options and complex issues. Chapter five is on regulating your emotions, which are stronger than others’ and being stirred up almost constantly at every stage of parenting. You need this chapter unless you have your emotions all under control. (You and I both smile. Sure.)

Chapter six, which focuses on all the many social aspects of parenting, will help even if you are an extravert (30 percent of HSPs are). Dealing with other people is no doubt the greatest source of emotional stimulation for most people, and therefore the greatest opportunity for overstimulating HSPs. The final two chapters, on the co-parenting relationship, are relevant even to single parents. The discussion of how parenting affects the way you get along with those you love applies to all of your close relationships.

Keeping in mind the goal to make this book a quick read, we have not used those nice stories that appear in so many parenting and self-help books and are usually a well-told blend of real stories: “When Janie first had her baby …” Instead, we’re giving you the words of actual HS parents. Their words are set apart so that you can easily skip them if you just want to read the information and advice. But those stories (slightly edited for grammar and ease of reading) are from the members of your support group, so to speak, and you may find them even more helpful than the rest of the information here.

This book mostly addresses the problems HS parents often have. After all, there’s no need to fix what’s working for HS parents. But keep in mind that our research, which included a survey of more than 1,200 parents, found that you have the potential to be not just a good parent but a great one. We found that those parents who were highly sensitive, like you, reported experiencing statistically significantly more emotional responsiveness and attunement to their children compared to other parents. This was one of the two factors that most stood out in the research because this attunement positively informs an HS parent’s deep processing of their child’s situations and the decisions they make on their child’s behalf.

How does this attunement help? Take one example: Parents constantly face questions in the moment, such as, “Right now, does he need a time out, or is this fuss due to being tired or hungry?” and “Right now, is this a ‘teachable’ moment, or should I wait and let us both cool off?” and “She’s fifteen—should I trust her to do the right thing or forbid her to go?” Coming up with the right answer matters for everyone in the family, both at the time and cumulatively. On average, HS parents tend to be better at all this than the typical parent, according to the research.

When I began studying sensitivity in 1991, I searched the research literature for the term “highly sensitive,” or just “sensitive,” and found “sensitive” used in only two places: to describe those who are gifted and to describe parents who achieve the best outcomes with their children. I don’t think these researchers were necessarily referring to the innate trait of high sensitivity because it had yet to be defined. But in 1979, they had already established that children benefited when parents were sensitive in some measurable sense, and research continues to demonstrate that. The more that is learned about parenting in general, the more we know that the key to successful parenting is being attuned and responsive, even when setting reasonable limits.

As for the research behind many of the statements in this book, you will find notes at the end, organized by chapter. If you have not yet read The Highly Sensitive Person, I suggest you do so as soon as you have time. Since it was published in 1996, I have heard over and over from readers that “it has changed my life.” And if you have known you are an HSP for a long time, welcome back to our community, this time a community of HS parents—and for me, HS grandparents!

Are You Highly Sensitive?
A SELF-TEST

Instructions: Respond to each statement according to the way you feel. Choose true if it is at least moderately true for you. Choose false if it is not very true or not at all true for you.

T | F | I am easily overwhelmed by strong sensory input.
T | F | I seem to be aware of subtleties in my environment.
T | F | Other people’s moods affect me.
T | F | I tend to be very sensitive to pain.
T | F | I find myself needing to withdraw during busy days into bed, a darkened room, or any place where I can have some privacy and relief from stimulation.
T | F | I am particularly sensitive to the effects of caffeine.
T | F | I am easily overwhelmed by things like bright lights, strong smells, coarse fabrics, or sirens close by.
T | F | I have a rich, complex inner life.
T | F | I am made uncomfortable by loud noises.
T | F | I am deeply moved by the arts or music.
T | F | My nervous system sometimes feels so frazzled that I just have to get away by myself.
T | F | I am conscientious.
T | F | I startle easily.
T | F | I get rattled when I have a lot to do in a short amount of time.
T | F | When people are uncomfortable in a physical environment, I tend to know what needs to be done to make it more comfortable (like changing the lighting or the seating).
T | F | I am annoyed when people try to get me to do too many things at once.
T | F | I try hard to avoid making mistakes or forgetting things.
T | F | I make it a point to avoid violent movies and TV shows.
T | F | I become unpleasantly aroused when a lot is going on around me.
T | F | Being very hungry creates a strong reaction in me, disrupting my concentration or mood.
T | F | Changes in my life shake me up.
T | F | I notice and enjoy delicate or fine scents, tastes, sounds, and works of art.
T | F | I find it unpleasant to have a lot going on at once.
T | F | I make it a high priority to arrange my life to avoid upsetting or overwhelming situations.
T | F | I am bothered by intense stimuli like loud noises or chaotic scenes.
T | F | When I must compete or be observed while performing a task, I become so nervous or shaky that I do much worse than I would otherwise.
T | F | When I was a child, my parents or teachers seemed to see me as sensitive or shy.

SCORING THE SELF-TEST FOR HIGH SENSITIVITY. If you responded to more than fourteen of the statements as true of yourself, you are probably highly sensitive. Highly sensitive men might have fewer true responses. But frankly, no psychological test is so accurate that an individual should base their life on it. We psychologists try to develop good questions, then decide on the cutoff based on the average response. If fewer than fourteen are true of you, but those that are true are extremely true, that might also justify calling yourself highly sensitive, especially if you are male.

CHAPTER ONE

A Deeper Look at What It Means to Be a Highly Sensitive Parent

LET’S BEGIN WITH THE STRAIGHT FACTS: High sensitivity is an innate trait found in about 20 percent of the population. You could call it a successful alternative survival strategy, as it has been found in about the same percentage of individuals in more than one hundred species. It is a well-researched, well-understood concept, as you will see in this chapter. We scientists also call it “sensory processing sensitivity” (which is unrelated to sensory processing disorder), because its chief characteristic is that those with the trait process information more thoroughly than others, or “high environmental sensitivity.” Everyone is sensitive to their environment to varying degrees, but HSPs are more so.

If you have taken the self-test at the beginning of this book, you may be starting to recognize that you are part of the sensitive minority, or perhaps you already knew. Either way, you are here to learn how being highly sensitive makes parenting a very different experience, and how to both cope with those differences and take full advantage of them.

This first chapter aims to make your trait real to you and to anyone with whom you share this chapter so that they can read it and better understand you. It provides a brief but complete understanding of your trait and the research on it.

Research: “My Sensitivity Is Wonderful, But …”

For you as a parent, as I said in the Introduction, the most relevant research on high sensitivity is our online survey of more than 1,200 English-speaking parents, both sensitive and those without this trait. The basic results were that highly sensitive (HS) parents tended to find parenting more difficult, but they were also more attuned to their children.

I do want to talk briefly about mothers and fathers separately. (Just to be clear, the survey did not ask respondents their marital status or if they were hetero- or homosexual.) We had two survey samples, each including both HS and non-HS parents. The first survey, of ninety-two mothers, had too few fathers for a separate statistical analysis, so we only looked at mothers. The results for mothers in the two samples were very similar.

In the second, there were 802 mothers and 65 fathers, a little better for analyzing fathers. On average, the HS fathers found parenting a little more difficult than the fathers who were not HS. But this was a small effect and not statistically significant, and probably due to the mothers usually being more directly involved with caregiving. Compared to fathers without the trait, the HS fathers did report greater attunement to their children, just as HS mothers had, and this was strong enough to be statistically significant in spite of the small number of fathers and even smaller number of HS fathers within the sample.

Attunement is especially important for raising highly sensitive boys, and HS fathers are in the perfect position to do it. As one said:

My sensitivity has helped my son to open his heart and be more loving as an adult. We watched many movies that showed men acting in a caring manner, which was a great buffer to all the violent movies that his friends wanted to watch.

We think that HS fathers reporting not much differently on the difficulty of parenting compared with fathers who were not HS is mainly because 1) the sample of fathers was, again, too small to draw an adequate conclusion, and 2) we did not gather data on whether parents were staying at home or working outside the home, but it is likely that these fathers were less frequently with their children during, say, a given week, and therefore less likely to become completely frazzled, as may happen with mothers. There may be additional reasons for why HS fathers did not differ much from other fathers in finding parenting difficult.

Because of the limited sample of fathers and our uncertainty about the causes of the difficult parenting results for fathers, throughout the book we almost always refer to HS parents without specifying mothers or fathers. Just remember, HS fathers, that averages are not about any one individual. They are not necessarily describing you. If you find parenting difficult, that doesn’t make your experience wrong.

About six hundred HS parents added comments at the end of my survey. In reading them over, I found that a certain grammatical structure kept catching my eye. I call it the “It’s great, but …” phrase. For example:

Being a parent has been incredibly wonderful, but also deeply distressing, and it’s difficult to share these experiences with people who are not highly sensitive.

I absolutely love parenting and have wanted it my whole life but find that I am constantly overwhelmed.

Without a doubt, I would summarize my parenting experience as an HSP to be the best experience of my life. Even though my efforts were many times riddled with doubt, guilt, and worry, I deeply believe that being highly sensitive has enhanced my parenting ability overall.

How Being Overstimulated May Affect Your Parenting

These parents are stating a paradox: “I’m doing well and doing terribly.”

This “doing well and terribly” is important to remember. Before I end the subject of our research on HS parents, I want to be sure to mention a study done by others, and I suspect there will be more results like these. This study found that, on the average, HS parents were not performing as parents quite as well as those without the trait. This was indicated by their self-reported parenting styles. You may have heard of these styles. There are three. At one extreme there is the authoritarian style, emphasizing obedience and strict limits (high standards, low communication). In the middle, the ideal, is authoritative, giving children structure and limits, but in a caring, listening way (high communication, high standards). At the other extreme is the permissive style, few limits and mainly trying to please the child (high communication, low standards). HS parents tended to say they were using one or the other of the extremes, strict or permissive, more often than they described themselves as using the middle, ideal authoritative style.

Of course parenting style varies all day long, but the authors of the article saw it the same way that I do. The extremes probably do not represent parenting philosophies associated with being an HSP, but that HS parents are reporting one of these two styles, and possibly using both at different times, because they are so often overwhelmed and are just admitting to how they usually handle their child’s demands during those times.

You can imagine how this goes. Maybe the parent, desperate for rest, decides strict limits are the only answer right now. The parent says, “This is quiet time. I need to rest. Go to your room and play there. And I don’t want to hear a sound out of you.” Child starts to protest. Parent interrupts. “You know the consequences if you don’t do as I say, right now. No story time tonight. Now I’m counting to three. No, I don’t care if you want to play here ‘real quietly.’ I will come and get you when I’m done resting.”

Maybe the parent just has to have quiet time and will do anything to get it. For example, the exhausted parent says, “This is quiet time. Please go to your room to play so I can rest.” The child says, “But Mommy, I want to play here!” (starting to whine, then sob). “No, when you play with those toys you are often too noisy.” “No, I will be real quiet.” “If you go, maybe we can play together later.” “No! I hate you!” (Screaming now.) So the parent caves in. “Okay. Yes, I know, you feel terrible. Okay, play here then, but keep it quiet. I mean it.”

This book is not about how to parent (although I will say a little more about this in chapter three). There are plenty of books on parenting and I urge you to learn from them. But this book is, in essence, about making you the best possible parent by reducing the overstimulation you are experiencing and fitting in more downtime and self-care. Not that it will be easy, this aiming for more “doing well” and only now and then “doing terribly.” All parents have those “terribly” times. But as you move through this book, I am confident that you will be able to parent more and more in your naturally attuned, caring, authoritative style. (Then I hope someone does a study on how well HS parents can parent when they are not so overstimulated.)

Let’s get on now to the research on HSPs in general.

The Research That Applies to all HSPs

We can look at the research under four headings, because sensitivity has four key aspects, which I call DOES:

 Depth of processing—a powerful desire to search for insight and the ability to process information deeply.

 Easily Overstimulated—you understand that already!

 Emotional responsiveness and empathy—you understand this, too, but the research makes it even clearer.

 A greater awareness of Subtle stimuli—invaluable to you as a parent.

We are going to discuss the research behind each of these four. The point is to demonstrate to you the reality of your high sensitivity and precisely why it makes you a better parent, even if it has some downsides. If you want more details on the studies, you will find them in the notes for this chapter.

Depth of Processing: The Desire for Insight and the Ability to Reflect

WHAT DO I MEAN BY PROCESSING DEEPLY? When people in general are given a phone number and have no way to write it down, they will probably try to process it in order to remember it by repeating it many times, finding patterns or meanings in the digits, or noticing the numbers’ similarity to something else. If you don’t process it in some way, you know you will forget it.

Highly sensitive people (HSPs) simply process everything more—not only to remember it, but to relate and compare what they notice to their past experience, as if seeking new routes through a maze. This is the essence of their survival strategy, which evolved far back among all animals. Whether we’re looking at fruit flies, fish, crows, or orangutans, the sensitive ones process (register and respond to) sensory input more than others of the same species, constantly and automatically.

Here’s a familiar human example. (We’ll stick to Homo sapiens parents from now on.) A new HS parent seeing a baby stroller go by might have literally dozens of thoughts about it: The likely cost, the various features (cupholder, sunshade), what would happen if it tipped over, details about the person pushing the stroller, and a lightning-fast comparison with other strollers. If she already has one, she may still make comparisons and wonder if she bought the right one. A non-HS parent might not even notice the stroller.

Two of the statements on our survey to which HS parents agreed more often than not was “Decisions about parenting (school, child-related purchases, etc.) have driven me crazy” and “I think I have made good decisions as a parent.” There it is.

HSPs don’t always agonize over a decision. After all, if we observe situations carefully and apply those observations next time, we may know in a new situation what to do before others do. And sometimes we just have a “gut feeling” and decide something without knowing how. That’s called intuition, and HSPs have good (but not infallible!) intuition. Intuition is the result of subconscious depth of processing. In the part of the survey where parents could write comments if they wished, HS parents often commented on their intuition. On the survey itself, a statement they agreed with more than those without the HS trait was “I tend to know what my child needs even before my child lets me know.”

Another result of depth of processing is conscientiousness. You’re likely to think more about the consequences of your behavior—for example, what would happen if every parent left a dirty disposable diaper under a bush, or if everybody picking up their child double-parked in front of the school? You probably notice more than most when other parents are being inconsiderate. That is, those parents have not considered (noticed, reflected on, processed, etc.) the problem they are creating for others. But your ability to process information deeply makes you more likely to do what is right.

RESEARCH ON DEPTH OF PROCESSING

Studies comparing the brain activation of HSPs against those without the trait while performing various perceptual and information-processing tasks have supported the idea that HSPs process more deeply. In the first and perhaps most important study, done by a team at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, headed by Jadzia Jagiellowicz, HSPs were found to use more of those parts of the brain associated with “deeper” processing of information, especially on tasks that involve noticing subtleties. In a subsequent study by a team at Stanford led by my husband, Arthur Aron, subjects were given perceptual tasks that were already known from prior research to be more or less difficult (i.e., in a brain scanner, one sees more or less brain activation) depending on the type of culture (“interdependent” or “independent”) a person is from.

However, when HSPs of both types of culture (in this case East Asian and European Americans) were given these tasks while in a magnetic resonance imager, the results were surprising. The brain activity of those without this trait was as expected. It showed they were having a harder time due to their culture. But it was fascinating to see that this greater activity due to culture was not true for HSPs. This implies to me that whatever their culture, they found it easy and natural to look beyond their cultural expectations to how things “really are.”

All parents raising children are subject to the influence of their family members and culture. Many sensitive parents, however, mentioned being troubled by the advice of others and ultimately ignoring it when they saw that their child needed something not culturally typical. I am not saying that I agree or don’t agree with them, but some told me they put their infants in bed with them when they slept, ignoring current guidelines about sudden infant death syndrome. Some tried alternative medicine, such as homeopathy or acupuncture, when other medications were not working. They chose unusual schools, or they chose to homeschool. They taught values that other children were not receiving. Of course, many parents who are low on HS do these things also, but I have the strong impression that HS parents do them more. It is as if, like the sensitive subjects in the magnetic resonance imager, HS parents are able to rise above culture as they thought through their parenting choices. For example:

Robert, an HS parent who had researched pregnancy and childbirth thoroughly, raised his children in China. His wife had a difficult birth. She needed rest afterward, but their newborn needed physical comfort and contact. So when Robert had to go out, he put the baby in the baby sling Chinese women normally use and went around town. At that time, Chinese men never carried babies this way. Robert did it not to be a rebel but because it seemed to him to be the best solution. And it wasn’t long before Chinese fathers in the neighborhood were following Robert’s example. He really was literally ignoring cultural norms in order to parent the best way he could.

More evidence for HSPs’ greater ability to process information deeply also comes from a study by Bianca Acevedo, in which people were shown pictures of their romantic partner or a neutral face. I will talk more about this study later, but what matters here is that the research on deeper processing of perception was found again. Moreover, compared to those without the trait, HSPs had more brain activation in an area called the insula or insular cortex, a part of the brain that integrates moment-to-moment experience and that some have called the seat of consciousness. This is exactly what we would expect of HSPs.

Your Strong Emotional Responses, Empathic Connection, and Delicate Attunement

I felt instant connection with both of my children.

I could feel my children’s emotions, and it allowed me to nurture them exquisitely.

I can read all of my son’s facial expressions, even the slightest ones no one else notices.

Even in the first studies my husband and I conducted in 1997, we found that HSPs reported that they felt things more strongly. In a 2005 experiment, we gave students the impression that they had done very well or very poorly on an aptitude test. The sensitive students were strongly affected, while those without the trait were barely fazed.

In 2016, Jadzia Jagiellowicz, the same researcher who did the first study of the brains of HSPs, conducted an experiment in which subjects were shown photos known to create strong reactions in most people (things like snakes, spiders, or garbage for negative reactions and puppies or birthday cakes for positive). HSPs reported stronger emotional reactions to both negative and positive pictures and decided more quickly how they felt about each one, but especially to positive images. This effect was also found in brain scans. Interestingly, this was even truer if their childhood had been good.

Of course, as a sensitive parent, you are not responding to puppies or birthday cakes but to another human being. In the study by Bianca Acevedo and her colleagues that I mentioned before—in which HSPs and those without the trait looked at photos of both strangers and loved ones expressing happiness, sadness, or a neutral feeling—when there was emotion in the photo, HSPs tended to show more brain activity than when there was neutral feeling. Some of this activity was in what is called the mirror neuron system,, which helps humans and other primates learn through imitation and is involved in empathy as well. Given this research, it seems that this system especially helps HSPs know others’ intentions and how they feel. This was most true when looking at the happy faces of loved ones, but also when viewing all sad faces, whether those of loved ones or strangers. It also appears that HSPs’ greater emotional responsiveness is based on more elaborate emotional processing, not simply being “more emotional.”

WHAT ABOUT BEING OVERLY EMOTIONAL?

Clearly, the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes is a good trait to have, particularly as a parent. But you may also wonder whether being more emotional than others makes us less rational and clearheaded.

I have some good news. Recent scientific models have placed emotion at the center of thinking and wisdom. Emotion motivates us to think about something. We study harder (especially as HSPs) and remember more when we know we will be tested. That is, the main role of emotions is not simply to make us act, but to prod us to think. In that sense, HSPs actually require being more emotional to process information more than others.

It is true that emotions do sometimes cause people, HSPs included, to act without reflection, and sometimes in irrational ways. If your home burned down or you were shamed in front of the class for not knowing an answer in the past, you are likely to become anxious in a present-day situation that is even remotely like the original traumatic one—a whiff of smoke, or being asked to answer a question in front of a group. As an HSP, you react more to both positive and negative experiences. If you have had many negative ones, your continuing reactions to them can interfere with rational thought part of the time—but certainly not all of the time.

Here is something important to keep in mind: For most HSPs, parenting is a new experience and not strongly associated with anything traumatic, even if childhood was. We found them to report that their experience of parenting now was no more affected by their own childhood than those without the trait. Maybe parenting is actually healing for HSPs, giving them a new area of confidence and joy.

More important, several of the studies we have discussed indicate that HSPs appear to be even more affected by pleasant experiences or success compared to negative experience. This is true more for HSPs than those without the trait, so we probably seek to repeat these good experiences more than others. That is, HSPs are more motivated than many other people to be aware of opportunities and take advantage of them.

For example, HS parents might apply early for what they consider to be the best preschool. (Preschool is a term you may not use in your country, but in the United States and some other countries, it refers to early childhood education, which may be lacking, included in, or different from child care or day care, depending on activities.) HS parents are motivated because they are anticipating how pleased they will be to have their child accepted into the one they wanted. Another example: An HS parent might remember a positive experience of playing in the snow with their child the previous winter and be especially likely to plan more snow play again this winter.

Further, most of us as HS parents think broadly about what happiness is (a good character, good relationships, something more than having fun or making good money) so that we can steer our child wisely. Even more than other parents, we plan well for our children because seeing them happy and thriving makes us feel so good, and we tend to be sensitive to everything positive, even if some days it doesn’t seem that way.

Here is a story about how strong emotions were present for an HS mother throughout her (reasonably positive) divorce. The story is summarized from Nancy’s narrative.

Nancy, as well as Hal, worked full time in a demanding job, and they found they had no time for anything besides discussing parenting. Nancy in particular found that keeping up with work, being a mother, and being a wife on top of that left her exhausted, unhealthy, and depressed—in short, “on the brink of a nervous breakdown.”

The two eventually chose to divorce, which ironically solved the problem for both of them because now Nancy had their son during the week, giving Hal a break, and he took the boy on the weekends, giving her that time to herself. [Side note: I know—why can’t couples do that without divorcing?!] These parents have remained good friends and have a “respectful co-parenting arrangement,” as Nancy puts it, even taking their son, Dan, on a birthday trip to Disney World together.

There at Disney World, she had a profoundly emotional moment. After settling into her hotel room, she came down to the lobby to meet Dan and Hal. She saw them standing in the distance, looking at her with huge grins—and she felt tremendous joy. Even though they were no longer a traditional family, she felt intense satisfaction that “we had made it through to the other side and had a bright future of happiness and thriving ahead of us. Dan would have two happy parents.” Seeing a glow around the three of them, there in that Orlando hotel lobby, she knew she would never forget that day. “My sensitivity has etched it in my brain,” she says. Certainly, all three benefited from her being so open to this positive experience, this deep joy.

Your Greater Awareness of Subtleties

HS parents often proudly relate how attuned they are to subtle stimuli:

My second child was thirteen weeks early and had a tracheostomy. She had no vocal capability, so she could not be heard when she cried. Thanks to my sensitivity, I was so attuned to her needs that she never ended up crying unattended.

We toured so many college campuses, wanting to help our son choose the right one. I couldn’t help but notice the little things—how the student tour leaders walked, talked, and dressed; how well the plants were doing; the expressions and tone of voice of anyone we spoke with. In the end, I just provided my observations, and he decided. He didn’t choose the big-name school, but the one that carefully tended things. Our son was well guided there, right through to being admitted into his first choice of medical school.

HSPs tend to be much more aware than others of subtle sensory information from their environment. This makes them unusually effective with living things that cannot speak for themselves: plants, animals, the very old and very young, and anybody (or any body) with problems difficult to diagnosis, not to mention foreign visitors who don’t speak the language. It is obviously a huge advantage when dealing with infants and children (also with teenagers, who can talk, but sometimes just won’t).

In HSPs, our awareness of subtleties is intertwined with emotional responsiveness and our ability to process things deeply. That’s why the depth of processing studies cited earlier in this chapter also looked at the subjects’ ability to notice subtleties. In the first study comparing the brains of HSPs and those without the trait, done by Jadzia Jagiellowicz, subjects had to decide quickly which photo of a landscape was the same when compared to the one they had seen a moment before. Sometimes, the differences between other photos and the two matching photos were easy to see, but some had just a minor difference—an extra bale of hay in a row or one extra fence post. The HSPs’ brains definitely had more activity in them than the brains of the other subjects when the pictures had minor differences.

Another study, done in Germany, compared HSPs and those without the trait on a standard laboratory task of picking out Ts from Ls in various positions within a larger pattern of horizontal and vertical lines. The HSPs were faster and more accurate.

To some of you, this aspect of your sensitivity is the most obvious. You notice every little thing. This can be whatever is especially nice, such as the sweet smell of an infant’s skin, the sound of your child’s soft breathing at night, or the way the sun strikes your teenage daughter’s hair. You are also bothered by things others may hardly notice, such as the sound of children chewing with their mouth open, jangling keys in your partner’s pocket, or a bit of a whine added to a request.

Still, although we do get easily overwhelmed when we have too much to process at once—a subject we turn to next—sensitivity is not primarily about being distressed by high levels of stimuli. Very loud noise can be annoying, but HSPs generally can tolerate it, which is less the case for persons with disorders involving tolerance of stimulation.

In my case, my own awareness of subtle stimuli saved my family’s life:

When my son was very little, we were living in a cabin on an island in British Columbia. One autumn, all three of us had the flu at the same time. It was chilly outside, so we kept stuffing more wood into our woodstove without having the energy to perform a chore that was new to us: cleaning the chimney pipes. Dirty chimney pipes are full of creosote, which can catch fire, overheat the stovepipes, and then ignite any wood they come into contact with.

That is just what happened—in the middle of the night, when we were all deep in feverish sleep.

But I heard something. Or maybe I smelled something. Whatever it was, it startled me awake. I could see through cracks in the ceiling the glow of light where it shouldn’t be in the crawl space under the roof. I leaped up, knowing immediately what had happened. I woke my husband, grabbed our son from his crib, and we escaped. I didn’t have words for it then, but I know now that my sensitivity to that subtle light, sound, and smell saved our lives.

Putting It All Together—Fortunate You and Fortunate Child

The D, E, and S of DOES give you huge advantages: the ability to process things deeply, to be emotionally responsive, and to be aware of subtle stimuli working together in a lovely way. (The negative side, that pesky O, we will get to in the next chapter.)

These aspects of sensitivity continue to work for us as parents in the early school years, when reflection, empathy, and awareness of the little things—especially around when to be firm and when to let something go, when to encourage independence and when to allow your changing son or daughter to go back to being a dependent little child for a while. For example, separation fears are normal, and with our greater emotional responsiveness, we HS parents are often especially sad for our children when they cry about being left somewhere. Knowing, however, that the child will benefit from developing some independence, we are often especially adept at spotting subtle cues in those tears and words regarding when it is okay to leave even while crying—or better yet, how to prevent these scenes.

As Laurie, HS mother of two young boys, said about her more difficult one:

My highly sensitive nature means that I know exactly how my son is feeling and can anticipate issues before they arise. I work hard to explore the issue, look for solutions, and then communicate with him and the wider family about the coping strategy that we will use. On the whole, my instincts about the children are correct, and I have more and more confidence in trusting them.

Here’s how Julie’s high sensitivity helped her:

I would often know when either child was getting sick before they actually showed symptoms that anyone else noticed.

Her husband, without the trait, thought she was imagining things, but then Julie would be proven right when the symptoms developed.

Over time my confidence as a parent grew, and I came to trust my instincts more and more because of my previous successes.

With older children, the contributions of HS parents may be subtler. For example, Don, an HS father with older children, wrote about one of the results of the deep relationship he shares with them:

They are connected to their feelings, which I think is a result of my talking often to them, asking them to tell me about their feelings and thoughts.

High Sensitivity as an Ancient Survival Strategy

I said at the outset that this trait is found in many other species, always in the minority. This trait has to be an advantage because otherwise it would have disappeared.

So why are sensitive individuals always a minority?

Partly this is because, yes, it is “expensive” biologically and personally to be highly sensitive. You are like a Porsche or a Jaguar, not a rugged Chevy truck. Your nervous system is finely tuned, which makes maintenance more costly.

Further, in many situations, there is nothing to notice that will give you any advantage. (After all, there’s no use noticing the color the jockey is wearing when trying to decide on which horses to bet.) Still, at certain times, as we have seen, your special equipment gives you and your children a giant edge.

There is another reason, however, that we are in a minority.

To study how this trait might have evolved, biologists working in the Netherlands set up a computer model comparing various scenarios. Imagine patches of grass in the forest that vary widely in how nutritious they are. Also imagine that only certain deer notice that fact. Now imagine that Deer A by nature pays attention to everything about each patch, learning as she goes along which patches are best. Deer B does not by nature bother to pay attention, but grazes wherever she finds any grass at all. If the grass varies a great deal, Deer A has inherited the better strategy. If she is a mother, her offspring will benefit from her noticing. If the grass varies very little, Deer B has the better strategy. But how often is there really no variation at all in how good something is?

Hidden in this is the real reason why we are always a minority group. If all the deer noticed which patches of grass were best, they would all go to them and gobble them up. There is no advantage to any one of them, so the trait is not passed down.

As a parent, suppose you have a sense of the layout of your town, including all the side streets, because you’ve driven around and you’ve noticed. This knowledge could even be unconscious, “intuitive” (knowing things without knowing how you know them). Or, maybe like me, you take a curious pleasure in looking at maps even when you don’t need one. At times, you might feel that you have no particular use for this information. A non-HS friend might say you are being “OCD,” obsessed with details. You may even feel that this kind of paying attention wears you out—that this survival strategy, in other words, comes at a cost.

Now, suppose there is a traffic jam on the main road out of town. Or, to make it worse, there’s been a disaster, and you have to get you and your kids out. Maybe cell phones and traffic apps are not working. Before this disaster, most people, unbothered by a little traffic, have driven the main drag. Maps always bored them. So you and a few other HSPs get out of town while the others sit in traffic.

The key here is that if everyone had known about your shortcut, you would all be sitting in traffic on all the various routes. (Yes, GPS gives everyone the best routes, but I suspect HSPs more often consider whether, if everyone checks their device and uses the suggested detour, it may end up being just as slow.)

Of course, people do figure out eventually what we have learned, often by imitating us. For example, many HS parents pay close attention to nutrition theories and research, worry about toxins in the home, or avoid poorly designed toys that might injure their child. Often, what you notice turns out to be so important that others imitate you or laws are passed about it.

Maybe you see to it that your children do not get to know “wild” kids or have certain teachers about whom you have heard mixed reports, or you have your teenage daughter learn some self-defense. Do you ever know if all this vigilance pays off? Often, we don’t at the moment—or maybe ever.

Prevention is a thankless business. I once heard a psychologist speak about the difficulty in funding the most obviously sensible mental illness prevention programs compared to treatment programs because it is difficult to measure how much prevention really helps. It’s like wearing a whistle around your neck to drive off elephants. If someone says, “That’s silly—there are no elephants around here,” you could reasonably say, “That’s because of my whistle.”

If you know where your child is at all times, are you overprotective? Hard to say, but your child surely has slightly better odds of surviving to adulthood, and that is what evolution is all about. Of course, all parents are highly motivated biologically and personally to keep their children safe, but as with the deer, it only requires a slight difference among individuals added to a slight difference in environment for close attention to pay off.

Does the highly sensitive parenting strategy work? Definitely, or sensitivity would not be a trait found all over the world.

How You Differ

Now that I have told you about “the” HS parent, you need to remember that none of you will fit the picture perfectly. You vary in age, wealth, culture, and so much else. Some of you looked forward very much to being a parent and have chosen to have more than one child. You may have even chosen to study child development or work in the field of child care. Others of you were more ambivalent. Perhaps you leaned toward becoming a parent in order not to miss the experience, or even to please a partner. But rearing children may not be your true calling.

Inheritance may be a factor, such as variations in the genes controlling your oxytocin levels. This neurotransmitter was first discovered in new mothers but is now known to be found in everyone, both men and women, to varying degrees.

Variations are also caused by how much your own childhood environment—family, schooling, and culture—prepared you for parenthood. It also depends on how well set up you are at home for caring for a child and how much support you have. Yet another way in which you vary is how difficult your child has been to raise—that is, to what degree they are distractible, highly active, emotionally dramatic, impulsive, inflexible, or persistent. Or they may be highly sensitive, too, and perhaps cautiously observing before trying new things, bothered by even mild noise or rough handling, and easily made anxious. None of these temperament extremes are abnormal. They do mean a parent must work harder to do a good job, which can be an enormous drain on any parent—but on the highly sensitive ones in particular.

Of course, there are other variations that hugely affect the task of parenting. A child may have a true disorder or “challenge,” even since birth. These can be physical, such as a tumor in the brain; emotional, such as a bipolar disorder; or cognitive, such as a learning disorder or a problem with brain development.

I say this because, again, I want to write for all of you, but in doing so I will not be addressing the needs of all of you, all the time.

Still, you are similar in one key way.

CHAPTER TWO
Coping with Overstimulation

THE PROPER CARE AND APPRECIATION OF A HIGHLY SENSITIVE PARENT

SAYS ONE HS MOTHER:

I think overall parenting has overwhelmed me. First, the job never ends. Second, the expectation from other parents and moms. If I tried to be like other non-HSP moms, I would probably survive one day and would pay for it for months.

Another HS mother’s thoughts:

I was there, but not there. I got through the day. Made the meals. Paid the bills. Did the laundry. Played chauffeur. Managed all the obligatory tasks in robotlike fashion because that is all I had to give. Outwardly, I appeared capable. Needless to say, I was not a bastion of warmth and security for my kids or my husband.

An HS father shares:

For an HSP—absorbing so much of life—it was a mental computer going full speed.

From my research survey, it is clear that sensitive parents are more stressed and overstimulated by parenting than parents without the trait. For example, HS parents were more likely to agree with two survey statements than parents who were less highly sensitive: “I do not get enough downtime” and “Getting enough sleep as a parent has been a problem.”

Before we continue, let me remind you that the HS parents were not necessarily or always hampered by their stress. Stressed or not, they were also more attuned to their children than other parents. For example, they agreed to these statements: “One of my strengths is the creativity I bring to parenting” and “When my child has experienced a major success or setback, it is as if it has happened to me.” But being creative takes work. Empathy is emotionally tiring. It’s all highly stimulating. High levels of stimulation drain energy from you, and you notice it because you feel less effective as well as less happy.

I repeat: All HSPs work hard at processing and feel their feelings more intensely, including empathy for others. They are quicker and more accurate when it comes to detecting subtle differences. And they are more stressed after hours of being so sensitive. You can’t have one without the other.

Imagine yourself as a battery (which is in a sense what we are, given our electrochemical nervous system). If you use yourself to be more attuned to your child, your battery is going to run down sooner than that of a parent who does not. Once you are nearly out of energy, you will be left vulnerable to being overwhelmed by noise, clutter, and demands for attention. Being more easily stressed and eventually overwhelmed is just a fact of life for HS parents, especially those with young children, and most especially those with more than one young child.

Research on Chaos and HS Parents

The mess that two kids create makes me stressed, and I don’t feel calm until the house is clean. So I spend one or two hours every day cleaning the house and putting things where they belong.

Theodore Wachs at Purdue University used the HSP Scale (combined with another measure, of noise sensitivity) to see how chaos affected parents differently according to their sensitivity. He rated homes for their noise, clutter, and crowdedness. Household disorder has been associated in other studies with parents (not HS parents in particular) who are less responsive and involved, provide less educational stimulation, use less effective discipline, don’t think that their children sleep enough, and feel less confident as a parent. This does not mean household chaos causes parents to be ineffective or that if you are struggling to control the chaos, you are a bad parent. It could be the cause is the other way around: Ineffective parents (probably found mostly among the other 80 percent) allow their homes to be messy. Which factor is the cause isn’t clear, but it means that where there’s chaos, parenting problems are more likely. Obviously, Wachs wondered how this works if a parent is especially sensitive.

Wach’s study of chaos and sensitivity found that households clearly differed in their noise and disorder, but HS mothers and the researchers sent in to observe the households both rated the chaos similarly. Homes that were chaotic were felt by the HS mothers to be chaotic. This was especially true when there were more people at home or when there was no place for putting away children’s toys. But those without the trait did not tend to perceive their home as chaotic, even if the raters did. This study did not go on to measure the effectiveness of the HS parents who were burdened by chaos (not all were, of course), but our research indicates that they at least report themselves to be very effective—more than those who are not HSPs.

Other Sources of Overstimulation Specific to HS Parents

In addition to household “chaos,” another source of overstimulation is our emotional responsiveness. Feeling everything more deeply is a form of stimulation, as you know. For many, the greatest difficulty is the unavoidable social stimulation. As one HS parent says:

Playdates are the worst. Another child added to the mix!

Then there are the decisions. I have listened to young parents agonize for hours over which babysitter, pediatrician, child care option, or preschool to choose. HS parents ponder deeply whether to go back to work or to have another child.

None of these are trivial decisions. Sometimes, they are decisions about personal values, but often there is information available that could help. The problem today is finding it. How many hours can you comb through the Internet before you are overstimulated and exhausted? (I will address this in more depth in chapter four.)

Your body is another source of overstimulation. HSPs in general report on the HSP Scale that they are more sensitive to pain. All parents are vulnerable to muscle strains and pains, for example, but HS parents may feel them more. All physical stimulation is stronger for the HS parent, including torturing your back by sitting in an uncomfortable chair during a meeting, walking around an amusement park in bad shoes, and whatever smells that, to you, amount to a stench.

Complicated things are also overstimulating, as when you are trying to understand complex instructions, remember something, or decide what to do next. You can process it, but it requires energy.

Then there is stimulation from two sources or more—for instance, your children talking to you when you are on the phone or trying to figure out a recipe.

Even mild stimulation, such as the TV in the background, is overstimulation if it goes on too long, and a greater deal of focus is required if you are trying to also do something else. Self-control requires mental energy, which requires physical energy in the sense that your brain is another physical organ needing nutrients and rest to restore itself.

How compassionately you treat yourself in your thoughts can make a huge difference in the amount you stimulate yourself from the inside. Self-criticism is exhausting.

The Physiology of Parent Burnout

Overstimulation occurs in response to children of any age, just in different forms. If you have a child under two or three, there is an excellent book, Mother Nurture by Rick Hanson, Jan Hanson, and Ricki Pollycove on mother burnout. (Almost all of it applies to fathers, too, and certainly to HS fathers.) Indeed, if your children are older, you still might appreciate the information in this book. It was coauthored by three medical professionals with vast experience on the subject—a doctor, an acupuncturist, and a therapist. While it was written in 2002 only with mothers in mind, and not specifically for HS parents, it explains the physiological side of your problem very well and suggests a wide range of treatment options.

Highly sensitive fathers, please—take the problem of burnout for yourself very seriously. Granted, in the second survey, which did have enough fathers who responded to analyze the data, HS fathers did not find parenting more difficult than those without the trait like HS mothers did. Even so, some of you may still be under considerable stress. You may be suffering physical effects as much as your partner. Although she may have been the one who was physically pregnant, starting then and continuing on, you have probably taken on extra duties as well as worries. For example, the stress for fathers may come from increasing pressure to earn enough or keep up with work while more is going on at home, and we did not ask about work pressures in our questionnaire.

FOUR SYSTEMS, PLUS ONE

Four systems in your body can wear out during the first years of parenthood, especially if the mother had a difficult pregnancy or if either parent beforehand was run-down, had a poor diet, had other illnesses, or was under emotional stress from other causes. Each system is crucial to the other three.

GASTROINTESTINAL SYSTEM. With the stress of parenting, your gastrointestinal system—stomach and intestines—may digest poorly, giving you problems such as nausea, constipation, diarrhea, or gas, as well as malnutrition. That means the rest of your body—those other three systems—receive fewer nutrients and also work less well.

NERVOUS SYSTEM. Your nervous system transmits information throughout your body, so it gives you notice when things are wrong in the form of general worry or troubled moods and feelings. A poorly functioning nervous system still produces thoughts. It cannot stop that basic function. But the thoughts it produces may be harmful to your health.

Further, if you have frequent treatments for headaches, lack of sleep, or distressed mood caused by a poorly functioning nervous system, these will probably bother the gastrointestinal system. They all interact.

There are at least four neurotransmitters that could be off due to stress. They can be treated in various ways to balance them, but figuring this out almost always requires a psychiatrist experienced with parents specifically, one who has seen it all before.

ENDOCRINE SYSTEM. Your endocrine system produces thyroid, testosterone, oxytocin, cortisol, estrogen, progesterone, prolactin, DHEA, insulin, and many other hormones. (Men and women produce all of these—some, obviously, in differing amounts.) These hormones take messages to all parts of the body, but they could fail to take or give the wrong messages. When your hormones are out of balance, you may be fatigued, irritable, jittery, waking in the night and unable to go back to sleep, depressed, and all the rest. They, in a sense, tell the entire body “we are now under stress,” putting digestion, the nervous system, and the immune system on the alert.

IMMUNE SYSTEM. The fourth system affected by stress is the immune system, the main defender of your health. When it is over- or underactive due to stress, hormone imbalance, poor food, depression, or something else, you will have more infections and allergies, plus possible autoimmune reactions leading to symptoms with more difficult causes to diagnose, such as fatigue and inflammation.

All four of these systems will affect the functioning of your muscles, as well—how well you handle all the lifting, bending, roughhousing, dancing, and stretching. All in all, parenting is a very physical experience. It is natural to become depleted over time. You want to feel strong, invulnerable—almost perfect for your child—but accepting the stress your body is under should lead to more compassion for what it needs, especially if you are highly sensitive. That means a thorough plan for self-care for all of these systems. In turn, that means making time for whatever you need, plus giving yourself some slack when you become ill or need to see a doctor.

FOR HS PARENTS, THE BURNOUT POTENTIAL NEVER GOES AWAY

The purely physical effects of overstimulation when raising school-age children and adolescents are the same as when your children are younger, but you may have more control over your self-care, and the overstimulation comes in different forms. You may still be losing sleep because you have to get up early to prepare your children for school and get them there. You have to deal with everything children bring home from school—from works of “art” to homework to emotional wounds and sticky questions, plus their own overstimulation, which their bodies rely on you to absorb and sooth. Plus, there are constant expectations from teachers and other parents, sometimes leading to some very intense interactions that you cannot avoid. Therefore, you cannot afford to let up on your self-care.

Teenagers? When they’re at home, they tend to be loud for some reason—their music and their voices, plus their loud friends. And there are so many issues to think about with teenagers. Meanwhile, you are aging, so all of your systems need more care. I often quote the line in Steel Magnolias when Dolly Parton tells the middle-aged ladies in her beauty salon, who are watching a young bride being “done” for her wedding, that there is “No such thing as natural beauty after twenty.” Except I say, “There is no such thing as natural health after forty.” Suddenly, we have to take care of everything even more to avoid aches, pains, and chronic illness.

What About Attachment Parenting?

Going back to the first two years, now that you understand the physical stress you are under as a parent of an infant or young child, it is time to discuss how to create the most secure child—with the least stress on yourself. As a psychologist, I know well the importance of a child having a secure attachment. Indeed, it is one of my special interests. Further, I like the principle of attachment parenting—of responding to an infant’s needs as much as possible. I think it is healthy emotionally as well as physically to breastfeed for as long as mother and child wish. (I breastfed my son until he was almost three.) Babies do like to be in constant contact with a reliable caregiver’s body. When a parent carries an infant in some kind of baby carrier with body contact, it often makes life easier for the parent as well, because hands are free and the baby often falls asleep while still retaining that all-important closeness.

But I think having only one primary caregiver that the infant recognizes as a secure figure is not good for an HS parent. An HS parent must receive many breaks from the constant contact. It is an illusion that you as a parent are necessary at all times. Humans evolved within extended families and tribes in which older siblings, grandmothers, and just about anyone regularly took over for the mother so that she could recover from stress, care for an even younger child, or return to working as the ablest adult. Why have we lost track of the naturalness of multiple caregivers? (I won’t answer that—you do not have the time to read my hypothesis.) The fact is that many of us still have extended family members who will help or can use friends for support as if they are family. Plus, many parents have partners. Young parents in a community can share duties, becoming extended family. And I suppose day care is a modern way to extend the available “family” that has always been there for us. It’s being home alone that appears to be less traditional in human parenting.

An extended family of those who really care about your child is still attachment parenting in the basic principles—responding to an infant’s needs and maintaining physical contact with an infant as much as possible. But this kind of attachment can form with one or more persons that the infant knows they can rely on. Maybe, at least for an HSP, these principles of responsiveness and physical proximity can only be supplied when someone else can also step in to fill that role. For all we know, infants may be built to expect a few caregivers, not simply one.

Further, there is actually no research as of now, at least that I know of, demonstrating that attachment parenting with one parent is better than “mainstream” parenting, although my intuition, and probably yours, assumes it is better. But attachment has to involve two, caregiver and child. It seems that the focus should be on how it works for caregiver and infant as a dyad. Some babies do not want to nurse very long. Some parents might injure their backs carrying infants too much. What if the parent providing all the care is paired with an infant who rarely sleeps through the night, so that this single caregiver is awakened over and over? Remember all those physiological effects of overstimulation?

In short, the idea of constant contact with one caregiver, normally the mother, may work well in some cases, but I think rarely for an HS parent. Maybe “well-rounded” children are less likely to be produced from a parent going through the motions of attachment parenting while screaming inside.

Yet out of conscientiousness, many HS parents will try. That is why I wish personally to give HS parents permission, if they need it, to provide their child with a sense of security in ways other than never leaving their side. If you have ever had a cat with kittens, you know the mother cat steps out of the box at times, no matter how much the kittens holler. Imitate your cat!

Some HS parents’ experiences with one-person-only attachment parenting:

I need my space, but this method of parenting doesn’t allow for that. I need some peace, but with children around most of the time, total peace is rare. I need less stimulation, but the pressure is relentless. Is all this worth it for raising well-rounded children? Who knows?

For an HSP, attachment parenting puts more pressure on us, since the child is within our “zone” 24/7. My ideology was saying one thing—“this is the way I want to do it”—but my sensitivity was saying another—“get this child away from me, I need a break!” It has been a difficult and stressful journey.

I am so sensitive and interested in the greatest health for my girls, and so I have dedicated myself to “attachment” parenting, extended breastfeeding, bed-sharing, and compassionate communication. With our oldest daughter, we bed-shared until seven months and then had her sleep alone and let her “cry it out” (which went on for the next year). With our youngest, we did no-holds-barred bed-sharing until about twenty months. I know I’ve been trying to make the best decisions I can at any given time. I just wish I had valued my sleep much more, and that of my daughters, as well. If I could go back, I would start sooner letting my infant cry herself to sleep in the loving and compassionate arms of Dad.

How to Deal with Overstimulation

I could provide endless tips for reducing overstimulation for HSPs—these ideas are all over the Internet. Still, I want to list some of the more unusual ones or very important ones for parents especially.

I like to divide the problem of overstimulation into three categories: avoiding it, coping with it while it is happening, and recovering from it (although, of course, they overlap). Here are a few ideas:

AVOIDING OVERSTIMULATION

The best solution, of course, is avoiding overstimulation in the first place, which often begins with your child. When your child is overstimulated or otherwise stressed, you will also be heading in that direction soon if you are not careful.

Do what you can to avoid overstimulation meltdowns in your child. How quickly it happens will depend on your child’s sensitivity, of course. But low-sensitive children tire out, too. The world is new to them, so even the simplest thing may be novel and require more processing and adaptation than you think. You can’t avoid stimulating children and still raise them well. Going exciting places—places they love, places where they learn—can leave a child exhausted and both of you at risk of a meltdown. Just being with friends will tire them, even if they are extraverted. (See chapter five for more about tantrums.)

Become an expert on how much stimulation your child needs and can handle. Some need a great deal; if their day does not include quite a bit of excitement or physical activity, they may create it by acting up or being defiant. Others need more quiet time. Observe the amount of after-school, weekend, and vacation time activities your child needs and the signs that they have had too much or not enough. Most can use quiet time after school or when they come home from day care. Some children, if they’ve had to sit still or follow directions, may also need to “let off steam.” Both quiet time and activities like soccer or dance lessons can provide a break for you if you allow yourself to take it instead of doing chores or chatting with the other parents.

Teenagers often overschedule themselves, and if they are on a college preparatory path, then grades, test scores, applications, and all the rest will overload the whole family. It can be harder to rein in adolescents; plus, they need to learn how to take care of themselves. Maybe suggest they research how much they can handle themselves. They can keep a diary, even for just a week, of their various activities, homework pressures, and how much sleep they had. They should also rate how they felt, their mood and their healthiness. Let them draw their own conclusions.

Watching out for overload on your children, and therefore on you, is basic parenting and should not be too difficult for you, given that you are generally very attuned to your children. Still, a few more suggestions always help.

SUGGESTIONS

 Know when everyone is most at risk for overstimulation—for example, when kids come home from school and everyone is talking and you need to listen. Encourage them to do something quiet for a time, perhaps with a snack. If you have not rested before they come home, or whenever you expect overstimulation, you should take a rest while they take a break themselves.

 With small children (maybe for all of us), food, water, and sleep are the keys to happiness.

 If your child is in a crying or screaming phase, keep earbuds handy everywhere! Have at least one pair of noise-canceling headphones. You’ll still be able to hear, but they can soften the highest shrieks. As one HS father describes:

Interestingly, it is more stressful for me to try and ignore the crying than to do something about it—even when this involves getting closer to the source of noise. [His solution was to keep a pair of earbuds in strategic places so he could use them when the noise became too much.]

 Limit playdates and plan them carefully. Expect your child to be exhausted afterward, and you as well, if you were in attendance. Reduce the toys and have an organized play room with a rule that toys stay there or, if they leave, be put back at the end of the day.

 Reduce the clutter. Even one or two clean surfaces, with other stuff in nice baskets, will lessen the feeling of chaos. Buy organizers of all sorts or create them out of cardboard boxes. Yes, it’s hard to entirely forget that the stuff inside is not always sorted, but let it go. No one with children is totally organized in all areas of life.

 Monitor your energy levels. One respondent said to imagine a pie and keep one third for the morning, one third for the afternoon, and one third for the evening. Once you use up the third allotted for that slice of time pie, shift to the lowest gear you have.

 Small, frequent breaks are a very good idea, taken before you hit the wall. As one HS parent shares:

Noise has definitely affected me—first the crying, now the boisterousness. The more tired I am, the worse it feels. I can go to kids’ parties and playdates with all the sounds of bouncing, shouting, and parents trying to chat by talking over it all. I find them exhausting and need quiet time afterward—but then, so do the kids. As well as encouraging the kids to have quiet time, other coping strategies include keeping a calm, tidy space for myself and, if a break is not possible, “steeling” myself with breathing or by sipping mint tea or water. I am quite controlling about how much activity we sign up for as a family in order to give myself (and my son) the necessary downtime. This is quite hard for me, as I love people and doing things.

I hate mess and disorder, and I was very house-proud before the kids came along. I have had to let go of that a bit, and the mess is sometimes so distressing for me that I cease to function and have to walk away or I will blow up.

BOUNDARIES

The extreme nature of everything I’ve experienced as a mother has also taught me the need for boundaries. I have learned to value my own limited energy and resources, and so I will ask my children to help me around the house. If they choose not to help, they will lose some valued object or activity.

For all HSPs, the key to avoiding overstimulation is boundaries. That is, saying no. But you cannot necessarily say no to young children. They really do need help or care, and when they just want something, they may put up such a fuss that it seems easier to grant them what they want. Teenagers will try that, too. In that case, the care they need may be simply your listening, or maybe your teaching gently what could be the repercussions of their choices or how civilized people behave! Often, people close to HSPs discover (especially children and partners) that if they make a big enough ruckus, the HSP will be overstimulated and argue less effectively or just give in. You cannot give in when care must be given or a lesson imparted, which means staying as rested as you can between times of caregiving.

Generally, you have to say “no” more often to others in addition to your children—friends, relatives. Let your partner know you will be doing this and why, and that they may sometimes get a “no,” too. When you have nothing more to give, be firm with those around you who would like your attention. Remember this: Many will ask for something from you, and you and you alone are the one who has to decide whether you can give it. They can’t know and would not want to distress you if they knew it would. You have to let them know.

Saying no to yourself can be the most difficult. You probably know your limits, but sticking to them can be hard. Those of you who are also high sensation seekers are familiar with the battle. We say it is like having “one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake” because the sensation-seeking “system” and what we call the sensitive system can both be present in a person. High sensation-seeking HS parents have the same problem we all do, but more so—needing to rest, but wanting to get things done or do something fun with their children.

Part of saying no is letting the house go sometimes, and saying no to guilt. Have some easy meals on hand, even if they do not meet your highest standards for nutrition. In particular, sleeping must come before housework or anything else. When you have time, consider saying no to everything but sleep.

I realize that it’s easy to say and not so easy to do, especially if you have more than one child. But your state of consciousness is the basis of everything else you do. When you are fresh, things go well. When you are not, things go badly. It is as simple as that.

COPING DURING OVERSTIMULATION

You notice you are getting irritable or feel you can’t take any more. You need a break, but you can’t take one. You can’t leave the baby alone. Or the children playing together need to be monitored. Or you have to wait up for a teenager to come home and then “have a talk.”

This is why you need help you can count on, which I will discuss later. But suppose you do not have help around at the moment?

IDEAS FOR THOSE TOUGH MOMENTS

 Change locations or activities with your child—go to another room, get into the car and drive, leave the store, go to the store, etc.

 One mother of young children suggested, Cuddle with them—it feels good, and it’s easier than listening!

 If your child is happily occupied for even just a few minutes, sit back and read or just stare into space. Do not jump up to get something done.

 Although you are very free to disagree, I am in favor of HS parents occasionally sitting their children down in front of high-quality TV programs and videos or their laptops while the parents take a break—preferably lying down within sight, and certainly within earshot. Whatever the evils of TV, an exhausted HS parent can be pretty hard on children, too.

 Take some slow, deep breaths. Blow out through your mouth, which causes the next breath to come from deep down. If you want, imagine you are blowing out your stressors.

 Make yourself a cup of tea.

 Give yourself a quick foot massage.

 Give your senses a treat: Smell something nice, look at something pretty, put on music you like, have a healthy snack that you love, or change into something comfy like pajamas or sweats.

 Hug whoever is agreeable to it—child or adult—for an entire minute if you can. Hugs feel good because they reduce stress hormones, pain, high blood pressure, and the likelihood of getting sick while increasing oxytocin, which always makes people feel better.

 Stretch. Bend over to touch the floor, then slowly rise, feeling each vertebra uncurl. Maybe stretch your mouth like you’re roaring, then relax your face. If you know any yoga, even one position, the right one for you at the moment can help.

 If necessary, simply retire to the bathroom for a while (if children are old enough to be left alone). Children understand that.

 Keep a good book around, or be prepared to listen to one, so that you can snatch a little reading now and then—something to look forward to when you can fit it in.

 Call or text a good friend, just to say hello.

 Go ahead and cry.

 One mother suggested imagining you are in a bubble or a huge protective ball so when the children are jumping on you (actually or metaphorically), they just bounce off and your sensitive nervous system is protected.

 Meditate in the same room as your child, without being frustrated if you are interrupted. Explain you are meditating, “taking a special break.” It can sometimes quickly calm those in your vicinity.

 Go out with your child, especially outdoors. Nature can be surprisingly calming, or at least it can shift the energy. You probably should resist running errands or going to another overstimulating environment where your child may also become overstimulated.

 Check to see if you are drinking enough fluids and have eaten protein with your last meal or snack. You need the same things that your child needs: rest, food, and water.

 Now think of your own favorite one- to five-minute breaks and jot them down. Refer to this list when you are so stressed you can’t think. You have thought it out beforehand.

RECOVERING FROM OVERSTIMULATION

Recovery is much like preventing and enduring overstimulation. Again, rest when your child does or when your child is out of the house. If you’ve been so overstimulated that you haven’t had time to process all the complexities of parenting, inner and outer for both you and your child, then you may have trouble sleeping even if you need it. That’s okay. All rest is good, even if you don’t fall asleep. Most of it comes from merely closing our eyes, since 80 percent of stimulation comes through vision.

Just watch out for consistently waking late in the night and not being able to go back to sleep. That can be a sign of depression or chronic anxiety that might need treatment. If it will reduce your anxiety to know whether or not your symptoms are at the “disorder” (impairment) level, read up on their DSM indicators on the Internet. (“DSM” refers to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.) Even better, have someone else look for you and ask you a few questions, provided the one investigating is someone trustworthy and would know, perhaps by living with you or simply being with you often enough to observe any changes in your behavior that you might not be noticing or just gradually getting used to.

Beware, however, that some “symptoms,” like crying easily, feeling indecisive, or not being able to concentrate when overstimulated, might be normal for HSPs. Depression and anxiety are only serious if you experience the symptoms (there’s a list of them in DSM) most of the day, nearly every day, for two weeks or more (depression) and more days than not for six months or more (anxiety). Even you meet these criteria, find a psychiatrist who understands or is willing to learn about high sensitivity. If you do not meet these criteria, you still may feel depressed or anxious enough to be miserable and seek help. Otherwise, ease up and get some paid or unpaid help with the kids and chores, and then see how you are feeling.

On the other hand, while downtime and sleep are essential, sometimes what you most need is a complete change, perhaps even as simple as running some errands by yourself. Again, this is why you need help. Activities that have nothing to do with parenting can be especially helpful—either something new and exciting (yes, even for an HSP) or a habitual pleasure. Of course, this means more stimulation, so be very careful. You must find balance.

As one parent said:

I continue to struggle with the need to respect my needs as an HSP, along with my drive to be successful in my career and to be an engaged, loving parent. I make a lot of self-care promises to myself that I do not keep.

When you get into being chronically overstimulated, sometimes it can be hard to stop and let yourself recover. You go on and on, running on empty. Or, to be more exact, running on cortisol, which is produced to help you deal with stress and does not just suddenly stop being produced when you stop moving. But too much stress will eventually deplete your adrenal glands, where cortisol comes from. That is, pushing yourself for too long will cost you eventually, so be careful.

SUGGESTIONS FOR RECOVERING

 Nurture yourself as much as possible during the downtime you have.

 Have “spa time” at home (fathers can do this, too)—a warm bath with a candle and some soothing music, and perhaps a scent you like, such as lavender, cedarwood, or sandalwood.

 Water helps in all ways: drinking it, taking a bath, walking beside it, swimming in it, or just hearing it. A little table fountain in your bedroom can be soothing and help to block sound.

 Drink warm or cooling beverages—whatever comforts you, depending on the season.

 Enjoy a healthy, comforting meal, by yourself.

 Do a self-massage. If you cannot get out to have a professional massage, get some massage oil or lotion, take off your clothes (turn up the heat if necessary), sit on a towel in front of a candle, and slowly massage each part of you that you can reach. It feels great!

 Keep a journal where you can reflect on parenting. Perhaps even draw a little or write a poem to express your feelings. You will treasure this someday, and for now you can step back and see how fast things are changing and how much you are doing, and doing well.

 Make a list of the reasons why you had children and another list of everything you are grateful for about your child and partner. Read these over when you most need the reminder.

Says one parent:

To date, my best method at avoiding this shutdown is to closely monitor my own energy level. As soon as I get a hint of being irritated, I take a break. I block out the noise and chaos of the house, along with the internalized messages that say “suck it up.”

Value of a “Spiritual” Practice

Perhaps the most difficult task for overstimulated HS parents is to keep the big picture. You wonder if your child will ever be toilet trained. (I guarantee you: They will not be wearing diapers in college.) You feel like you will never get a good night’s sleep or an entire day to yourself again. Or your teenager will always ask you to let him off at the corner rather than be seen with you. You know none of this will last, and you are basically so glad you have this child in your life. But when we are stressed or afraid, our view of life contracts. When we settle down, it expands.

The big picture comes easily for HSPs, I believe. We think about how things got to be the way they are and how they may turn out. This, I believe, is why most of us have a proclivity for spirituality, the biggest picture of all. Why were we born? Why are we living? Who or what created us or is behind all of this? What happens when we die? This is one reason I have called HSPs “the priestly advisors.” When things go wrong for those without the trait, they want us to advise them about matters they have not thought much about up until now, while we have been thinking about them all our lives.

When I was first interviewing people to learn about sensitivity, I kept the question about their spirituality for last, feeling it might be too personal. But all forty of the interviewees brought it up on their own before the end, and most had some kind of spiritual path and practice.

I think of a spiritual practice as whatever connects you with something much larger, even your largest Self, or with all beings, the entire creation, infinity and eternity, God or Allah, the Sacred, or the Source. These days many people try to find their own, unique spiritual path, even within a traditional religion. It also seems that the paths are all leading to the same place, even if we have different names for that place.

If you want the big picture waiting in the wings when you need it, your spiritual path requires daily practice, or, for busy parents, as often as you possibly can. This is another form of rest or downtime.

My own story:

During my son’s first year we were living in Paris on a post doc, in a two-room apartment. Every evening, when I was fixing dinner, my son would start to whine and drag on my legs. If I put him in his crib (in the same room as the kitchen) he would scream. My husband would try to take him to the other room to soothe him in the other room, but he only wanted me. Meanwhile, I was losing it, crying or angry or both. We had planned to learn Transcendental Meditation (TM) during our stay because it had been highly recommended by friends, but we had put it off because of a lack of money and childcare. As this went on, however, we decided to try learning TM. The very first time my husband and I took turns doing our twenty-minute evening meditation in the back room—the other using a quiet voice while in the kitchen with our son—the whole evening mutual meltdown failed to happen. It never happened again. It was like a miracle. Hence Art and I became sold on TM.

One way to combine deep rest and a spiritual practice is meditation, as long as it does not involve mental effort. Having compared methods, in my opinion the most restful and effortless meditation, and therefore the most efficient for your purposes, is TM (Transcendental Meditation; Christian Centering Prayer is a very similar method of meditation). The TM course is a bit expensive, but well worth it. The teaching is very professional and standardized, and it includes any help you may need with your practice for the rest of your life. Most of all, rather ironically, it requires several meetings with a skilled instructor in order to learn not to make an effort. With this method, it is fine to sit comfortably, for your mind to wander, or for you to fall asleep—the point is that rest is the basis of successful activity as well as the evolution of consciousness. But you may already meditate and prefer another method. If so, that’s great.

Or perhaps prayer, yoga, a little expressive art therapy, a walk in nature, or a few minutes of gardening may be your spiritual practice. Just try to take time to do it as often and as regularly as you can.

Self-Care and the HS Parent’s Past

HSPs in general are known for their “differential susceptibility.” That is, with a good childhood, they do better than others in many ways, but with a poor childhood, they are more prone to anxiety, depression, shyness, low self-esteem, and so forth.

In my experience, differential susceptibility also impacts self-care. If your needs were well met in childhood, you may be exceptionally good at taking care of yourself as an HS parent. If you experienced neglect or intrusive caregiving that met someone else’s needs more than your own, you may not be as good at this. In that case, pay particular attention to your attitudes about self-care and get some professional help if you continue to take poor care of yourself. (You may find my book The Undervalued Self helpful, as well, but then again, you may not have time to read another book right now.) On the Internet, you can find pieces I have written on finding a good therapist and discussing your trait with a therapist by searching for “Elaine Aron on how to find a therapist.”

Individual HS parents must check in often as to whether their self-care routines are working for other members of their families. Often, your ideas about how to balance downtime and work come from your childhood. If you saw one partner dominating the other in any way, you have to be very watchful not to let that repeat. If you tend to be dominated, you will need to speak up for your needs, for your child’s sake as well as yours. Especially if you are the one bringing home the money, and the only HSP in the family, you can easily end up being the dominator. Just because you are sensitive and work hard, you can’t assume that you can demand to participate less in daily life or not divide the drudgery equally. It has to be discussed as a team. If your job is too stressful for helping at home, think seriously about how to remedy this so that you can be sensitive, yet still involved in both the pleasant and difficult aspects of family life. This may take some creativity or letting go of something for now, but it is well worth it. See chapter three for more ideas.

Conclusion

The only built-in problem for HSPs is being easily overstimulated. If you find yourself feeling worn down, you can do better—and you must. When you do happen to be rested and thinking more clearly, take a careful look at your life. What can you do better? Eat better? Cut down other expenditures so you can budget for more help? Let go of something? Think back. When you have let go of something in the past, have you really missed it? You added parenting to your life. It may be time to subtract something else.

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