Elaine N. Aron's Blog

With my upcoming book, Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens: An Objective Look at Meditation Methods and Enlightenment (coming out this April), I’ll be sharing two parts in each blog post—the first will explore research, HSP news, and current insights, while the second will offer a more spiritual reflection and deeper inner perspective.  

Part I:

Summary of Some of the Latest Interesting Research and Part II The Season of (Not) Light 

A Burst of New Research

Acevedo, B. P., & Lionetti, F. (2025). Advances in research on sensory processing sensitivity.  Frontiers in Psychology ,  16 , 1724138.

The journal Frontiers in Psychology likes to put out a call for papers devoted to a particular research topics and have editors for that topic. Papers are published over a span of time as work is completed, and the topic has editors who know that topic well.  In this case Bianca Acevedo and Francesa Lionetti have been the editors for the research topic titled “Sensory processing sensitivity research: Recent advances,” They have now produced a summary of the 17 papers published under this topic. It is relatively short and easy to read, so rather than me summarizing a summary, I suggest you read it yourself. So much research is being done on HSPs! Read full article here. 

 

HS College students Are More likely Than Others to Misuse the Internet if They had Poor Parenting, but Less Likely if They Had Good Parenting

Ke, X., & Wang, Z. (2025). The longitudinal impact of parenting styles on pathological internet use among college students: The mediating role of rumination and the moderating role of environmental sensitivity.  Behavioral Sciences .

Pathological Internet Use (PIU) refers to excessive time spent online by individuals, leading to negative effects on an individual’s physical, psychological, and social functioning. This study was done in China, where 652 college freshmen were asked three times over one year to take the Parenting Style Questionnaire, the Pathological Internet Use Scale, the Rumination Thinking Scale and the HSP Scale. Positive parenting at time 1 (T1) led to lower PIU at time 3 (T3 PIU), while T1 negative parenting led to significantly greater PIU at time 3 (T3). Rumination measured at time 2 (T2) helped predict the degree to which T1 parenting styles led PIU at T3. 

Important to us, being an HSP increased these effects. For them, positive parenting at T1 led to even lower PIU at time 3, while negative parenting at T1 led to even greater PIU at time 3 (T3), especially if there was rumination present too. All of this supports the differential susceptibility model. Good parenting helps HSPs more and poor parenting hurts them more.

Bottom Line: HS college students will use the internet in a healthy way if they have had good parenting, but veer into using it pathologically if they have had bad parenting.  Once again, differential susceptibility predicts the results.

 

Highly Sensitive Children (HSCs) Gain More than Others from Social Skills and Anti-Bullying Programs

Acevedo, B. P., Sperati, A., Williams, C., Griffin, K. W., Tork, A., & Botvin, G. J. (2025). The moderating role of sensory processing sensitivity in social skills enhancement and bullying prevention among adolescents.  Behavioral Sciences ,  15 (10), 1344.

You might remember that a study had already been done on bullying, finding that HSCs, boys specifically, gained more than others from a bullying prevention program. (See Nocentini, A., Menesini, E., & Pluess, M. (2018). “The personality trait of environmental sensitivity predicts children’s positive response to school-based antibullying intervention.” Clinical Psychological Science, 6(6), 848-859.) It was the first article reviewed in this post. The present study included a life skills enhancement program as well as the bullying prevention aspect. Participants were 301 middle-school students (average age 12), who filled out measures of their social competency and bullying-prevention skills before and after the 4-week training, as well as the HSC Scale. 

Analyses revealed that the HSCs showed the greatest increases in several personal and interpersonal competencies, including decision-making skills, media resistance skills, social skills, bullying resistance skills, and bullying bystander intervention skills, compared to students without the HS trait. This is another example of differential susceptibility—that HSPs may suffer more than others in poor environments, but gain more than others in good environments, such as helpful interventions

Bottom Line:  With some instruction, middle-school-aged HSCs more than other kids can make great decisions, resist the media, be socially competent, avoid bullying, and step in when they see bullying happening.  So let’s be sure they receive the teaching they can benefit from so nicely. 

 

HSPs Experience Fatigue When They Have to “Tune Out” Noise in Order to Listen to Someone

McGarrigle, R., & Mattys, S. (2023). Sensory-processing sensitivity predicts fatigue from listening, but not perceived effort, in young and older adults.  Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research ,  66 (2), 444-460.

McGarrigle, R., Knight, S., Hornsby, B. W., & Mattys, S. (2021). Predictors of listening-related fatigue across the adult life span.  Psychological Science ,  32 (12), 1937-1951.

In a study published in 2021, researchers were looking for predictors of listening-related fatigue. No, not getting tired of listening patiently as a friend talks about their divorce or a colleague about their boss, but how tired you feel after a standardized task in which you are told to listen to two things at once but only attend to one. (Much like trying to listen to a conversation in a noisy restaurant.) Using a large sample (281) of adults, they found that while hearing loss was related to listening fatigue, as they expected, SPS was also an important factor. Specifically, the higher the SPS score, and in addition the more that one did the listening task well, the more listening fatigue. That is, the more that HSPs did well at the task, presumably working hard on it, the more tired they were by it.

In a later study, both 206 young (18-39) and 122 older (60-80) adults were given the same kind of task and this time given questionnaires about the effort they thought they had made and the fatigue they felt afterwards as well as the HSP Scale. Again, HSPs reported more listening-related fatigue than others of their age, regardless of their level of hearing loss or skill at the task. The authors concluded that that SPS is a better predictor of listening-related fatigue than performance on the task or effort ratings. It seems that SPS has arrived in yet another area of research—listening fatigue.

Bottom Line: In a situation with too much stimuli, HSPs are more tired out by the effort of listening, even though they may listen very well.  No surprise to you, right?

 

Part II The Season of (Not) Light 

Many HSPs comment on not feeling as good when the days get shorter, especially when it gets cloudy too. It’s something else we are more sensitive to—the change of seasons. The days are getting longer in the Southern Hemisphere right now. Hurray for them. But I’m up here in the northern one and notice the shortening days. “Seasonal Affective Disorder?” More people with SAD are also HSPs. But I call mine Seasonal Affective Disappointment. Not quite a disorder, causing no impairment. But I do look forward to the winter solstice, December 21, 7:03 am, when the days will start getting longer. Soon it will be May, the swimming pool where we live will reopen, I will swim every day I can, and all will be well again. 

Light. Light. Never mind that the winter solstice marks the first day of winter. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. We think humans worried a lot in the past about the shortening days, always hoping the trend will reverse this year, too, and marking the exact date when it should happen with standing stones aligned with whatever, or just markings on stones. Meanwhile, humans have these holidays around lights to cheer us up. We know pagans were big on bonfires at this time of year, but now we have Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s, Kwanzaa, Diwali (in October), Lunar New Year (East Asia), with all their lights–Christmas trees, menorahs, all kinds of other candles, lights on roof tops and lawns, headdresses with candles worn by young Swedish girls on Saint Lucia day. Does it help? I guess, although there is not much in the way of festivities after New Years until Valentine’s Day, which is just a so-so holiday–and then finally Easter/Passover. Spring. 

I suppose the title of this little outburst, “The Season of (Not) Light,” may have led you to expect something about depression, loneliness, and overstimulation during the holidays. If you use this website’s search box and type in “holidays,” you will see what I have written several times in the past about avoiding overstimulation. Depression and loneliness are bigger topics, requiring your seeking out some help and companionship. Please do. I am just going to go on about light.

Light. Spiritual traditions talk about enlightenment, and spiritual teachers liken pure consciousness or pure awareness to light, in that as we look at things, pure consciousness or pure awareness is always there—no one has ever experienced anything without being conscious, being aware—and yet awareness itself, like light, is not itself visible. But that is obviously only an analogy, since light does come and go, and people can experience the world without light. Blind people do it all the time.  Indeed, they can become enlightened—permanently aware of awareness itself, without any outer light to enlighten them.

Since we are in the subject, and this is also the time of year for giving gifts, I am going to give you a gift in the form of a suggested reading, one very related to blindness and enlightenment. It is scary in parts, having to do with a blind fighter in the French Resistance who ends up caught, of course, so I am warning you, but also telling you that the ending is brilliant, happy.  Full of light. To introduce it I have inserted something from my book, Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens, coming out March 31:

Finally, there is the autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II, which was rated by a panel assembled by Harper Collins as one of the one hundred best spiritual books of the twentieth century. He describes his awakening (although he did not have a term for it) while near death in Buchenwald, the Nazi prison camp…. His awakening is an example of an extraordinary, persistent state of consciousness that happened without him or those around him having any concept of enlightenment.  

Curious about whether Lusseyran’s state persisted, I found one more book by him [in 1958 he moved to the U.S. and taught French at various universities], six essays under the title Against the Pollution of the I. In the title essay, you sense his desire to give others what he has but cannot name. In the next essay he describes Jeremy, a fellow prisoner at Buchenwald, a plain-spoken welder, given the name Socrates by the prisoners. Wherever Jeremy went, people wanted to be near him, yet gave him the personal space not given to others. As Lusseyran describes him, Jeremy was a source of silent calm and joy where there seemed to be no reason. There is no doubt that Jeremy would qualify as enlightened. 

While I was writing this blog post, the sun came out.  First time in days. The weather report says it will not be out tomorrow or the next day. So I went and basked in the sun, ate breakfast in the sun, talked to a friend while sitting in the sun, puttered with my potted plants, who were so happy to see the sun—it was delicious. And I found my ideas all dried up like the muddy sidewalks. Sorry, but I’m ending this. I hope you can find some sunshine too.

Except, here’s your homework: See if you can notice your own awareness in the background of everything you do. It is quiet, simple, and sweet like the sun. No words, no thoughts, no feelings–just pure whatever. Unbounded, infinite. However you want to describe it. Can you sense it? If you can, keep coming back to it.

With my upcoming book, Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens: An Objective Look at Meditation Methods and Enlightenment (coming out this April), I’ll be sharing two parts in each blog post—the first will explore research, HSP news, and current insights, while the second will offer a more spiritual reflection and deeper inner perspective.  

Part I:

Research, A Major “Meta-analysis” of the Research about HSPs’ Mental Health, Plus a Study HS Mothers

Falkenstein, T., Sartori, L., Malanchini, M., Hadfield, K., & Pluess, M. (2025). The Relationship Between Environmental Sensitivity and Common Mental-Health Problems in Adolescents and Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.  Clinical Psychological Science , 0(0).  Read article here.  

There is an excellent description of this article for non-scientists—[make these dashes]written by its author, Tom Falkenstein–at the website Sensitivity Research. Yes, there are other authors listed, but this paper is one chapter in Tom’s upcoming doctoral dissertation on HSPs and mental health. The other authors are simply his dissertation supervisors (plus one helpful MA-level assistant). If you are interested in this subject, PLEASE FIRST READ TOM’S SUMMARY. And if you want, use the link above to look at the actual article. That way I do not need to repeat myself here, but rather can try to put the article in a larger context.  

More about Tom Falkenstein: He is a psychotherapist in private practice, licensed to practice in the U.K. and Germany, and the author of The Highly Sensitive Man, published in 2019.  Obviously he is also working on his doctoral dissertation, under Michael Pluess at Queen Mary University of London. And he is a member of the International Consultants on High Sensitivity (ICHS, a group of professionals I worked with so that they could speak in place of me!). 

What Is a Meta-Analysis?

Turning to Tom’s paper, just to review, as you will learn from reading his article, a meta-analysis has three steps. First, you identify all of the research on a subject, then second, reduce this research to the methodologically soundest studies, and finally, third, calculate the overall “effect” size—the strength of the relationship between two variables or groups, in this case mental health and environmental sensitivity, or high environmental sensitivity, as measured by the HSP Scale.  They began with 829 studies, reducing them to just 33, involving 12,697 participants (note: the average age was around 25 and 63% were female). The effect size for anxiety was a little higher than for depression, but both were “moderate” and there were strong relationships with other mental health problems as well.  To be clear, this means HSPs in general are moderately more likely to have mental health issues, but does not mean that every HSP has mental health problems or explain why the data indicates this relationship 

You may have noticed that Tom carefully avoided the term “mental illness” but stuck to “mental health” problems. However you term it, the press and internet (and AI) certainly picked up the finding, wrongly announcing this sort of thing: “A big study found that HSPs have more mental health problems.” But the good news is that the trait will now be taken even more seriously by mental health professionals, and maybe treatment will be better tailored to HSPs, although that is not guaranteed. Therapists may still treat an HSP’s depression, anxiety, or whatever as just another case of that, without considering the trait in greater depth. But it is Tom’s hope that by bringing it more to the attention of clinicians, through this meta-analysis and the rest of his research, they will develop greater wisdom about how HSPs specifically should be attended to in therapy.

The Bigger Picture—Problems with the HSP Scale

But before you go away with the simple conclusion that you belong to a group of people who are more likely than others to have, okay, mental health problems, let’s look at the bigger picture (always my favorite). None of this is meant as a criticism of Tom’s paper. It was very, very well done. Exactly right. But it has limited meaning, in part because obviously a meta-analysis can only be as good as what goes into it. That is why one narrows the studies down to the ones using the very best methods available.  But in this case, this meant only studies using the HSP Scale (which were almost all studies).  

I have already written extensively about the problems with that measure (read blog here). Above all, the items are mostly negative. If you are in a negative state generally or on the day you take the test (not feeling mentally healthy), for whatever reason, you might say yes to more of these items, regardless of your sensitivity. Hence it could be seen as a measure of high sensitivity AND, in addition, a measure of mental health, two things being measured by the same self-report. Not good. Hence the revision of it, which includes items not related to negative feelings, such as experiences of positive stimuli and feeling empathy. But for all those studies, the HSP Scale was the only good measure, and it has been a good-enough measure. It just has this slight bias.   

As I have written, when the scale was broken down into factors, aspects, or whatever you want to call them, two contained 18 of the 25 items, and all 18 were about negative aspects of the trait, mainly feeling overstimulated or not liking overstimulation.  The third factor contained 7 items, all of them positive or positively worded. In the three studies that were included that looked at the three factors, there was much less association, or none, between the 7-item positively worded factor and mental health problems. That does make the HSP Scale seem to be a mixed measure of mental health and HSPs.

More of the Bigger Picture—Measures of Mental Health

Measures of depression, anxiety, and the like are meant to apply to everyone. But do they apply equally to HSPs? Maybe not.  Consider a yard stick, meant to measure the height of horses. If you include ponies, the same yardstick will tell you that ponies are short horses. But ponies are not generally thought of as horses. They are different. Why think about the average height of ponies in the context of horses? By analogy, HSPs are also different. It is their nature to think about things more deeply, so they are going to think more about dangers. Hence they might score higher on a measure of anxiety because of this difference. If they have experienced trauma, they are going to think more about how the nature of their situation or of the world may be depressing, even hopeless. They may score higher on a measure of depression because of this difference. Applying my pony analogy to HSPs, because of their trait of depth of processing, their “shortness,” their differentness, they are going to measure “shorter” on a measure of anxiety or depression if those measures are based on the general population, which includes its “tall”–less reflective, more impulsive people. (If you did not follow all of that, just leave out the horses and ponies and read on.)

My point is that higher levels of anxiety may be “normal” for HSPs because of their depth of processing. And given differential susceptibility, that HSPs are more affected by both negative and positive experiences, another product of deep processing of one’s experiences would be that depression should be more common in HSPs than others given the same difficult environment, especially in childhood. What we need is a yard stick for measuring depth of processing! Or better, one for measuring helpful deep processing. 

In fact, when HSPs use their depth of processing to regulate their strong emotions, they do very well (see the study below about HS mothers and mindfulness as a personality trait). But research shows that HSPs have trouble regulating their feelings in these ways: accepting their feelings, not being ashamed of them, believing they can cope as well as others do, trusting bad feelings will not last forever, and assuming there’s hope–that they can do something about their bad feelings eventually. (See my article on this.) That is, they have trouble being “mindful.” We can assume that most of the HSPs in the 33 studies did not know much if anything about their trait and would have felt just these feelings about their intense emotions. With better understanding of their trait, they might have much better emotional regulation skills–be much better at accepting their feelings, dropping their shame, and so forth. And if they did have trouble, perhaps with more understanding of their trait, they would not hesitate to get the help they need for learning to handle their emotions. But such HSP-informed persons were probably not the participants in these studies.

Finally, as the authors noted, the studies in their meta-analysis used only self-report measures, which are subject to social-desirability bias (wanting to look good, probably true of non-HSPs) and to the participant’s level of introspection (affecting how much they think about each item, probably higher for HSPs). And I think it is safe to assume that on average HSPs are probably more honest and conscientious than others when reporting their mental health problems, possibly making them seem to have more of such problems. They might do the same with positive experiences, but these were not measured.

All in all, measures meant to compare HSPs and non-HSPs on their mental health can offer problems.

More of the Big Picture—The Details About the Participants in the Studies

Again, this is no fault of the authors of the meta-analysis but relates to the population of people in the 33 studies they had available. We saw they were young adults, the mean age being 25, who are known to have poor mental health in general, given a variety of pressures on them, and the majority were women. The mental health of women in that age range is known to be even worse than that of men of that age.  There is something about the environment, the pressures that people that age experience that makes life especially difficult. So, given differential susceptibility, we would expect HSPs in the same generational “environment” to have more mental health problems. We cannot assume that the results of these studies reflect the mental health of HSPs who are more mature or of populations including more men.

A Bigger Picture About Why HSPs are More Likely to have Mental Health Problems

After reaching their conclusions, the authors provide three reasons given by authors of some of the studies as to why HSPs might have more mental health problems. One, as I have said, is their depth of processing. Specifically, this was seen as leading to “rumination,” which is associated with depression. Another reason given is that since HSPs are more easily overstimulated, they must be more stressed by life in general. And finally, as I have noted, having more intense emotions requires better emotional regulation, and as I have said, HSPs have trouble in this area. 

But what about the role of an HSP’s childhood? Childhood adversities are significantly related to mental health problems, and we know this is more common for HSPs because they are more affected by both bad and good childhood environments, but this contribution was not examined in these studies, or at least not reported in the metanalysis. Further, whatever other adversity HSPs may have faced, most of those in the populations studied grew up in families and went to schools where their trait was not understood. Surely this is another reason the studies’ participants might have felt there was something wrong with them, something they should be anxious or depressed about, contributing to their answers on the self-report measures in these studies.

Bottom Line(s):  There is no doubt that HSPs are somewhat more likely to have mental health problems when measuring them against non-HSPs on the usual measures of mental health, just as ponies become nothing but short horses if you only look at numbers on a yardstick! But given HSPs’ depth of processing, they are their own thing, just as ponies are more than just small horses. We do not want HSPs to be viewed as simply more troubled versions of people without the trait. Their depth of processing of their experiences also leads to their doing better than others in many ways. But in a meta-analysis of the existing studies, the yardsticks, the measures used, treated HSPs and non-HSPs as the same. The limitations in the population age and gender also raise questions about the conclusion regarding the size of the relationship between mental health problems and HSPs. Plus there are the possible reasons for this relationship, still not well explored, which can drastically change how we view the association. Nevertheless, it is an excellent study of its type, highlighting just how much research has been done and summarizing it quite beautifully. As Tom told me, “My hope is that our findings will help to highlight the role of sensitivity in mental health and that mental health professionals will take the trait more seriously.” And that is a lovely goal, certain to benefit HSPs in the long run. 

Highly Sensitive Mothers who are More Mindful Find it Easier Parenting Preschoolers

Passaquindici, I., Sperati, A., Lionetti, F., Fasolo, M., & Spinelli, M. (2025). Maternal mindfulness buffers parenting in highly sensitive mothers.  Current Psychology , 1-4.

This study gave four self-report measures to mothers of young children: the HSP Scale, a measure of parent’s emotional regulation, of the mother’s perception of the bond between mother and child, and of mindfulness as a trait (not as a meditation practice). That measure has five subscales: how much one observes one’s momentary inner and outer environment, being able to describe this, acting with awareness of what one has observed, not judging your inner experience and accepting it or not reacting to it. 

Reading the list of subscales in the measure of mindfulness would lead you to think that being mindful sounds just like being an HSP, but we know from other research that many HSPs struggle with some of this, the parts about accepting their inner experience, that is their feelings–not judging and not reacting. See my blog on this, which contains the research. As I said in the article above and will repeat here, heir emotional regulation abilities may fall short in five specific ways: Trouble accepting feelings, being ashamed of them, not thinking they can cope as well as others do, feeling like what they experience as bad feelings will last forever, and not feeling hope that they can do something about these feelings.

These specific problems with emotional regulation may not be true of you, but they are for many HSPs, and if this is true of you, you can work on it. But you can see that measuring mindfulness is almost another way of measuring emotional regulation.  And not surprisingly, HS mothers high in mindfulness also reported being high in their emotional regulation as a parent and having a better bond with their preschool child than other HS mothers. (This was not found for mothers of toddlers, so younger children may make it hard for anyone to stay “mindful”!)

While practicing meditation might help, it was not a part of the study. To me, this study was really about HSPs’ attitudes about their intense emotions, attitudes that HSPs can and must develop for a happier personal and family life. So, again, do not judge your strong “bad” feelings, but accept them. They are normal for you, an HSP. For example, your child is having a tantrum.  Don’t like your child right now? Wish you had never become a parent? That is okay. Normal. Accept it. Then, being less stressed about yourself and your feelings, you will be able to see what you know needs to be done to improve the situation. Don’t know for sure how to do better? Read some parenting books or take some parenting courses. Get some advice from an expert. You can do it! 

Bottom Line:  HSPs, including parents and maybe especially parents, need to accept their feelings and trust that they know, or can learn, what to do to make things better.

 

Part II: 

When “Meditation is hell.”

Again, the second part of my blog is about something sort of “spiritual.” In May I wrote about meditation as, specifically, a valuable path to enlightenment when consistently practiced. Then I wrote about why some people stop. There were many comments, but one stood out that I wanted to answer. What follows in italics is only part of this person’s comment, but I do want to address the issue she raised—what to do when meditation feels hard or even feels like hell. Here is what she wrote.

I believe that finally seeing the reality of the lifelong-held trauma ended up calming my mind. Now that the anxiety and confusion that would keep shouting “See me! Hold me!” have been heard, I could come back to meditation without “sitting in fire”, as I would sometimes describe it. Meditating could be SO hard.

So here is my suggestion.

Keeping in mind that HSP can be hit really hard by ACE-trauma and often left deprived of a minimally balanced future, it would really be comforting that its impact on meditation would be addressed more often when talking about its benefits. You know, for people severely traumatized early in life, meditation can also feel like hell sometimes.

And when one is deeply spiritually inclined, one can’t help asking “what’s wrong with me if even meditation can’t help my troubled soul?” Hope doesn’t come by easily then.

Let me be clear at the start:  Meditation should not feel like hell. If it does, stop and consult a good meditation teacher.( I am not addressing the different types of meditation. That is another topic, a long one requiring two chapters in my book coming out April 1, Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens: An Objective Look at Meditation Methods and Enlightenment.) What I am saying here applies to all types of meditation, although finding help may differ according to where, how, and what you learned. If trauma is rearing up also, as it did for this person, consult a good, HS-informed therapist.

 Meditation and therapy can work well together, but it is also fine to stop meditating until you resolve the reasons for the hellish feeling. There is nothing wrong with needing to stop or modify your meditation practice. But always get help. It is not okay for meditation to feel like hell, ever.

What does the Research Say?

If you have had or are having negative experiences in meditation, you are not alone. Here is a summary of what I wrote in my book on the subject of whether meditation can be harmful or lead to negative experiences. This is a complicated topic, since one must define harm (feeling a little down, very depressed, a little anxious, very anxious, etc.), and over how long (an hour, a day, months, years). . Indeed, something that seems adverse one day may seem like the beginning of something good the next day. But the negative stuff should not persist. Meditation teachers expect some negative experiences, such as feeling more anxiety, and are trained in handling them, and then they are over

Still, a survey might find those same meditators who had their issues resolved would have admitted in a survey to having had at one time or other some negative experiences in meditation, boosting the number of negative experiences reported.  Again, research on this is complicated by the question of how to report the amount of harm and for how long.  

A systematic review of studies of harmful effects of meditation found that as of 2020 roughly 8.3% of meditators reported having had adverse experiences that felt harmful or undesirable and lasted more than a few hours. These were highly varied, including increased depression, anxiety, a sense of dissociation, trouble focusing, reliving of traumas, and panic One of thestudies in the review found it was closer to 10%, although the same study found 88% were happy with their meditation practice and this was unrelated to reporting harmful events.

Another study estimated that the incidence of bad effects lasting over a month was around 5%, about the same as for any other psychological treatment, although one study found it to be closer to 10%. But again, in that same study,  85% were happy with their meditation practice, and that did not differ whether meditators had had adverse effects.

The research is clear, however, that you are far more likely to have negative experiences that persist if you learn on your own, or, once you learn, do not seek any further guidance as your experiences change. After all, until very recently, meditation was always taught face-to-face by an experienced teacher who could tailor the practice to the individual and hear immediately how it went, adjusting the method as needed. Obviously, the risk of going without guidance is greater if you are already struggling in your life, especially with repressed material, such as experiences of abuse or other forms of PTSD. 

Again, professional, competent teachers of meditation expect meditators to have some “adverse” experiences as part of the learning process, but competent teachers can usually help with these. If a person stops meditating without discussing it with a teacher, feeling meditation harms them, there is no doubt some truth to it. But as a therapist, I can attest that some people come for help right when they are about to fall apart, and then the help is too late or not what they really needed or they even blame the help as the cause, when trouble was just waiting to erupt. I cannot know in any particular case, but meditation seems very safe or maybe totally safe as long as you turn to a knowledgeable teacher if a problem arises.  And stop if it feels like hell! If you have been a victim of abuse, do not let meditation abuse you too.  And definitely do not blame yourself.  There are many paths, and one may be closed to you now, rightly, yet open up later. Try to trust your process.

Part I:
Research, A Major “Meta-analysis” of the Research about HSPs’ Mental Health, Plus a Study HS Mothers

Part II:
On Something More Spiritual:  When Meditation is Hell

 

Part I.  Research

A Summary of Years of Research: A Major “Meta-analysis” of the Research about HSPs’ Mental Health

Falkenstein, T., Sartori, L., Malanchini, M., Hadfield, K., & Pluess, M. (2025). The Relationship Between Environmental Sensitivity and Common Mental-Health Problems in Adolescents and Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.  Clinical Psychological Science , 0(0). Read article here. 

There is an excellent description of this article for non-scientists–written by its author, Tom Falkenstein–at the website Sensitivity Research. Yes, there are other authors listed, but this paper is one chapter in Tom’s upcoming doctoral dissertation on HSPs and mental health. The other authors are simply his dissertation supervisors (plus one helpful MA-level assistant). If you are interested in this subject, PLEASE FIRST READ TOM’S SUMMARY. And if you want, use the link to look at the actual article. That way I do not need to repeat myself here, but rather can try to put the article in a larger context.  

More about Tom Falkenstein: He is a psychotherapist in private practice, licensed to practice in the U.K. and Germany, and the author of The Highly Sensitive Man, published in 2019.  Obviously he is also working on his doctoral dissertation, under Michael Pluess at Queen Mary University of London. And he is a member of International Consultants on High Sensitivity (ICHS, a group of professionals I worked with so that they could speak in place of me!). 

What Is a Meta-Analysis?

Turning to Tom’s paper, just to review, as you will learn from reading his article, a meta-analysis has three steps. First, you identify all of the research on a subject, then second, reduce this research to the methodologically soundest studies, and finally, third, calculate the overall “effect” size—the strength of the relationship between two variables or groups, in this case mental health and environmental sensitivity, or high environmental sensitivity, as measured by the HSP Scale.  They began with 829 studies, reducing them to just 33, involving 12,697 participants (note: the average age was around 25 and 63% were female). The effect size for anxiety was a little higher than for depression, but both were “moderate” and there were strong relationships with other mental health problems as well.  To be clear, this means HSPs in general are moderately more likely to have mental health issues, but does not mean that every HSP has mental health problems or explain why.

You may have noticed that Tom carefully avoided the term mental illness but stuck to “mental health” problems. However you term it, the press and internet (and AI) certainly picked it up, wrongly announcing this sort of thing: “A big study found that HSPs have more mental health problems.” The good news is that the trait will now be taken even more seriously by mental health professionals, and maybe treatment will be better tailored to HSPs, although that is not guaranteed. Therapists may still treat an HSP’s depression, anxiety, or whatever as just another case of that, without considering the trait in greater depth. But it is Tom’s hope that by bringing it more to the attention of clinicians, through this meta-analysis and the rest of his research, they will develop greater wisdom about how HSPs specifically should be attended to in therapy.

The Bigger Picture—Problems with the HSP Scale

But before you go away with the simple conclusion that you belong to a group of people who are more likely than others to have, okay, mental health problems, let’s look at the bigger picture (always my favorite). None of this is meant as a criticism of Tom’s paper. It was very, very well done. Exactly right. But it has limited meaning, in part because obviously a meta-analysis can only be as good as what goes into it. That is why one narrows the studies down to the ones using the very best methods available.  But in this case, this meant only studies using the HSP Scale (which were almost all studies).  

I have already written extensively about the problems with that measure (read blog here). Above all, the items are mostly negative. If you are in a negative state generally or on the day you take the test, for whatever reason, you might say yes to more of these items, regardless of your sensitivity. Hence it could be seen as a measure of high sensitivity AND, in addition, a measure of mental health, two things being measured by the same self-report. Not good. Hence the revision of it, which includes items not related to negative feelings, such as experiences of positive stimuli or feeling empathy. But for all those studies, the HSP Scale was the only good measure, and it has been a good-enough measure. It just has this slight bias.   

As I have written, when the scale was broken down into factors, aspects, or whatever you want to call them, two contained 18 of the 25 items, and all 18 were about negative aspects of the trait, mainly feeling overstimulated or not liking overstimulation.  The third factor contained 7 items, all of them positive or positively worded. In the three studies that were included that looked at the three factors, there was much less association, or none, between the 7-item positively worded factor and mental health problems. That does make the HSP Scale seem to be a mixed measure of mental health and HSPs.

More of the Bigger Picture—Measures of Mental Health

Measures of depression, anxiety, and the like are meant to apply to everyone. But do they apply equally to HSPs? Maybe not.  Consider a yard stick, meant to measure the height of horses. If you include ponies, the same yardstick will tell you that ponies are short horses. But ponies are not generally thought of as horses. They are different. Why think about the average height of ponies in the context of horses? By analogy, HSPs are also different. It is their nature to think about things more deeply, so they are going to think more about dangers. If they have experienced trauma, they are going to think more about how the nature of their situation or of the world may be depressing, even hopeless. Applying my pony analogy to HSPs, because of their trait of depth of processing, their “shortness,” their differentness, they are going to measure “shorter” on a measure of anxiety or depression if those measures are based on the general population, which includes its “tall”–less reflective, more impulsive people. (If you did not follow all of that, just leave out the horses and ponies and read on.)

My point is that higher levels of anxiety may be “normal” for HSPs because of their depth of processing. And given differential susceptibility, that HSPs are more affected by both negative and positive experiences, another product of deep processing of one’s experiences would be that depression should be more common in HSPs than others given the same difficult environment, especially in childhood. What we need is a yard stick for measuring depth of processing! Or better, one for measuring helpful deep processing. 

In fact, when HSPs use their depth of processing to regulate their strong emotions, they do very well (see the study below about HS mothers and mindfulness as a personality trait). But research shows that HSPs have trouble regulating their feelings in these ways: accepting their feelings, not being ashamed of them, believing they can cope as well as others do, trusting bad feelings will not last forever, and assuming there’s hope–that they can do something about their bad feelings eventually. (See my article on this. That is, they have trouble being “mindful.” We can assume that most of the HSPs in the 33 studies did not know much if anything about their trait and would have felt just these feelings about their intense emotions. With better understanding of their trait, they might have much better emotional regulation skills–be much better at accepting their feelings, dropping their shame, and so forth. And if they did have trouble, perhaps with more understanding of their trait, they would not hesitate to get the help they need for learning to handle their emotions. But these HSP-informed persons were probably not the participants in these studies.

Finally, as the authors noted, the studies in their meta-analysis used only self-report measures. which are subject to social-desirability bias (wanting to look good, probably true of non-HSPs) and the participant’s level of introspection (probably higher for HSPs). And I think it is safe to assume that on average HSPs are probably more honest and conscientious than others when reporting their mental health problems, possibly making them seem to have more of such problems. They might do the same with positive experiences, but these were not measured.

All in all, measures meant to compare HSPs and non-HSPs on their mental health can offer problems.

More of the Big Picture—The Details About the Participants in the Studies

Again, this is no fault of the authors of the meta-analysis but relates to the population of people in the 33 studies they had available. We saw they were young adults, the mean age being 25, who are known to have poor mental health in general, given a variety of pressures on them, and the majority were women. The mental health of women in that age range is known to be even worse than that of men of that age.  There is something about the environment, the pressures that people that age experience that makes life especially difficult. So, given differential susceptibility, we would expect HSPs in the same generational “environment” to have more mental health problems. We cannot assume that the results of these studies reflect the mental health of HSPs who are more mature or of populations including more men.

A Bigger Picture About Why HSPs are More Likely to have Mental Health Problems

After reaching their conclusions, the authors provide three reasons given by authors of some of the studies as to why HSPs might have more mental health problems. One, as I have said, is their depth of processing. Specifically, this is seen as leading to “rumination,” which is associated with depression. Another reason given is that since HSPs are more easily overstimulated, they must be more stressed by life in general. And finally, as I have noted, having more intense emotions requires better emotional regulation, and as I have said, HSPs have trouble in this area. 

But what about the role of an HSP’s childhood? Childhood adversities are significantly related to mental health problems, and we know this is more common for HSPs because they are more affected by both bad and good childhood environments, but this contribution was not examined in these studies, or at least not reported in the metanalysis. Further, whatever other adversity HSPs may have faced, most of those in the populations studied grew up in families and went to schools where their trait was not understood. Surely this is another reason the studies participants might have felt there was something wrong with them, something they should be anxious or depressed about, contributing to their answers on the self-report measures in these studies.

Bottom Line(s):  There is no doubt that HSPs are somewhat more likely to have mental health problems when measuring them against non-HSPs, just as ponies become nothing but short horses if you only look at numbers on a yardstick! But given HSPs’ depth of processing, they are their own thing, just as ponies are more than just small horses. We do not want HSPs to be viewed as simply more troubled versions of people without the trait. Their depth of processing of their experiences also leads to their doing better than others in many ways. But in a meta-analysis of the existing studies, the yardsticks, the measures used, treated HSPs and non-HSPs as the same. The limitations in the population age and gender also raise questions about the conclusion regarding the size of the relationship between mental health problems and HSPs. Plus there are the possible reasons for this relationship, still not well explored, which can drastically change how we view the association. Nevertheless, it is an excellent study of its type, highlighting just how much research has been done and summarizing it quite beautifully. As Tom told me, “My hope is that our findings will help to highlight the role of sensitivity in mental health and that mental health professionals will take the trait more seriously.” And that is a lovely goal, certain to benefit HSPs in the long run. 

Highly Sensitive Mothers who are More Mindful Find it Easier Parenting Preschoolers

Passaquindici, I., Sperati, A., Lionetti, F., Fasolo, M., & Spinelli, M. (2025). Maternal mindfulness buffers parenting in highly sensitive mothers. Current Psychology, 1-4.

This study gave four self-report measures to mothers of young children: the HSP Scale, a measure of parent’s emotional regulation, of the mother’s perception of the bond between mother and child, and of mindfulness as a trait (not as a meditation practice). That measure has five subscales: how much one observes one’s momentary inner and outer environment, being able to describe this, acting with awareness of what one has observed, not judging your inner experience and accepting it or not reacting to it. 

Reading the list of subscales in the measure of mindfulness would lead you to think that being mindful sounds just like being an HSP, but we know from other research that many HSPs struggle with some of this, the parts about accepting their inner experience, that is their feelings–not judging and not reacting. See my blog on this, which contains the research. Their emotional regulation abilities may fall short in five specific ways: Trouble accepting feelings, being ashamed of them, not thinking they can cope as well as others do, feeling like what they experience as bad feelings will last forever, and not feeling hope that they can do something about these feelings.

These specific problems with emotional regulation may not be true of you, but they are for many HSPs, and if this is true of you, you can work on it. But you can see that measuring mindfulness is almost another way of measuring emotional regulation.  And not surprisingly, HS mothers high in mindfulness also reported being high in their emotional regulation as a parent and having a better bond with their preschool child than other HS mothers. (This was not found for mothers of toddlers, so younger children may make it hard for anyone to stay “mindful”!)

While practicing meditation might help, it was not a part of the study. To me, this study was really about HSPs’ attitudes about their intense emotions, attitudes that HSPs can and must develop for a happier personal and family life. So, again, do not judge your strong “bad” feelings, but accept them. They are normal for you, an HSP. For example, your child is having a tantrum.  Don’t like your child right now? Wish you had never become a parent? That is okay. Normal. Accept it. Then, being less stressed about yourself and your feelings, you will be able to see what you know needs to be done to improve the situation. Don’t know for sure how to do better? Read some parenting books or take some parenting courses. Get some advice from an expert. You can do it! 

Bottom Line:  HSPs, parents included or maybe especially, need to accept their feelings and trust that they know, or can learn, what to do to make things better.

 

Part II: On Something More Spiritual

When “Meditation is hell.”

Again, the second part of my blog is about something sort of “spiritual.” In May I wrote about meditation as, specifically, a valuable path to enlightenment when consistently practiced. Then I wrote about why some people stop. There were many comments, but one stood out that I wanted to answer. What follows in italics is only part of this person’s comment, but I do want to address the issue she raised—what to do when meditation feels hard or even feels like hell. Here is what she wrote.

I believe that finally seeing the reality of the lifelong-held trauma ended up calming my mind. Now that the anxiety and confusion that would keep shouting “See me! Hold me!” have been heard, I could come back to meditation without “sitting in fire”, as I would sometimes describe it. Meditating could be SO hard.

So here is my suggestion.

Keeping in mind that HSP can be hit really hard by ACE-trauma and often left deprived of a minimally balanced future, it would really be comforting that its impact on meditation would be addressed more often when talking about its benefits. You know, for people severely traumatized early in life, meditation can also feel like hell sometimes.

And when one is deeply spiritually inclined, one can’t help asking “what’s wrong with me if even meditation can’t help my troubled soul?” Hope doesn’t come by easily then.

Let me be clear at the start:  Meditation should not feel like hell. If it does, stop and consult a good meditation teacher. I am not addressing the different types of meditation. That is another topic, a long one requiring two chapters in my book coming out April 1, Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens: An Objective Look at Meditation Methods and Enlightenment. What I am saying here applies to all types of meditation, although finding help may differ according to where, how, and what you learned. If trauma is rearing up also, as it did for Diane, consult a good, HS-informed therapist. Meditation and therapy can work well together, but it is also fine to stop meditating until the hellish feeling passes. There is nothing wrong with needing to stop or modify your meditation practice. But always get help. It is not okay for meditation to feel like hell, ever.

What does the Research Say?

If you have had or are having negative experiences in meditation, you are not alone. Here is a summary of what I wrote in my book on the subject of whether meditation can be harmful or lead to negative experiences. This is a complicated topic, since one must define harm (feeling a little down, very depressed, a little anxious, very anxious), and over how long (an hour, a day, months, years). But the negative stuff should not persist. Meditation teachers expect some negative experiences, such as feeling more anxiety, and are trained in handling them, and then they are over. Indeed, something that seems adverse one day may seem like the beginning of something good the next day.

Still, a survey might find those same meditators who had their issues resolved would have admitted in a survey to having had at one time or other some negative experiences in meditation, boosting the number of negative experiences reported.  Again, research on this is complicated by the question of how to report the amount of harm and for how long.  

A systematic review of studies of harmful effects of meditation found that as of 2020 roughly 8.3% of meditators reported having had adverse experiences that felt harmful or undesirable and lasted more than a few hours. These were highly varied, including increased depression, anxiety, a sense of dissociation, trouble focusing, reliving of traumas, and panic. One study found it was closer to 10%, although the same study found 88% were happy with their meditation practice and this was unrelated to reporting harmful events.

Another study estimated that the incidence of bad effects lasting over a month was around 5%, about the same as for any other psychological treatment, although one study found it to be closer to 10%. But in that same study, again, 85% were happy with their meditation practice, and that did not differ whether meditators had had adverse effects.

The research is clear, however, that you are far more likely to have negative experiences that persist if you learn on your own, or, once you learn, do not seek any further guidance as your experiences change. After all, until very recently, meditation was always taught face-to-face by an experienced teacher who could tailor the practice to the individual and hear immediately how it went, adjusting the method as needed. Obviously, the risk of going without guidance is greater if you are already struggling in your life, especially with repressed material, such as experiences of abuse or other forms of PTSD. 

Again, professional, competent teachers of meditation expect meditators to have some “adverse” experiences as part of the learning process, but competent teachers can usually help with these. If a person stops meditating without discussing it with a teacher, feeling meditation harms them, there is no doubt some truth to it. But as a therapist, I can attest that some people come for help right when they are about to fall apart, and then the help is too late or not what they really needed or they even blame the help as the cause, when trouble was just waiting to erupt. I cannot know in any particular case, but meditation seems very safe or maybe totally safe as long as you turn to a knowledgeable teacher if a problem arises.  And stop if it feels like hell! If you have been a victim of abuse, do not let meditation abuse you too.  And definitely do not blame yourself.  There are many paths, and one may be closed to you now, rightly, yet open up later. If you can, trust your process.

With my upcoming book, Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens: An Objective Look at Meditation Methods and Enlightenment (coming out this April), I’ll be sharing two parts in each blog post—the first will explore research, HSP news, and current insights, while the second will offer a more spiritual reflection and deeper inner perspective.  

Part I:
Research: Why a New Measure of High Sensitivity, or What Was So (Annoyingly) Wrong with the Old One?

For this blog, instead of a straightforward summary of what I see as the best of the latest research, I am going to explain more about the old and new measures of high sensitivity, AKA Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS), because most of the latest research is still based on the old measure, which is, well, inherently flawed in certain ways, although not fatally so. Indeed, the two scales give similar results, overall. Which is great.  But the flaws have become a serious problem.

If you are really interested in the research on SPS, it is very important that you read this rather long blog post carefully.

I began explaining to you the new measure back in December here, when it first appeared on my website and Michael Pluess’s site here, I told a bit about how we created it, carefully, and that it is shorter, eighteen items, and has six factors, with a nice balance of positive and negative factors and items. The six factors, with three questions (“items”) in each, are Sensitivity to Details, Depth of Processing, Social Sensitivity, Sensitivity to Positive Experiences, Emotional Reactivity, and Overstimulation. Nice, yes? 

But, Yes, a Scale of 1 to 7 is Inconvenient When Taking it on Paper—Why Was That Done?

Actually, the old HSP Scale also used a 1 to 7 scale for research, but it being much longer, on our website and on paper for clinical use, it seemed okay to just use true/false or yes/no.

But there is no shorter version of this scale, so each item must be rated on a scale of 1 to 7, as I will explain.  This is no problem if you take it on one of the websites.  But if you are an individual or a mental health professional wanting to give or take this test on paper, it means you have to add up 18 different numbers.  Why was it done this way?

I need to start with the fact that this measure (like most valid psychological measures) was created for research purposes, not for diagnosing or categorizing an individual. (I always think deciding on an individual’s sensitivity should involve more than a self-report questionnaire anyway.) The research function of the measure is much enhanced by using a scale of 1 to 7, called a Likert Scale. You can see why.  Each answer is more precise than just a yes or no. That allowed us to use only 18 questions to cover all 6 factors, 3 questions for each–short enough for a researcher to include it in a study and have other measures in the study too. (And if a clinician gives the measure by reading out the questions from each factor and getting an answer that falls between “never” and “extremely,” that gives a more precise picture of the individual.)

Okay, What Is a Factor?

It is very important as you read this post that you understand what a factor is within a measure. A factor is uncovered statistically within the full list of items in a measure by looking for items that group together—that is, if those filling out the measure said yes or answered with a high number to one item and then on another they were very likely to say yes or give a high number, and then on another, but answered lower on others, those on which people gave similar answers are seen as a subgroup of items within the measure that can be grouped together as a factor. Then each factor is given a name. Think “aspect” or “major characteristic.” 

Factors can be deliberately created when making a measure, as we did for our new measure.  That is, a researcher can create items that, if you answered high on one, you were likely to answer high on other, similar items.

If I were creating a measure to help a city person know if an animal in a pasture is a horse, cow, goat, lama, or whatever, I might ask Qs about the height, the number of legs, the length of the hair, the type of tail or hooves, and also questions about behavior—does it often run, climb, approach people, make noises, does it seem like it can be ridden. So there would be sets of items that would create an appearance factor and another set of items would create a behavior factor. Back to the factors in measuring high sensitivity in a moment.

Did We Really Need a New Measure?

People tell me that when they take the new measure they come out about the same as when they take the old one. That’s really excellent news, actually. We hoped the new measure would work the same, so that past research studies that used the old measure were not invalidated. But there are two problems with the old measure—one is what the measure says about the trait, and the other is its factors.

In a way a measure is like an inventory, or even an advertisement for the thing being measured. Reading the items, you come to understand the thing it is measuring. Back to my measure of what-animal-is-it, my items so far are very factual, but I might include questions that ask about the animal’s beauty–how much people think this animal is nice to watch; how much are its ears small and delicate or large and floppy; how soft is its fur, how much it feels good looking into its eyes.  Now the measure is looking for something more positive.  

The old HSP Scale, created back in the 1990s, after interviewing 39 people, describes a trait that has many problems associated with it—for example, needing or preferring to avoid noise, violent TV, chaos, making mistakes, hunger, caffeine, or being under pressure to do a lot.  The items are also mostly negatively worded. I suppose the people I interviewed talked mostly about the problems with being highly sensitive, not the more subtle positive side, such as being more prone than others to notice beauty, feel empathy, or think deeply.  And I did not know enough to focus on that side of the trait.

So, it gave an accurate yet one-sided “advertisement” for high sensitivity.

As for the other problem, the HSP Scale factors, in those days you aimed for a measure that produced one factor—that measured all aspects, showing that if a person answered yes to one, they were likely to answer yes to all the others. The astounding thing to us was that the HSP Scale statistically was one factor.  This was true in spite of the items being so varied–for example, being bothered by pain, easily startled, conscientious, and having a rich inner life. It being one factor suggested that all of these different behaviors were caused by one underlying trait, sensitivity. It was beautiful, really. One factor. 

However, times change in the statistical world, and you now can take a measure like the HSP Scale, with its many varied items, and “force” it to show its underlying factors, even if they are also highly related to each other. In 2004 Smolewska, McCage, and Woody published an important paper on the components of the HSP Scale, naming three factors:  Aesthetic Sensitivity (AES), Low Sensory Threshold (LST), and Ease of Excitation (EOE).  

What Is the Problem with Having Three Sub-Factors?

People began to make extensive use of these three aspects in their research. It seemed as if no one but me had noticed that the factors consisted of one list of positive items, 7 out of the 25 items on the research version of the HSP Scale, and two longer lists of negatively worded items that are honestly difficult to tell apart. Here are the positive ones, all 7, one of the three factors:

Do you have a rich, complex inner life? Do you seem to be aware of subtleties in your environment?Are you deeply moved by the arts or music? Are you conscientious? When people are uncomfortable in a physical environment do you tend to know what needs to be done to make it more comfortable (like changing the lighting or the seating)? Do you notice and enjoy delicate or fine scents, tastes, sounds, works of art? Do you find yourself needing to withdraw during busy days, into bed or into a darkened room or any place?

Even the last item, that could be negative, is positively worded. The name the factor was given, “Aesthetic Sensitivity,”  was clearly a stretch. Conscientiousness?  

Now compare these 7 items to some of the items in the two other factors, which are negatively worded or about negative experiences:  

Some items from the “Ease of Excitation” factor:

Do you tend to be more sensitive to pain? Do you startle easily? Do you get rattled when you have a lot to do in a short amount of time? Are you annoyed when people try to get you to do too many things at once?Do you try hard to avoid making mistakes or forgetting things? 

Some items from the “Low Sensory Threshold” factor:

Are you easily overwhelmed by things like bright lights, strong smells, coarse fabrics, or sirens close by?Are you made uncomfortable by loud noises? Do you make a point to avoid violent movies and TV shows? Do you become unpleasantly aroused when a lot is going on around you?Are you bothered by intense stimuli, like loud noises or chaotic scenes?

Again, these two factors are actually hard to tell apart from their contents. They are simply about the negative side of being highly sensitive.

What Kinds of Problems Are Created by the Old Measure and its Three Sub-factors?

A key issue is what is measured by negatively worded items in general, compared to positively worded items. Given the original one-factor solution, I think it is safe to say that most HSPs experience all three factors—the positive and the negative side of being an HSP. Yet the impression has developed that the three factors represent different types of HSPs, and the ones answering high on Aesthetic Sensitivity (AES) are healthier in some way. But some people, some HSPs even, may answer more negatively worded items than another person for several reasons not directly about related to the items.

An HSP may want to be very honest and accurate, and not shirk the negative.  Indeed, a problem with questionnaires is that people often answer with a positive bias, putting a “rosy glow” on their answers.  HSPs probably do the opposite.They may have a personality that tends to see things more negatively, for whatever reason.  Perhaps they had a difficult childhood.Perhaps they were in a bad mood the day they took the test.Perhaps they are going through a difficult period in their lives.Maybe they are not even HSPs, but have problems going on that could cause them to answer some of these items like an HSP.

Another key problem is the issue of what correlates with these subfactors. Most research with measures looks for a statistical correlation between the score on the measure and something else. Score on a measure of impulsiveness and number of driving tickets.  Score on a measure of athletic interest and number of hours spent each week playing a sport.  A correlation means that when one thing is found, the other is often found.  They are associated.  That is all. But there is an important rule about correlation that even good researchers forget:  Correlation does not mean causation. Impulsiveness does not necessarily cause driving in an manner that gets you driving tickets.  If animals with longer legs run more, it can seem that long legs cause more running. (Or, less logical in this case, that running lengthens your legs.) But goats like to run and have relatively short legs. Lamas have long legs and do not seem to be big runners.  Often a third thing is the cause—breeding within a species to make for faster animals. Fast horses are useful so they have been bred for speed.  Fast goats or cows?  Not so much!

There is a tendency to think, for example, that if a person scores high on the HSP Scale and is often depressed, that being an HSP causes depression. But in fact we know that differential susceptibility is at work here. HSPs with good-enough childhoods are not prone to depression. The third thing is the quality of their childhood. But it turns out that the negatively worded factors of the old HSP Scale correlate more with depression, so it is often implied that people who score high on these factors are the ones who are more depressed.  There is not enough consideration of the five other reasons or “causes” I gave above about why people might score high on these factors.

You can see why creating our own six factors, with a balance of positive and negative factors and items, was necessary.  It not only avoids anyone else finding other, less accurate factors, but solves the “advertisement” problem by giving a complete picture of SPS, as we understand it so far, both positive and negative.  

Some Recent Studies Emphasizing the Three Sub-factors

I do not wish to be negative about these studies. They are just recent examples. There are probably 50 more like them. I just want you to get a sense of the problem.  I wish we had gotten the new measure out years ago, but a good measure takes time.  Meanwhile…

Golonka, K., & Gulla, B. (2021). Individual differences and susceptibility to burnout syndrome: Sensory processing sensitivity and its relation to exhaustion and disengagement.  Frontiers in psychology ,  12 , 751350.

This study of burnout surveyed 516 adult employees, 236 were women and the average age was 29. The sample consisted of employees in IT (26%) and financial businesses, with 10% of the participants in managerial positions.  Most worked full time and had completed higher education.  

Higher scores on the measure of SPS correlated with burnout symptoms, except that higher scores on the AES factor (which they renamed “sensing the subtle”) showed the opposite effect.  They said AES may be a protective factor against burnout.  The question is, what is the causation here, when someone answers higher on AES, with all of its positive items, and also answers that they are not experiencing much burnout.  Does having this wonderful protective factor keep you from developing burn out?  Or does not having burn out make you answer more positively?  Or is a third thing operating.  For example, if you understand you are highly sensitive, perhaps you view the trait more positively and also are able to take better care of yourself and avoid jobs or work situation that lead to burnout.

Iimura, S. (2021). Highly sensitive adolescents: The relationship between weekly life events and weekly socioemotional well‐being.  British Journal of Psychology ,  112 (4), 1103-1129.

This study looked at how 114 Japanese adolescents in Tokyo rated, over four weeks, two of their weekly life events and their well-being that week.  The relation of well-being and sensitivity varied from week to week, sometimes making it look like sensitivity led to lower well-being, and on other weeks like the sensitive adolescents gained more than others from positive experiences, an example of “vantage sensitivity.”  

The main part of the study did not look at the factors, which was good in a way.  But in a footnote the author made the extraordinary observation that when the results were reanalyzed using only the AES subscale, the findings for all weeks supported a strong vantage sensitivity model. Students scoring high on the AES factor were gaining more than students without the trait from their positive experiences.  The question of causation jumps out.  Were students scoring high on AES, the positively worded questions, more prone to seeing everything more positively?  Or were their experiences of the weekly events actually more positive, causing them to answer more items on the AES factor? Or could there be another possibility?  Maybe these sensitive adolescents were experiencing an especially supportive school or home life, so that they could find something good in most of their experiences and also answer more positively-worded items.

Maracineanu, I. G., & Truta, C. (2025). The Relationship between Well-Being and Hypersensitivity among Young Adults.  Bulletin of the Transylvania University of Braşov. Series VII: Social Sciences• Law , 43-52.

These authors looked at the well-being of young adults with “hypersensitivity,” and found that for the most part their well-being was lower. However, this was in fact true only for those high on the two negative factors.  The authors concluded that “People who have difficulty tolerating strong sensory stimuli are more prone to stress and discomfort, which can limit positive experiences.”  

The message is that difficulty with intense stimuli means missing out on positive experiences. But these “people who have difficulty tolerating strong sensory input” are all HSPs, not a separate kind of HSP.  They are probably having at least adequate positive experiences, this being a part of the trait. Yes, being high on the two negative factors was associated with lower well-being, whereas Aesthetic Sensitivity correlated with all of the positive measures in the study: Wellbeing, Positive emotions, Engagement, Good relationships, Finding Meaning in life, Accomplishment, and Happiness.  But of course Aesthetic Sensitivity was also correlated with the overall measure and the two negative factors, Ease of Excitation and Low Sensory Threshold.  That is, as I said before, these are not different groups of people.  Most HSP have all three factors operating and experience some well-being and some negative times–to different degrees, maybe, but we do not have to look for a special subset of HSPs who are miserable due to overstimulation so their positive experiences are limited.  Other issues, third causes, will be limiting their positive experiences, not their difficulty tolerating noise! 

Christou, A. I., Fanti, K., Mavrommatis, I., & Soursou, G. (2025). Parent–Child Eye Gaze Congruency to Emotional Expressions Mediated by Child Aesthetic Sensitivity.  Children .

You can see here the issue with the three factors in the very title of the study.  Children high on Aesthetic Sensitivity behaved differently from other HSCs, but the reasons were barely explored, and certainly not the issue of positive versus negative items.  They were simply the children, some special type of HSC according to the researchers, whom they chose to focus on.

A Few More Points About Measuring SPS

As we expected, while we slowly worked on the new measure and told the world that the old one had some limitations, others made new measures.  A pretty good one is by De Gucht, V., Woestenburg, D. H., & Wilderjans, T. F. (2022). The different faces of (high) sensitivity, toward a more comprehensive measurement instrument. Development and validation of the sensory processing sensitivity questionnaire (SPSQ). Journal of Personality Assessment, 104(6), 784-799. 

This measure aimed to capture more of the positive side of the trait.  But it is very long–43 items  And contains no items on depth of processing (what I consider the foundation of the trait). These are its six factors: Sensory Sensitivity to Subtle Internal and External Stimuli, Emotional and Physiological Reactivity, Sensory Discomfort, Sensory Comfort, Social-Affective Sensitivity, and Aesthetic Sensitivity. 

Another measure, originally in German, was created by Danièle Anne Gubler, Tobias Janelt, Marcus Roth, Katja Schlegel, Jasmin Guggisberg & Stefan Johannes Troche: (2025) The DOES Scale:  Measuring Sensory Processing Sensitivity as a Trait Constellation, Journal of Personality Assessment.

This measure has 20 items divided into the four DOES factors we always talk about. (Depth of processing, easily Overstimulated, strong Emotions/Empathy, and Sensitive to Subtle.) Thus, this measure leaves out what the new HSP-R includes, empathy as something separate from emotion and also positive sensory experiences.

I know there are quite a few other measures that people have made up, compensating for the fact that the old scale had a copyright that did not allow it to be used for anything but clinical or research purposes.  These made-up measures are questionable, of course, not having been validated in research studies.  But hopefully these will fade away. The new measure can be used on anyone’s website if they ask permission from Michael Pluess and print the references at the bottom of the pdf. The pdf is there on my website and on Michael’s, with what must be cited at the bottom. 

So that’s the measuring-SPS saga,  Remember, a questionnaire is not the trait.  Just a bunch of questions!

Part II:
HSPs and the Origin of Religion

Because this first half of my post was SO long, I will keep this “spiritual” half brief.  I thought you would find it interesting that there is a theory that HSPs played a major role in the origin of religion and spirituality. Two experts on the origin of religion, Margaret Rappaport and Christopher Corbally, cite the research on the trait of high sensitivity as support for their theory that the evolution of this trait in humans was a building block in the evolution of religion. In their article “Evolution of Religious Capacity in Genus Homo,” published in 2018 in Zygon (a peer-reviewed journal of science and religion), they suggest that religious feeling evolved out of compassion, and compassion must have three steps:  A certain perception of a situation, sensitivity to its meaning, and then decision making, deciding to act. Think of our six factors—empathy and depth of processing surely lead to compassion. The authors also reason that high sensitivity must have been, and still is, more often present in those who fill religious functions.  

This is all theory, not data, but the reasoning from the evidence satisfied the peer reviewers of the journal. And it makes sense. Another way to frame their ideas is that sensitivity to one’s world inevitably produces the “differential susceptibility” we are always talking about. HSPs are differentially susceptible to the entire world–more deeply affected by both the good events and people and the sad, ignorant, or simply difficult things. It seems that HSPs in particular may have always tended to see better when people were struggling and try to help, to celebrate the good in music and ritual, and to try to figure out where evil comes from.  We wondered why some people cheat, lie, or even murder, what human actions might affect disasters such as droughts or earthquakes, and of course what happens after death.  

Probably we HSPs have always craved to talk about all this, to explore it, while the majority of people gave it less thought. Until, according to these scholars, the rains failed, some tyrant tried to take over, or death came unexpectedly.  Then the majority would want to know what the more thoughtful and kind minority, those HSPs, had to say about it.  What did they think caused evil?  What did they do to avoid bad things happening to them or to manage how they felt afterwards?  Their answers may have been part of the rise of religion.

I’m not sure you need to read their article (actually, it is in three parts).  If you do bring it up using Google Scholar, you can use Control F to search for the word sensitivity.  It will give you a quick sense of how they think about it.  This is the full reference:

Rappaport, M. B., & Corbally, C. (2018). EVOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS CAPACITY IN THE GENUS HOMO: TRAIT COMPLEXITY IN ACTION THROUGH COMPASSION: with Margaret Boone Rappaport and Christopher Corbally,“Evolution of Religious Capacity in the Genus Homo: Origins and Building Blocks”; Margaret Boone Rappaport and Christopher Corbally,“Evolution of Religious Capacity in the Genus Homo: Cognitive Time Sequence”; and Margaret Boone Rappaport and Christopher Corbally,“Evolution of Religious Capacity in the Genus Homo: Trait Complexity in Action through …. Zygon®, 53(1), 198-239.

For this blog, instead of a straightforward summary of what I see as the best of the latest research, I am going to explain more about the old and new measures of high sensitivity, AKA Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS), because most of the latest research is still based on the old measure, which is, well, inherently flawed in certain ways, although not fatally so. Indeed, the two scales give similar results, overall. Which is great.  But the flaws have become a serious problem.

If you are really interested in the research on SPS, it is very important that you read this rather long blog post carefully.

I began explaining to you the new measure back in December here, when it first appeared on my website and Michael Pluess’s site here, I told a bit about how we created it, carefully, and that it is shorter, eighteen items, and has six factors, with a nice balance of positive and negative factors and items. The six factors, with three questions (“items”) in each, are Sensitivity to Details, Depth of Processing, Social Sensitivity, Sensitivity to Positive Experiences, Emotional Reactivity, and Overstimulation. Nice, yes? 

But, Yes, a Scale of 1 to 7 is Inconvenient When Taking it on Paper—Why Was That Done?

Actually, the old HSP Scale also used a 1 to 7 scale for research, but it being much longer, on our website and on paper for clinical use, it seemed okay to just use true/false or yes/no.

But there is no shorter version of this scale, so each item must be rated on a scale of 1 to 7, as I will explain.  This is no problem if you take it on one of the websites.  But if you are an individual or a mental health professional wanting to give or take this test on paper, it means you have to add up 18 different numbers.  Why was it done this way?

I need to start with the fact that this measure (like most valid psychological measures) was created for research purposes, not for diagnosing or categorizing an individual. (I always think deciding on an individual’s sensitivity should involve more than a self-report questionnaire anyway.) The research function of the measure is much enhanced by using a scale of 1 to 7, called a Likert Scale. You can see why.  Each answer is more precise than just a yes or no. That allowed us to use only 18 questions to cover all 6 factors, 3 questions for each–short enough for a researcher to include it in a study and have other measures in the study too. (And if a clinician gives the measure by reading out the questions from each factor and getting an answer that falls between “never” and “extremely,” that gives a more precise picture of the individual.)

Okay, What Is a Factor?

It is very important as you read this post that you understand what a factor is within a measure. A factor is uncovered statistically within the full list of items in a measure by looking for items that group together—that is, if those filling out the measure said yes or answered with a high number to one item and then on another they were very likely to say yes or give a high number, and then on another, but answered lower on others, those on which people gave similar answers are seen as a subgroup of items within the measure that can be grouped together as a factor. Then each factor is given a name. Think “aspect” or “major characteristic.” 

Factors can be deliberately created when making a measure, as we did for our new measure.  That is, a researcher can create items that, if you answered high on one, you were likely to answer high on other, similar items.

If I were creating a measure to help a city person know if an animal in a pasture is a horse, cow, goat, lama, or whatever, I might ask Qs about the height, the number of legs, the length of the hair, the type of tail or hooves, and also questions about behavior—does it often run, climb, approach people, make noises, does it seem like it can be ridden. So there would be sets of items that would create an appearance factor and another set of items would create a behavior factor. Back to the factors in measuring high sensitivity in a moment.

Did We Really Need a New Measure?

People tell me that when they take the new measure they come out about the same as when they take the old one. That’s really excellent news, actually. We hoped the new measure would work the same, so that past research studies that used the old measure were not invalidated. But there are two problems with the old measure—one is what the measure says about the trait, and the other is its factors.

In a way a measure is like an inventory, or even an advertisement for the thing being measured. Reading the items, you come to understand the thing it is measuring. Back to my measure of what-animal-is-it, my items so far are very factual, but I might include questions that ask about the animal’s beauty–how much people think this animal is nice to watch; how much are its ears small and delicate or large and floppy; how soft is its fur, how much it feels good looking into its eyes.  Now the measure is looking for something more positive.  

The old HSP Scale, created back in the 1990s, after interviewing 39 people, describes a trait that has many problems associated with it—for example, needing or preferring to avoid noise, violent TV, chaos, making mistakes, hunger, caffeine, or being under pressure to do a lot.  The items are also mostly negatively worded. I suppose the people I interviewed talked mostly about the problems with being highly sensitive, not the more subtle positive side, such as being more prone than others to notice beauty, feel empathy, or think deeply.  And I did not know enough to focus on that side of the trait.

So, it gave an accurate yet one-sided “advertisement” for high sensitivity.

As for the other problem, the HSP Scale factors, in those days you aimed for a measure that produced one factor—that measured all aspects, showing that if a person answered yes to one, they were likely to answer yes to all the others. The astounding thing to us was that the HSP Scale statistically was one factor.  This was true in spite of the items being so varied–for example, being bothered by pain, easily startled, conscientious, and having a rich inner life. It being one factor suggested that all of these different behaviors were caused by one underlying trait, sensitivity. It was beautiful, really. One factor. 

However, times change in the statistical world, and you now can take a measure like the HSP Scale, with its many varied items, and “force” it to show its underlying factors, even if they are also highly related to each other. In 2004 Smolewska, McCage, and Woody published an important paper on the components of the HSP Scale, naming three factors:  Aesthetic Sensitivity (AES), Low Sensory Threshold (LST), and Ease of Excitation (EOE).  

What Is the Problem with Having Three Sub-Factors?

People began to make extensive use of these three aspects in their research. It seemed as if no one but me had noticed that the factors consisted of one list of positive items, 7 out of the 25 items on the research version of the HSP Scale, and two longer lists of negatively worded items that are honestly difficult to tell apart. Here are the positive ones, all 7, one of the three factors:

Do you have a rich, complex inner life? Do you seem to be aware of subtleties in your environment?Are you deeply moved by the arts or music? Are you conscientious? When people are uncomfortable in a physical environment do you tend to know what needs to be done to make it more comfortable (like changing the lighting or the seating)? Do you notice and enjoy delicate or fine scents, tastes, sounds, works of art? Do you find yourself needing to withdraw during busy days, into bed or into a darkened room or any place?

Even the last item, that could be negative, is positively worded. The name the factor was given, “Aesthetic Sensitivity,”  was clearly a stretch. Conscientiousness?  

Now compare these 7 items to some of the items in the two other factors, which are negatively worded or about negative experiences:  

Some items from the “Ease of Excitation” factor:

Do you tend to be more sensitive to pain? Do you startle easily? Do you get rattled when you have a lot to do in a short amount of time? Are you annoyed when people try to get you to do too many things at once?Do you try hard to avoid making mistakes or forgetting things? 

Some items from the “Low Sensory Threshold” factor:

Are you easily overwhelmed by things like bright lights, strong smells, coarse fabrics, or sirens close by?Are you made uncomfortable by loud noises? Do you make a point to avoid violent movies and TV shows? Do you become unpleasantly aroused when a lot is going on around you?Are you bothered by intense stimuli, like loud noises or chaotic scenes?

Again, these two factors are actually hard to tell apart from their contents. They are simply about the negative side of being highly sensitive.

What Kinds of Problems Are Created by the Old Measure and its Three Sub-factors?

A key issue is what is measured by negatively worded items in general, compared to positively worded items. Given the original one-factor solution, I think it is safe to say that most HSPs experience all three factors—the positive and the negative side of being an HSP. Yet the impression has developed that the three factors represent different types of HSPs, and the ones answering high on Aesthetic Sensitivity (AES) are healthier in some way. But some people, some HSPs even, may answer more negatively worded items than another person for several reasons not directly about related to the items.

An HSP may want to be very honest and accurate, and not shirk the negative.  Indeed, a problem with questionnaires is that people often answer with a positive bias, putting a “rosy glow” on their answers.  HSPs probably do the opposite.They may have a personality that tends to see things more negatively, for whatever reason.  Perhaps they had a difficult childhood.Perhaps they were in a bad mood the day they took the test.Perhaps they are going through a difficult period in their lives.Maybe they are not even HSPs, but have problems going on that could cause them to answer some of these items like an HSP.

Another key problem is the issue of what correlates with these subfactors. Most research with measures looks for a statistical correlation between the score on the measure and something else. Score on a measure of impulsiveness and number of driving tickets.  Score on a measure of athletic interest and number of hours spent each week playing a sport.  A correlation means that when one thing is found, the other is often found.  They are associated.  That is all. But there is an important rule about correlation that even good researchers forget:  Correlation does not mean causation. Impulsiveness does not necessarily cause driving in an manner that gets you driving tickets.  If animals with longer legs run more, it can seem that long legs cause more running. (Or, less logical in this case, that running lengthens your legs.) But goats like to run and have relatively short legs. Lamas have long legs and do not seem to be big runners.  Often a third thing is the cause—breeding within a species to make for faster animals. Fast horses are useful so they have been bred for speed.  Fast goats or cows?  Not so much!

There is a tendency to think, for example, that if a person scores high on the HSP Scale and is often depressed, that being an HSP causes depression. But in fact we know that differential susceptibility is at work here. HSPs with good-enough childhoods are not prone to depression. The third thing is the quality of their childhood. But it turns out that the negatively worded factors of the old HSP Scale correlate more with depression, so it is often implied that people who score high on these factors are the ones who are more depressed.  There is not enough consideration of the five other reasons or “causes” I gave above about why people might score high on these factors.

You can see why creating our own six factors, with a balance of positive and negative factors and items, was necessary.  It not only avoids anyone else finding other, less accurate factors, but solves the “advertisement” problem by giving a complete picture of SPS, as we understand it so far, both positive and negative.  

Some Recent Studies Emphasizing the Three Sub-factors

I do not wish to be negative about these studies. They are just recent examples. There are probably 50 more like them. I just want you to get a sense of the problem.  I wish we had gotten the new measure out years ago, but a good measure takes time.  Meanwhile…

Golonka, K., & Gulla, B. (2021). Individual differences and susceptibility to burnout syndrome: Sensory processing sensitivity and its relation to exhaustion and disengagement.  Frontiers in psychology ,  12 , 751350.

This study of burnout surveyed 516 adult employees, 236 were women and the average age was 29. The sample consisted of employees in IT (26%) and financial businesses, with 10% of the participants in managerial positions.  Most worked full time and had completed higher education.  

Higher scores on the measure of SPS correlated with burnout symptoms, except that higher scores on the AES factor (which they renamed “sensing the subtle”) showed the opposite effect.  They said AES may be a protective factor against burnout.  The question is, what is the causation here, when someone answers higher on AES, with all of its positive items, and also answers that they are not experiencing much burnout.  Does having this wonderful protective factor keep you from developing burn out?  Or does not having burn out make you answer more positively?  Or is a third thing operating.  For example, if you understand you are highly sensitive, perhaps you view the trait more positively and also are able to take better care of yourself and avoid jobs or work situation that lead to burnout.

Iimura, S. (2021). Highly sensitive adolescents: The relationship between weekly life events and weekly socioemotional well‐being.  British Journal of Psychology ,  112 (4), 1103-1129.

This study looked at how 114 Japanese adolescents in Tokyo rated, over four weeks, two of their weekly life events and their well-being that week.  The relation of well-being and sensitivity varied from week to week, sometimes making it look like sensitivity led to lower well-being, and on other weeks like the sensitive adolescents gained more than others from positive experiences, an example of “vantage sensitivity.”  

The main part of the study did not look at the factors, which was good in a way.  But in a footnote the author made the extraordinary observation that when the results were reanalyzed using only the AES subscale, the findings for all weeks supported a strong vantage sensitivity model. Students scoring high on the AES factor were gaining more than students without the trait from their positive experiences.  The question of causation jumps out.  Were students scoring high on AES, the positively worded questions, more prone to seeing everything more positively?  Or were their experiences of the weekly events actually more positive, causing them to answer more items on the AES factor? Or could there be another possibility?  Maybe these sensitive adolescents were experiencing an especially supportive school or home life, so that they could find something good in most of their experiences and also answer more positively-worded items.

Maracineanu, I. G., & Truta, C. (2025). The Relationship between Well-Being and Hypersensitivity among Young Adults.  Bulletin of the Transylvania University of Braşov. Series VII: Social Sciences• Law , 43-52.

These authors looked at the well-being of young adults with “hypersensitivity,” and found that for the most part their well-being was lower. However, this was in fact true only for those high on the two negative factors.  The authors concluded that “People who have difficulty tolerating strong sensory stimuli are more prone to stress and discomfort, which can limit positive experiences.”  

The message is that difficulty with intense stimuli means missing out on positive experiences. But these “people who have difficulty tolerating strong sensory input” are all HSPs, not a separate kind of HSP.  They are probably having at least adequate positive experiences, this being a part of the trait. Yes, being high on the two negative factors was associated with lower well-being, whereas Aesthetic Sensitivity correlated with all of the positive measures in the study: Wellbeing, Positive emotions, Engagement, Good relationships, Finding Meaning in life, Accomplishment, and Happiness.  But of course Aesthetic Sensitivity was also correlated with the overall measure and the two negative factors, Ease of Excitation and Low Sensory Threshold.  That is, as I said before, these are not different groups of people.  Most HSP have all three factors operating and experience some well-being and some negative times–to different degrees, maybe, but we do not have to look for a special subset of HSPs who are miserable due to overstimulation so their positive experiences are limited.  Other issues, third causes, will be limiting their positive experiences, not their difficulty tolerating noise! 

Christou, A. I., Fanti, K., Mavrommatis, I., & Soursou, G. (2025). Parent–Child Eye Gaze Congruency to Emotional Expressions Mediated by Child Aesthetic Sensitivity.  Children .

You can see here the issue with the three factors in the very title of the study.  Children high on Aesthetic Sensitivity behaved differently from other HSCs, but the reasons were barely explored, and certainly not the issue of positive versus negative items.  They were simply the children, some special type of HSC according to the researchers, whom they chose to focus on.

A Few More Points About Measuring SPS

As we expected, while we slowly worked on the new measure and told the world that the old one had some limitations, others made new measures.  A pretty good one is by De Gucht, V., Woestenburg, D. H., & Wilderjans, T. F. (2022). The different faces of (high) sensitivity, toward a more comprehensive measurement instrument. Development and validation of the sensory processing sensitivity questionnaire (SPSQ). Journal of Personality Assessment, 104(6), 784-799. 

This measure aimed to capture more of the positive side of the trait.  But it is very long–43 items  And contains no items on depth of processing (what I consider the foundation of the trait). These are its six factors: Sensory Sensitivity to Subtle Internal and External Stimuli, Emotional and Physiological Reactivity, Sensory Discomfort, Sensory Comfort, Social-Affective Sensitivity, and Aesthetic Sensitivity. 

Another measure, originally in German, was created by Danièle Anne Gubler, Tobias Janelt, Marcus Roth, Katja Schlegel, Jasmin Guggisberg & Stefan Johannes Troche: (2025) The DOES Scale:  Measuring Sensory Processing Sensitivity as a Trait Constellation, Journal of Personality Assessment.

This measure has 20 items divided into the four DOES factors we always talk about. (Depth of processing, easily Overstimulated, strong Emotions/Empathy, and Sensitive to Subtle.) Thus, this measure leaves out what the new HSP-R includes, empathy as something separate from emotion and also positive sensory experiences.

I know there are quite a few other measures that people have made up, compensating for the fact that the old scale had a copyright that did not allow it to be used for anything but clinical or research purposes.  These made-up measures are questionable, of course, not having been validated in research studies.  But hopefully these will fade away. The new measure can be used on anyone’s website if they ask permission from Michael Pluess and print the references at the bottom of the pdf. The pdf is there on my website and on Michael’s, with what must be cited at the bottom. 

So that’s the measuring-SPS saga,  Remember, a questionnaire is not the trait.  Just a bunch of questions!

Part II:  HSPs and the Origin of Religion

Because this first half of my post was SO long, I will keep this “spiritual” half brief.  I thought you would find it interesting that there is a theory that HSPs played a major role in the origin of religion and spirituality. Two experts on the origin of religion, Margaret Rappaport and Christopher Corbally, cite the research on the trait of high sensitivity as support for their theory that the evolution of this trait in humans was a building block in the evolution of religion. In their article “Evolution of Religious Capacity in Genus Homo,” published in 2018 in Zygon (a peer-reviewed journal of science and religion), they suggest that religious feeling evolved out of compassion, and compassion must have three steps:  A certain perception of a situation, sensitivity to its meaning, and then decision making, deciding to act. Think of our six factors—empathy and depth of processing surely lead to compassion. The authors also reason that high sensitivity must have been, and still is, more often present in those who fill religious functions.  

This is all theory, not data, but the reasoning from the evidence satisfied the peer reviewers of the journal. And it makes sense. Another way to frame their ideas is that sensitivity to one’s world inevitably produces the “differential susceptibility” we are always talking about. HSPs are differentially susceptible to the entire world–more deeply affected by both the good events and people and the sad, ignorant, or simply difficult things. It seems that HSPs in particular may have always tended to see better when people were struggling and try to help, to celebrate the good in music and ritual, and to try to figure out where evil comes from.  We wondered why some people cheat, lie, or even murder, what human actions might affect disasters such as droughts or earthquakes, and of course what happens after death.  

Probably we HSPs have always craved to talk about all this, to explore it, while the majority of people gave it less thought. Until, according to these scholars, the rains failed, some tyrant tried to take over, or death came unexpectedly.  Then the majority would want to know what the more thoughtful and kind minority, those HSPs, had to say about it.  What did they think caused evil?  What did they do to avoid bad things happening to them or to manage how they felt afterwards?  Their answers may have been part of the rise of religion.

I’m not sure you need to read their article (actually, it is in three parts).  If you do bring it up using Google Scholar, you can use Control F to search for the word sensitivity.  It will give you a quick sense of how they think about it.  This is the full reference:

Rappaport, M. B., & Corbally, C. (2018). EVOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS CAPACITY IN THE GENUS HOMO: TRAIT COMPLEXITY IN ACTION THROUGH COMPASSION: with Margaret Boone Rappaport and Christopher Corbally,“Evolution of Religious Capacity in the Genus Homo: Origins and Building Blocks”; Margaret Boone Rappaport and Christopher Corbally,“Evolution of Religious Capacity in the Genus Homo: Cognitive Time Sequence”; and Margaret Boone Rappaport and Christopher Corbally,“Evolution of Religious Capacity in the Genus Homo: Trait Complexity in Action through …. Zygon®, 53(1), 198-239.

With my upcoming book, Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens: An Objective Look at Meditation Methods and Enlightenment (coming out this April), I’ll be sharing two parts in each blog post—the first will explore research, HSP news, and current insights, while the second will offer a more spiritual reflection and deeper inner perspective.  

Part I: Summary of Latest Interesting Research

HS Parents, “for Better and for Worse”

Lionetti, F., Spinelli, M., Bosmans, G., D’Urso, G., Fasolo, M., & Pluess, M. (2025). Is environmental sensitivity relevant to understand parenting? Observational studies with mothers of young children. Journal of Family Psychology,

When studies use self-report measures of parenting, HS parents often come out looking less competent, but these researchers wondered if the deeper processing of HS parents causes them to describe their own parenting as worse than observers might. To avoid that problem, two studies in Italy observed mothers with infants rather than asking them to describe in a questionnaire how they parent.  In the first study, HS mothers were a bit more intrusive when their infants were 3 months old and less intrusive than other parents at 9 months. That was the only difference observed. In the second study, HS mothers with a history of “Adverse Childhood Experiences” (ACEs) were found to be less attuned to their 3-month-old infants and more stressed. But in the same study HS mothers had more adaptive parental responses than others if they had higher physiological self-regulation, something on which HSPs can vary. In this study they looked at “respiratory sinus arrhythmia,” a good thing to have, in that it is a measure of the coordination of your heart and breathing, and similar to vagal tone, measured in this study, which I have also discussed: Moscardino, U., Scrimin, S., Lionetti, F., & Pluess, M. (2021). Environmental sensitivity and cardiac vagal tone as moderators of the relationship between family support and well-being in low SES children: An exploratory study. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, [link]

That is, high sensitivity was not directly related to worse parenting, but rather it made mothers more receptive to environmental (ACEs) and inner physiological factors, for better and for worse. 

Bottom Line: Understanding HS parents is complicated because they may differ from other parents in systematic ways when they are asked to fill out a questionnaire about how they parent. Additionally, differential susceptibility enters in—with poor childhoods they may parent worse than others. But certain physiological factors looked at in this study, among many other things, may make them better than others at parenting. 

HSPs Flourish When Connected To Nature

Carroll, S., O’Brien, A., Lionetti, F., O’Reilly, A., & Setti, A. (2025). Flourishing as a highly sensitive person: a mixed method study on the role of nature connectedness and chaotic home environment.  Frontiers in Psychology ,  16 , 1480669.

Here is yet another study of how HSPs do better if connected to nature, this time with 856 participants over 40,  surveyed for their level of  SPS (high means being an HSP), “flourishing,” current chaos in the home, and nature connectedness. Flourishing was positively associated with nature connectedness and age and negatively with higher SPS. But if you were over 50, nature connectedness increased the chances of flourishing if you were an HSPs, while it did not affect how chaos affected HSPs. When 12 participants were interviewed, they reported significant benefits from nature.  The authors conclude that, “overall, the results showed that connecting with nature significantly contributes to flourishing in highly sensitive individuals, particularly in middle to older age.”

Bottom Line: Again and again we see, get out in nature if you want to flourish! The older you get, the more true it is.

 

Part II: Belief Versus Actual Experience:

What It Takes

In these blog posts on the transcendent, I would like to provide you with something factual and something practical. I will start with facts. According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2024, 86% of adults living in the U.S. believe people have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical body, 83% believe in God or a universal spirit, and 79% believe there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we can’t see it.  This is all less true for atheists or agnostics, of course, but still, even many of them agree with these statements. And all of this is about the same globally. Further, I suspect HSPs are at the high end, above 86%. You do not need much from me on these topics.

Belief in the West, Actual Experience Coming from the East

Still, all of that is about belief. What about experience? Western spiritual teaching tends to be more about ideas and words in the form of sermons, books, and prayers, and then you believe in those ideas.  Eastern teachings focus much more on the experience of the transcendent—experiences of pure being, the Absolute, God (in Vedanta, not Buddhism). Their sermons, books, and prayers mostly aim to foster that experience. The experience itself is sought and repeatedly experienced until it becomes permanent, sometimes described as nirvana or liberation.

You, however, may have already had some powerful experiences. Roughly half of those polled in the U.S. say they have had a “mystical” experience, and a few have said it has transformed their lives permanently, in which case researchers called it a “spiritually transformative experience.” So it seems to be human nature. And again, these experiences may be even more common among HSPs. 

However, in the West, slipping from ordinary life into a permanently transformed state is very rare.  Eastern teachings, in contrast, emphasize that almost anyone can do it, through slow, consistent brain changes, using meditation and related practices, such as yoga.  

About 17 to 20% of people in the U.S. do yoga or meditate. I suspect that the percentage would be higher among HSPs. I certainly have encouraged HSPs to try meditation, to help them regulate their emotions, recover from or prevent overstimulation, and generally stay calm. Those who meditate and do yoga say it improves their well-being in a variety of ways, but I doubt many are thinking about its original purpose, awakening or enlightenment. (Yoga in the sense of bodily poses was meant to enhance meditation.) That may be one reason why, although I cannot find any data on how many people meditate consistently, every day, my impression is that most do not. Or they begin and then after a few months quit entirely. So perhaps this is something I can help with.  

The Reason You Need Consistent Practice

Before considering the reasons people stop, perhaps it would help to see why one might regret it later.  There is a huge body of research on the benefits of meditation, from making you more effective in your work to slowing down the aging process–but all these benefits require consistent practice, and they accumulate over years. This is due to neuroplasticity, that whatever we do consistently changes the brain in that direction. Our mind gets used to the state created by meditation and begins to learn how to stay in it when we are not meditating. It cannot learn that, however, unless we consistently go there.  As Transcendental Meditation teachers like to say, you dip the cloth in the dye (the inner experience), then fade it in the sun, until eventually it no longer fades. 

With that in mind, I think the flaws in the logic of the reasons for stopping meditation become clearer.

The Reasons People Say They Stop

First, “It took too much time.” Really, “too much”? Everything valuable takes some time. It is a question of priorities. If you have children, you make time for them. If you want a garden, you take time to tend to it. (One term Buddha used for meditation was “cultivation,” in that it takes time to cultivate a mind.) If you want major permanent improvement in your brain, you take time for it. And often one finds one’s life becomes more efficient, so that you may have less time for work, yet accomplish more when you are doing it. Less time for “fun things,” but find them more fun.

As an example of just one study of the effects of meditation on the brain, Luders, Cherbuin, and Kurth in 2015 published research in Frontiers in Psychology finding that while the human brain begins deteriorating after the first two decades of life, in their study of 100 long-term meditators (age 24-77 years), using various types of meditation, the decline (looking at grey matter in this case) was much more limited than in a matched control group. Isn’t it worth it, long-term, to have your brain intact?

Second, “I wasn’t good at it.” This response always makes me sad. Since meditation came to the West, a great deal has been learned about how to teach it. Basically, everyone can learn to meditate. It is not difficult. Indeed, it should feel effortless. But teachers do vary in how well they teach. If you do not find your meditation easy, find a new method or a new teacher.

A common problem is that being used to working hard to make progress, meditators often work at meditating well too. Often new meditators will hear about others’ experiences and start comparing themselves. Teachers sometimes encourage this, but if you know you are meditating correctly, try to avoid comparing yourself. Your brain is unique with unique needs.

Or new meditators will have a very deep, fulfilling experience and then try to make that happen again.  But every meditation is different. And when they fail to recreate that special moment, they start straining and then they have a “bad” meditation. A few of those and they feel they are not good at meditating. Certain advanced Buddhist practices do require some effort, but not strain. When you start thinking you are bad at meditating, revisit your teacher to be reminded about how to meditate and how well you are doing.

Third, “I didn’t get much from it.” Here the problem is having the wrong expectations. Again, meditation works gradually on the whole brain, and the real purpose is a total transformation, sometimes called enlightenment. Specific problems such as insomnia or anxiety may not be immediately fixed. You have to give it time, preferably at least a year. And the changes you notice may not be the ones you expected, but just as good, such as improvements in relationships because you are a kinder, calmer person after your daily meditation. 

All of this is not meant as a sermon or lecture. Please understand that. I want you to decide for yourself about meditation and everything else “spiritual.” I simply want you to be well informed when you decide. (That is the sole purpose of my book coming out in the spring, Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens.)

As usual, Part I of this blog post summarizes the latest interesting research. There are only two studies this time, but the first is an especially good one.  The second just adds emphasis.  Part II is about something more “spiritual,” related to my current interest and upcoming book, Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens.

Part I: Summary of Latest Interesting Research

HS Parents, “for Better and for Worse”

Lionetti, F., Spinelli, M., Bosmans, G., D’Urso, G., Fasolo, M., & Pluess, M. (2025). Is environmental sensitivity relevant to understand parenting? Observational studies with mothers of young children. Journal of Family Psychology,

When studies use self-report measures of parenting, HS parents often come out looking less competent, but these researchers wondered if the deeper processing of HS parents causes them to describe their own parenting as worse than observers might. To avoid that problem, two studies in Italy observed mothers with infants rather than asking them to describe in a questionnaire how they parent.  In the first study, HS mothers were a bit more intrusive when their infants were 3 months old and less intrusive than other parents at 9 months. That was the only difference observed. In the second study, HS mothers with a history of “Adverse Childhood Experiences” (ACEs) were found to be less attuned to their 3-month-old infants and more stressed. But in the same study HS mothers had more adaptive parental responses than others if they had higher physiological self-regulation, something on which HSPs can vary. In this study they looked at “respiratory sinus arrhythmia,” a good thing to have, in that it is a measure of the coordination of your heart and breathing, and similar to vagal tone, measured in this study, which I have also discussed: Moscardino, U., Scrimin, S., Lionetti, F., & Pluess, M. (2021). Environmental sensitivity and cardiac vagal tone as moderators of the relationship between family support and well-being in low SES children: An exploratory study. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, [link]

That is, high sensitivity was not directly related to worse parenting, but rather it made mothers more receptive to environmental (ACEs) and inner physiological factors, for better and for worse. 

Bottom Line: Understanding HS parents is complicated because they may differ from other parents in systematic ways when they are asked to fill out a questionnaire about how they parent. Additionally, differential susceptibility enters in—with poor childhoods they may parent worse than others. But certain physiological factors looked at in this study, among many other things, may make them better than others at parenting. 

HSPs Flourish When Connected To Nature

Carroll, S., O’Brien, A., Lionetti, F., O’Reilly, A., & Setti, A. (2025). Flourishing as a highly sensitive person: a mixed method study on the role of nature connectedness and chaotic home environment.  Frontiers in Psychology ,  16 , 1480669.

Here is yet another study of how HSPs do better if connected to nature, this time with 856 participants over 40,  surveyed for their level of  SPS (high means being an HSP), “flourishing,” current chaos in the home, and nature connectedness. Flourishing was positively associated with nature connectedness and age and negatively with higher SPS. But if you were over 50, nature connectedness increased the chances of flourishing if you were an HSPs, while it did not affect how chaos affected HSPs. When 12 participants were interviewed, they reported significant benefits from nature.  The authors conclude that, “overall, the results showed that connecting with nature significantly contributes to flourishing in highly sensitive individuals, particularly in middle to older age.”

Bottom Line: Again and again we see, get out in nature if you want to flourish! The older you get, the more true it is.

Part II: Belief Versus Actual Experience:

What It Takes

In these blog posts on the transcendent, I would like to provide you with something factual and something practical. I will start with facts. According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2024, 86% of adults living in the U.S. believe people have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical body, 83% believe in God or a universal spirit, and 79% believe there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we can’t see it.  This is all less true for atheists or agnostics, of course, but still, even many of them agree with these statements. And all of this is about the same globally. Further, I suspect HSPs are at the high end, above 86%. You do not need much from me on these topics.

Belief in the West, Actual Experience Coming from the East

Still, all of that is about belief. What about experience? Western spiritual teaching tends to be more about ideas and words in the form of sermons, books, and prayers, and then you believe in those ideas.  Eastern teachings focus much more on the experience of the transcendent—experiences of pure being, the Absolute, God (in Vedanta, not Buddhism). Their sermons, books, and prayers mostly aim to foster that experience. The experience itself is sought and repeatedly experienced until it becomes permanent, sometimes described as nirvana or liberation.

You, however, may have already had some powerful experiences. Roughly half of those polled in the U.S. say they have had a “mystical” experience, and a few have said it has transformed their lives permanently, in which case researchers called it a “spiritually transformative experience.” So it seems to be human nature. And again, these experiences may be even more common among HSPs. 

However, in the West, slipping from ordinary life into a permanently transformed state is very rare.  Eastern teachings, in contrast, emphasize that almost anyone can do it, through slow, consistent brain changes, using meditation and related practices, such as yoga.  

About 17 to 20% of people in the U.S. do yoga or meditate. I suspect that the percentage would be higher among HSPs. I certainly have encouraged HSPs to try meditation, to help them regulate their emotions, recover from or prevent overstimulation, and generally stay calm. Those who meditate and do yoga say it improves their well-being in a variety of ways, but I doubt many are thinking about its original purpose, awakening or enlightenment. (Yoga in the sense of bodily poses was meant to enhance meditation.) That may be one reason why, although I cannot find any data on how many people meditate consistently, every day, my impression is that most do not. Or they begin and then after a few months quit entirely. So perhaps this is something I can help with.  

The Reason You Need Consistent Practice

Before considering the reasons people stop, perhaps it would help to see why one might regret it later.  There is a huge body of research on the benefits of meditation, from making you more effective in your work to slowing down the aging process–but all these benefits require consistent practice, and they accumulate over years. This is due to neuroplasticity, that whatever we do consistently changes the brain in that direction. Our mind gets used to the state created by meditation and begins to learn how to stay in it when we are not meditating. It cannot learn that, however, unless we consistently go there.  As Transcendental Meditation teachers like to say, you dip the cloth in the dye (the inner experience), then fade it in the sun, until eventually it no longer fades. 

With that in mind, I think the flaws in the logic of the reasons for stopping meditation become clearer.

The Reasons People Say They Stop

First, “It took too much time.” Really, “too much”? Everything valuable takes some time. It is a question of priorities. If you have children, you make time for them. If you want a garden, you take time to tend to it. (One term Buddha used for meditation was “cultivation,” in that it takes time to cultivate a mind.) If you want major permanent improvement in your brain, you take time for it. And often one finds one’s life becomes more efficient, so that you may have less time for work, yet accomplish more when you are doing it. Less time for “fun things,” but find them more fun.

As an example of just one study of the effects of meditation on the brain, Luders, Cherbuin, and Kurth in 2015 published research in Frontiers in Psychology finding that while the human brain begins deteriorating after the first two decades of life, in their study of 100 long-term meditators (age 24-77 years), using various types of meditation, the decline (looking at grey matter in this case) was much more limited than in a matched control group. Isn’t it worth it, long-term, to have your brain intact?

Second, “I wasn’t good at it.” This response always makes me sad. Since meditation came to the West, a great deal has been learned about how to teach it. Basically, everyone can learn to meditate. It is not difficult. Indeed, it should feel effortless. But teachers do vary in how well they teach. If you do not find your meditation easy, find a new method or a new teacher.

A common problem is that being used to working hard to make progress, meditators often work at meditating well too. Often new meditators will hear about others’ experiences and start comparing themselves. Teachers sometimes encourage this, but if you know you are meditating correctly, try to avoid comparing yourself. Your brain is unique with unique needs.

Or new meditators will have a very deep, fulfilling experience and then try to make that happen again.  But every meditation is different. And when they fail to recreate that special moment, they start straining and then they have a “bad” meditation. A few of those and they feel they are not good at meditating. Certain advanced Buddhist practices do require some effort, but not strain. When you start thinking you are bad at meditating, revisit your teacher to be reminded about how to meditate and how well you are doing.

Third, “I didn’t get much from it.” Here the problem is having the wrong expectations. Again, meditation works gradually on the whole brain, and the real purpose is a total transformation, sometimes called enlightenment. Specific problems such as insomnia or anxiety may not be immediately fixed. You have to give it time, preferably at least a year. And the changes you notice may not be the ones you expected, but just as good, such as improvements in relationships because you are a kinder, calmer person after your daily meditation. 

All of this is not meant as a sermon or lecture. Please understand that. I want you to decide for yourself about meditation and everything else “spiritual.” I simply want you to be well informed when you decide. (That is the sole purpose of my book coming out in the spring, Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens.)

This is the third time I have tried this—beginning with a report of some of the latest research, and then in the second part exploring something “Spiritual.” Here are the five studies I selected for Part I. There were others—more and more research is being published on HSPs. But I thought readers would gain the most from these.

CLARIFYING SPS, AUTISM, AND ADHD–AND MUCH MORE

Damatac, C. G., ter Avest, M. J., Wilderjans, T. F., De Gucht, V., Woestenburg, D. H., Landeweerd, L., … & Greven, C. U. (2025). Exploring sensory processing sensitivity: Relationships with mental and somatic health, interactions with positive and negative environments, and evidence for differential susceptibility.  Current Research in Behavioral Sciences ,  8 , 100165.

We are often asked about the relationship between Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and SPS as well as its relation to Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD). This complicated, ambitious study looked at both these issues as well as differential susceptibility to mental and physical health and life satisfaction. In case you get mired down in the details, here is what you probably most want to know: This study did not find that overall the measures they used for autism, ADHD, and SPS were all measuring something similar. However, factors within the measures overlap. That is, there is an overlap in some areas but not all. That is, some of the same people answer yes to items on two or three of the measures.

The participants were 252 adults from the Netherlands’ Healthy Brain Study, which includes 1000 persons selected to be a good representation of the larger population, except all are aged 30–39 years (in the midst of life, past thresholds like marriage, first child, and first job). They filled out several measures, but most important for us, they took De Gucht’s measure of SPS, involving six factors. These are similar to the HSP-R’s six factors, except the De Gucht measure (the Sensory Processing Questionnaire or SPSQ) does not include depth of processing. To make sense of the rest of the study, you need to know what these six are:  Sensory Sensitivity to Subtle Internal and External Stimuli, Emotional and Physiological Reactivity, Sensory Discomfort, Sensory Comfort/Pleasure, Social-Affective Sensitivity, and Esthetic Sensitivity. (Clearly this is very similar to the revised HSP Scale, the HSP-R.)

Importantly, there was no statistically significant association between De Gucht’s overall measure of SPS and the six-item ADHD measure or the longer measure of ASD. That is, this study does not support the idea that SPS is simply either ASD or ADHD. There were however associations between SPS, ASD, and ADHD on some SPS factors: “Sensory sensitivities” and “emotional and physiological reactivity” from the new measure and “ease of overstimulation” from the old HSP Scale are features that high SPS, ASD, and ADHD have in common. That is, these specific traits or experiences are common for all three to some degree, which is why they can seem to be the same trait if one only looks at being easily overstimulated. 

As for ASD in particular, among the subscales of the ASD measure (which were attention to detail, childhood behavior onset, limited imagination, limited social skills, and rigidity), “limited imagination” was especially not associated with SPS and among the SPS factors, “sensory comfort” and “social affective sensitivity” were not associated with ADS. That is, these are ways SPS is not like ASD. Regarding ADHD, only the “inattention” aspect of that measure had small associations with subscales of SPS, mainly, again, “higher emotional and physiological reactivity.”

The study also tried to look at both positive and negative environments, in childhood and in the present, in order to continue to understand differential susceptibility, the tendency for HSPs to be more affected than others by both good and bad environments.  As expected, HSPs with positive histories and present situations reported more life satisfaction than those without the trait, while those with negative histories and present situations were more likely to have autistic traits (that is, they answered yes to more items on the ASD measure).

An odd result was that HSPs who had more of what were called “uplifting” events during a given week were more likely to exhibit autistic traits!  But most of these uplifting events were very stimulating: Relating well with your spouse or lover; relating well with friends; completing a task; eating out; visiting, phoning, or writing someone; or spending time with family.  These all could be a source of overstimulation and increase emotional and physiological reactivity, an SPSQ subscale correlated with autistic traits. My guess is that by the time an HSP has been “uplifted” by some of these, they will want to withdraw, as measured by items on the autism scale such as “not liking parties” or “not liking having your daily routine disturbed.” I think the point is that it can be difficult to find the right measures of positive outcomes for HSPs—what is “uplifting” for others may not be for us.

The authors also looked at health, and found that higher SPS related to more burnout, anxiety, depression, stress, health complaints, and nonprescription medication use, even after controlling for neuroticism.  However, other studies I have cited [link to that blog https://hsperson.com/are-highly-sensi... ]indicate that stress may be the main underlying cause of health complaints in HSPs, but this study did not separate out stress. 

This is a complicated study, and I am sure I have not done it justice.  But it is a fine example of what is to come in research with SPS—for example, more teasing out of the differences among ASD, ADHD, and SPS, and more detailed studies of differential susceptibility.

Bottom Line:  Again, this study did not find that overall measures of autism, attention deficit disorder, and SPS were correlated.  That is, SPS did not appear to be the same as either trait.  However, factors within the measures did correlate with SPS.  That is, there is an overlap in some areas but not all.  And if an HSP had a negative history, or too many “uplifting” experiences in a week, they scored higher on some aspects of the measure of ASD. (And remember, it is possible to be an HSP AND in addition to having ASD or ADHD.)  But they are not one, single trait or condition.

HIGHLY SENSITIVE ADOLESCENTS FEEL MORE PHYSICAL PAIN THAN OTHERS

Hochreuter, J., Wehrli, S., Locher, C., Lionetti, F., Kossowsky, J., Pluess, M., & Koechlin, H. (2025). Painfully Sensitive: How Sensory Processing Sensitivity Affects Healthy Adolescents’ Perception of Pain.  Journal of Pain Research , 719-733.

A hundred healthy adolescents, aged 16 to 19, completed questionnaires and participated in an experimental heat pain paradigm.  As a direct measure of pain, participants were asked to raise the intensity of the heat on their hand until it became “painful,” and then to stop. How high that level was and how  long it took to reach that level was the direct measure of pain.  This was done three times, and after each time all participants were asked to report how painful the whole thing had been, from zero to ten.  Highly sensitive adolescents were more sensitive to pain than others as measured during the procedure itself,  However, they did not report experiencing more pain than others.  

In another part of the experiment, all participants were shown photos intended to make them happy, sad, or neutral, to see if this affected their experience of the pain, but these had little impact on any participants (the authors realized the photos they used were so dated—puppies, birthday cakes, snakes, auto accidents—that they were not likely to affect any modern adolescent!).  Finally, the authors used questionnaires to look at the quality of parenting these teenagers were receiving, their social support, and their emotional regulation.  None of this had very much effect on any participants’ experience of pain, even HSCs. That is, regardless of other factors, HSCs  simply physically felt more pain.  

Bottom Line:  I repeat, HSPs, at least in adolescence, seem to be more sensitive physically to pain, even if they do not report it.  (This makes me think of the many HSPs who have told me that they know they are more sensitive to pain than others are, but are not very inclined to admit to it—that is, complain about it. How many times have we been told “Don’t be so sensitive?  It’s nothing.  It’s all in your head!”)

HARDLY “BREAKING NEWS”: GOING TO THE DENTIST IS MORE STRESSFUL FOR HSPS

Golonka, K., Gulla, B., Kościelniak, D., Darczuk, D., Cienkosz-Stepanczak, B., Bystrowska, B., … & Krzyściak, W. (2025). Sensory processing sensitivity in adult dental patients and its relation to perceived stress, cortisol, and serotonin secretion.  Scientific Reports ,  15 (1), 1-14.

This study looked at 157 adult dental patients on the day of a routine dental visit. Patients took the HSP Scale, a measure of feeling stressed, and one of positive and negative emotions, plus various biochemical tests. The higher the patient’s score on the HSP Scale, the more they reported feeling stressed and having negative emotions, plus they had higher levels of cortisol (a sign of stress) accumulated over the last few months as measured by hair samples. The authors saw various reasons why this would be so and suggested some effort could be made to help HSPs during dental appointments. 

Okay, I will make this personal.  Thank goodness and amen.  For me, going to the dentist has always involved stress, how much depends on what is being done and the kindness of the dentist.  To keep the stress from ruining my life for weeks in advance of the appointment, I learned not to think about it until the day I was going.  And I have always taken crazy care of my teeth to avoid anything difficult. But just getting my teeth cleaned is painful.  (It is not painful for my non-HSP husband, who falls asleep during teeth cleaning).  The last time I had my teeth cleaned I took two acetaminophens beforehand and it actually helped.  I’m not saying you should. It was probably just a placebo effect.  But the big point is, if going to the dentist bothers you, it’s probably your sensitivity—to pain, to anxiety about the condition of your teeth, to fear of criticism for not taking proper care of your teeth, and all the rest.  Once again, high sensitivity explains us to ourselves.

Bottom Line:  Especially given that HSPs are usually physically more sensitive to pain (see above), it might not be surprising that going to the dentist makes them nervous.

HSPS MAY BE ABLE TO ACHIEVE A BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE THAN OTHERS WHEN DEALING WITH CHRONIC ILLNESS

Bakhshayesh Eghbali, B., Hosseini-Nejad, M., Saadat, S., Babaee, M., Eyvani, K., Kohandel, K., & Shabani Chobe, M. (2025). The Role of Sensory Processing Sensitivity and Self-management on Quality of Life in Multiple Sclerosis.  Caspian Journal of Neurological Sciences ,  11 (1), 67-76.

This study provides a sense of how being highly sensitive can actually help a person living with a serious illness.  Multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms lead to all sorts of impairments that predict limitations, unemployment, and withdrawal from social and leisure activities.  This study used questionnaires to measure SPS, health related quality of life, and “self-management.”  These were given to 320 “relapsing-remitting” MS patients registered in the nationwide MS registry of Iran.  

I found self-management an interesting concept.  It refers to how much a person actively copes with a chronic illness through, for example, adherence to treatment and medication, participation in medical decisions, self-care, maintaining social relationships, and keeping one’s emotional balance.  That is, it is learning and using the skills necessary for an active life and a satisfactory mental state while living with a chronic disease.  The measure tapped five areas of self-management, including communication with health care providers, treatment adherence, knowledge of MS, and overall health maintenance behavior.  

The findings showed that the quality of life in people with MS was higher if they were highly sensitive and if they scored high on self-management.  They did not report the correlation between the two, but I would guess it is high.  They studied SPS because they thought people who are more aware of sensations in their bodies might manage their illness better, and if being overstimulated bothers them, that they might be better at reducing it and thus improving their well-being.  But we know HSPs would also process everything about the illness more deeply, which would certainly lead to better self-management.  I hope someone repeats this research looking at other long-term illnesses, to see if being an HSP improves outcome.

Bottom Line:  This opens a new avenue of research, into whether and how HSPs might be better patients, by paying more attention to their bodies, to professional advice, to details about any illness they are dealing with, and to their own individual needs.

ONCE AGAIN—HSPS BENEFIT MORE THAN OTHERS FROM BEING CONNECTED WITH NATURE

Wigley, I. C. M., Nazzari, S., Pastore, M., Provenzi, L., & Barello, S. (2025). The contribution of environmental sensitivity and connectedness to nature to mental health: Does nature view count?.  Journal of Environmental Psychology ,  102 , 102541.

This is yet one more study about HSPs benefiting from being in nature—in this case, living with a view of nature (trees, a garden, or a park)).  In a sample of 807 Italian citizens, it was found that those high on the measure of SPS were more at risk of reporting symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression, but feeling connected with nature reduced this risk for them in particular.  Being connected with nature was of course associated with exposure to nature, so this study tested whether, particularly for HSPs, having a view of nature would have this same positive effect on connectedness with nature and on mental health, and it did. That is, routine, daily visual exposure to nature appeared to enhance the feeling of connection to nature, particularly among HSPs, thereby mitigating the risk of psychological distress. 

Bottom Line: Most HSPs know this very well, but the research continues to show it:  Feeling connected to nature really helps us, and we learn from this study that just being able to see it in our daily lives can do that.  So try to make it a priority to live or work, preferably both, where you have a view of nature.  And while they did not study it, having plants in your house or pets, even goldfish, may help too!

 

Part II

The Container and the Contained

Have you ever thought (at any age)  that you are getting older but something in you is not?  That you are really the same person you have always been? 

Have you ever felt like you were witnessing yourself in a situation?  That you were not the “doer”? 

Who is that person that does not change, and the one that can witness without participating?  This is a huge subject, but let’s take on a piece of it.

In the second half of recent newsletter blogs I have been addressing “spiritual” topics, I guess in the classical sense of spiritual as opposed to material, since I began by writing about the possibility of experiencing two aspects to life, the relative and the absolute or transcendent.  In the second blog, I simplified matters by talking about expansion and contraction.  Even forgetting about anything absolute, we all know that there are expanded and contracted mental states. There is nothing wrong with contracted states.  We contract or constrict our awareness when we focus.  If you want to speak more philosophically (HSPs usually like to), ultimately, everything in the relative, material world is contracted in the sense it is one aspect of the whole.  Being expanded is when we relax those constrictions and see the bigger picture or enjoy some rest.

In this blog post I want to talk about these two aspects of life in a different way, the container and what it contains.  

The Contained?  What’s That?

As always, I hope to be both factual and practical. By the “container” I mean our body, but we can extend that to everything else in the relative that “belongs to us”–our name, history, education, career, family.  All that is ours.  But the body is so central, because it at least seems that without a body, especially without a brain, everything else goes. We may forget, ignore, or deny our physical vulnerability until we get seriously sick or are caused to notice that we are aging.  (I secretly think there’s something mean about those birthday cards that make jokes of our adding another year.)

I am sure all of you view death and what does or does not remain after death in very different ways.  Some of you are already yawning–you totally believe in an afterlife.  Maybe reincarnation.  But others of you are already annoyed, that I would even bring it up.  When we die, everything goes. How is it factual or practical even to discuss it?

The Factual

True, it seems that just as most people only know about the relative and not the absolute field of life, most people only know about the relative container, the body, and completely identify with that. Yet the fact is that a vast number of people think they have a soul or spirit that lives on after death. Some people feel they have experienced it during a near-death experience.  The research on these experiences is quite solid and substantial (e.g., the work of Bruce Greyson).  Many say they have experienced visitations by a loved one who had died and was able to come back to speak to them or show them some sign of their presence. Further, every single religion (even Judaism) has some idea of the soul or spirit living on, reincarnating into a new body or eternally living in a place where the soul goes after death. 

Those are the facts of countless human experiences, and it can be hard to believe that so many are simply wrong–except you and me.  I’m saying “you and me” because I’ve never been sure what I believe about all of this.  (A friend who is certain about reincarnation teased me that it was my karma to be born with the burden of not believing I would be reincarnated.)  One practical part of the container plus contained perspective is that it really does change how you live your life if you are certain that death does not end it. 

But forgetting about the question of whether something survives death, some people I really respect have no doubt that the body is the container of something more. Indeed it seems to me that all spiritual teachers and writers have discussed it. For example, I like Thomas Merton on the subject of the “individual,” which our culture relentlessly encourages us to develop, to “self-actualize,” and the “person” God means for us to be, which we can only know when we let go of the outer trappings of ourselves and our lives and seek to do God’s will and to know God’s love.  

Then there is Ram Dass, that jolly, charming author of Be Here Now, who had a stroke in his sixties and then wrote Still Here to explore for us the issue of aging and death, using his personal experience.

The Practical

While I am not sure about life after death, like Ram Dass I know about life now.  After fifty years of consistent meditation practice and eighty years of living in my body, I have the clear experience of my body being the container of something else, a witness to it all, or the Soul as Ram Dass calls it.  This is not a belief, but an experience, and it is extremely practical. The experience can be overwhelmed for a time by something like being in chronic pain, a new scary diagnosis of something, or losing another activity that I once enjoyed. But that “this-is-it” feeling does not last. Without much of an effort, the transcendent–the Soul, the Great Whatever–prevails.  I just feel this equanimity return.  It is something big, boundless.  And I can tell that it is due to my not identifying with my body or its changes very much.  I am something else.  Again, it is not a belief or attitude. I experienced that. And it certainly makes aging and illness less difficult, so far.

Here’s another practical story:  I turned to Ram Dass after reading the transcript of an interview with Riyas Motan on “Buddha at the Gas Pump” (one of my favorite podcasts). Riyas was born in Kenya, of Indian ancestry, and while working as a psychotherapist, privately pursued a spiritual path until he had a permanent “awakening.”  This eventually led to his being given “dharma transmission” by one of his spiritual teachers, Adyashanti.  This meant he was considered evolved enough to teach others, so in a way it was the pinnacle of his life.  But four months later, this very health-conscious, spiritual man learned he had fourth stage, probably terminal lung cancer, and was plunged into the treatment for that. 

Adjusting to this extreme change in his life demanded that he use his spiritual life as never before to come to a place of not just acceptance, but growth.  After much inner work he says he is actually grateful for the cancer, saying that it “happened not to him, but for him.”  

That line really caught my attention.  He was quoting Ram Dass, who felt the same about his stroke, which left this dynamic man in a wheelchair and able to speak only very slowly.  How does one get to that place of feeling this is the best thing that could have happened to me?  Not easily, when you live in a culture that focuses entirely on the body and its health, as if that is all you are.  But Ram Dass has a lot to say about undoing that perspective in his Still Here.  And it comes down to finding a way to get to know the difference between the container and what it contains.  Of course the container, the body, is important. The contained must have a container.  But how many of us really know the contained?  Really can identify with it?  

How to get there is another subject, so complex that it led me to spend five years researching and writing a book about it, Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens. It will be published next spring, but in the meantime I hope these blogs will give you some ideas. It is always, in the end, a very personal journey to reach a place like that of Thomas Merton, Riyas Motan, or Ram Das.  But I wanted to make it clear that it can be done. By anyone.

This is the third time I have tried this—beginning with a report of some of the latest research, and then in the second part exploring something “Spiritual.” Here are the five studies I selected for Part I. There were others—more and more research is being published on HSPs. But I thought readers would gain the most from these.

CLARIFYING SPS, AUTISM, AND ADHD–AND MUCH MORE

Damatac, C. G., ter Avest, M. J., Wilderjans, T. F., De Gucht, V., Woestenburg, D. H., Landeweerd, L., … & Greven, C. U. (2025). Exploring sensory processing sensitivity: Relationships with mental and somatic health, interactions with positive and negative environments, and evidence for differential susceptibility.  Current Research in Behavioral Sciences ,  8 , 100165.

We are often asked about the relationship between Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and SPS as well as its relation to Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD). This complicated, ambitious study looked at both these issues as well as differential susceptibility to mental and physical health and life satisfaction. In case you get mired down in the details, here is what you probably most want to know: This study did not find that overall the measures they used for autism, ADHD, and SPS were measuring something similar. However, factors within the measures overlap. That is, there is an overlap in some areas but not all. Some of the same people answer yes to items on two or three of the measures.

The participants were 252 adults from the Netherlands’ Healthy Brain Study, which includes 1000 persons selected to be a good representation of the larger population, except all are aged 30–39 years (in the midst of life, past thresholds like marriage, first child, and first job). They filled out several measures, but most important for us, they took De Gucht’s measure of SPS, involving six factors. These are similar to the HSP-R’s six factors, except the De Gucht measure (the Sensory Processing Questionnaire or SPSQ) does not include depth of processing. To make sense of the rest of the study, you need to know what these six are:  Sensory Sensitivity to Subtle Internal and External Stimuli, Emotional and Physiological Reactivity, Sensory Discomfort, Sensory Comfort/Pleasure, Social-Affective Sensitivity, and Esthetic Sensitivity. (Clearly this is very similar to the revised HSP Scale, the HSP-R.)

Importantly, there was no statistically significant association between De Gucht’s overall measure of SPS and the six-item ADHD measure or the longer measure of ASD. That is, this study does not support the idea that SPS is simply either ASD or ADHD. There were however associations between SPS, ASD, and ADHD on some SPS factors: “Sensory sensitivities” and “emotional and physiological reactivity” from the new measure and “ease of overstimulation” from the old HSP Scale are features that high SPS, ASD, and ADHD have in common. That is, these specific traits or experiences are common for all three to some degree, which is why they can seem to be the same trait if one only looks at being easily overstimulated. 

As for ASD in particular, among the subscales of the ASD measure (which were attention to detail, childhood behavior onset, limited imagination, limited social skills, and rigidity), “limited imagination” was especially not associated with SPS and among the SPS factors, “sensory comfort” and “social affective sensitivity” were not associated with ADS. That is, these are ways SPS is not like ASD. Regarding ADHD, only the “inattention” aspect of that measure had small associations with subscales of SPS, mainly, again, “higher emotional and physiological reactivity.”

The study also tried to look at both positive and negative environments, in childhood and in the present, in order to continue to understand differential susceptibility, the tendency for HSPs to be more affected than others by both good and bad environments.  As expected, HSPs with positive histories and present situations reported more life satisfaction than those without the trait, while those with negative histories and present situations were more likely to have autistic traits (that is, they answered yes to more items on the ASD measure).

An odd result was that HSPs who had more of what were called “uplifting” events during a given week were more likely to exhibit autistic traits!  But most of these uplifting events were very stimulating: Relating well with your spouse or lover; relating well with friends; completing a task; eating out; visiting, phoning, or writing someone; or spending time with family.  These all could be a source of overstimulation and increase emotional and physiological reactivity, an SPSQ subscale correlated with autistic traits. My guess is that by the time an HSP has been “uplifted” by some of these, they will want to withdraw, as measured by items on the autism scale such as “not liking parties” or “not liking having your daily routine disturbed.” I think the point is that it can be difficult to find the right measures of positive outcomes for HSPs—what is “uplifting” for others may not be for us.

The authors also looked at health, and found that higher SPS related to more burnout, anxiety, depression, stress, health complaints, and nonprescription medication use, even after controlling for neuroticism.  However, other studies I have cited [link to that blog https://hsperson.com/are-highly-sensi... ]indicate that stress may be the main underlying cause of health complaints in HSPs, but this study did not separate out stress. 

This is a complicated study, and I am sure I have not done it justice.  But it is a fine example of what is to come in research with SPS—for example, more teasing out of the differences among ASD, ADHD, and SPS, and more detailed studies of differential susceptibility.

Bottom Line:  Again, this study did not find that overall measures of autism, attention deficit disorder, and SPS were correlated.  That is, SPS did not appear to be the same as either trait.  However, factors within the measures did correlate with SPS.  That is, there is an overlap in some areas but not all.  And if an HSP had a negative history, or too many “uplifting” experiences in a week, they scored higher on some aspects of the measure of ASD. (And remember, it is possible to be an HSP AND in addition to having ASD or ADHD.)  But they are not one, single trait or condition.

 

HIGHLY SENSITIVE ADOLESCENTS FEEL MORE PHYSICAL PAIN THAN OTHERS

Hochreuter, J., Wehrli, S., Locher, C., Lionetti, F., Kossowsky, J., Pluess, M., & Koechlin, H. (2025). Painfully Sensitive: How Sensory Processing Sensitivity Affects Healthy Adolescents’ Perception of Pain.  Journal of Pain Research , 719-733.

A hundred healthy adolescents, aged 16 to 19, completed questionnaires and participated in an experimental heat pain paradigm.  As a direct measure of pain, participants were asked to raise the intensity of the heat on their hand until it became “painful.” How high that level was and how  long it took to reach that level was the direct measure of pain.  This was done three times, and after each time all participants were asked to report how painful it had been, from zero to ten.  Highly sensitive adolescents were more sensitive to pain than others as measured during the procedure itself,  However, they did not report experiencing more pain than others.  

In another part of the experiment, all participants were shown photos intended to make them happy, sad, or neutral, to see if this affected their experience of the pain, but these had little impact on any participants (the authors realized the photos they used were so dated—puppies, birthday cakes, snakes, auto accidents), they were not likely to affect any modern adolescent!).  Finally, the authors used questionnaires to look at the quality of parenting these teenagers were receiving, their social support, and their emotional regulation.  None of this had very much effect on any participants’ experience of pain, even HSCs. That is, regardless of other factors, HSCs  simply physically felt more pain.  

Bottom Line:  I repeat, HSPs, at least in adolescence, seem to be more sensitive physically to pain, even if they do not report it.  (This makes me think of the many HSPs who have told me that they know they are more sensitive to pain than others are, but are not very inclined to admit to it—that is, complain about it. How many times have we been told “Don’t be so sensitive?  It’s nothing.  It’s all in your head!”)

 

HARDLY “BREAKING NEWS”: GOING TO THE DENTIST IS MORE STRESSFUL FOR HSPS

Golonka, K., Gulla, B., Kościelniak, D., Darczuk, D., Cienkosz-Stepanczak, B., Bystrowska, B., … & Krzyściak, W. (2025). Sensory processing sensitivity in adult dental patients and its relation to perceived stress, cortisol, and serotonin secretion.  Scientific Reports ,  15 (1), 1-14.

This study looked at adult dental patients (N = 157) on the day of a routine dental visit. Patients took the HSP Scale, a measure of feeling stressed, and one of positive and negative emotions, plus various biochemical tests. The higher the patient’s score on the HSP Scale, the more they reported feeling stressed and having negative emotions, plus they had higher levels of cortisol (a sign of stress) accumulated over the last few months as measured by hair samples. The authors saw various reasons why this would be so and suggested some effort could be made to help HSPs during dental appointments. 

Okay, I will make this personal.  Thank goodness and amen.  For me, going to the dentist has always involved stress, how much depends on what is being done and the kindness of the dentist.  To keep the stress from ruining my life for weeks in advance of the appointment, I learned not to think about it until the day I was going.  And I have always taken crazy care of my teeth to avoid anything difficult. But just getting my teeth cleaned is painful.  (It is not painful for my non-HSP husband, who falls asleep during teeth cleaning).  The last time I had my teeth cleaned I took two acetaminophen beforehand and it actually helped.  I’m not saying you should. It was probably just a placebo effect.  But the big point is, if going to the dentist bothers you, it’s probably your sensitivity—to pain, to anxiety about the condition of your teeth, to fear of criticism for not taking proper care of your teeth, and all the rest.  Once again, high sensitivity explains us to ourselves.

Bottom Line:  Especially given that HSPs are usually physically more sensitive to pain (see above), it might not be surprising that going to the dentist makes them nervous.

 

HSPS MAY BE ABLE TO ACHIEVE A BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE THAN OTHERS WHEN DEALING WITH CHRONIC ILLNESS

Bakhshayesh Eghbali, B., Hosseini-Nejad, M., Saadat, S., Babaee, M., Eyvani, K., Kohandel, K., & Shabani Chobe, M. (2025). The Role of Sensory Processing Sensitivity and Self-management on Quality of Life in Multiple Sclerosis.  Caspian Journal of Neurological Sciences ,  11 (1), 67-76.

This study provides a sense of how being highly sensitive can actually help a person living with a serious illness.  Multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms lead to all sorts of impairments that predict limitations, unemployment, and withdrawal from social and leisure activities.  This study used questionnaires to measure health related quality of life, SPS. and “self-management.”  These were given to 320 “relapsing-remitting” MS patients registered in the nationwide MS registry of Iran.  

I found self-management an interesting concept.  It refers to how much a person actively copes with a chronic illness through, for example, adherence to treatment and medication, participation in medical decisions, self-care, maintaining social relationships, and keeping one’s emotional balance.  That is, it is learning and using the skills necessary for an active life and a satisfactory mental state while living with a chronic disease.  The measure tapped five areas of self-management, including communication with health care providers, treatment adherence, knowledge of MS, and overall health maintenance behavior.  

The findings showed that the quality of life in people with MS was higher if they were both highly sensitive and if they scored high on self-management.  They did not report the correlation between the two, but I would guess it is high.  They studied SPS because they thought people who are more aware of sensations in their bodies might manage their illness better, and if being overstimulated bothers them, that they might be better at reducing it and thus improving their well-being.  But we know HSPs would also process everything about the illness more deeply, which would certainly lead to better self-management.  I hope someone repeats this research looking at other long-term illnesses, to see if being an HSP improves outcome.

Bottom Line:  This opens a new avenue of research, into whether and how HSPs might be better patients, by paying more attention to their bodies, to professional advice, to details about any illness they are dealing with, and to their own individual needs.

 

ONCE AGAIN—HSPS BENEFIT MORE THAN OTHERS FROM BEING CONNECTED WITH NATURE

Wigley, I. C. M., Nazzari, S., Pastore, M., Provenzi, L., & Barello, S. (2025). The contribution of environmental sensitivity and connectedness to nature to mental health: Does nature view count?.  Journal of Environmental Psychology ,  102 , 102541.

This is yet one more study about HSPs benefiting from being in nature—in this case, living with a view of nature (trees, a garden, or a park)).  In a sample of 807 Italian citizens, it was found that those high on the measure of SPS were more at risk of reporting symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression, but feeling connected with nature reduced this risk.  Being connected with nature was of course associated with exposure to nature, so this study tested whether, particularly for HSPs, having a view of nature would have this same positive effect on connectedness with nature and on mental health, and it did. That is, visual exposure to nature appeared to enhance the feeling of connection to nature, particularly among HSPs, thereby mitigating the risk of psychological distress. 

Bottom Line:  Most HSPs know this very well, but the research continues to show it:  Feeling connected to nature really helps us, and just being able to see it in our daily lives can do that.  So try to make it a priority to live or work, preferably both, where you have a view of nature.  And while they did not study it, having plants in your house or pets, even goldfish, may help too!

 

Part II

The Container and the Contained

Have you ever thought (at any age)  that you are getting older but something in you is not?  That you are really the same person you have always been? 

Have you ever felt like you were witnessing yourself in a situation?  That you were not the “doer”? 

Who is that person that does not change, and the one that can witness without participating?  This is a huge subject, but let’s take on a piece of it.

In the second half of recent newsletter blogs I have been addressing “spiritual” topics, I guess in the classical sense of spiritual as opposed to material, since I began by writing about the possibility of experiencing two aspects to life, the relative and the absolute or transcendent.  In the second blog, I simplified matters by talking about expansion and contraction.  Even forgetting about anything absolute, we all know that there are expanded and contracted mental states. There is nothing wrong with contracted states.  We contract or constrict our awareness when we focus.  If you want to speak more philosophically (HSPs usually like to), ultimately, everything in the relative, material world is contracted in the sense it is one aspect of the whole.  Being expanded is when we relax those constrictions and see the bigger picture or enjoy some rest.

In this blog post I want to talk about these two aspects of life in a different way, the container and what it contains.  

The Contained?  What’s That?

As always, I hope to be both factual and practical. “By the container”, I mean our body, but we can extend that to everything else in the relative that “belongs to us”–our name, history, education, career, family.  All that is ours.  But the body is so central, because it at least seems that without a body, especially without a brain, everything else goes. We may forget, ignore, or deny our physical vulnerability until we get seriously sick or are caused to notice that we are aging.  (I secretly think there’s something mean about those birthday cards that make jokes of our adding another year.)

I am sure all of you view death and what does or does not remain after death in very different ways.  Some of you are already yawning–you totally believe in an afterlife.  Maybe reincarnation.  But others of you are already annoyed, that I would even bring it up.  When we die, everything goes. How is it factual or practical even to discuss it?

The Factual

True, it seems that just as most people only know about the relative and not the absolute field of life, most people only know about the relative container, the body, and completely identify with that. Yet the fact is that a vast number of people think they have a soul or spirit that lives on after death. Some people feel they have experienced it during a near-death experience.  The research on these experiences is quite solid and substantial (e.g., the work of Bruce Greyson).  Many say they have experienced visitations by a loved one who had died and was able to come back to speak to them or show them some sign of their presence. Further, every single religion (even Judaism) has some idea of the soul or spirit living on, reincarnating into a new body or eternally living in a place where the soul goes after death. 

Those are the facts of countless human experiences, and it can be hard to believe that so many are simply wrong–except you and me.  I’m saying “you and me” because I’ve never been sure what I believe about all of this.  (A friend who is certain about reincarnation teased me that it was my karma to be born with the burden of not believing I would be reincarnated.)  One practical part of the container plus contained perspective is that it really does change how you live your life if you are certain that death does not end it. 

But forgetting about the question of whether something survives death, some people I really respect have no doubt that the body is the container of something more. Indeed it seems to me that all spiritual teachers and writers have discussed it. For example, I like Thomas Merton on the subject of the “individual,” which our culture relentlessly encourages us to develop, to “self-actualize,” and the “person” God means for us to be, which we can only know when we let go of the outer trappings of ourselves and our lives and seek to do God’s will and to know God’s love.  

Then there is Ram Dass, that jolly, charming author of Be Here Now, who had a stroke in his sixties and then wrote Still Here to explore for us the issue of aging and death, using his personal experience.

The Practical

While I am not sure about life after death, like Ram Dass I know about life now.  After fifty years of consistent meditation practice and eighty years of living in my body, I have the clear experience of my body being the container of something else, a witness to it all, or the Soul as Ram Dass calls it.  This is not a belief, but an experience, and it is extremely practical. The experience can be overwhelmed for a time by something like being in chronic pain, a new scary diagnosis of something, or losing another activity that I once enjoyed. But that “this-is-it” feeling does not last. Without much of an effort, the transcendent–the Soul, the Great Whatever–prevails.  I just feel this equanimity return.  It is something big, boundless.  And I can tell that it is due to my not identifying with my body or its changes very much.  I am something else.  Again, it is not a belief or attitude. I experienced that. And it certainly makes aging and illness less difficult, so far.

Here’s another practical story:  I turned to Ram Dass after reading the transcript of an interview with Riyas Motan on “Buddha at the Gas Pump” (one of my favorite podcasts). Riyas was born in Kenya, of Indian ancestry, and while working as a psychotherapist, privately pursued a spiritual path until he had a permanent “awakening.”  This eventually led to his being given “dharma transmission” by one of his spiritual teachers, Adyashanti.  This meant he was considered evolved enough to teach others, so in a way it was the pinnacle of his life.  But four months later, this very health-conscious, spiritual man learned he had fourth stage, probably terminal lung cancer, and was plunged into the treatment for that. 

Adjusting to this extreme change in his life demanded that he use his spiritual life as never before to come to a place of not just acceptance, but growth.  After much inner work he says he is actually grateful for the cancer, saying that it “happened not to him, but for him.”  

That line really caught my attention.  He was quoting Ram Dass, who felt the same about his stroke, which left this dynamic man in a wheelchair and able to speak only very slowly.  How does one get to that place of feeling this is the best thing that could have happened to me?  Not easily, when you live in a culture that focuses entirely on the body and its health, as if that is all you are.  But Ram Dass has a lot to say about undoing that perspective in his Still Here.  And it comes down to finding a way to get to know the difference between the container and what it contains.  Of course the container, the body, is important. The contained must have a container.  But how many of us really know the contained?  Really can identify with it?  

How to get there is another subject, so complex that it led me to spend five years researching and writing a book about it, Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens. It will be published next spring, but in the meantime I hope these blogs will give you some ideas. It is always, in the end, a very personal journey to reach a place like that of Thomas Merton, Riyas Motan, or Ram Das.  But I wanted to make it clear that it can be done. By anyone.

PART I: THE LATEST RESEARCH

These are the studies that have appeared since my last blog and that I wanted to share. Each has a heading, the reference in the journal where it appeared, my short description, and a “Bottom Line” to skip to if you wish!  These will also be added to the big list under the research tab.

HSPS STUDY ALL THE CLUES BEFORE CHOOSING THE RIGHT ANSWER

Xiao, L., Baetens, K., & Deroost, N. (2025). Adaptation in attentional cautiousness among highly sensitive persons: Evidence from spatial cueing paradigm.  Personality and Individual Differences ,  237 , 113042.

In this study, HSPs and others were given tasks in which they had to choose the right answer, and first were given a cue that might or might not provide the correct answer.  The likelihood of it being a correct cue was varied from 50% to 100%.  HSPs were slower than others on all of these tasks, as if wanting to carefully study every cue before deciding—which describes well our trait and various findings about our brains: We like to observe more than others do before acting.  However, when the correctness of the cues was increased to 100%, we adapted and speeded up our making use of the cues and answering.

Bottom Line: One more study confirms that our basic trait is to “pause to check” before acting.

Akawu, M., Oladesu, O. R., Itse, Y. I., Yahaya, I., & Uzoigwe, T. L. (2024). Hypersensitive Personality and Empathy as Predictors of Hell Anxiety among Undergraduate Students: The Need for Psycho-Spiritual Therapy.  International Journal For Psychotherapy In Africa ,  9 (3).

This is one of the few or only studies of HSPs and spirituality or religion, with a focus on the fear of Hell or the problem of Hell anxiety.  The participants were 354 college students in Nigeria (about two thirds Christian, one third Muslim), but according to the authors, the issue is a described all over the world. Some people become extremely obsessed with images of hell and the sins that cause someone to be left in Hell forever if they do not behave perfectly.   They may engage in behaviors to avoid the fear, but mostly they focus their life on avoiding hell.  

No one has studied why some people in particular develop hell anxiety, but the authors wondered if “hypersensitivity,” as measured by the HSP Scale. might be associated with this fear, due to vivid imaginings of descriptions of Hell that HSPs have heard.  The authors also measured  empathy, since that might cause one to imagine more vividly the suffering of those forever in Hell.  About 9% of their sample reported hell anxiety, and not surprisingly, both SPS and empathy were associated with having more of this fear. Having dogmatic or fundamentalist-religion views were not especially associated with this fear.

Bottom Line: Not surprisingly, HSPs more than others, or at least HS university students in Nigeria, take their beliefs very seriously.

HSPS MORE OFTEN DEAL WITH “EMOTIONAL” BUT NOT “SOCIAL” LONELINESS

Meckovsky, F., Novak, L., Meier, Z., Tavel, P., & Malinakova, K. (2025). Highly sensitive persons feel more emotionally lonely than the general population.  Scientific Reports ,  15 (1), 2707.

This study included 3247 Czech participants, aged 18 to 80. The authors used a measure of loneliness that included overall loneliness, social isolation, social loneliness (e.g. not having many friends) and emotional loneliness (not being as close to others as you would like).  HSPs were not any more socially lonely or isolated than others, but they did feel more emotionally lonely.  It is nice that the study made this distinction, as I think many HSPs have felt this way—that you can talk to people, but those you talk to have no sense of the depth of your inner life, and it may feel futile to try to explain yourself. Or as the authors put it, “Thus, HSPs appear to have a higher need for intimacy in close relationships, which they lack. In terms of ordinary social relationships, they interact like the general population.”

The authors did not look at how one’s childhood might affect these results—for example, having an insecure attachment style–but thought this would be important to look at in the future.

Bottom Line:  This study is very helpful in the way that it reaffirms the experience of many HSPs, that it can leave you feeling lonely to only be with those without the trait, no matter how kind they may be.

HSPS EXERCISE AS MUCH AS OTHERS, BUT DO NOT CHOOSE INTENSE ACTIVITIES FOR THEIR EXERCISE

Webb, B. L. (2025). Sensory Processing Sensitivity and Its Relation to Exercise Behavior and Preferred Exercise Intensity.  Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology ,  10 (1), 18.

 Participants in this study were 320 college students and employees, age 18 to 70, mostly female, who completed the 12-Item Highly Sensitive Person Scale, the Godin Leisure-Time Exercise Questionnaire, and a question related to preferred exercise intensity. HSPs were as likely to engage in exercise as much as others, but they exercised less intensely than others.  Intense exercise meant those activities during which the heart beats rapidly, such as running, jogging, hockey, football, soccer, squash, basketball, cross-country skiing, judo, roller skating, vigorous swimming, and vigorous long- distance bicycling.  (You can imagine various reasons why HSPs might not engage in some of these.)

Bottom Line:  The good news, since exercise is healthy, is that we exercise as much as others do. Also good news, and maybe why we exercise, is that we choose what we like!

PART II:  SOMETHING MORE PERSONAL AND “SPIRITUAL”:  The Delicate Subject of God-No-God, and How the Expansion and Contraction of Consciousness Helps with Pain                                                                                                                    

Some of you may not have read my last blog, as it came just before the holidays and was not very clear about the subject—“Two Gifts.”  The two were that the new HSP measure, HSP-R, is now ready. You can now download it on the website under tests [say if it is on the screen].  The self-scoring version will be available soon [or say it is now]

The other “gift” was that while the first half of each blog post would continue to cover the latest interesting research, the second half would be on subjects more “spiritual.” I admitted then and do again that that is a difficult term to swallow, but I hoped you would understand that I would remain factual and practical.  The comments on that first attempt were all positive, so I guess it was okay for at least some of you. I do think that HSPs tend to be spiritually inclined, but not all, of course.

Spirituality–A Delicate Subject

I think spirituality is a very delicate subject for most of us.  It’s very personal, private.  I have joked that in the West’s diverse and mostly secular/scientific culture, talking about one’s sexual life might be easier than talking about one’s spiritual life.  Perhaps that fits with the study I reported above, that HSPs can be surrounded by people and yet emotionally lonely, maybe partly because they do not feel they will be understood or accepted it they talk about things “spiritual.”  I am hoping this blog will help with that feeling, being here in a community of other HSPs who are at the minimum interested in this subject, open to it, and kind about it, even if, as normal humans, we do not all agree with each other.

The subject of this blog was going to be “contraction and expansion,” and it is, below.  But first I feel that I need to share something more personal (yet factual), to bring us a bit closer. I feel a bit nervous about doing this. But it seems important.  My experience is taken from an account in a book I have spent five years writing and that comes out next year.  (There, another personal revelation.) The book aims to be objective, but of course an author’s subjective experience is always there too, even if between the lines, so I brought the personal out from between the lines by putting accounts of my personal experience in italics. Hence the italics in the paragraph below, from the book.

Another night when I was lying in bed feeling very depressed [this was about thirty-five years ago, when I was dealing with clinical depression, which I am not now]… I thought how much I wished that I had concrete evidence of God that I could trust for the rest of my life. By God I meant at that time someone or something that cared about me and guided my life…. Immediately after having this wish for a sign, I saw in my mind a small automobile accident, a “fender bender,” with me standing at the back of my car beside the driver of the car that had hit me, looking at the damage. 

That bit of imagery seemed like a “dumb” random thought that I certainly hoped would not manifest. But the next day, you guessed it, I’m on an on ramp into a congested freeway and the car in front of me stops suddenly. The driver of the car behind me did not see me stop and hit me. We pull over and get out to exchange info, but I am smiling, almost laughing. This was my sign, my peculiar sign.

I did not immediately convert to anything!  Even though I had already been meditating for almost 20 years when this happened, seeing the spirituality all around me in my life required considerable time. I could not honestly call this experience a coincidence (especially as there was another similar experience at about this time, via a dream). But at the time I had no place to put it cognitively. Having such a place would have required a deep confidence that someone or something cared, and given my difficult childhood, I was not there yet. But whatever was doing “this” has done something like it several more time.  It’s not like I feel deep faith now, but a weird absolute certainty, given I trust in the facts, that I frequently can forget!

Okay, What About God?

I know I have now brought up the very complicated subject of God.  It’s difficult to avoid when talking about spirituality.  I know that for some of you God is central to your life, and for some anathema. Or you may be among those who are call yourself “spiritual but not religious,” leaving the idea of God to be explored.  Or “spiritual but atheist.”  Yes, there are some.

But maybe here we can all give it a rest.  To write this blog for the many, not just a few, I need to find a way to keep the peace among us, for us to accept each other.  Maybe to do that we could think of perspectives on God as lying on a dimension that most of us slide along, from days or years at the No-God-for-Me end (along with most Buddhists) to the other end, where faith in God is beyond doubt. A certainty. Where someone else is about God may be interesting, and may well change, but is not a cause for debate.

What we mean by God can also change. I am asking you to be inclusive about that, too. At times you or anyone might have in mind a personal God, at other times something completely abstract, without attributes, akin to or the same as Brahman, the ground of Being, or pure consciousness in Vedanta.  Or, consider the Christian mystic Meister Eckart, who saw creation as constantly bubbling out of the Godhead.  Maybe you or some of you see God much like that, the source of all creation, similar to today’s concept of the quantum field. According to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, a quantum field cannot sit still. Instead, it froths and boils, a bubbling soup of particles and anti-particles, constantly created and destroyed. It is the basis of everything, with virtual particles constantly manifesting according to the field’s energy state. If one calls this God or the Godhead, one has a purely scientific view of the Great Whatever.

Instead or Relative and Absolute, But How About Contraction and Expansion?

In my December blog, the first on something “spiritual,” I talked about the oldest solution to stress, loss, anxiety, and pain of all sorts, as given by all spiritual traditions—access to the two fields of life.  The alleviation of suffering through access to these two fields is, in a way, the basis of all spirituality. Buddha spoke of nirvana as the way out of all of our suffering.   Krisha in the Bhagavad Gita said, “Established in Being perform action.”  Jesus said the Kingdom of God (free of Roman domination) was within.  Muhammad said handle difficulties by staying close to Allah through prayer and supplication.  The two fields?  One is the “relative world,” which we all live in, but there is also the transcendent, which we can experience—some easily, some with practice. 

However, I realize that the transcendent–Pure Being, God-as-the-Absolute–may actually seem a bit inaccessible.  So in the rest of this blog I am going to look at these two fields in another more practical way, as something we can always access.  Let’s start by seeing all of the relative world in terms of contraction. Please think about this a minute. Matter is in a sense a contraction or concentration or condensation of stuff—atoms, etc. Air is not as contracted as water, water less contracted than hard stuff like stone.  We see relative degrees of contraction or denseness all around us.

Inside we also can feel degrees of contraction.  We can be highly focused (thinking hard, or emotionally focused, as when we feel fear or anger); we can be alert but not especially focused; or very relaxed, open, and uncontracted. As an analogy, our thoughts are like a stream, flowing along freely, but sometimes there is something like a pile of rocks that causes rapids, and on the other side of the rapid the water forms eddies.  That is, we start thinking about something and we HSPs especially may process it deeply.  Our thoughts churn around this rock pile like the water in rapids.  At other times we can just “float along.”  

I like the eddy analogy because when we went down the Colorado River for 15 days (!), after going through a rapid, a place requiring intense concentration because of the big rocks in the water, our oar person would “eddy out”—allow the boat to be caught in an eddy–in order to stop and see that those coming through after us were alright.  An eddy was a safe place in a sense.  The rushing river did not control you, carrying you down to the next rapid. You just floated in circles.  But you had to row pretty hard to get out of an eddy and continue to flow down the river.  

Of course contracted states, whether diamonds in the material world or intense thoughts in the subjective world, can be very nice.  When we are experiencing some great pleasure, we are fully contracted, “really into it.” We can truly enjoy being completely focused while engaged in a concert performance, learning something fascinating, or working to express ourselves creatively. There is nothing wrong with contraction. Our very self or ego is a contraction, or an eddy we swirl around in, separate in a sense from the big river of life.  The universe is thought to have been contracted to the tiniest, infinitely dense point, a “singularity,” before the Big Bang expansion.

Some Contracted States are Fun—But Some Are Not

Most people on that Grand Canyon trip lived for the white-water rapids.  They loved them.  Not me.  I went in spite of my fear of the rapids.  My point is, contracted states can also be painful.  Pain itself can reduce us to nothing put PAIN.  Emotional states do that too.  Think of terror.  Or sinking deep into feelings of Loss, suffering, worry, grief.  They all cause us to contract, to focus down, until we are that one huge thing, that huge eddy in the rapids that has us cut off from the flow.

I have said that as HSPs we focus especially well due to our extra observing and processing of our surroundings.  We also feel physical and emotional pain more than others.  So we contract very easily.  And, again, contracting is normal, even good. But as HSPs we need to be as skilled at expanding as contracting, for those times when we want to escape a painfully contracted state.

Using Expansion Skillfully

Finally, something practical!  Think about all the ways you naturally expand out of a contracted state.  Sometimes we use distraction to deal with the contraction that comes with pain—physical pain, or maybe grief, or maybe waiting for a test result to tell us if we are seriously sick.  What kind of distraction?  Maybe plunging into some work, or watching an absorbing movie. Here, true, we are exchanging one eddy, a painful one, for another. But in a sense when we use a distraction our world has expanded beyond the pain.

  But there are other natural ways to expand.  Suppose you have been concentrating very hard.  Then you “take a break.”  As you know, a great way to do this is to step outside. Getting out into nature is a brilliant way to expand.  Just going outside for a walk.  Looking at trees.  Going down to the shore and staring across the ocean, a lake, or up and down the length of a river.  Looking up at the stars.  

People can expand us, too–talking to a friend can give us a new perspective; realizing others have gone through the same thing or worse; and more expanded yet, seeing our situation in the light of human history.  

We can expand out of a contracted state by doing something that is easy for us and that we love–dancing, singing, running, petting our dog or cat.  And of course there is the ultimate expansion, doing something “spiritual”–meditating or praying or performing meaningful rituals.  These can expand us right out to the edges of pure Being.

May you eddy out and then rejoin the flow, as you wish, expanding and contracting as smoothly as a jellyfish or your own heart.

Elaine

P.S. I want to give credit to Andrew Holechek for introducing me to this contraction/expansion perspective. In the last blog I mentioned one of his books, Reverse Meditation: How to Use Your Pain and Most Difficult Emotions as the Doorway to Inner Freedom. Holechek begins his book by arguing that meditation is sold as a way to feel better, but what happens when we feel bad? If equanimity is the ultimate sign of enlightenment, why not tackle it at the start by facing the hard stuff first? Reverse the goal, by learning to fully, fully expand at the moment of intense contraction. But that is a topic for another time.