Market Overview

What I discovered after many years of studying this innate survival strategy is that high sensitivity means, above all, thinking deeply about everything. Which makes someone like me, well, thoughtful, creative and inclined more than most to both science and spirituality. Having nearly automatic empathy – almost too much sometimes – we cry easily. We notice subtleties: birds, flowers, the lighting in a room, and if someone has rearranged the furniture.

With all that going on in a sensitive person’s brain, we are easily overstimulated. If I’m travelling and visit a museum during the day, I don’t want to go to a night club that night. Nix to all noisy restaurants. I wear noise-cancelling headsets on planes. I love giving talks about high sensitivity but am totally exhausted afterwards. The more people in the audience, the more exhausted. I am also more sensitive to pain, as that therapist noted early on, causing me to explain that to medical staff: ‘Maybe you’ve noticed with all your professional experience that some people are more sensitive… Me!’

In 2010, after years of research, I boiled all this down to the acronym DOES: ‘Depth of processing, Overarousability, Emotionally responsive and Empathic, and sensitive to Subtle stimuli’. By this definition, about 30 per cent of people have this trait of high sensitivity – and because it is a survival strategy to observe before acting, it’s a trait seen in many. We’ve all met an especially sensitive cat, dog or horse. But there are sensitive birds, fish and fruit flies too.