Overstimulation and The Highly Sensitive Person

As with every personality trait, the highly sensitive person has both positive and negative qualities; however, the negative aspects can be so overpowering that the positives can get missed. Learning how to effectively manage overstimulation (the biggest source of stress for the highly sensitive person) can be a powerful way to turn the focus away from the negative and back to the plentiful positive qualities.

 

The Relationship between Overstimulation and The Highly Sensitive Person

Some people, when they are going through life, are fairly unaffected by the sensory information that surrounds them. Using the metaphor of a thermometer, the input of sensory stimuli just doesn’t impact their temperature. 

Perhaps someone is using a leaf blower outside their window, but they don’t hear it. They may have dishes strewn about the kitchen from the previous night, but they barely notice it. Their toddler might be using them as a runway for their toy airplane, but it doesn’t faze them. And the diaper pail may be in desperate need of emptying, but they don’t smell it. 

For these people, sensory information just doesn’t have as significant of an impact on their nervous system.

And then there’s the highly sensitive person (or HSPs as they are sometimes referred to). For sensitive people, each of these sensory inputs can be highly stimulating, turning up the temp on the thermometer in a big way. 

To understand why this happens, it’s important to understand the evolutionary benefits of sensitivity (there clearly has to be some, or this temperament variation that presents itself in approximately 20% of the population would have died out). The highly sensitive person’s success in the world comes from their attention to subtle information that others often tune out. Things like noticing the nuances of their child’s cry to determine the severity of the issue at hand. Tending to the cues or body language of others to assess how they are responding to you. Picking up a hint of smoke, and searching out the source to rule out a fire. 

These sensory inputs are important! To turn them off (even if we could) would be like asking an HSP to ignore the warning cries of a fire alarm. Yes the sound is annoying. But heeding the warning saves lives. 

So we can’t turn it off, and we wouldn’t want to. But it does make navigating the chaos of life a lot more challenging. Because dealing with stressors one thing at a time is doable. But adding them together not only increases the temperature cumulatively, but often exponentially. And for a highly sensitive person, it can reach boiling in no time.

So what does boiling look like? Well, it can present as anger, frustration, stress, panic, crying or even complete shut down. But underneath what you see, the culprit is very likely feelings of overwhelm as a result of sensory overload. 

Take this example from my own life. 

It’s a workday morning, and I’m standing in the kitchen as I mentally run through all the things I need to do before our babysitter arrives to watch my little ones for the day. For my HSP self, these two things are already sources of stress: a to-do list, and a ticking clock. My husband walks in and asks Google to share today’s news. Now my already multi-tasking self is having to attempt to filter out the added stimulation of the news. (But not completely, because my brain keeps pulling me back to this potentially important source of information that I might not want to miss!)

My emotional temperature is rising. But then my toddler comes in asking me a question in his cute, but very lengthy and mumbled way, and now my brain is split into 4 pieces. My 5yo is yelling “Mama” over and over again from another room for who knows what reason… perhaps she can’t find her beloved stuffed cats or perhaps something has toppled on her and she can’t escape (because who could tell). And my husband, having no awareness of the inferno that is rising inside of me asks me if I can give him a manicure right now.

[Cue Explosion]

For each of these people surrounding me, this explosion comes out of nowhere. 

Because each person sees only their one demand for my attention. And surely one demand should not be that stressful, right? But what they fail to see is that I am standing at the center of an information network, with all pathways culminating in me.

It is not each individual vie for attention that is the problem. It is this network of information, each jockeying for attention, that leaves me feeling torn apart. 

This is the daily experience for many HSPs, especially those that are parents. Figuring out how to navigate the stress can be tricky, but also essential. I’ve got 4 tips for you to help. 

 

How to Reduce Overstimulation for The Highly Sensitive Person

 

Maintain a daily relaxation practice. 

Relaxation and reprieve is vital for the highly sensitive person’s well-being. It works as a form of prevention, because relaxation practices help to reduce the amount of baseline stress from which a person operates. 

Let’s say you wake up one morning and determine that your stress level is at a 6/10 (with 10 being the most stressed you’ve ever felt). Although you might be able to manage your day if you were to stay at a 6, you don’t have much wiggle room for any added stressors. 

The highly sensitive person can expect to experience added stressors during a typical day, just because of how low our threshold is as to what is experienced as stress. So while 6/10 on the stress scale may be manageable, the first stressor is going to raise that to 7. And the second stressor is going to raise that number to 8, quickly catapulting you into the danger zone. 

Now, if that same highly sensitive person adds in a relaxation practice, they might be able to move their baseline stress number down from a 6 to a 4, for example, to start their day. And while that is still registering on the stress scale, it expands the wiggle room a couple of notches. And that can make all the difference in whether you can effectively manage your stress or combust.

Relaxation can take many different forms, but meditation, mindfulness, and self-care are all great places to start.  

 

Reduce Stimulation When Possible

Because so much of a highly sensitive person’s stress occurs in response to stimulation, finding ways to reduce that stimulation is key. But HSP’s are highly variable in what they consider over-stimulating, so you will need to first identify what sources of stimulation contribute to stress for you. Here are some examples:

• Sound (Music, TV, talking, multiple people talking at the same time, appliances, tools/machinery, fans, children’s play, children’s whining/crying/screaming, ticking clocks, water dripping, vehicles, speakerphone, raised voices, ring tones, alarms)
• Sight (Clutter, disorder, crowds, lots of visual stimuli at once such as at a fair or a market, specific facial expressions, lights too bright or too dim, foggy glasses, dirty windshield, hair in your eyes, hat obstructing your vision)
• Smell (Garbage, dirty diaper pails, burnt food, antiseptic, strong perfumes, fragrant toiletries, essential oils, candles, household cleaners, spices)
• Touch (scratchy clothes, too-tight clothes, tags, dry skin, dirty hands/feet, tickles, children climbing on you, children pulling on clothes, too cold, too hot, too much pressure, too little pressure, buzzing notifications)
• Time pressure/deadlines
• Other people’s feelings/moods
• Multitasking
• Being overly scheduled

Once you identify the sources of stimulation for you, you can start to find ways to reduce some of them (although unfortunately there are going to be things we can’t change). But even though we can’t control all sources of stimulation, stepping in to address the things we can change helps us have more wiggle room to tolerate the things we can’t. 

 

Set Boundaries

In order to be able to effectively manage the stimulation occurring around them, a highly sensitive person needs to be able to set boundaries with others. Boundaries are difficult for a lot of people, but HSPs tend to find it even more challenging (perhaps because of the anxiety surrounding conflict, or perhaps because of the increased emotional attunement to others). Regardless, being able to ask someone to stop doing something, to remove yourself from an undesirable situation, and to allow yourself to make decisions about your environment are all important components of mental health. 

 

Utilize Coping Skills to Respond to Stress in the Moment

So you’ve done everything you can to help prevent or reduce overstimulation, and yet you’re still feeling overstimulated? This, unfortunately, is going to happen, and it’s going to happen more often for the highly sensitive person. Once we’re at that place of over-stimulation, it’s time to move on to trying to cope with that feeling. Here are some ideas for ways to cope:

• Identify your emotions
• Communicate your feelings to others
• Advocate for your needs
• Take time away
• Engage in deep breathing (focusing on the exhales)
• Practice mindfulness
• Provide yourself mental affirmations
• Challenge unhelpful thoughts

Living as a highly sensitive person can sometimes feel quite burdensome, because our nervous systems are so sensitive to everything around us. But it’s important to recognize that this trait comes with it’s own set of gifts. And when we can learn to better manage the over-stimulation, it becomes much easier to recognize and appreciate those gifts. 

 

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Dana Basu, PsyD is a licensed clinical psychologist and founder of EverGROW therapy. She provides individual therapy, support groups, and online resources for parents in Orange County and throughout the state of California via online therapy. She specializes in working with the highly sensitive person and people with difficult childhood experiences, trauma, parenting stress, and chronic guilt.