Reflection: 25 Years of HSP-ness!

In early January 1997, I found myself at a Borders bookstore in Austin, Texas, looking forward to an afternoon of looking at books and spending a $50 gift certificate I had received for Christmas.

It was on that day I accidentally stumbled across Elaine Aron's "The Highly Sensitive Person" for the first time. I say "accidentally," because the book had been left behind by someone in the travel section.

I won't go into detail about that day — I have covered that elsewhere in these pages — but this morning I thought about how twenty-five years is really a long time. And yet? It doesn't seem that long ago. 

The book was pretty new when I found it; it was first published in 1996. 

So what have we learned, since then? What have I learned, since then?

Personally speaking, I have learned that there truly is a reason for why I often feel a little out of step with my surroundings, and the people in it.

Meanwhile, I have also come to embrace that "Being an HSP" is not some kind of excuse or "hall pass" that allows me to get special treatment. My sensitivity is merely a fact of life, much like someone might live with allergies, or a tendency to get sunburned very easily. Knowing that I am an HSP simply allows me to make somewhat more informed choices for my life. And that's a good thing.

Because I write a blog about high sensitivity, I sometimes get asked whether I consider myself to be part of the "HSP movement." I tend to distance myself a little bit from that, primarily because movements — whereas they definitely can be beneficial — tend to come at the world from a position of victimhood. And I'm not a victim of my sensitivities.

I simply offer my sincere perspective, with no attachment to whether or not other people agree with them. But if some of these words are helpful to people... then that's a good "movement!"

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