I Found Out I’m a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)

It took me 22 years to discover something about myself that my mother knew when I was 3 years old.

Photo by Benjamin Voros on Unsplash

When I was 3, my great-grandmother passed away. My mother held my tiny hands as she said, “Pumunta na siya sa heaven, anak” (She went to heaven, love). I looked into her eyes, but couldn’t understand the sentiment. I could only tell she was sad.

During the funeral service, I watched people around me cry and express their grief. I looked at my mother and watched her tears fall — and not long after, I began bawling. I became the loudest crier in church, even water buffalos down the street heard me. Heads turned, and my mother’s grief was disturbed by shock and a slight embarrassment. She rubbed my back and wiped my tears, telling me that everything would be okay.

This is one of the many stories my mother has recounted to me about my childhood. I had a very fruitful upbringing; one that started in the Philippines and moved around from Malaysia to England, to Azerbaijan, and eventually settling back in the Philippines until I was 18.

The clearest childhood memories I remember are set in the Philippines. Although I grew up without siblings, I had eight cousins — plus the neighbours’ kids, and all the second and third cousins I didn’t know about but gradually met through the years.

I’m not sure you can tell, but I was made fun of a lot. For a while I was the youngest cousin, so my kuyas (older male relatives) loved teasing and playing with me. They’d startle me, call me a ghost because my skin was fair compared to theirs, make loud noises, hide from me while I went to the bathroom — and it all resulted in a distressed, unhappy little girl. “Ang pikon mo naman!” (You’re so sensitive!) my cousins would say — which led to even more tears.

My mother would tell them off and they’d say their sorries with my favourite Filipino childhood snacks: Tomi and Yakult. It was apparent food usually [re]solved everything for me.

Not much has changed since.

I’ve always been known as a sensitive child. My parents tried toughening me up, telling me I needed to stop crying so much (bless their hearts, I really think they did the best they could with parenting). But that didn’t stop me from feeling things intensely — and it was more than empathy.

If my mother was cleaning the kitchen and some pots toppled over and crashed, not only did my auditory system process the crash, my whole body felt the crash. If I spent the whole day going to classes and working, then I would 100% choose to spend alone time over going out with friends. Even today, I’ve noticed that if I wake up later than planned and have a long to-do list to get through, I feel stressed and overwhelmed to the point my chest tightens. If I notice someone expressing discomfort, I evaluate and act on how I can ease their distress. If I listen to Jealous by Labrinth, I cry every. single. time.

And you best bet if I’m hungry, I lose all sense of concentration and focus.

Brené Brown wasn’t much of a thing then, so I didn’t know how to cope with my vulnerability. Although I acknowledged and critiqued some of these tendencies — believing my sensitivity to be a weakness and annoying — I somehow found a way to stay true to my character; to that little curly-haired girl who just wanted to feel loved and accepted for who she was. No matter what I did, my inner world continued to feel rich and complex. Even when I tried to suppress my emotions and hold back my tears, they continued to surface; demanding to be heard and expressed.

In 2020, I came across an infographic on Instagram that was similar to this:

Source: https://www.jennynurick.com/traits-of-a-highly-sensitive-person/

As I read each bullet point, I kept nodding. This is me! This is SO me! I even nodded more than I’d ever nod while reading my Co-Star. It gave such an accurate description of myself, and I eagerly researched more into what it meant.

That’s when I came across this test curated from the research of Dr Elaine Aron. If you scored more than 14 as true of yourself, you’re most probably highly sensitive.

Well, I scored a 25. Out of 27.

I knew myself to be an overachiever in school — but when I scored that high on a personality test, I didn’t know if I needed to respond with pride or shame.

But the more I reflected on it, the more I found solace in the following conclusions:

1. I felt understood,
2. My tendencies of feeling deeply and reacting to physical, emotional, and social stimuli finally made sense, and
3. It’s completely normal; it’s just another trait to describe someone.

It’s just another trait to describe someone — and it is definitely not synonymous with weak.

Although I’m a huge fan of organisation and using my Dymo to label folders and containers, I’m not a huge fan of labelling people. It can lead to categorisation, preconceived opinions, and a dichotomous way of thinking. However, it does provide awareness.

As you can read on my Medium bio, the first part says:

Highly sensitive and emotional person rooted in compassion; a story I choose to accept and embrace.

Being highly sensitive is something I didn’t choose, but it is something I’ve chosen to treat with compassion and accept as part of my identity. It’s helped me understand and validate my needs, in order to sustain a healthy relationship with myself and others. Since reading more into HSPs I’ve learned how to become better at dealing with certain situations and emotions, and as a result, I’m better positioned to make proper decisions.

So I guess you can say I respond to a 25/27 with great pride.