Psychotherapy and the Highly Sensitive Person Book Review
Psychotherapy and the Highly Sensitive Person:
Improving Outcomes for that minority of people who are the majority of clients by Elaine N. Aron
Why this book?
I lived my life for almost thirty years thinking I was difficult to live with, a problematic and unlucky person. I thought something was wrong with me. My instinctive urge was to find a solution to this problem. I buried my nose in psychological books. Completed all online tests about psychological disorders.
I remember that I did a short HSP test at some point. I never thought that the HSP test was scientific enough because I thought that this was true for too many people. Or I wanted to find a problem that can be "mended" by pills.
Throughout my life, I heard countless times how sensitive I am. Well, they said too sensitive. I overthink and react too strongly to issues that don’t have a direct effect on me, like when I froze every time I heard an ambulance siren. I guess being sensitive was too obvious to be a problem. Being sensitive was a part of me that I never liked.
For a few years, I tried to act as if I didn’t even care about anything. Those were very rich in experience years. You know, when you learn how not to cope with life. Until that point, I believed that I could change myself.
When I finally read Dr. Aron’s books, my mind changed. Dr. Aron and her books helped me accept the sensitive person that I am. Not only to accept but also to try to love.
I admit I’m not an easy person, but I don’t need anyone's advice on how to live my life. This particular book is brilliant. Dr. Aron uses a lot of case illustrations to make it easy to understand why sensitive people do what they do. If you know anyone in your circle who acts too sensitive this book is for you to understand us more.
About the book
She dispels common misconceptions about the relationship between sensitivity and other personality traits, such as introversion and shyness. She defines the trait for the benefit of both the clinician and the patient. Readers will learn to assess for the trait, distinguish it from clinical diagnoses such as panic disorder or avoidant personality disorder, understand how sensitivity may change the presentation of a problem such as depression or shyness, and generally inform, validate, and improve the quality of life for these clients. Dr. Aron pays particular attention to self-esteem issues and helps patients separate the effects of their innate temperament from problems due to their personal learning histories.
Dr. Aron keeps both the patient and practitioner in mind as she suggests ways to adapt treatment for highly sensitive persons and how to deal with the typical issues that arise. Three appendices provide the HSP Scale, a summary of the extensive research on this innate trait, and its relation to DSM diagnoses. Through this helpful guide, therapists will see a marked improvement in their ability to assist highly sensitive clients.
Chapters:
1. Highly Sensitive Patients: Who They Are, Who They Aren’t, and Why It Matters
In this chapter, we understand more about how a highly sensitive person works and their characteristics. It provides a definition of high sensitivity and compares it to other well-known personality traits. Dr. Aron discusses research indicating that sensitive individuals with difficult childhoods are indeed more vulnerable to shyness, depression, and anxiety than others. Sensitive persons are more likely to be shy if they have had a difficult childhood.
2. Assessing for High Sensitivity
In this chapter, Dr. Aron guides us in assessing high sensitivity by focusing on four broad aspects. It’s very helpful to know how to avoid false positive and false negative diagnoses using case illustrations. If a highly sensitive person is more extroverted, a high sensation seeker, or has a highly adaptive persona, it might be difficult to diagnose. I also learned what the DOES stands for. It’s the basic characteristics of this trait: depth of processing, overarousability, emotional intensity, and sensory sensitivity.
3. Two Issues Arising From Innate Sensitivity: Being Easily Overaroused and Stronger Emotional Reactions
There are many common features in the lives of highly sensitive people. They often develop slower, do not settle on a career until thirty or even later, marry and have children later, or retire later. They also change jobs often. They are very bad at self-care, so if you happen to be highly sensitive, please make sure you take care of yourself.
4. Three Common Problems: Low Self-Esteem, the Wrong Lifestyle, and Overreactions to Criticism
In this chapter, we take a closer look at the problems most highly sensitive people face. The three common problems. The wrong lifestyle can be the one where they try to live as neurotypicals. There are plenty of suggestions on how to work with each problem, and this chapter discusses the interaction of the trait with gender, age, and ethnicity.
5. Adapting Treatment to the Highly Sensitive Patient
This chapter is written mostly for therapists. I also learned what to look for when trying to find a good therapist. There are recommendations that are more suitable for highly sensitive patients.
6. Helping Them Establish Relationships: Meeting Others, Shyness, and Fears of Commitment
A feeling of being alone. This chapter focuses on the difficulty some have with meeting people and then committing to a longer relationship. Sensitive persons tend to have an unusual degree of kindness and empathy toward others, an advantage they build into relationships. They prefer one-on-one conversations and are easily bored by superficial conversations.
7. Helping Long-Term Relationships: Working With Conflicts, Degree of Temperament Similarity, and Sensitive Sexuality
This chapter continues to consider the relationships of the highly sensitive, with a focus on the issues arising in long-term friendships and with romantic life partners, such as negotiating conflicts and reluctance to leave bad relationships. There are suggestions for resolving problems encountered by a sensitive patient with a nonsensitive partner and also those of a pair of sensitive persons. The chapter concludes with the results of a survey comparing sexuality in sensitive and nonsensitive persons. Sensitive persons can be very appealing to others. Persons high in sensation seeking are known to be easily bored in a relationship and likely to have an affair, but usually, sensitive persons think long and hard before leaving a relationship.
8. The Sensitive Person in the Workplace
This chapter begins by examining typical difficulties most sensitive persons encounter when trying to find a suitable career. Also, I learned how to help sensitive people find and define what a good workplace is.
9. Personality Variation in Highly Sensitive Persons
This chapter reminds therapists of the wide variety of sensitive patients they might see. The possible variations are infinite.
In the appendix, you will find a self-test and a part where Dr. Aron distinguishes sensitivity from DSM disorders.
Thank you for reading!
The Witty Witch