I feel like I’m learning new things about my high sensitivity every day. When I was younger, how different life would have been — for the better — if I’d known what I know now about being highly sensitive.

In a nutshell, being highly sensitive means your brain and nervous system are wired somewhat differently than those of others. You have a higher sensitivity to stimuli, like noise, lights, and activity, and you feel things deeply. As a result, you have a lower threshold before reaching critical mass. This explains why highly sensitive people (HSPs) can become easily stressed out and quickly overwhelmed in situations that might not bother other people.

HSPs did not choose or learn this trait. In fact, we’re biologically wired from birth to be this way, according to Dr. Elaine Aron, author of The Highly Sensitive Person. Although we can learn to cope with the daily stressors we face — and minimize their impact — nothing is going to change our underlying sensitive nature.

What Is Synesthesia?

If you’re a highly sensitive person like me, you might also experience another condition called synesthesia. This sounds like a scary disease or a disorder, but personally, I’ve found it can be a fascinating thing to experience.

Synesthesia is a condition caused by a genetic mutation that leads to stronger connections between certain parts of the brain. Essentially, people with this condition, called synesthetes, experience unusual associations and a sort of “crossing” of the senses. Only about one to four percent of the general population experience this phenomenon.

People with this condition process data in the form of several senses at once. For example, when listening to music, a synesthete might see certain musical notes as different colors. This can also happen for other things that typically have nothing to do with colors, like days of the week, numbers, or months.

How I Experience Synesthesia

Personally, I experience synesthesia with months. When I think of the month of January, I see the color red. February is yellow. May is pink. October is orange. November is brown. December is blue. You get the idea.

Some of these associations are obvious, while others, not so much. For example, October being orange makes sense with all the orange Halloween stuff around during that time. On the other hand, February is my least favorite month and yellow is my least favorite color, so apparently my brain automatically links those two. Also, my mom’s birthday is in January, and she always prominently wore her birthstone (a deep red garnet) on her finger. Because of that, January automatically makes me think of my mom, so it’s a deep red.

My version of synesthesia is of the perceptual nature, meaning that I actually see the colors that are associated with the months. So, for example, when I read the word “December,” I see it written in or colored in with blue.

However, there’s another type of synesthesia — the conceptual kind. With this type, you do not actually see colors, sounds, etc., but you feel the association. Perceptual synesthesia if quite rare, with conceptual synesthesia being a little more common.

Need to Calm Your Sensitive Nervous System? 

HSPs often live with high levels of anxiety, sensory overload and stress — and negative emotions can overwhelm us. But what if you could finally feel calm instead?

That’s what you’ll find in this powerful online course by Julie Bjelland, one of the top HSP therapists in the world. You’ll learn to turn off the racing thoughts, end emotional flooding, eliminate sensory overload, and finally make space for your sensitive gifts to shine.

Stop feeling held back and start to feel confident you can handle anything. Check out this “HSP Toolbox” and start making a change today. Click here to learn more.

The Link Between Sensitivity and Synesthesia

If you’re a highly sensitive person, could you have a higher chance of also being a synesthete? Let’s take a look at the science.

Oxford University researchers found that, like high sensitivity, synesthesia is wired into the brain. In a study, they compared brain activity in two groups of people, one group with synesthesia and one without. They found that synesthetes had higher levels of “excitability” in their primary visual cortex, and it took much less stimulation for this part of their brain to activate. They also found that when they changed the “excitability” in the brain — making it easier or harder for the neurons to fire — they increased or decreased the effects of synesthesia.

Although no direct connection between synesthesia and high sensitivity has been uncovered (at least not yet), synesthesia has long been linked to a hypersensitivity of the senses. And synesthetes report having a heightened appreciation of all kinds of sensory stimulation, from smells to sounds. As one synesthete described, “I tend to get overloaded quickly: like there’s just too much sensory perception coming in at one time, and I have a hard time sorting it out and coping with it.”

That sounds a lot like a highly sensitive person.

So are HSPs more likely than others to have synesthesia? It’s possible, because both HSPs and synesthetes certainly share the characteristic of sensory sensitivity. But we don’t know for sure, as the trait of high sensitivity still needs further study.

Living as a Highly Sensitive Synesthete

Living with high sensitivity and synesthesia means that you’ll experience the world differently than most people. In some ways, this can be a lot of fun (trust me!). There are, however, some parts that are challenging and will definitely take some getting used to.

For one, HSP synesthetes experience life at a heightened level. While intriguing, this also means that they can become even more easily overwhelmed than other HSPs. For example, a simple trip to the store might completely overpower their system due to the influx of sounds, smells, and sights — and the “cross-processing” of them.

If you’re just realizing that you might be a synesthete, you’re probably feeling how I felt when I first discovered it — excited, surprised, and a little special. You might even feel a little concerned about what it might bring. All of those feelings are perfectly valid.

To me, both my high sensitivity and synesthesia allow me to see the world in many different colors and tones — and that’s something I‘ll never get tired of.

You might like:

• 14 Things HSPs Absolutely Need to Be Happy
• 13 Problems Only Highly Sensitive People Will Understand
• Why Do Highly Sensitive People Absorb Other People’s Emotions?
• The 7 Best Careers for a Highly Sensitive Person

Did you enjoy this article? Sign up for our newsletters to get more stories like this.

The post Are Highly Sensitive People More Likely to Have Synesthesia? appeared first on Sensitive Refuge.

Things seemed to affect me much more deeply than they did the people around me. Any little feeling — from pain to joy — hit me hard, and I did everything I could to shield myself from things I knew would hurt. But I couldn’t. I grew up in a family that knew the harsh realities of the world and wanted me to be prepared for them.

At the age of six, my mother placed me in a karate class so I could learn self-defense, and I did that for six years until I moved on to other sports. In general, it was a lot of fun, and as a six year old, it was quite different from anything else other kids my age were doing.

But there were times when the class and what was expected of me clashed disastrously with my sensitivity. For one, the adults were constantly complaining about my lack of aggression. I could never bring myself to attack anyone, even for a simulation, and my defense skills were weak. Unlike the other kids, I didn’t seem to have whatever it took to tap into that violent, survivalist side of myself. So I distinctly remember the teachers saying things along the lines of:

“You’ll never make it if you really get attacked.”

“You need to toughen up.”

“You’re not aggressive enough.”

‘You’re Not Aggressive Enough’

I can’t tell you how many times I heard that criticism. When I couldn’t respond to a simulated attack with as much aggression as the other kids, I was seen as a failure.

In addition, part of our homework after self-defense class was to go home and watch TV shows like America’s Most Wanted. Our instructor wanted us to know how violent people could be and what we might be up against one day. That might seem a little extreme, but my karate instructor was a woman who’d been attacked by an intruder and badly injured. Learning self-defense and teaching it to others became her passion, and she wanted to prepare her students for the worst.

Cruelty is only “the way it is” if you just accept it without question and move on. That’s how it becomes the way it is — because you’ve done nothing to make it stop.

I’m not sure if the other students in the class took the “watch true crime shows” assignment seriously, but my family sure did. They agreed with the instructor’s “you need to know the harsh realities of the world” sentiment.

Honestly, it was very rough for me. I couldn’t stand the descriptions of violent crimes or the horrible things complete strangers would do to others. (It turns out getting very bothered by violence or cruelty is a common problem for highly sensitive people.) I knew by now that these things happened sometimes, but I didn’t think I needed all the details.

I Felt Every Little Thing So Deeply

There were many other facets of life that rubbed harshly against my sensitivity. Being an introvert, I was a quiet child in school, which often led to me being scolded by teachers for not participating. This made me feel ashamed and embarrassed, which were both things I felt very deeply as an HSP.

I cried a lot as a child over one thing or another, but I learned to wait and do so in private. Most of the adults around me were not sympathetic to my strong feelings and only made things worse. I heard things like:

“You need to suck it up.”

“You’re just crying for attention.”

“Other children have it worse than you.”

But I wasn’t crying for attention. As an introvert, I hated attention. And I wasn’t crying because I didn’t get my way or just because I could.

I was crying because I felt every little thing so deeply, and I had no healthy way of processing or understanding my emotions. I felt ashamed and weak for being sensitive, and I didn’t know what to do.

Why I Don’t Want to ‘Toughen Up’

Of course, as an adult, my sensitivity is still very much a part of me. It hasn’t ever gone away, and I don’t expect it will. I still have to shield myself from “little” things that other people breeze through (like violent TV shows), and certain things still cause a very strong emotional reaction in me.

The difference in me today, though, is that I am fine with that. I don’t want to change. I don’t want to “toughen up.”

Everyone knows that the world can be a hard, cruel place. Bad things happen, and we often don’t treat each other with as much compassion and understanding as we should.

These are the reasons that people usually give for why I should be tougher. It’s as if they’re saying, “You’re going to have to face that, and you’ll never survive it the way you are. You need to develop a thicker skin.”

Ironically, though, those are also the reasons I give for wanting to stay like I am. With all the nastiness around, I want to remain something good.

I don’t want the world to be one big karate class. The truth is, I want to keep on being unable to stand the world’s cruelty, because as soon as I develop a thicker skin and can withstand more, that means I will start to accept it. And accepting it means it won’t change.

No One Should ‘Get Used to It’

Of course, there are times when it’s healthy for us HSPs to manage our emotional reactions, set boundaries, and stop taking on emotional baggage that’s not ours to carry. That’s not what I’m saying. My biggest frustration is the person who just shrugs and says, “That’s the way it is. Get used to it.”

I don’t believe that. This is only “the way it is” if you just accept it without question and move on. That’s how it becomes the way it is, because you’ve done nothing to make it stop.

I know that one person can’t wipe out all the bad things in the world, but I also know that good deeds are contagious.

Whenever someone witnesses another person doing something kind and completely selfless, just because they want to, it inspires people to pass it on. That’s all you have to do.

My high sensitivity is like a pair of goggles. It allows me to see things that need to change. I can’t just turn a blind eye to pain and suffering and pass by as if I’ve noticed nothing. As a highly sensitive person, I’m simply not wired that way.

So, developing a thicker skin and a tougher persona has never worked for me, and it probably never will. I don’t think it will do the world any good if I start blending in as another uncaring bystander. I want to keep being the person who speaks out, shares my emotions, and lets others know when something is not okay.

And if you’re a highly sensitive person, I hope you will, too.

A version of this post originally appeared on Introvert, Dear.

You might like:

• 13 Signs That You’re an Empath
• Your Gift of Sensitivity Might Be Someone’s Answered Prayer
• How I Learned to Stop Absorbing Other People’s Emotions

Did you enjoy this article? Sign up for our newsletters to get more stories like this.

The post Why This Highly Sensitive Person Has No Desire to ‘Toughen Up’ appeared first on Sensitive Refuge.