Top Highlights

• Partly this is because, yes, it is “expensive” biologically and personally to be highly sensitive. You are like a Porsche or a Jaguar, not a rugged Chevy truck. Your nervous system is finely tuned, which makes maintenance more costly.
• According to research, as a highly sensitive person (HSP), you are more easily overstimulated. So in addition to the time it takes to parent, you need more downtime. Without this downtime, you get irritable and just plain miserable—and there goes that attunement.
• The basic results were that highly sensitive (HS) parents tended to find parenting more difficult, but they were also more attuned to their children.
• Many sensitive parents, however, mentioned being troubled by the advice of others and ultimately ignoring it when they saw that their child needed something not culturally typical.
• In HSPs, our awareness of subtleties is intertwined with emotional responsiveness and our ability to process things deeply.