The Hidden Effects of Being a Sensitive or Empathic Person on Your Daily Life

In my practice, I often work with individuals who consider themselves sensitive or empathic. Some may even identify with the terms Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) or an empath. The term Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) was coined by psychologist Dr. Elaine Aron in the 1990s to describe individuals who are more sensitive to sensory and emotional stimuli than others. Around the same time, psychiatrist Dr. Judith Orloff popularized the term empath to describe individuals, who in addition to having high sensory and emotional sensitivity, also have a tendency to feel and absorb the emotions of others. Dr. Aron estimated the number of HSPs to be around 15–20% of the population, while the latest available research estimates the number for empaths to be around 1–2%.

While these terms can be helpful for understanding certain aspects of oneself, for the rest of this article, I'll focus on sensitivity and empathy themselves rather than on specific labels. Since sensitivity and empathy often go hand in hand, for brevity, I'll simply refer to sensitivity.

Sensitive individuals often have many wonderful qualities. They are often caring and compassionate, with a high sense of integrity. They tend to be highly observant of the world around them, have a strong sense of intuition, and are perceptive and insightful. Many are creative and tend to think deeply.

However, sensitive individuals also experience challenges due to their traits:

1. If they have sensory sensitivities, they may be easily overstimulated and overwhelmed by things they experience in their environment, such as loud sounds or chaotic activities.

2. They may easily pick up on and be affected by other people’s moods and energies.

3. They may be especially sensitive to criticism.

4. They may be so compassionate that they have poor boundaries with others and end up sacrificing their own needs.

5. They may think so deeply that they get stuck in analysis paralysis and have difficulty making decisions or taking action.

6. Because they are so different from others, they may feel misunderstood and out of place.

Compounded challenges for sensitive individuals living in conflicting environments

Being such a minority that is so different from the majority, it's not uncommon that sensitive individuals find themselves living in environments and being among family members and peers that are in conflict with their qualities as someone sensitive. If this has been your experience, the above challenges may add an additional layer of difficulty to the day-to-day challenges you experience. The following are examples of how each of these sensitivity-related challenges could have played out in your daily life as a child and/or adult:

1. If you've experienced chaotic activities and changes regularly in your life, you may have felt overwhelmed due to your sensory sensitivities, making your experiences especially stressful.

2. If you've been among people — family members, friends, coworkers, etc. — who are often feeling stressed and anxious, you may have easily picked up on and been affected by the unpleasant emotions of those around you.

3. Any criticism for being different compared with family members and peers may have been especially hurtful and impactful.

4. As the compassionate and sensitive individual in the family, you may have ended up as the listener or emotional caretaker for other stressed or anxious family members, and you may not have had your own emotional needs met. You may continue to sacrifice your own needs as an adult. This can create stress and anxiety, as well as impact your sense of self and identity.

5. As an adult, the combination of deeply thinking about all possibilities and outcomes of a decision and not knowing your identity may have kept you stuck in life, or on the other extreme, restlessly trying out multiple possibilities.

6. You may have felt misunderstood, disconnected, and a lack of belonging in your family, among peers, and/or in the workplace.

This list isn't intended to overwhelm you, but to give you perspective and perhaps some relief in understanding why your challenges and experiences may have felt so painful and difficult.

A deeper understanding of yourself as someone who is sensitive may also help you find greater resolution as you work through your ongoing challenges. The list above suggests that it may be helpful to be mindful of broadly three aspects of your experiences so that you can gain a more complete understanding of them and find ways to resolve your challenges:

1. How your sensory and emotional sensitivity may have impacted your experiences

2. How your needs may have been neglected or sacrificed growing up, and how that impacts your your sense of self, your identity, and how you live your life today

3. How your feeling of not belonging, not being understood, and feeling disconnected from others may be due to being a sensitive person (rather than something else that you thought made you different from others)

Understanding and resolving your challenging experiences from a sensitivity perspective

How your sensory and emotional sensitivity may have impacted your experiences

When we’re trying to understand and resolve a challenging experience, we usually start by addressing the event that occurred. Often, we think about what happened on a relatively superficial level: what words were said, by whom, and what actions were taken. Someone might say, “Joe said X to me,” and that gave them anxiety.

It can be helpful to go a step further and consider additional aspects of the sensory experience. What was the tone or volume with which the words were said? What was the expression on the person’s face? For example: “Joe said X to me in a loud, accusatory tone, and he had an irritated look on his face.” For some people, these additional details may contribute to their anxiety.

But with someone who is sensitive, I might ask one more question that isn't often asked:

Could you also feel the other person's emotion — or energy?

When people think about a sensory experience, they tend to think about the five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. But sensitive individuals can also be very attuned to emotional information — some might also call it an energy or vibe. They may walk into a room and quickly sense the atmosphere. If they’re sitting with a stressed or anxious person, they may feel that stress or anxiety themselves. With Joe, they might say, “I could feel Joe’s intensity.” This intensity can immediately raise their level of anxiety.

So when you’re trying to understand an unpleasant experience, it may be helpful to explore whether that emotional aspect of the experience contributes to your discomfort. Sometimes, when I’ve helped people work through their experiences, this becomes the missing piece needed to resolve the stress they’ve been carrying.

In addition, in experiences in which you were merely a bystander, it may be possible that you felt a certain way because you shared the same space with someone else or passively observed another person’s experience. For example, did you feel anxious in a certain situation because of what was happening, or did you take on the anxiety of someone who was with you?

There’s one notable impact from situations like these if a sensitive individual grew up with a stressed or anxious caretaker. It’s possible that they subconsciously learned that certain situations are unsafe not only through observing behaviors, but also through what they felt from that caretaker.

How your needs may have been neglected or sacrificed growing up, and how that impacts your sense of self, your identity, and how you live your life today

If you've grown up in a situation where you were made the listener or emotional caretaker in your household, you may have learned that your emotional needs are less important than others'. If, as someone sensitive, you have also lived your life trying to adapt to or fit in with others and their expectations, this can be a very good recipe for losing your sense of self and thus, your identity. In this case, identity is about who you are, what you want, and how you live your life.

Often, many sensitive individuals have difficulty prioritizing their own needs in everyday life. This pattern can become so ingrained that they’re unaware of its impact until stress or dissatisfaction surfaces. When they try to assert their needs, they may feel guilty or uncomfortable, guided by an internalized belief that it’s their job to make others happy.

Working through these experiences can help clarify when it was — and wasn’t — your responsibility to take care of others emotionally. Understanding this allows you to unlearn those beliefs, assert your needs, and rebuild a stronger sense of self.

How your feeling of not belonging, not being understood, or feeling disconnected from others may be due to your sensitivity

Very often, the people I work with see themselves as outliers in their families. They may even refer to themselves as the “black sheep.” They can feel they have little in common with others because of their observant, perceptive, and inquisitive nature, even from a very young age. Some were criticized for being “too sensitive” or “too soft” while growing up, or teased for their interests.

They also grew up feeling different from many of their peers. Without understanding how sensitivity shaped their experience, they may have attributed their lack of belonging to something else that made them different from others.

This raises questions worth exploring: Have you felt out of place, not understood, or disconnected from others because of your sensitivity? Is it possible that you felt lonely or anxious growing up because few people understood you on a deeper level?

When you work through any experiences of feeling different or lonely, addressing this aspect of being a sensitive person may be what's needed to resolve the emotions tied to certain experiences.

In addition, you may find that the connection you’ve been seeking is with people who share similar depth, perspective, and sensitivity.

Understanding and resolving your challenges as a sensitive individual

Based on my observation and experience, I believe that sensitivity does have an innate component. At the same time, many challenges associated with sensitivity can be learned or intensified through experience.

1. Sometimes, easily feeling other people’s emotions may be due to a past unpleasant experience being triggered. For example, if you feel sad when someone is sharing a sad experience, is it possible their story is triggering a sad memory of your own? If you feel someone’s anger strongly, could it be triggering a past experience of being with someone who was angry?

2. Easily “absorbing” other people’s emotions may also be related to having learned that you were responsible for taking care of someone else’s emotions. You might unconsciously "take on" another person’s anxiety because that’s what you were taught to do.

3. Sensitivity to criticism can be developed and intensified if someone grew up receiving criticism in a harsh manner or without enough love, affection, or emotional support. In such cases, they can learn to associate criticism with judgment and understandably become sensitive to it.

4. Poor boundaries and sacrificing one’s own needs, as discussed earlier, also tend to be learned.

5. Continually analyzing and having difficulty making decisions or taking action may in part stem from past experiences that led to beliefs such as it’s bad to make mistakes or that it’s wrong to do what you truly want.

6. Past experiences of not being understood may lead to anxiety in social interactions, which can contribute to difficulty connecting with others even when there is potential.

   
   

I’ve seen that as sensitive individuals work through the emotional impact of past experiences, they often feel freer from the challenges they’ve carried.

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Resources

For more information on Highly Sensitive Persons, you can visit Dr. Elaine Aron's website and take her HSP self-assessment test.