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In this section, we present book recommendations, HSP-related events, and some of our favorite quotes for HSPs.
First off, we want to tell you about and recommend Dr. Elaine Aron's yearly East and West Coast HSP Gatherings.
For more information, visit Dr. Aron's website www.hsperson.com.
Some ideas and concepts we think are relevant to highly sensitive people and Non-HSPs alike...
"The only way you know you love yourself or anyone else is by the commitments you are willing make and keep."
"Bad habits are easy to form, but hard to live with; good habits are hard to form, but easy to live with."
"You have a choice: The pain of discipline, or the pain of regret." (You're going to pay, one way or the other.)
"Don't spend major time with minor people."
"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."
Here's a quote by Margaret Mead that applies to HSPs:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed. It is the only thing that ever has."
One final important thought, and good words to live by, that we hear regularly at Dr. Pat Allen's wonderful seminars:
"Beware of your words for they become your actions, beware of your actions for they become your habits, beware of your habits for they become your character, beware of your character for it becomes your destiny."
We'd like to recommend some books that explore the Trait of High Sensitivity. If a book interests you, you can bring up descriptive information from our partner Amazon.com by clicking on the title. And remember that anything you buy at Amazon directly benefits the Highly Sensitive People organization.
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The Highly Sensitive Person
Do you have a keen imagination and vivid dreams? Is time alone each day as essential to you as food and water? Are you "too shy" or "too sensitive" according to others? Do noise and confusion quickly overwhelm you? If your answers are yes, you may be a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). Author Elaine Aron — who's a psychotherapist, researcher, and an HSP herself — delves deep to into the subject. |
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The Highly Sensitive Person in Love: Understanding and Managing Relationships When the World Overwhelms You
Picking up where The Highly Sensitive Person left off, Aron explores the sometimes bumpy terrain that love relationships have to offer this group of people. The special characteristics of the HSP, which tend to be misunderstood as shyness and dismissed as signs of weakness in our highly competitive society, inevitably bring interesting challenges to all kinds of love relationships for HSPs. Detailed, helpful, wise advice for HSPs and their partners. |
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The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping Our Children Thrive When the World Overwhelms Them
In this book Aron shifts her focus to highly sensitive children, who face unique challenges as they grow up. HSCs are born deeply reflective, sensitive to the subtle, and easily overwhelmed. These qualities can make for smart, conscientious, creative children, but with the wrong parenting or schooling, they can become unusually shy or timid, or begin acting out. HSCs are often mislabeled as overly inhibited, fearful, or "fussy," or classified as "problem children" (and in some cases, misdiagnosed with disorders such as Attention Deficit Disorder). In this pioneering work, parents will find helpful self-tests and case studies, along with thorough advice on:
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Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight: What to Do If You Are Sensory Defensive in an Overstimulating World
This book is well written, comprehensive, and way overdue. If you are a person who gets gets irritated (or loses it) over stimuli that other people seem to tolerate without difficulty, or if you know such a person, then this is the book for you. While other books address the issue of sensory integration in children, this is the only book that I know of that addresses sensory defensiveness as a problem in adults. Among the many strongpoints of the book are its discussions about how sensory defensiveness can be misdiagnosed as other disorders, what it is like to live with sensory defensiveness, and how to improve the ability to cope. The only bad thing about the book is that the five-color dust jacket is a little on the busy side. Of course, you always have the option of removing the dust jacket. —Bert Krages |
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The Sensitive Person's Survival Guide: An Alternative Health Answer to Emotional Sensitivity & Depression
If you're a sensitive person with any sort of empathic experiences, you will be fascinated by this book. The idea that this empathic ability might contribute to recurring depression was a mind-blower, but immediately obvious once it was pointed out. If you share this book with your non-sensitive friends and family members, however, be prepared to endure skepticism and even ridicule. It's pretty "out there" for people who haven't had similar experiences. In fact, the only major objection to the book is that she writes as someone from "inside" the alternative medical field, without an objective standpoint to explain or defend her statements in a way that will stand up to those who by default, automatically dismiss anything not backed up by randomized double-blind studies. |
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Are You Really Too Sensitive?: How to Understand and Develop Your Sensitivity As the Strength It Is
This book brought me peace with myself. It was the first eye opening to see that although I am different there is nothing wrong with me. Many sensitives lived with this secret that deep down they knew something was amiss. What this book will help you understand is the difference is a gift not a weakness. It is just a matter of bringing your gifts of into balance. It brings the validation of picking up from others. It teaches how to trust your intuition. This book is a sensitive's bible. —Kathleen Heintzelman |
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The Highly Sensitive Person's Survival Guide: Essential Skills for Living Well in an Overstimulating World
If you're a HSP, the most important thing you must learn is how to manage your increased volume of sensory experience, both physical and emotional stimulation. This accessible, practical guide contains strategies that help you master this critical skill. The book starts with a brief description of the highly sensitive person, and then offers a self-examination quiz, which allows you to assess whether you are highly sensitive, then outlines coping techniques. You'll learn tips for reducing the influence of provocative sensory experiences, such as excessive light and noise in the home and office. Meditation and relaxation techniques help you to reduce the anxiety caused by heightened sensitivity. Easy-to-follow exercises guide you through the challenges of communicating and interacting with others in both social and intimate relationships. |
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The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World
"Introverts are like a rechargeable battery. They need to stop expending energy and rest in order to recharge. Extroverts are like solar panels that need the sun to recharge. Extroverts need to be out and about to refuel." Marti Olsen Laney explains how introverts create energy in the opposite way extroverts do. I'm often drained of all energy after being with people for extended periods of time. This book helped me understand why I have deeper thoughts when I'm by myself than in a group setting. If you are worried about what to say at a party, Marti gives plenty of solutions in the form of openers, sustainers, transitions and closers. Then she dives into the hazards from 9 to 5. "The Introvert Advantage" is an encouraging book for anyone who has felt the pain of being an introvert in an extrovert world. This is a must-read book for all Introverts and the people who love them. Finally someone out there understands! —The Rebecca Review |
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The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Ekhart Tolle's message is simple: living in the now is the truest path to happiness and enlightenment. And while this message may not seem stunningly original or fresh, Tolle's clear writing, supportive voice, and enthusiasm make this an excellent manual for anyone who's ever wondered what exactly "living in the now" means. Foremost, Tolle is a world-class teacher, able to explain complicated concepts in concrete language. More importantly, within a chapter of reading this book, readers are already holding the world in a different container — more conscious of how thoughts and emotions get in the way of their ability to live in genuine peace and happiness. The Power of Now reads like the highly acclaimed A Course in Miracles — a spiritual guidebook that has the potential to inspire just as many study groups and change just as many lives for the better. —Gail Hudson |
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The Tao of Equus: A Woman's Journey of Healing and Transformation through the Way of the Horse
The Tao of Equus (which literally translates as "the way of the horse") explores the possibility that horses are highly evolved, spiritual beings who offer humans opportunities for healing and personal growth. Moving beyond the realm of horse whispering, Kohanov studies how horses awaken intuition in humans while also mirroring our unspoken feelings and fears. At its core, this book reminds us to be mindful as we approach the horse-human relationship. Like human-to-human relationships, we have to do our own personal and spiritual work before we can expect to create a meaningful and cooperative interspecies connection. Kohanov is a steadfast writer who isn't shy about claiming a strong feminine approach, showing how mythology and history are filled with examples of powerful woman-horse connections. — Gail Hudson |
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The Gifted Adult: A Revolutionary Guide for Liberating Everyday Genius(tm)
Jacobsen estimates that 20 million Americans are "gifted adults" with an amalgam of intellectual abilities and personality and character traits that she has found to indicate high potential, a concept of a new kind of intelligence which she dubs Evolutionary Intelligence. Statistically, many gifted adults are baby boomers (a notion that is likely to appeal to them). The Minnesota psychologist has devised a broad self-assessment test, based in part on Howard Gardner's famous work on "multiple intelligences" and in part on her own definition: creative thinking, enthusiasm, playfulness, intuition, curiosity, humor, independence, multiple talents and a sense of justice. Jacobsen's goal is to help the gifted hone their abilities and cope with the "truths" of being gifted: being different, sometimes being misunderstood, needing patience to fulfill one's life mission, the support of mentors and peers and spiritual guidance. She provides useful advice about framing responses to common criticisms, such as of perfectionism and sensitivity; about overcoming blocks to development; about skillful decision-making and achieving balance. |
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Getting to 'I Do'
One of my first reactions was to a subheading in the first chapter DO YOU WANT IT ALL, OR ARE YOU WILLING TO COMPROMISE? One of the best insights in the book was that rejecting someone can be an act of love. The author advocates either accepting or rejecting; both are acts of love. What is not an act of love is to tolerate someone. Many of my concerns with the book could have been alleviated if the material in the chapter FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES, which is at the end of the book, would have been placed at the beginning. It sets the context in which the rest of the book is written rather than being a summary. Even though this book is written for women and I don't agree with everything in the book, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in improving relationships in their life simply because it is so thought-provoking. —Brian Ziegler |
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Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It
"To get a man to listen, give him advance notice and provide an agenda," write the husband-and-wife Peases in this pithy, attention-grabbing guide to the differences between men and women. The book weaves together facts from the latest brain research, theories from evolutionary biology and a treasure trove of anecdotal events and conversations collected by the authors during a three-year research trip around the world. Sociobiology has rarely been so entertaining. The Peases say that a woman's brain is wired to be able to speak and listen simultaneously; men, by contrast, need to clam up to think. "He uses his right brain to try to solve his problems or find solutions, and he stops using his left brain to listen or speak." Men were hunters who evolved tunnel vision, while as nurturers women not only had broad peripheral vision but sensitive relationship skills. Channel surfing and newspaper skimming are modern ways for a man to cut off from others to privately mull problems, advise the authors. "Remember, his forefathers spent more than a million years sitting expressionless on a rock surveying the horizon..." |
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The Alchemy of Love and Lust
It's dangerous to blame too many of our behaviors and tendencies on raging hormones. We are, after all, creatures of free will. But after reading Theresa Crenshaw's book, you'll never again see your free will as being all that free. The book functions as both an encyclopedia of our attachment-related hormones — describing hormones and pheromones as though they were intimate friends, telling us exactly what they are and exactly what modern science thinks they do — and a guide to what we can do to get them to keep functioning the way we want them to and keep a relationship vibrant. |
Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand: Men and Women in Conversation
Another book we highly recommend:
Now available, Chopped Liver for the
Loving Spirit by Jim Hallowes...and Friends, including the chapter "Loving Highly Sensitive People" about the trait of high sensitivity.
Chopped Liver for the Loving Spirit is a collection of stories including
chapters by actor Dick Van Patten, Comedian Fred Travalena, and Heisman Trophy winner Les Horvath, and many others.
Paperback, 272 pages. Published by Best-Seller Books.
Click here to purchase it from the On-Line Gift Store.
Come visit our HSP Products Store on CafePress for even more custom gift items for yourself and other Highly Sensitive People!
In Memory of a very dear friend, Michael E. Tinley, who was at work on the 100th floor of the North Tower at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Here is my "Ground Zero" photo that I took from the observation deck of the Empire State Building the first weekend it was open to the public and what was also the first day of "America's War on Terrorism," October 7, 2001.