Travis Bradberry* says that being highly sensitive can be a blessing or a curse — it all comes down to how you cope with it.
Sensitive people get a bad rap.
Research suggests that genes are responsible for the 15-to-20 per cent of people who qualify as ‘highly sensitive’.
Psychologist, Elain Aron has found that they experience sounds, feelings, and even the presence of other people much more intensely than the average person.
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to recognise and understand emotions in yourself and others and your ability to use this awareness to manage behaviour and relationships.
The good news is that highly sensitive people aren’t more or less emotionally intelligent than others.
Highly sensitive people experience things more intensely.
Their strong emotions are easier to identify (and potentially use to their benefit) than the average person.
This also helps them to communicate effectively because they don’t just hear the words coming out of other people’s mouths, they also catch on to subtleties in gesture and tone.
There are trade-offs, however, as strong emotions that are left unchecked can have disastrous consequences.
Highly sensitive people can use EQ to their benefit only once they understand that they are highly sensitive.
This awareness ensures they reap the benefits of their heightened emotional awareness while spotting and defeating their negative tendencies.
You’re likely wondering if you or someone you know are highly sensitive.
The following are the most common qualities that highly sensitive people possess.
You think deeply:
When life throws you a curveball, you retreat deep into your shell, thinking through every aspect of what transpired before taking any action.
Small things (in your own life and other people’s lives) can have a big impact on you.
You’re detail-oriented:
You’re as sensitive to details as you are to feelings.
You see details that others miss, and you aren’t content until you’ve dotted all the i’s and crossed the t’s.
This is a strength that is highly valuable in the right profession.
You take longer to reach decisions:
Since you’re prone to dig deep beneath the surface, you tend to drag out decisions.
You can’t help but try to run every possible outcome through your head, and this is often at the expense of the ticking clock.
You’re crushed by bad decisions:
When you finally make a decision, and it turns out to be a poor choice, you take it much harder than most.
This can create a vicious cycle that slows down your decision-making process even more, as fear of making a bad decision is part of what slows you down in the first place.
You’re emotionally reactive:
When left to your own devices, you have a knee-jerk reaction to your feelings.
You also have strong reactions to what other people are going through.
When your emotions come on strong, it’s easy to let them hijack your behaviour.
The hard part is channelling your feelings into producing the behaviour that you want.
You take criticism harshly:
Your strong feelings and intense emotional reactions can make criticism hard to take.
Though you may overreact to criticism initially, you also have the tendency to think hard about things and explore them deeply.
This exploration of criticism can play out well for you in the long run, as your inability to ‘shrug it off’ helps you make the appropriate changes.
You work well in teams:
Your ability to take other people’s feelings into account and pay attention to the smaller details makes you extremely valuable in a team environment.
This can backfire if you’re the one that is tasked with making final decisions, as you’re better suited to offering input and analysis than you are to deciding whether or not to push the red button.
You have great manners:
Your heightened awareness of the emotions of other people makes you highly conscientious.
You pay close attention to how your behaviour affects other people and have the good manners to show for it.
You also get particularly irked when other people are rude.
Open offices drive you crazy:
Your sensitivity to other people, loud noises, and other stimuli makes it practically impossible for you to work effectively in an open-office environment.
You’re better off in a cube or working from home.
Like many things in life, being a highly sensitive person is both a blessing and a curse.
It all comes down to what you make of it.
* Travis Bradberry is the co-founder of TalentSmart, a provider of emotional intelligence tests, emotional intelligence training, and emotional intelligence certification. He can be contacted at TalentSmart.com.
This article first appeared on the TalentSmart website.