The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

To complement Chapter 8 on HSPs and psychotherapy, Chapter 9 deals with HSPs and traditional medicine. Aron envisions HSPs not just navigating the world of healthcare successfully, but actually being “pioneers” who help bring the science of medicine forward—a task in keeping with their larger role as “royal advisors” who provide moral and intellectual leadership. They can do this by educating their healthcare providers about the needs of their personality type, thus becoming representatives for the HSP point of view. In particular, HSPs need to make doctors aware of their greater sensitivity to pain, medications, and medical environments. Aron sees such advocacy as a way to counteract the increasingly depersonalized character of modern healthcare, as well as the tendency to treat sensitivity dismissively or as a disorder in need of a cure. Thus, Chapter 9 serves Aron’s scheme in the whole book to make high sensitivity better known, understood, and even valued in society.

In keeping with the book’s larger goal of offering fine-grained, practical advice, Aron’s discussion of HSPs’ relationship to the medical world includes advice on specific medications. In making her recommendations, Aron seeks a balance between recognizing that traditional medications may be necessary for some individuals and a conviction that “natural” healing methods are preferable. To the latter end, Aron recommends herbal remedies and calming practices to deal with the stresses of being an HSP, thus emphasizing the key role of “wholeness” as opposed to the short-term fixes provided by medication.

In general, Chapter 9 strikes a hopeful and forward-looking note. The revised 2020 version of the chapter recognizes positive changes that have taken place since the original 1996 publication, and Aron notes that she expects such progress to continue. The revised chapter shows Aron’s point of view that there is now greater awareness of high sensitivity, due in part to her own studies and writings. Aron implies that raising awareness about high sensitivity will improve healthcare as a whole by making it more nuanced, flexible, and responsive to diverse needs.

In Chapter 10, Aron concludes the book with a look at spirituality, which she has implied throughout the book is an important aspect of Personal Growth and Self-Care for HSPs including herself. By crowning the book with this topic, Aron reflects her view that HSPs are inherently open to spirituality and that such practices are key to a healthy life. Aron characterizes spirit as a transcendental property of reality, that which includes and contains “soul, body, and world” (207). HSPs are inherently geared toward this reality in part because of their “talent for being aware of what others miss or deny” (207)—in other words, their deeper perception of life and reality, one that goes beyond surfaces to the inner essence. Aron cites her own habit of meditation as evidence of her longtime engagement with spirituality as an HSP.

Aron’s conviction that HSPs are inherently spiritual relates to her concept of HSPs as the “royal-advisor” class and even the “priest” class: a group called upon to supply spiritual “nourishment” to society. This reflects Aron’s larger claim that HSPs can act as leaven in society—a metaphor comparing HSPs to the yeast that makes bread rise—influencing people in positive ways and changing the tone of the culture. For Aron, HSPs’ inherent spirituality is expressed in their behavior, which tends toward silent attentiveness and considerateness. 

One of the ways HSPs can lead the spiritual direction of society, according to Aron, is through the search for wholeness. Here Aron returns to Jung’s concept of the shadow self, in which all human beings are imperfect and have a darker or “shadow” part along with their more positive part. According to Aron’s scheme, it is healthier to confront and acknowledge the shadow self rather than repress it. By bringing the shadow out into the open, the individual has “a greater chance of behaving morally” (217). The “evil” aspects of the shadow—which in a Jungian sense are “buried in the unconscious” (219)—can be converted into good by counterposing them with one’s brighter half, like a series of checks and balances aimed at wholeness rather than moral perfection. This search for balance counteracts the societal pressure to erase or ignore the shadow self, a tendency that can lead to dissatisfaction. 

HSPs are particularly suited to be leaders in wholeness because they must constantly deal with issues of balance in their lives and are good at self-analysis. As with other personalities, HSPs can achieve a balance that Aron defines as “Just okay, ordinary, normal” (217)—avoiding stereotypes that treat them as either defective or supernaturally gifted. This reflects Aron’s end goal in Challenging Societal Misconceptions About High Sensitivity: to have HSPs take their place as ordinary members of society whose gifts are respected without being either degraded or overprotected.

In seeking to balance The Challenges and Benefits of High Sensitivity, most HSPs should strive to be slightly more extraverted, thus tempering their already strong tendency to introversion. The pursuit of wholeness reflects Aron’s stress on the reality of limitations in life and the need to choose a “persona.” This ultimately reflects a view that all human beings have a determined essence or character, yet with the freedom to look beyond it.