The World And Its Colors: Diversity In Sensitivity

Ever happened that everytime you and your friend listen to a song together and you feel the music cutting through your skin and bones and giving you goosebumps while your friend wouldn't be bothered at all? Or every time you enter a bright room, it pierces your eyes or gives you a headache while everyone else is completely fine? Do you often find yourself immersed in stuff so deep that you point out things others usually miss out? 

You too might've marvelled at the way two different people go on to experience the same thing differently. This is brought by your levels of 'sensitivity' which determines how easily your senses catch something going on in your environment. It's your threshold or boundary at which you let an external object register on your mind. 

The colors 

Some of us act like prisms, absorbing and breaking a single beam of light into a wide spectrum of varying colors and feeling each one of its colors intensely while the others only see a single, steady beam of light. The way you experience this color is known only to you. We use the term 'qualia' to refer to the subjective,  internal conscious experiences that are unknown to others. So the unique way in which your brain paints the world for you due to your own level of sensitivity is your own personal universe of qualia, unique to you and unknown to others. 

Every time you try to get others to experience or feel something on a level you do, you end up being exhausted or frustrated. While it's difficult for you to get the other person to experience things on your level, these differences make up who we truly are and what we identify as. Our different sensitivity levels shouldn't really make us aliens to one another but more receptive to and understanding of our diversities, that is, how each one of us might experience the colors of the world differently. 

Why do we differ in our sensitivity?

Diversity exists in every aspect of nature. Everything is designed differently and with such precision and purpose that you wouldn't see it as worthless. So even you as an individual carry a distinct design and serve great purpose. Twin studies tell us that almost 50% of our sensitivity is inherited while the other 50% is the result of our environment (Assary et al., 2020).

From an evolutionary view, it is said that heightened sensitivity, which processes environmental cues more deeply, helped people sense the danger early on, ensuring better survival for them and their groups. Low sensitivity, on the other hand, gives an opportunity to be bolder and less overwhelmed, which ensures willingness to take risks in novel environments. So a population consisting of both would navigate an unpredictable future better. 

Elaine Aron coined the term HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) as a personality trait to refer to someone with a more attuned nervous system, processing physical, social and emotional stimuli much more deeply than others. Thomas Boyce and Bruce Ellis say it's Biological Sensitivity to Context (BSC),  which says that a child's biological sensitivity is dynamically shaped by early childhood experiences to help them adapt to their specific environment. Highly stressful or traumatic experiences may increase sensitivity levels as a survival mechanism to constantly monitor threats. 

Highly sensitive people also have a highly reactive amygdala, which processes threatening and emotional stimuli and leads to stronger registration of both positive and negative inputs. The nervous system of an HSP also filters less incoming sensory stimuli which is why you may find yourself easily overwhelmed, react intensely to input initially, and take slower to return to baseline levels, if you are also one. 

A harmonious existence with your sensitivity 

If you have heightened sensitivity, you would've perhaps been confused at times or tried making changes to yourself to prevent being overstimulated or frustrated by your surroundings. Experiencing things at the extremes, whether a positive or negative stimulus, is nevertheless easy; it's a punishment and a reward at the same time. But, as all things created by nature serve valuable purposes, you are definitely not an exception. 

The calm to the chaos and stillness to the noise. You elevate your surroundings in exceptional ways by making sure the world around you is steady and balanced, so your own internal world can also be at ease and not overwhelmed. You may or may not have been told that your presence brings comfort in itself. It's a highly specialized offering that beautifies the way you contribute to the world and it makes your own experience unique. 

While some of us may never get to experience things as intensely as an HSP, we may perhaps know how to exist with them harmoniously without overstimulating them or feeling offended by their experiences. 

Now that we know we've varying levels of sensitivity and there's only so little a person can do about it, it would be worth mentioning that if someone around you shows heightened reaction to any stimulus, they're not being dramatic or over-reacting. It's how their nervous system takes in stuff, which might be different from how yours does. Their increased reactions sometimes, especially the negative ones, may perhaps be more annoying and disturbing to them than they might be to you. 

So, they surely won't expect another negative add on from someone around them who could possibly try to soften their experience for them. If their reactions don't pose any harm to you, the best you could do is validate them and provide them the calm surroundings they need to thrive best in. So, high sensitivity in a person would bring you calm and that's what they themselves would flourish in too, but only if they're not already overwhelmed. 

The diversity in us is what makes us unique to ourselves and to others and that's how we contribute uniquely to our surroundings. All in all, we make up the environment for each other and so, it's in our hands whether we mess it up or bless it.