What Is Emotional Reactivity In Highly Sensitive People?
Today I want to talk about emotional reactivity, or emotional intensity, a common trait in highly sensitive people.
As mentioned in the books of Dr. Elan N. Aron, there’s 4 common traits found in HSPs that I’ve made a mini-series about on The CalmWithDom Podcast, which you can listen to after reading this! Soon, there will be blog posts on each individual trait.
Keep reading to learn more about emotional reactivity!
What Is Emotional Reactivity?
So, Emotional Reactivity: What is this exactly? It’s simply how you emotionally react to your immediate environment. I like to call it the unconscious step right before empathy. It’s your capacity for feeling the emotions of others.
Think about the moment you see a movie scene or commercial that’s sad or upsetting.
The reaction it might instantly invoke in you is to cry, or simply feel sadness for something that has nothing to do with you, that you yourself aren’t going through primarily, but secondhand. Or maybe you’re not sad, but critical, concerned, maybe downright apathetic.
The actual emotion is besides the point.
Everyone, other than those with antisocial personality disorder, has different levels of emotional reactivity. What makes highly sensitive people different is their capacity for emotional reactions. Unsurprisingly, it’s really high.
We’re more emotional, our emotional worlds are rich. Not to say that we emote more. We can, but that’s an individual thing and not really across the board.
Even if you’re highly sensitive, it doesn’t directly mean you’re wearing your heart on your sleeve all of the time. And so, even if it’s not easy for you to express or simply show your emotions, it doesn’t mean you don’t feel deeply.
Related: What Is A Highly Sensitive Person | How To Know If You Are One
What Does Your Emotional Reactivity Mean For You?
It means it doesn’t take much for you to understand how others are feeling. This quality actually makes highly sensitive people more ‘empathic,’ or seemingly feel the emotions of others.
It’s instantaneous, it’s instinctive. If someone is expressing discomfort around you, you in return first feel the discomfort, and then make adjustments, in your environment, in your behavior, in your decisions overall as needed. That usually means you make decisions with this information in mind.
This is why highly sensitive people tend to be strong decision-makers. You see how this is adding up? If you’ve caught the past episodes on depth of processing and overstimulation, this just makes sense.
Take your ability to immediately recognize the details of your environment, and add it to your ability to deeply process said details, as well as deeply empathize with and consider the other people in your environment. Decision-making is literally your superpower!
What Are The Downsides To An HSP’s Emotional Reactivity?
That being said, it’s not always a good thing – it does come with some downsides. One downside is you’re more likely to be deeply impacted by events and situations than others who experience the same thing.
It comes with the territory, right?
You can’t be so sensitive to the world without being affected by it. So if you were brought up in a negative environment, or went through a traumatic event, it’s going to impact you more than non-HSP who have gone through similar (or the same exact event as you, like siblings, friends, etc.).
But I’ll go ahead and sandwich that downside with another plus, because it’s just as relevant. On the flip side, you benefit way more than others from positive environments, events, and situations, and that just means you benefit more than others would.
And this isn’t an exaggeration. You find joy in the small things. You appreciate the most minor positive occurrences.
Just to prove that point, I want you to think of a time when you saw someone smile and it made you smile. It made your chest warm, and you felt good just from the sight.
Or seeing people laugh, watching kids play. If that was recent, and it’s a pretty common thing for you… then consider my point proven. Whether it’s happening directly to you or not, you benefit greatly.
Related: How To Practice Emotional Detachment For Your Mental Health
Two Things Highly Sensitive People MUST Remember
Number #1: You don’t need much to be happy, and therefore your needs are not a burden.
We do this to ourselves a lot of the time – in the middle of your overwhelm, in the middle of your overstimulation and inability to be okay when a lot is going on for a long period of time, it’s easy to think you’re falling short of others’ expectations.
And that is because you’re so hyper-aware of the needs of others and how what you’re doing is affecting them, that you don’t treat your needs with that same level of importance, with the same weight.
As highly sensitive people, when we don’t tend to our needs, we’re doing the opposite of harnessing our sensitivity to thrive, to excel no matter where we are – and instead, we suffer because of it. Instead, no one gets to benefit from your highly sensitive nature, not even you.
Number #2: Your emotional reactivity enables you to excel no matter where you are – physically, in your relationships, in your mental health, in your career, and in how you show up for others.
To be a person who can light up from seeing a stranger smile, to have a full heart from understanding someone else’s good intentions, to have a fire spark in you from seeing other people’s success – that is someone with access to immense power and strength.
And people don’t typically use words like power and strength to describe highly sensitive people, and I think that’s a mistake. When you can find value in very simple things, when small details like that can excite you about life, you can literally do anything you set your mind to.
Not everyone understands this and that’s okay – they’re not meant to.
The Takeaway
I don’t personally get too excited when I hear other highly sensitive coaches say “HSP hate change” or “Highly sensitive people are prone to anxiety.” Those “fun facts” aren’t fun, and they don’t make HSP feel understood for the people they are.
The HSP I work with usually aren’t suffering from mental health symptoms, or what I like to call energy leaks, because they’re highly sensitive, but because they don’t know how to meet their needs as a highly sensitive person.
They’re not yet familiar with how they operate as highly sensitive people. That’s the difference, and personally speaking, I know having that mindset when I was learning more about how I operated, I was able to see the untapped potential and value of my SPS, and of my own value.
When you don’t understand how to navigate these traits, those mental health symptoms are going to cripple you, because you’re going to think you are fundamentally the problem. And being highly sensitive is not wrong or a problem.
This article was all about emotional reactivity in HSP. If you have any questions or comments, leave them below!
If you would like to learn more about how to harness your sensitivity to strengthen your relationships,
click here to learn how to work with me!
Until next time.
When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That's when you can get more creative in solving problems.
