The highly sensitive person
in hardcover, this book identifies and defines a new personality type -- and shows readers how to overcome its limitations and maximize its strengths.
Stats for nerds
8recommend
14mentions
12people
2010–2024years
64% recommend36% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Wow, this is interesting, very few books I've read more than once! Even fewer are non fiction, but they sure do explain a lot about me:
- Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker helped me process a number of assaults that happened to me as a child
- Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann helped me understand intuitively how databases work and how to use eventual consistency to handle workloads
- The Highly Sensitive Person: How To Thrive when the World Overwhelms You by Elaine Aron this helped me process my and my families neurodivergence.
- Structure And Interpretation of Computer Programs by Ableson and Sussman. Great book, it's how I learned to love Lisp. I felt like I grew 10x in skill from completing all the homework.
- Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training by Mark Rippetoe. This is the book that got me into powerlifting as a regular part of my fitness. I used this to heal my back, neck, and wrist pain. Changed my life.
- Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter by James Gurney. The GOAT of plein air painting himself teaches so much about how light works on complex forms. I've dog-eared this book.
- Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux. A great look into how to build and run a self organizing team. Very insightful for when I was leading several teams and needed inspiration for something other than the typical chain of command.
- The Classroom Management Book by Harry Wong. This book taught me so much about how humans work. I still apply lessons from this book 20 years later.
- Real World Haskell by O'Sullivan, Goerzen, Stewart. This taught me a lot about Haskell, and got me into all the neat effects needed to make a function pure but still handle IO/async, etc.
- Peopleware by DeMarco, Lister. My go to book for people management and a philosophy of project management
- Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples by Gottman. I love this book for teaching me how to be a better spouse and friend.
- The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing by Larimore, Lindauer. A great guide to building a permanent portfolio that will return consistent gains with the market. Simple in hindsight, thanks to this book. Best book on investing I've ever read.
- How to Take Smart Notes by Ahrens. Introduces the zettlekasten system for thinking and creativity. Very inspiring, got me to start a personal file that I keep going to this day, five years later.
- Twenty Small Sailboats to Take you Anywhere by Vigor. I read this book over and over, dreaming of buying a small boat and sailing around the world. Maybe this year...
- There are some life situations where having ADHD is probably a lifesaver. Those situations are likely far less common these days than 100+ years ago, so that aspect of humanity is now less relevant. But the evolutionary behavior will take a long time to eliminate itself...
There were parts of the book, The Highly Sensitive Person, by Elaine Aron, which were eye-opening to me in how they illustrated facets of myself (and how they showed the human value of some of those facets). There's definitely a place in the world for fixers, watchers, and people with unusual behaviors.
I suspect there may be uniquely valuable things to be learned or received from autistic people; but we haven't figured out how to bridge the communication gap. So while most people would assume that autistic means broken or useless, it's possible that the rest of us are just not ready or not capable of comprehending what's actually available.
- +1 to therapy. Also, consider reading The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron.
I made a huge improvement to my shyness and self esteem by doing a few awareness workshops in my country (not US). And now doing therapy to boost other areas of my life which I want to improve.
It's not your fault, it's how you (and I) were raised. I am a sensitive person. Since my parents didn't know much about it, they didn't teach me how to get by, how to make contact with people, how to respect myself and still be out in the world. The message I got was that I am shy and I need to "get over it". This didn't help but made things worse. Only in my 30s did I start fixing it and healing my pains. Very much worth it.
Good luck
- You might just be an HSP: https://www.amazon.com/Highly-Sensitive-Person-Thrive-Overwh...
I've had this problem in many contexts. Some of it stems from childhood circumstances, but it's also that I often read people better than they seemingly know themselves, i.e., noticing anger that they don't think they have. This can cause a lot of stress.
- Not the usual fare around here, but lots of devs struggle with mental health, so here goes.
I was first diagnosed with depression when I was working on a startup in 2007. I went to the doctor, told him I was feeling mild flu symptoms for a couple of months, he asked me a few questions, determined that I had depression, gave my some SSRIs, and sent me home.
It worked for a while, but then 2008 happened, our startup collapsed, the stakes got higher and the depression came back. The doc recommended I up the dosage, but I could see this would eventually lead me to a straitjacket.
Over the years I've tried different meds, various forms of therapy, studied and actively practiced life coaching, got married, had kids, moved to another country and changed everything I could think of about my life. Unfortunately the dark bouts of depression remained.
About four years ago I stumbled on a book called Highly Sensitive Person that absolutely blew my mind. I realized I had very intense emotions that I was culturally programmed to repress, which caused my psyche to overload and go into full apathy mode also known as clinical depression.
I've been on a path to figure out how to process my emotions without repressing them and combined my personal experience with several non-mainstream techniques to build Wuju. It's an online app that can help you tap into your hidden emotions and release them so they no longer influence your behaviour or cause depressive symptoms.
I've used it in the last 18 months to deal with parenting two kids, surviving infidelity, losing my job, starting a business, and covid anxiety. My longest bouts of depression now last a day at most and even that doesn't happen too often.
If you're struggling with depression, anxiety or even just procrastination that you can't seem to get rid of, Wuju might help you (it's free while in beta and will remain free for life for anyone who joins early).
If you have any questions, ping me on Twitter, where I talk a lot about emotional intelligence and how to heal from mental disorders.
- There's a few theories out there around sensory processing difficulties, which I've been looking into a lot lately to pretty good effect. Check out The Highly Sensitive Person. (Seriously. get yourself a pair of earplugs and see how that alters your sense of focus on moderately interesting tasks, if it does anything, you should read the book). The TLDR is that when engaging in a task you have to reach the correct activation level to perform it, and it's a struggle for some people.
Some people think that a lot of ADHD people or misdiagnosed, others that it's just another symptom of ADHD.
Which is why some people have to fidget, or listen to music, or move around in order to get stuff done. Or why I'm a worse driver if I can't have the radio on.
The pinnacle of this for me was about half a dozen years ago, I was slugging out some code for a personal project. But I was also feeling nostalgic for an old movie (can't recall which, but let's say it was The Princess Bride). So I put it on in the background. But this isn't quite getting me in The Zone, so this is the scene my partner walks into:
I'm sitting on the couch typing. In all likelihood my knee is bouncing (makes laptops a bit tricky). There's 90's music coming out of my laptop, The Princess Bride is on the TV.
Her head is about to explode. You would think I was killing kittens. She has an ADHD diagnosis, and this plan I have enacted is so anathema to her coping mechanisms that she can't even bear to witness it. Which is too bad because I was getting rather a lot done.
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