Don’t Ever Do THIS if You’re Highly Sensitive!

Do you consider yourself a highly sensitive person? If so, you probably ask yourself from time to time how you should and should not behave in certain everyday situations. In this article, you'll learn seven things you better not do as a highly sensitive person. 

1. No pre-bedtime movies to get you worked up 

There's no question about it: tastes differ. A good movie in the evening is a natural part of many people's lives, and not just on weekends. Highly sensitive people, however, would do well to pay special attention to the choice of movies and the timing.

Comedies or feature films are much better before bedtime than nerve-racking thrillers, for instance. This is because films are often remembered subconsciously. Shortly before bedtime, an upsetting movie can influence the dreams of highly sensitive people and thus massively lower sleep quality.

Vivid and upsetting dreams from films that are difficult to process are about on par with eating take-out barbecue before bed, in terms of your sleep quality. The fast-moving images often found in nerve-wracking movies and the loud suspenseful background music can unnecessarily stir up your emotions at an hour when you're supposed to be calming down.

2. Workplace hierarchies

Most professionals have a supervisor, and with that often comes further hierarchies in the workplace. Working in hierarchical relationships can manifest itself in authoritarian behaviors within a group. Stress in the workplace is nothing unusual and yet there are companies and employers where things are particularly turbulent.

Demanding superiors, but perhaps also annoying colleagues, can be especially hard on highly sensitive people. These internal structures are unchangeable and those affected usually feel very uncomfortable in such a working atmosphere. In addition, there is the often ambivalent way of dealing with criticism.

On the one hand, highly sensitive people feel especially obligated or are even afraid to make mistakes, on the other hand, they often take even constructive criticism personally, which does not necessarily facilitate harmonious interaction with the boss and colleagues. For this reason, the creativity and effectiveness of highly sensitive people are better nurtured in less hierarchically structured workplaces. The right choice of profession is therefore doubly important.

3. Stimulus overload

Party people need a large supply of stamina, but also an especially strong eardrum. Not surprisingly, highly sensitive people prefer not to be party-goers, and there are good reasons for this. Strong external stimuli in the form of excessive noise or bright light are part and parcel of the evening.

A dance club with friends can turn out to be a real test. What is a pleasure for other people can overwhelm highly sensitive people. In some cases it will induce a fight-or-flight response, which in the worst case can escalate to a genuine panic attack. Stimulus overload can affect anyone, but the personal and subjectively perceived threshold for this varies greatly.

This means that some people hardly feel any discomfort even standing right in front of the loudspeakers, while highly sensitive people perceive even an average volume as unpleasant, causing them downright physical pain.

4. Group sports and competition

Spending an hour at the gym together with your best friends or playing in a soccer team – sounds good, doesn't it? But many highly sensitive people are skeptical about this idea. The reason for this can be found in their internal competitive situation, which can make them uncomfortable.

Wherever team sports are played, there are many eyes on you. This increased attention and the associated vulnerability to criticism in the event of a mistake becomes all the more apparent here. Sport in a group therefore triggers a feeling of being observed in highly sensitive people, which they often cannot cope with at all.

Since sport thrives on mistakes and defeats are just as much a part of it as victories, highly sensitive people are vulnerable to being knocked down. That nagging feeling of not being good enough makes them very uncomfortable.

5. The problem on the job with multitasking

Very sensitive people tend to become overwhelmed when they are asked to do several things at the same time. This is especially noticeable in the professional environment. Everyone reaches their limits when overworked.

A less sensitive person may be less concerned about a higher frequency of tasks and demands than their colleagues. The mixture of perfectionism and a stress intolerance make everyday working life an almost insurmountable hurdle. The hectic world of work sometimes demands unreasonable things of employees.

The increased demands of the job and the already high demands that highly sensitive people place on themselves make it difficult to achieve the satisfaction that is so important and not infrequently leads to strong self-doubt among those affected. They then believe that they cannot meet the demands.

The resulting negative feelings, such as fear or insecurity, have a detrimental effect on these people's productivity.

6. Criticism at the wrong time

Although criticism is an unpleasant accompaniment to everyday life for the majority of people, huge differences can be observed in terms of how people deal with it as well as with effects on the people themselves.

Highly sensitive people will look for ways to avoid being exposed to criticism about their person. As a result, they will try to conceal their own personal attackable surface and at this point it becomes problematic, because there’s no such thing as a perfection. The goal should therefore be rather to improve one's handling of one's own critical faculties and fear of others’ criticism instead of avoiding them.

A life free of criticism sounds nice, it would even be a paradise for many highly sensitive people. Their self-esteem suffers considerably from this difficult back-and-forth with criticism. For this reason, working on a healthy self-esteem should be a top priority.

7. Toxic relationships and people who do no good

Toxic relationships do no one any good. For highly sensitive people, such a relationship has a particularly negative impact because they feel more deeply and intensely than their less sensitive peers. Just one toxic relationship can be the straw that breaks the camel's back and plunge the person into a deep crisis.

It is possible that these relationships, or fellow human beings, cannot be immediately identified and only gradually turn out to be toxic. But if you as a highly sensitive person find yourself spending long hours brooding about the behavior of this person or even sleepless nights, you should consider terminating the relationship, if at all possible.

Today’s Conclusion

If you listen to your deepest inner self and do not let yourself be guided by various external currents, you can often make the right decisions based on your natural intuition and avoid situations that are not good for you. However, if you do fall into a trap, try to stay calm and focus on your strengths instead of letting yourself be pulled into a spiral of hopelessness. Try to stay in the here and now and always keep a cool head. That's it for today.