The key ideas

Sensitive: The Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person in a Loud, Fast, Too-Much World

Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo, 2023

Why do some people leave a noisy office full of energy while others leave drained? Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo show that roughly one person in three is born to take in the world more deeply than others, and that this is a trait, not a weakness. You will learn what gifts sensitivity brings, how to handle overstimulation and other people’s pain, and how the trait shapes love, work and raising children.

Who it is for

For anyone who has heard “don’t take everything so personally” since childhood and gets worn out by noise sooner than others. And for anyone who lives or works with a sensitive person and wants to understand them.

Sensitive people often need the Golden Rule in reverse: treat yourself the way you treat others.

The lecture Dresden did not expect

In 1903, Dresden was preparing a grand exhibition about cities. The organisers invited the sociologist Georg Simmel to speak, and they expected to hear praise for progress. Simmel stepped up to the podium and talked about something else. He said the big city pours an endless stream of impressions onto a person, and the nerves cannot keep up. To survive the noise, people shut down and turn cold and indifferent.

More than a century later, there is far more noise. Phones, news, open-plan offices, messages late at night. Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo call our world loud, fast and too much. Both of them see themselves as sensitive people, and together they built the largest online community for people like them.

Their book argues with a phrase almost everyone has heard: “Don’t take everything so personally.” According to the authors, roughly one person in three is born to take in the world more deeply than others. It is not a weakness and not an illness. It is a personality trait with its own strengths. The trouble is not sensitivity itself. The trouble is a world that demands you hide it.

In this book you will learn what scientists mean by sensitivity and why sensitive people get more out of a good environment than everyone else. You will learn the five gifts this trait brings and how not to burn out from overstimulation and other people’s pain. You will also see what it changes in love, at work and in raising children, and why the authors speak of a whole sensitive revolution.

Sensitivity is a trait, not a diagnosis

The term “highly sensitive person” was coined by the American psychologist Elaine Aron. In the 1990s she and her husband Arthur began studying people who respond more strongly than others to noise, light, other people’s moods and subtle changes around them. Aron showed that this is not a whim or a spoiled character. It is a stable trait people are born with.

Granneman and Sólo give it a simple definition: the ability to perceive, process and respond deeply to your environment. The key word is deeply. A sensitive person does not just notice more. They think longer about what they noticed and react to it more strongly.

To make the trait easier to recognise, Aron described it with four signs. Their English initials spell DOES: depth of processing, overstimulation, emotional reactivity and sensitivity to subtleties. In Aron’s view, a sensitive person has all four at once, while any single sign on its own is common.

Where does the trait come from? The authors write that it is largely inherited, and you cannot simply switch it off by willpower. But environment plays a part too. A child who grows up in a home with unpredictable parents, for example, may become even more alert to the slightest shift in a parent’s mood. Sensitivity helps that child spot danger in time.

Sensitivity is often confused with shyness or reserve. But a sensitive person can be an introvert or an extrovert. Nor is it a disorder that needs treating. The research the authors cite points to a scale: some people are a little sensitive, some are moderately so, and about a third sit at the high end.

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About the author

Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo are American writers and the founders of Sensitive Refuge, the largest online community for highly sensitive people. Granneman also created Introvert, Dear, a community for introverts.

All books by this author: Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo

Terms from the book

  • Overstimulation
  • Roosevelt
  • Wrzesniewski
  • Empathy
  • Darwin
  • Ricard
  • Aron
  • Perkins
  • introvert
  • extrovert
  • Compassion
  • Gaslighting
  • Simmel: Georg Simmel (1858–1918), German philosopher and sociologist. In 1903 he gave a lecture in Dresden, “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, on how the city floods a person with impressions.
  • Highly sensitive person: A term coined by Elaine Aron: someone who is born to take in and process what happens around them more deeply. It is a personality trait, not a diagnosis.
  • DOES: An acronym Elaine Aron uses to describe high sensitivity: depth of processing, overstimulation, emotional reactivity and sensitivity to subtleties. It is Aron’s framework, not a diagnostic test.
  • Amplification effect: A phrase from the book: sensitive people get more out of a good environment, support and teaching than less sensitive people do.
  • Springsteen: Bruce Springsteen (born 1949), American rock musician and songwriter from New Jersey. In 2016 he published his autobiography, “Born to Run”.
  • Toughness myth: A phrase from the book: a set of beliefs that sensitivity is weakness and that enduring without showing your feelings is the right way to live.
  • Goodall: Jane Goodall (1934–2025), British primatologist who studied chimpanzees in Tanzania for decades.
  • Sensory intelligence: A phrase from the book: the ability to pick up signals from your surroundings and respond to them accurately.
  • Gretzky: Wayne Gretzky (born 1961), Canadian ice hockey player, one of the highest-scoring players in NHL history.
  • Singer: Tania Singer (born 1969), German neuroscientist who studies empathy and compassion.
  • Johnston: Brian Johnston, American writer of books for sensitive children. The authors interviewed him and his wife about how sensitivity nearly broke their marriage and then saved it.
  • Job crafting: An approach in which a person reshapes their job from the inside: their tasks, their relationships with people and the way they see their role.
  • New Deal: Roosevelt’s programme of reforms in the 1930s, designed to pull the United States out of the Great Depression.
  • Nunchi: A Korean word: the ability to sense the mood of the people around you and understand what is left unsaid.
  • Sensitive way: A phrase from the book: an outlook in which quality of life, connection with people and caring for yourself matter more than bare achievement and power.

All terms

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