A highly sensitive person typically has one or more senses that are heightened in sensitivity. It is even possible that all of their 5 senses are more sensitive to stimuli than those of a non-highly sensitive person.
Being a highly sensitive person can come with a lot of challenges and one of those challenges is dealing with overstimulated senses daily. That’s why it is important to see what possible solutions there are to help you make your everyday life a little easier.
I am particularly very sensitive to my hearing, smell, and touch and a little more sensitive than the non-highly sensitive individual in sight. For me, taste isn’t something that overstimulates me, although I don’t like the taste of a lot of food.
Let’s see in which overstimulation of your senses you recognize yourself, and what there is to do about it shall we?
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The 5 Senses of a Highly Sensitive Person
Most people have 5 well-developed senses, but the senses of highly sensitive people might feel overdeveloped and overstimulated more often depending on the situation. As I begin to learn more and more about being a highly sensitive person, I learn to handle these situations differently from before.
It is so important to know how to take precautions so you can prevent the overstimulation part because it’s no fun when you are overstimulated en want to crawl into a little ball with no one around to have some sensory rest.
If you don’t know which of your senses might be hyper-sensitive, I suggest you read the whole blog post, otherwise, you can just skip to the senses you need a little help with.
Prevention of overstimulation for a highly sensitive person is key here!
Hearing
You probably like listening to music or talking to a loved one, listening to the birds chirp and the sound of your favorite Netflix show. But what happens when you don’t have control over the loudness of it all? This is where the problems might arise…
The problem of overstimulated and even painful ears often arises with loud noise, but for a highly sensitive person, this can also happen with slightly louder sounds than what they find comfortable.
Things that can provoke overstimulation might be people who talk very loudly, watching television with people who like it a little louder, the noise of a train passing by, or going to a music festival. These are all challenges for the highly sensitive person with a high sensitivity to sound.
I have written a blog post about noise sensitivity to dig a little deeper into this topic, so definitely check this out if you suffer from very sensitive ears.
Hearing Tips for a Highly Sensitive Person:
Step out of the uncomfortable or even painful situation if this is possible. This can be moving yourself to a quieter space further away from the speakers when you are at a party or festival or going to your room when the television is too loud.
Ask to lower the volume of the thing that is causing your ears to hurt for example lower the volume of the TV and put on some subtitles.
Always bring earplugs, noise-canceling earphones, or headphones with you. They will be life saviors when you have to tolerate loud noise for a significant time. I use my AirPods almost every day, sometimes I only use them to block noise and not even listen to music. Recently, I’ve also bought Loop Switch Earplugs, I use them mostly in quiet mode to focus on work or to read a book on the train.
Touch
Sensitivity to touch might be a little easier to deal with than sensitivity to sound as you have more control over the things touching you (I hope you do at least).
I am not necessarily talking about other people touching you, although you might not like that, this is personal for everyone. Some people like being touched frequently, and others would love to walk around in a cactus suit so nobody touches them. What I am mostly referring to is the heightened sensation of your skin with clothes or things you wear every day.
The itching of clothes that contain wool everywhere the fabric touches a few millimeters of bare skin can drive me (and probably many others) crazy. This also goes for labels in clothes touching skin or just clothes that don’t fit right, clothes that are too tight or sit in the wrong way, like a wrinkled sock in a shoe. All very annoying and when not improved, it can lead to severe sensory overstimulation and it will occupy your mind.
So let’s deal with these things!
Touch Tips for a Highly Sensitive Person:
When you hate people touching you, ask them kindly to not do it, that you are not comfortable that way.
Always try on clothes before you buy them. Give it a few minutes to see if the clothes start itching and if so, do not buy them even though they might look great on you. Try to avoid wool or check that there is only a tiny percentage of it in the clothes and see if you can tolerate that by wearing it for a while in the store. Don’t buy clothes if they don’t fit well, this has nothing to do with wool but everything with buying the right size or cut.
Cut out labels. This can be tricky when you need to know how to properly wash something, but try to buy clothes that need the same washing and drying programs so that it doesn’t matter if they still have their labels on them. You could also try to wear it will the label still there, not every label will annoy you because some clothes you only wear with another piece of clothing underneath for example.
Always put on your clothes properly before setting a foot out of the door. If that sock is turned weirdly inside your shoe or your bag is choking you because you didn’t adjust the cord, it will bother you.
Comfort yourself now and then by touching very nice fabric like a soft blanket or petting a fluffy dog. These things can feel amazing on your skin.
Smell
Okay, smell can be a tricky sense for a highly sensitive person to overcome as you can not always control your surroundings.
For example, the smell of the garbage can left open by your roommate, and the smell of a person’s body odor or breath when they talk closely to you can mess with your senses as well as your mind as a highly sensitive person. When people talk to me, but their breath stinks like hell or they smell like they just run a marathon, I have a very hard time focusing on what they are saying.
There are even good smells that can distract you from focusing on your task at hand like sitting next to a person who wears too much perfume.
Highly sensitive persons who are very sensitive to smell can enjoy good smells more than others, but I find most smells are more off-putting than nice to be around in this world. Unfortunately, we have to deal with these awful smells from time to time and we can not avoid them all.
As you can not put some plugs inside your nose as you would do with your ears, let’s see which tips might be helpful to you.
Smell Tips for a Highly Sensitive Person:
Control the smell in a space that is truly yours. Like your bedroom for example, if you don’t have to share it with anyone else, you can determine a lot about the smell. Let in some fresh air now and then to ventilate it, put on a scented candle if you like that, or keep the smell neutral. This can be your good-smelling sanctuary.
When you do have to talk close to someone with bad breath but it only happens on occasion, I think you need to try to accept it for that short period and maybe take a step back to smell it a little less.
When you know a smelly person pretty well (like mother/father, partner, sister…) and want to help them with their breath issues or their odor issues, give them some helpful tips! I know this can be extremely hard to do as you don’t want to hurt them, but if you can give them practical tips that will work, you are helping them a lot and improving other social interactions for them as well.
To fix breath issues, they need to focus on good oral hygiene practices and the tongue scraper will be especially helpful to most people. Body odor can be more tricky but taking a shower every day when they transpirate heavily isn’t a luxury and finding a good deodorant is key (dermatological tested and all)!
Put the garbage out of the house or in a place where the smell doesn’t disturb you. If you can remove a bad smell from your living area, this is great.
Ventilate every room as much as possible to get clean air into the room to remove all dirty smells. (Unless the smell is coming from outside that is!)
Enjoy good smells like a cup of coffee or a nice flower bouquet, as they will give you energy!
Sight
This can also be a sense where some compromises with your environment have to be made if you want to live more pleasantly. A highly sensitive person who has very sensitive eyes can be more easily overstimulated by bright artificial light and even from bright daylight.
Things like working in an office with harsh fluorescent lighting can overstimulate a highly sensitive person very easily. Also walking outside on a very bright day without sunglasses can be too much for someone with very sensitive eyes. The screens on your electronic devices can also cause overstimulation of your eyes.
Even at nighttime, you can have more struggles falling asleep when there is too much light in your bedroom.
Take good care of your eyes as a highly sensitive person with the following tips.
Sight Tips for a Highly Sensitive Person:
Wear sunglasses more often. When you step outside and the sun causes your eyes to squinch, you might benefit from wearing sunglasses to protect them. Even when the sun isn’t shining, the air can feel very strong to highly sensitive people with sensitive eyes so even then sunglasses can help you. It is important to note that not all sunglasses are fine, find the good ones with proper eye protection and a color tone you like.
We should always look for offices with some windows and daylight to feel better and more energetic at work.
Buy electronic devices with a true tone feature to diminish eye strain as much as possible. True tone does adapt the colors on your computer, phone, etc. to the surrounding environment. You should also lower the brightness settings of displays when you are sitting in a darker room to give your eyes some more rest. There also exist devices like blue light blocking glasses to block the blue light for you.
For a good night’s sleep, I wrote a blog post with helpful tips that you should check but the main things for the sense of sight are making your room as dark as possible and if not possible, wearing a comfortable sleep mask to block all the light.
Taste
Hyper-sensitive taste organs can be very beneficial for avoiding food poisoning and for appreciating good food even more. When you have very well-developed taste, your family might trust you to do a taste test on food that has passed its expiration date to check if it’s still okay to eat it without getting sick.
This hypersensitivity can be wonderful when you are eating delicious foods as you will love and savor them even more than a normal-tasting person. But there is a chance that you are also more of a picky eater, which isn’t very handy when eating with other people.
I think taste is an easier sense to stay on top of and not get overstimulated by it as easily as the other senses. If you disagree, please let me know in the comments!
Taste Tip for a Highly Sensitive Person:
When you try new foods, only take a tiny portion to try it first, when you do not like it, you don’t have to throw it all out.
Enjoy all the delicious foods and drinks and consume them mindfully.
Conclusion
Highly sensitive people will have one or more senses that are more sensitive to stimuli than people who aren’t highly sensitive. Figure out what your heightened senses are to learn how to better deal with them and not let them disturb your everyday life as much.
We should be thankful for our sensitivity to the good things and get more of the positives of being a highly sensitive person by learning how to navigate the more difficult aspects. Get to know yourself better to live a happier life.
I am not always happy with the fact that I am a highly sensitive person but I try to use the tips mentioned above as much as I can to deal with this very stimulating world.
Hopefully, you learned something about yourself and can apply one or more of these tips to make your life a little easier. Highly sensitive persons should be able to thrive in their everyday life!
Let me know if you have some more tips for your fellow highly sensitive and if you liked some of my tips. Would love to hear from you!