Experiences of Adults High in the Personality Trait Sensory Processing Sensitivity: A Qualitative Study
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Recruitment and Sampling
2.2. Questionnaires
2.3. Interview Protocol
2.4. Conducting the Interviews
2.5. Data Analysis
3. Results
3.1. Participants
3.2. Characteristics of SPS: Perceptions and Experiences
3.2.1. Emotional Responding (n = 26)
P20: “When I am at a party for example and I say, like: ‘What nice tableware’ or something like that and somebody says, like: ‘Well, I think it actually looks terrible’, then I can suddenly start thinking: ouch! That it cuts me deeper than I perceive it cutting people around me. And then I really feel like a scared little animal that’s easily hurt or something.”
P9: “Very small things, I can intensely enjoy those, yeah. Small things that people often overlook. A breeze through your hair for example, or the sun that shines, or leaves that make that rustling sound when you walk over them in autumn.”
P22: “It seems that many people don’t mind it if they, for example, look at a video which contains violence. They can just scroll away. But with me it actually sticks. It hits me really hard and it just sticks.”
3.2.2. Relatedness to Others (n = 25)
P10: “I can just look around the group and immediately spot who is feeling well and who is fighting as a couple, or where there’s tension.”
P8: “When I work together with colleagues for example, I very quickly know like: this colleague likes this, this colleague likes that. So, I often get told that collaborating is nice, because I, of course, think like: oh, that one likes to do things that way, and that one likes to do things that way. But more often than not I forget to think about my own interests.”
P14: “When I first make contact with children, especially when they are new arrivals, I very quickly notice […] I start reacting very enthusiastically or I need to really stay calm. Yeah, for the most part I quickly realise how a child is put together and how I can respond to the situation.”
P21: “When someone says, for example, like ‘sure, I’m okay’, I might want to ask like ‘hey, how are you really? Because I see this and this.’”
P19: “When I am really good friends with someone, that can be a real deep feeling you know? A true connection, as if it’s family I guess. So, when something negative happens or there’s a fight one time or something, then it kinda really hits me hard.”
3.2.3. Thinking (n = 25)
P14: “Like when I finally lie in bed and go to sleep, everything keeps like rolling around in my head and I keep mulling things over. And yes, I do mean every time, I can never get to sleep in one go. For example, my ex, they always said good night and they were gone within ten seconds, but I would keep thinking for an hour before I fell asleep.”
P6: “Sometimes it takes awfully long for me to make a decision, because I want to weigh all the options and the pros and cons and what everyone’s opinion might be. These are mostly, for example, things we are going to do, and my girlfriend then thinks: get on with it already.”
P11: “My father always said: ‘you always get so philosophical right off the bat’. And then I think: What are you talking about? I am just talking about the state of my life or how I experience something or think about it and he immediately thinks it’s deep?”
3.2.4. Ease of Overstimulation (n = 24)
P19: “Well, at my work at [company] we naturally have rather bright lights to nicely illuminate all those [products], but sometimes I would just stand still for a moment […] but then if one of those bright lights might shine on my face in that particular spot, I would step aside, because I know it might cut really deep and would need to be processed, so to speak.”
P13: “I actually don’t go to large events in large venues anymore. I do that very rarely because I know I can actually only take it for like an hour or something.”
P5: “I actually have a lot of problems making decisions when I experience some overstimulation. Well, I have that after a day of work when I stand in the supermarket, where I think: I can’t take this, I’ll just make spaghetti bolognaise again or whatever.”
P16: “People who are constantly clicking their pens, oh, please stop. I can’t stand it. I get incredibly annoyed. I don’t know what it does to me specifically. I’m not that far yet. But I get incredibly annoyed by it. I just go off like a firework, I just get angry and rebellious and then I’m like: cut that out.”
3.2.5. Perceiving Details (n = 21)
P24: “I sometimes specifically notice that when you walk past some place while you’re with someone, you might see something really beautiful and the person you’re with just completely misses it or walks past it.”
P9: “You notice a lot more details of things. For example, my wife showed me a picture this morning, a baby picture, never seen it before. ‘Who is that?’ she asks. I say: ‘that’s your father’. But I’ve only known her father since he was a grownup. She asked: ‘I hadn’t even recognised him. How did you know?’ ‘Well, his eyes, his ears, I guess... I dunno.’”
3.2.6. Global SPS Characteristics (n = 26)
P4: “It [HSP] really encompasses your entire being.”
P7: “I would like to be able to relax more, that is, in the evenings. I am constantly in ‘hurry-up’ mode.”
P25: “It’s as if I’m more conscious of those details, those expressions, of what comes back to me. And it’s a lot of fun and actually quite useful. But it can also be quite tiring without you noticing it.”
3.2.7. Other SPS Characteristics
3.3. Strategies and Activities to Improve Well-Being
3.3.1. Reducing Sensory Input (n = 26)
3.3.2. Psychological Strategies (n = 25)
3.3.3. Other Strategies
3.4. Learning about SPS and Attitude towards SPS
3.5. Meeting with Participants
4. Discussion
4.1. Summary
4.2. Phenotyping and Validation of SPS
4.3. SPS and Well-Being
4.4. Strengths and Limitations
4.5. Future Directions
4.6. Practical Implications
5. Conclusions
Supplementary Materials
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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SPS and Personality | M (SD) |
---|---|
SPS (7-point scale) | |
Highly Sensitive Person Scale | 5.41 (0.49) |
Sensory Processing Sensitivity Questionnaire | 5.66 (0.55) |
Personality (5-point scale) | |
Extraversion | 3.29 (0.59) |
Agreeableness | 4.13 (0.39) |
Conscientiousness | 3.65 (0.47) |
Negative emotionality | 3.14 (0.68) |
Openness to experience | 4.09 (0.47) |
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Bas, S.; Kaandorp, M.; de Kleijn, Z.P.M.; Braaksma, W.J.E.; Bakx, A.W.E.A.; Greven, C.U. Experiences of Adults High in the Personality Trait Sensory Processing Sensitivity: A Qualitative Study. J. Clin. Med. 2021, 10, 4912. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm10214912
Bas S, Kaandorp M, de Kleijn ZPM, Braaksma WJE, Bakx AWEA, Greven CU. Experiences of Adults High in the Personality Trait Sensory Processing Sensitivity: A Qualitative Study. Journal of Clinical Medicine. 2021; 10(21):4912. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm10214912
Chicago/Turabian StyleBas, Sharell, Mariëtte Kaandorp, Zoë P. M. de Kleijn, Wendeline J. E. Braaksma, Anouke W. E. A. Bakx, and Corina U. Greven. 2021. "Experiences of Adults High in the Personality Trait Sensory Processing Sensitivity: A Qualitative Study" Journal of Clinical Medicine 10, no. 21: 4912. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm10214912