10 Tips to Support the Highly Sensitive Person in Your Life
1. Understand that they are not choosing the emotions they are feeling, nor are they choosing how big or deep those feelings are. It’s just happening to them, and in the moment they are along for the ride.
2. You can walk away, but they are stuck inside themselves. If they are behaving in a way that isn’t kind or wonderful to you, or they’re upsetting you, I can guarantee it’s worse for them. It’s not an excuse for them to treat you badly, but it’s important to recognize the pain that they are in.
3. Help them find ways to express and process their emotions in a healthy way. You are not their therapist, and they should not expect you to solve their problems or be their sole source of solace. Encourage them to journal, go to therapy, move their body, practice mindfulness or meditation, and other tools that will help them feel better. You can always lend an ear and be there to support them, but make sure you have your own healthy boundaries.
4. Come up with a plan so that you know how to help when they are going through something. Ask them to tell you what would be most helpful to them when they are feeling really sad, angry, tired, overwhelmed, etc. — having a toolkit you can go to that you co-created will help you know what to do. Write down what they tell you in your notes on your phone so you can reference it whenever you need to.
5. Don’t try to make sense of what they’re feeling in the moment. Use your toolkit to help them, and when the big emotions or overwhelm have passed, then you can discuss what happened and how you can handle it better in the future, or what next steps should be.
6. Stay open to their experience. HSPs get dismissed a lot, and it can be really triggering to have yet another person tell them to get over it, or to say what they’re feeling and experiencing is dramatic, etc. Just hear them and stay open to the fact that they are trying to communicate their experience to you. Accept their experience without question. There is no debating what they feel or what their experience is, only they can tell you what is true for them.
7. Practice self care with them. HSPs need a lot of self care and rest, and we often feel guilty for doing it, or embarrassed to ask for what we need. We also generally don’t like to miss out on what’s going on, so it can be easy to put self care aside to spend time with loved ones instead. Commit to a plan of self care that you will both do together, or a time of day where you’ll both do activities that are nourishing for you, even if they’re different.
8. Give them space. HSPs need a *lot* of space. It’s not personal, it’s just a necessary fact of the trait. Imagine a sound you hate going on in the background. Imagine that it’s all you can focus on. Imagine that it never goes away. That’s what the world can feel like to an HSP when they’re out of balance and experiencing overwhelm. It’s exhausting and relentless. Getting away to be with themselves and not have to talk, or be a certain way, or hear sounds, or show the “right” emotions is essential to returning to calm.
9. Be soft and kind to them. The world is hard for everyone, and even harder for an HSP. We don’t need tough love, we don’t need someone to tell us we need to have thicker skin, we don’t need to be stronger. We need people and places where we feel safe enough to let our walls down, feel what we feel, and stop shaming ourselves for it. The biggest gift you can give an HSP is a safe, healthy space to just be.
10. Finally, enjoy their gift of feeling deeply! HSPs are often very empathic and can have wonderfully intuitive gifts. They feel joy and happiness just as deeply and richly as they feel sadness or any other “negative” emotion. Enjoy their highs, and support them in their lows. HSPs will show you deep love, a world that is rich with feeling, and compassion that knows no end.
