O_O So.
The other day, my dad read this article about a newly recognized personality trait. Not a disorder, not an advantage. A personality trait. People who have it are called Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs). This means exactly what it sounds like--their nervous system tends to be more sensitive (meaning, more pain or more pleasure than most people feel), they're extremely emotional people, are effected by the emotions of the people around them, take great pleasure in sensory experiences (music, food, etc.), notice subtle things in their surroundings/life/situations (think like Sherlock Holmes, basically), and a whole bunch of other stuff.
And you know what?
It.
Makes.
SO.
MUCH.
SENSE!
From the reading my dad and I have done, we've come to realize that many people we know are HSPs. He and I both took a little test thing to give us a rough estimate of how likely that is for us. I checked 23 out of 27 of the boxes on the test, and only 14 checked boxes were required for a "yes, you're probably an HSP" answer.
All of the sudden, everything in my life that I never thought about and dismissed as a family quirk is making SENSE. O.o Why my migraines are triggered by flashes of bright light. Why I get so irritated after being in a large, upset crowd for too long. Why I go through mood swings that are strange even for a teenager. Why I can smell nearly as good as a hound dog, despite my constant stuffy nose. Why my advice to those who don't see value in life is always to try to enjoy having the five senses. ESPECIALLY why I love music and writing and reading so much--HSPs tend to be "unusually creative".
I'm not an introvert. I'm not bipolar. I'm an HSP. It has a NAME. There's a name for what I am. o__o And the statistics!!! :'D 15% to 20% of the people you meet is probably an HSP. That's about 1 in 5 people! And my recently developing social anxieties? Unfortunately, yes, that's real. It's apparently one of the effects of not being identified as an HSP early enough--the person will be misjudged by themselves and the people around them, thereby causing long-term damage such as chronic depression (eh, possibly, now I see it might just because I always seem to be around depressed people, thus making ME depressed), social anxieties (x_x yup, getting there), being severely anti-social, and a plethora of other things.
I just can't get over this. O.o
If anything I just said sparks your interest, or you think you can identify with it, you can take a self-test here:
http://www.hsperson.com/pages/test.htm
REMEMBER, like the bottom of that page said, the results you may get are NOT final. It's more like an educated guess. NOT concrete proof.
