Mental Health
and
High Sensitivity
Manuela Pérez Chacón
Antonio Chacón
Juan Moisés de la Serna
Editorial Tektime
2021
Mental Health and High Sensitivity
Written by Manuela Pérez Chacón, Antonio Chacón and Juan Moisés de la Serna
1st Edition: december 2021
© Juan Moisés de la Serna, 2021
© Ediciones Tektime, 2021
All rights reserved
Distributed by Tektime
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Translated by Susana Hyder
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About the authors:
Manuela Pérez Chacón
Degree in Psychology, Ph.D. student in the inter-university program on Psychology of Human Resources at the University of Seville and the University of Valencia. Specialist in Clinical Psychology. Specialist in Industrial Psychology. University Specialist in Special Education: Therapeutic Pedagogy. Professional Expert in Psychological disorders in children and adolescents. Master in Occupational Risk Prevention, specializing in Safety, Hygiene, Ergonomics, and Psychosociology.
Master of Psychology with over 10 years of experience in the areas of health and psychosocial risk prevention. Specialized in clinical therapy and occupational psychology. Expert in Children and Adolescent Mental Disorders. Member-founder of the Child-Youth Mental Health Unit of the Hospital Jerez Puerta del Sur (USMIJ-Clínica Jerez). Gold Medal to Professional Merit by the General Council of Industrial Relations and Labor Sciences, PREVER 2018 Awards, for her research in the field of Psychosocial Risks in the Workplace. Member of the Official College of Psychologists of Western Andalusia number AN-06014.
President of the Spanish Association of High Sensitivity Professionals (HSP Spain). Psychologist Specializing in HSP (Highly Sensitive Persons) and referring physician in Spain as an expert in High Sensitivity. Public speaker specializing in Child Psychology and Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) in Children. First Spanish woman certified as a psychologist specializing in High Sensitivity (Acknowledged Professional by Elaine Aron). Has been interviewed several times in well-known media channels such as Cadena SER, La1 de RTVE, or El Pais.
Antonio Chacón
Expert in psychosocial risk management with 15 years of experience in External Prevention Services (EPS). Ph.D. Student in the Psychology of Human Resources program at the University of Seville. Assistant professor at the International University of La Rioja of the Masters in Occupational Risk Prevention and Masters in Systems Integration. (International University of La Rioja UNIR).
Founder of the Association of Psychologists and High Sensitivity Professionals (HSP Spain). Awarded a Cruz de Honor (Cross of Honor) for health and Safety in the Workplace and awarded a Gold Medal of Professional Prestige by Forum Europe. Disseminator on the subject of High Sensitivity Trait in Organizations.
Juan Moisés de la Serna
Ph.D. of Psychology and Master in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology, University Professor. To date, his research focuses on the potential factors influencing COVID -19 and on the short and long-term psychological and neurological complications after SARS CoV-2 infection in humans.
The most-read author in Spain in 2020 according to researchgate.net.
Scientific disseminator with more than 30 books published on Psychology and Neuroscience, including topics such as ADD, PDD, ASD, ADHD, EQ, MSD, High Capacity.
Prologue
The interest generated by our first book on High Sensitivity encouraged us to continue disseminating insight on this personality trait. This second book focuses more on the difficulties experienced by highly sensitive people as well as on the psychological abilities they possess. Knowing how to manage the trait of High Sensitivity is fundamental to achieving a maximum potential in the personal growth of the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). Hence the importance of knowing how to meet the needs of highly sensitive children (HSC) from an early age. HSC children become HSP adults. Solve the issue in childhood and you avoid the need for treatments later on.
Throughout life, the HSP can go through transient psychological problems or disorders derived from mismanagement of their trait. In these pages, we share real examples of people who have come to a psychology consultation looking for a solution to their bumps in the road. Many HSPs discover it in the wake of one of these ups and downs in their lives. Knowing how to take the right path, choosing to have people close to them who respect the HSP trait, and learning to set limits, are the objectives most demanded by the HSPs who are treated by a mental health professional.
This book aims to help both the reader, as well as the health or medical professional. Based on our experience as professional experts of High Sensitivity we are offering solutions to the problems that arise from being an HSP, sharing examples of people who have gone through the same stages, as well as showing some of the most common disorders derived from having this particular personality trait. Although being an HSP or HSC is not a disorder, it is necessary to learn to adapt to todays society until society becomes better acquainted with High Sensitivity.
Manuela Pérez
www.HSPespana.org
Index
Chapter 1. Introduction to the study of the relationship between High Sensitivity and Mental Health
Chapter 2. Characteristics of the Highly Sensitive Person
Chapter 3. The brain and High Sensitivity
Chapter 4. Non-sensitive and Sensitive Patients
Chapter 5. Education. High Capacity and High Sensitivity
Chapter 6. Differentiating Characteristics of Highly Sensitive People
6.1. Is High Sensitivity a disorder?
6.2. Autism and High Sensitivity
6.3. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and High Sensitivity
Chapter 7. Effects of High Sensitivity
7.1. Fear of failure of the highly sensitive person
7.2. Pathological self-criticism of the highly sensitive person
7.3. Depression vs. High Sensitivity
Chapter 8. Highly Sensitive Patients
8.1 What concerns High Sensitivity professionals
8.2. Why HSCs are mistaken as having other disorders
8.3. When being an HSC becomes a problem.
8.4. When being an HSC becomes an advantage.
8.5. What I can do when teaching HSC?
8.6. When should I seek help for my HSC?
8.7. What can I do as a parent of an HSC?
8.8. What do statistics say about HSC, regarding culture, gender, and genetics.
Chapter 9. Problems derived from high sensitivity.
9.1. How to act in social situations if you are an HSP
9.2. Mindfulness to help highly sensitive people
9.3. Troubleshooting as therapy for highly sensitive people
9.4 Systemic family therapy applied to families with HSP members
Chapter 1. Introduction to the study of the relationship between High Sensitivity and Mental Health
Whether you are a highly sensitive person or a mental health professional, you will benefit from reading this book. You may be a person who has discovered your highly sensitive trait as a result of not feeling too good about yourself. Or maybe you have spent years going to psychologists and psychiatrists, or have been looking for information until someone enlightened you with knowledge of the existence of Highly Sensitive People (HSP). You may be a professional who has cared for people you could not quite manage to understand, people who did not exactly have a disorder but there was something that prevented them from growing and continuing their journey in life with ease. Perhaps, your case is that of an individual who is having a hard time communicating with your partner because it seems that you are each speaking a different language since each one feels and perceives the world differently. You may have even left a job due to feeling like you did not fit in, whether with others or with repetitive and routine tasks.
We all indeed have sensitivity and it is also true that anyone may need at some point in their life to go to a psychology professional to resolve something whether small or big. This book aims to provide a way to work with highly sensitive people.
What is written here will help you not only to identify the trait but also to detect the psychological consequences of it from a psychology professional point of view. It addresses High Sensitivity (HS) or Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) as seen by mental health experts, a contribution of experiences, studies, and scientific basis.
We will define what it means to be a highly sensitive person and your relationship with your environment from the strictest sense of the word. By reading this book you will learn about the most common psychological disorders and why highly sensitive people can suffer from them. You will understand the talent and the high capacity that highly sensitive people possess. All this is explained from a psychological point of view.
No doubt, the experiences of highly sensitive people serve as an example to us. However, we want to raise awareness among the HSP and HSC population of the importance of putting themselves in the hands of health professionals. It is the psychologists, counselors, pediatricians, and psychiatrists trained in High Sensitivity who are the most adept at solving the problems you may encounter.
It is essential to keep in mind that being highly sensitive is not the same as having a disorder. There are specific treatments currently being developed by scientific researchers. Possessing the trait of high sensitivity can lead you to suffer certain difficulties but also benefit from many advantages. The detection and diagnosis of any disorder associated with the trait should be left in the hands of mental health experts.
It is just as important to know who to turn to so you can find solutions if you possess the Highly Sensitive trait and questions arise, as well as to know that anyone around you can be an HSP.
It is also essential to trust the sciences, and psychology is one of them. Psychological techniques and treatments are a result of experiments and research that have been carried out by numerous experts over the years. In this book, we aim to make a connection between this scientific precision and the personality trait that we now colloquially know as High Sensitivity. The scientific name for this trait corresponds to Sensory Processing Sensitivity.
The Highly Sensitive Person has a way of perceiving and feeling that starts from birth and which is molded through experiences. It is a type of personality that includes a high capacity to process information about your surroundings. It makes you more aware of everything that enters through the five senses, especially in new or unexpected situations. The Theory of Positive Disintegration, known to many as a theory of emotional development by the Polish psychologist and psychiatrist Dabrowski during the beginning of psychology as a science, classified this ability as part of the different levels of human development.
This book will provide you with both information and possible solutions if you are someone who is involved in caring for the emotional needs of a person, whether that person is your child, your student, or your patient. In this book, you will find key information not found in other books since it explains the relationship between High Sensitivity and its possible consequences on an individual throughout their life. In addition to delivering a practical approach that can help highly sensitive people to manage their trait or help a person learn how to interact with highly sensitive children, the book provides data and sample consultations, as well as the most recent research on High Sensitivity.
This book is the result of a collaboration between high-sensitivity professionals and has been written in the form of a research project. It provides information collected from group therapies and individual psychology sessions conducted over several years in mental health departments and addresses some central issues of the daily work of High Sensitivity professionals with children and adolescents. Care of children is a field of great concern regarding study and treatment, especially in the interest of the prevention of possible mental disorders. Young people are the human potential of the near future in companies.
We have focused on the symptoms that derive from the presence of the highly sensitive trait in an individual under the perspective of the diagnostic axes of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM5). Risk factors, current treatments, and prevention have been based on cognitive-behavioral therapies. The diagnosis and evaluation provide a comparison and bring to light the possible confusion with some disorders that have similar pathological signs. Regarding the research models described, they include scientific theories at an international level that have been instrumental in the discovery of the High Sensitivity trait.