In my work with highly sensitive clients, I often compare a highly sensitive disposition to being born with very fair skin. You can complain that you weren’t born with darker skin, and you might be envious of friends who are able to sun themselves on the beach, in the garden, or in the park and not worry about burning. But at the end of the day, you have to accept that your skin is different. It’s not better, not worse, just different. People with very fair skin can also go sunbathing if they want; they just can’t stay in the sun for as long as other people. They also have to take different precautions, such as using high SPF sunscreen, finding somewhere shady to sit, and wearing a hat or light-colored clothing. In fact, people with pale skin can enjoy the “sunny” moments in life just as much as anyone else; they just have to learn how to do it in their own and sometimes a slightly different way. And that’s the crux of the matter: to accept the situation as it actually is and, ultimately, to find your own individual and authentic way of learning to live with it.
There has been a sharp increase in the number of publications on and academic research into high sensitivity over the last few years. Through this, the term high sensitivity is becoming increasingly well recognized internationally. My guess is that this also has something to do with the time in which we currently live. I notice that many people feel that their personal lives and their careers are increasingly fast paced and achievement oriented, and they often feel constantly stressed, exhausted, overstimulated, and under nonstop pressure. The line dividing our private and public lives continues to become more and more blurred, and Western society increasingly seems to celebrate and demand that we cultivate personality traits that aren’t normally associated with sensitive, introverted, and reserved people.
What is increasingly valued is the ability to push on through, to work quickly and make quick decisions, to be able to do many things at once, and to appear self-confident and extroverted in front of groups of people—whether it’s with other children in the kindergarten or primary school or with other adults in the workplace. Added to this is the value placed on making a good first impression, the pressure to be constantly available via email and cell phone, and the ability to present yourself well, whether on social media or in real life. Many psychologists and psychiatrists have gone as far as labeling this as an “epidemic of narcissism”2 in what they term a “narcissistic society.”3
It would seem, in the West, that more and more value is being placed on behaviors and qualities that highly sensitive people either often find more difficult to access or that make them feel overstimulated or exhausted. And yet these are the very qualities and positive characteristics of many highly sensitive people—a high capacity for empathy, emotional depth, and subtlety, a tendency to deal with things in an ethical way, and a finely tuned sense of perception—that seem more important now than ever before if we are going to be able to deal with the social and economic challenges of our world.
I believe that dealing with your own specific sensitivity in a natural and authentic way is not just vital for every single man but also vital for society as a whole. If highly sensitive men are able to live in harmony with their temperaments, to use their skills actively and positively, and to no longer feel ashamed about them, hide them, or believe that they make them inferior as people, then they can profoundly change the relationship that they have with themselves. But this will also change their relationship with other people, whether family, friends, or colleagues, and this could have far-reaching consequences. Because, through this, society’s conception of what it means to be a man could change. We could have a less rigid, less narrow, freer, more complex understanding of masculinity. The result of this change, which is already happening, could be a more realistic and more authentic male image, so that being manly and being sensitive no longer seem to be mutually exclusive. I believe that sensitive men in particular could drive this change and even lead it, but they can only do so if they have accepted their own high sensitivity and can sense that they are important, not just for the evolution of men but also of society as a whole.
This book is written in two parts: theory and practice. In the first part of the book, I will use theoretical concepts from the fields of psychology and medicine to discuss how we see men in contemporary Western society and the unique problems they are currently facing. I will illuminate the negative effects that a traditional, antiquated image of men can have and explain why it is highly sensitive men in particular who have the power to bring about necessary change and who thus have huge social value. I will then give you an overview of how the concept of high sensitivity was developed and describe exactly what high sensitivity is, as well as what it is not, and how you can tell whether you yourself are highly sensitive. You will learn what the typical characteristics of highly sensitive men are, but also how being highly sensitive can be both a challenge and an asset. And you will also learn to differentiate high sensitivity from psychological disorders.
In the second half of the book, I will give you practical tools that will help you deal with the challenges of being highly sensitive and the situations that highly sensitive people often find difficult. I will show you how you can fundamentally improve the quality of your everyday life through emotional regulation, mindfulness, acceptance, relaxation, self-compassion, and self-care. And I’ll show you the best way of putting these techniques into practice. I will offer you concrete exercises and numerous strategies that have been particularly helpful to my highly sensitive clients over the years.
Each chapter is also followed by a conversation with a highly sensitive man. In these sections, the men describe what effect their high sensitivity has had on their careers, their sexuality, and their relationships, and how they’ve learned to deal with its downsides and get the most out of their disposition. The book ends with a conversation between Elaine Aron and myself about the key role that highly sensitive men have in the world today.
As a cognitive behavioral psychotherapist, it is, of course, in my nature to ask you to reflect on many questions over the course of this book, rather than just giving you a set of directives to follow. In doing so, I hope to spark off a process in which you begin to deal with your sensitivity in a very personal way. Once you have read this book, my hope is that you will feel more able to accept yourself as a highly sensitive man, exactly as you are, and that you will have learned to better look after yourself in your daily life. It would make me particularly happy if, through reading this book, any lingering feeling of being “not quite right” diminishes and that you learn to like your sensitive side more. Although I am aware of the limits of self-help books, I also believe in the power of books, which often leave behind subtle but far-reaching traces in us.
The Phenomenon of High Sensitivity
A Turning Point in Masculinity: The Importance of Highly Sensitive Men in Society
HAS THE TIME COME FOR male emancipation? And if so, then what would that emancipation look like? While feminism is experiencing its “fourth wave,” men seem to be having a much harder time dealing with themselves and their place in society. And yet anyone who follows current trends in the media will have noticed that questions around male identity and role models and men’s psychological well-being have been an increasingly common topic of discussion over the last few years. You only have to open a magazine or newspaper, turn on your TV, or open your browser to discover an ever-growing interest in stories about being a father, being a man, or how to balance a career with a family. Many of these articles have started talking about an apparent “crisis of masculinity.”
The headlines for these articles attempt to address male identity, but often fall into the trap of sounding ironic and sometimes even sarcastic and critical: “Men in Crisis: Time to Pull Yourselves Together,”1 “The Weaker Sex,”2 “Crisis in Masculinity: Who is