Everything, All the Time, All at Once: The Bittersweet Gift of Over-Consciousness

By Lexi Jones

Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), also known as having Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS), is a personality trait that involves having an intensified sensitivity in your nervous system. It means being hyper-aware of emotions, social dynamics, your body, other people’s bodies, and the environment around you. It’s not a disorder. It’s just how some people’s systems are wired. About 15 to 20 percent of people have it.

It was first studied by psychologists Elaine and Arthur Aron. They found that people with high SPS take in way more information from their surroundings than others do and process it more deeply. This makes them more emotionally reactive, more intuitive, and more likely to notice small changes that other people just brush past. And it doesn’t stop at humans. They’ve seen signs of this trait in animals too, which makes sense since high sensitivity is thought to be a survival tool — constantly scanning for danger, constantly aware. Which can mean anxiety becomes a built-in default.

HSP can come from genetics, trauma, neglect during childhood, or a mix of all three. But once it’s there, it becomes the lens through which you experience everything. It’s not just feeling a vibe or reading a room. It’s processing layers of data every time someone speaks. It’s catching the crack in their voice, the fake laugh, the subtle shift in energy. And it’s not because you’re trying to. Your brain just does it. Automatically.

Everything gets dissected. Every sound, tone, movement, and silence means something. It’s like being in a constant state of decoding. You notice the weight someone shifts when they sit, the way their eyes flick to the side before they respond, the pause between two words that no one else hears. It’s empathy, yes. But also an overload of stimulus. Bright lights, tags on clothing, background noise, temperatures, even the way a room feels after someone else walks in — it all hits harder.

This overlaps a lot with hyperawareness, where your brain never really shuts off. You’re always clocked in. It also ties into existential depression, which happens a lot in highly sensitive or gifted people. It’s when life starts feeling too real. Too much. You’re not just living in the world, you’re feeling every corner of it. And it’s exhausting.

While HSP and SPS aren’t usually labeled as neurodivergent in the traditional sense, they share a lot of similarities. It’s a differently wired brain. You think differently, you feel differently, you process differently. But because there’s no obvious speech delay or outward social “quirk,” people assume you’re neurotypical. They don’t see how much of your energy is going into trying to pass as normal.

People with HSP often learn how to mimic and mirror others. Not to be fake, but because they’ve had to adapt. You learn how to study what looks “right,” what sounds “casual,” what responses won’t make people uncomfortable. You over-prepare what you’re going to say. You adjust your tone, posture, energy, all in real-time. Sometimes you opt out of social interaction entirely just to get a break from the mental gymnastics. It’s not antisocial. It’s self-preservation.

So even if you seem like you’re “functioning,” what’s happening under the surface is a whole system of internal processing that never stops. And people don’t see that. Which is why it’s easy to feel misunderstood, overstimulated, and emotionally wiped out — even in a room full of people who think you’re doing fine.