Has anyone ever told you to โstop being so sensitiveโ or to โtoughen upโ?
If you are regularly accused of being too sensitive, you may be a highly sensitive person (HSP), among an estimated 15 to 30 per cent of the global population.
โI was told my entire life I was oversensitive, or being overdramatic,โ says Catherine Asta, an author, psychotherapist, and founder and host of The Late Discovered Club, a podcast that gives voice to autistic women.
Asta is autistic, something that was identified late in her life. โOver time, you learn to mask to protect yourself in all the spaces, faces and places that make it feel unsafe to be you.โ
It was not until she was in her thirties, after a period of repeated burnout, that Asta realised she had to change her lifestyle and the way she worked. Based in the United Kingdom, she trained to become a psychotherapist and is now writing her second book.
Her story, she saw, was not uncommon. Now she works with people โ some in their seventies and eighties โ who have felt โdifferently wiredโ all their lives without knowing why.