This is the highly sensitive person podcast, a weekly podcast for people who experience the world brighter, louder, and more intensely.

Join me on a journey of acceptance of our highly sensitive person traits.

Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. I'm your host, Kelly. In this podcast, I talk about what it's like to be a highly sensitive person and spread knowledge about being highly sensitive to help other people out there learn to better accept themselves and realize that you're not alone, you're not the only one who feels this way, and that being sensitive does

not mean being weak. I want to share one iTunes review from a listener named Erica B9, who wrote,

This podcast has changed the way I think and feel about myself. I no longer feel isolated in the

world. I now understand why I feel such intensity about

so many facets of life that most others simply miss or cannot see or feel. Thank you so much,

Erica. It makes me feel great to know that, that these episodes are helpful to you.

Today's episode is about empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another being.

Highly sensitive people are very empathetic. Us HSPs pick up on the emotions of others,

including happiness, pain, and sadness. These feelings can stay with us and bother us more than they would other people.

A lot of the emotional problems we suffer from are not our own. So let's talk about some science

real quick. Earlier this year, Dr. Elaine Aaron studied the brains of a bunch of people to see how

they reacted to photos of people who looked

happy, sad, or neutral. And some of the photos they were shown were of their spouses. What they found

was that when the subjects were shown these different photos, highly sensitive people had more

blood flow to the parts of their brain that are involved with awareness and emotion, particularly

those areas connected with empathy when compared to people with low sensitivity.

This is physical evidence within the brain that highly sensitive individuals respond especially

strongly to social situations that trigger emotions, and in this case, of faces being happy or sad.

This is evidence that feeling strong empathy is hardwired in our brains.

I bet if you stop and think for a few minutes, you can probably recall countless examples of

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