Free Resources for HSPs

If you're a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), then you know the value of resources that can help you manage your sensitivity in healthy, empowering ways. This page presents wellness therapies, educational e-books, and academic papers that focus on self-awareness, emotional regulation, and resilience, and lists communities in which HSPs can find fellowship, support, and/or empowerment. Plus, at the bottom, there is a stress-relieving brain teaser for you to try (with a $10 e-gift card as a prize), and to close, there's even a mood-lifting, HSP-themed joke-of-the-week at the end. We hope you'll find something here that will help you navigate your daily life with more ease, confidence, and happiness!


 WELLNESS THERAPIES

Wellness therapies offer profound benefits for HSPs, who often experience heightened emotional, physical, and environmental sensitivity. Modalities such as mindfulness meditation can help regulate the nervous system and provide a sense of grounding, while methods like behavioral therapy can help change maladaptive behaviors through learning principles. Approaches like these allow HSPs to manage overstimulation, reduce anxiety, and develop greater emotional resilience. 

Accessing behavior modification resources for Highly Sensitive People, in particular, can empower individuals to better understand and support their sensitivities. Such HSP resources not only foster personal growth but also encourage self-compassion and emotional balance. Here are some links to two popular behavioral therapies, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
  
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a therapeutic approach that helps individuals identify and challenge negative thought patterns, which can often lead to unhelpful emotions and behaviors. For example, with respect to HSPs and their hypersensitivity to criticism, CBT can be quite valuable. Through CBT, HSPs can learn to reframe self-critical or catastrophic thoughts, viewing feedback more objectively rather than as a reflection of their worth. In general, CBT builds tools for self-acceptance and emotional regulation over time, empowering people to display healthier responses to social situations.

Here's a link to a brief overview of CBT:
Brief Overview of CBT

The link below gives accesses to a workbook that details CBT-based steps for treating anxiety disorders:
Anxiety Solution Workbook

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a psychological approach that encourages individuals to accept their thoughts and feelings, rather than fighting or feeling controlled by them. Rooted in mindfulness and behavioral change principles, ACT focuses on helping people live in alignment with their values despite uncomfortable emotions or thoughts. It emphasizes "psychological flexibility," which is the ability to stay present and make decisions based on values rather than avoidance or fear. Through techniques like mindfulness exercises, values clarification, and committed action, ACT aims to enhance well-being by guiding individuals to embrace a more meaningful, fulfilled life.

Here's a link to a 7-page article by Dr. Russell Harris, a medical practitioner and psychotherapist, that presents a non-technical overview of ACT: 
Non-Technical Overview of ACT

The link below gives accesses to a wealth of ACT-related information, including info about books on ACT procedures, papers on the philosophical foundations of ACT, and questionnaires that measure psychological inflexibility:
Collection of ACT Resources


SUMMARIES OF EDUCATIONAL BOOKS
  
Succinct but thorough summaries of educational books tailored for Highly Sensitive People can act as powerful tools for integrating self-empowering knowledge into daily life. HSPs often process information deeply, which can make lengthy texts both enriching and overwhelming. However, well-crafted summaries distill key concepts without losing the essence of the material, allowing HSPs to absorb and reflect on important insights at a comfortable pace. Condensed versions can serve as personalized "Cliff Notes," making complex psychological or self-help material more accessible and less mentally taxing for sensitive individuals.

We've included the book summaries below to offer you immediate and digestible guidance that supports daily emotional regulation, self-awareness, and decision-making. Whether used as refreshers or a starting points for deeper exploration, they complement other HSP resources on this page by offering practical knowledge in an HSP-friendly format. We hope that that the summaries will become reliable companions in your journey toward self-understanding and empowerment.

The following link will direct you to a detailed summary by Lanre Dahunsi of the book "The Highly Sensitive Person's Guide to Dealing with Toxic People" by best-selling author and psychologist Shahida Arabi. The book offers HSPs practical strategies to recognize, set boundaries with, and distance from toxic individuals without compromising personal values or empathy.
Summary of The HSPs Guide to Dealing with Toxic People

This link connects to a 3-page summary by Sevket Akyildiz of the book "On Being an introvert or Highly Sensitive Person: A Guide to Boundaries, Joy, and Meaning" by psychotherapist Ilse Sand. By presenting practical advice on how to build meaningful connections, establish healthy boundaries, and find joy without sacrificing personal well-being, the book offers empathetic guidance to introverts and HSPs looking to thrive in alignment with their authentic self.
Summary of On Being an Introvert or HSP

The link below leads to a comprehensive summary of the book "The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You" by clinical psychologist Elaine Aron. The book sets out compassionate and scientifically grounded approaches to managing the challenges that sensitivity can bring in relationships, work, and daily life. It's a transformative guide for HSPs seeking to understand and embrace their unique temperament.
Summary of The Highly Sensitive Person

The book "Codependent No More" by bestselling author Melody Beattie is a self-help guide that defines codependency as a pattern of behavior where individuals prioritize others' needs while neglecting their own, often leading to a cycle of unhealthy relationships and self-sabotage. Highly Sensitive People may be more vulnerable to codependency due to their high levels of empathy and desire to help others. Melody's book teaches readers how to break free from codependent relationships. The following link accesses a comprehensive summary of the book, which includes guidelines for how to detach when constant worrying over other people's welfare is negatively affecting your life. 
Summary of Codependent No More

EDUCATIONAL eBOOKS

Educational books about sensitivity offer HSPs valuable insights into their unique traits, helping them transform what can often feel like a burden into a meaningful strength. Such books generally provide research-backed explanations and real-life examples that validate the HSP experience, often for the first time. By understanding the biological and psychological roots of their sensitivity, HSPs can reframe their emotional intensity and deep processing as assets rather than flaws. The following e-books are empowering resources for Highly Sensitive People, designed to help HSPs thrive in a world that often misunderstands sensitivity.

Here's a link to the academic handbook "Psychological Aspects of Human High Sensitivity: Concepts - Identification - Support". The handbook is an invaluable academic resource that provides rigorous research-based concepts about sensitivity, clear methods for identifying HSPs (both children and adults), and institutional strategies tailored to supporting HSPs across various life contexts, including education, mental health, and workplace environments. 
Psychological Aspects of Human High Sensitivity

This link will take you to the book "Wholistic Healing for the Highly Sensitive Person" by gifted psychotherapist and healer Daniel Benor. The book will help you understand how wonderful the universe is, and how, by practicing principles of wholistic psychotherapy, you can participate more fully in making this the best universe you and all other consciousness on this planet can experience. Dr. Benor combines scientific insights with spiritual wisdom, creating a well-rounded approach that respects the complex nature of sensitivity.
Wholistic Healing for the HSP


ACADEMIC PAPERS
  
Academic papers on sensitivity should be of great interest to Highly Sensitive People because they offer scientifically grounded insights into the nature and mechanisms of high sensitivity. Such studies help validate the HSP experience by highlighting neurological, psychological, and behavioral traits unique to sensitive individuals. 

For HSPs seeking a deeper understanding beyond self-help literature, the following research papers provide evidence-based explanations that can clarify why you respond to stimuli more intensely or process information more deeply. These academic papers will relay credible knowledge, support informed self-advocacy, and encourage more compassionate self-awareness rooted in science.

The following links to the peer-reviewed paper entitled "The functional highly sensitive brain: A review of the brain circuits underlying sensory processing sensitivity and seemingly related disorders" by Bianca Acevedo et al. The paper elucidates the neural markers and cardinal features of the highly sensitive brain that distinguish it from the brains associated with other seemingly related behavioral taxonomies.
The Functional Highly Sensitive Brain

The paper linked to below, "What Does It Mean To Be Sensitive? Serotonin, Stress, and the Highly Sensitive Person" by Alessandra Suuberg, reviews research on the genetic and neurological bases of sensory processing sensitivity and explores how that research might be applied to the development of targeted interventions for HSPs.
What does it mean to be sensitive?

Entrepreneurs are stereotypically extraverted, energetic, and open to new ideas, and therefore HSPs, who are usually introverted, easily overwhelmed, and cautious, are not generally viewed as good entrepreneurial candidates. However, the authors of the following paper, "Sensory processing sensitivity and entrepreneurial intention: The strength of a weak trait", find that having the ability to recognize potential business opportunities is a sufficient condition for an HSP to develop a conscious commitment to becoming an entrepreneur. The paper reassures that although Sensory Processing Sensitivity is a trait that is often presented as ‘weak’, it has positive implications. 
Sensory processing sensitivity and entrepreneurial intention

It is known that Highly Sensitive People are blessed with the gift of excellent intuition. In fact, it is believed that highly sensitive managers tend to use intuition more frequently in their decision-making process than rational analysis. However, the paper linked to below sheds a revealing light on these observations by uncovering that HSPs who have a higher intensity of the positive aspects of high sensitivity (enhanced empathy, greater sensitivity to others, deep reflectiveness, and the ability to perceive subtle stimuli) factor intuition into their decision-making processes LESS, while HSPs who have a higher intensity of the negative aspects of high sensitivity (tendency toward sensory overload and stress, strong emotional reaction to negative stimuli, and a propensity to avoid intense sensory inputs) factor intuition into their decision-making processes MORE.
HSP intuition in decision-making

Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) have sensory processing sensitivity (SPS), which is a temperament trait characterized by an increased sensitivity to sensory information and a deeper processing of stimuli. HSPs who tend to develop stomachaches, sleep problems, etc. after taking medications - or even dietary supplements - will find the following paper interesting. The paper examines the relationship between SPS and "medication sensitivity", which is the susceptibility to experiencing adverse effects from medication, even at typical or lower doses. The authors found that SPS is moderately associated with medication sensitivity, and therefore, in general, HSPs and their healthcare partners should take extreme care when choosing medication dosage to minimize the risk of adverse drug reactions. 
SPS and Medication Sensitivity
       

COMMUNITIES

STRESS-RELIEVING BRAIN TEASER

Larry wrote down the numbers from 0 to 9 and then organized them into the following three groups:
 
Group 1:  0, 4, 6, 8
Group 2:  2, 3, 5, 7
Group 3:  1, 9

What simple rule did Larry use to assign the numbers to their groups?

MOOD-LIFTING JOKE OF THE WEEK

A preschool teacher asked her students in class, "Who can count from one to ten?"

Little three-year old Timmy swiftly raised his hand.

"I can!" he declared, and started counting: "One, two, three four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten!"

The teacher, who happened to be an HSP, couldn't help but run over and hug him in demonstrative delight. 
 
"That's so impressive, Timmy! Who taught you that?"

"My uncle Bobby!" Timmy said.

"Wow ... and can you count past ten, dear?" the teacher asked Timmy.

"Sure thing," Timmy replied. "Jack, Queen, King..."