Part I: Recent Interesting Research & Part II: On the Subject of Surrender

As has become usual, my blog is in two parts, the first with the research I selected to summarize for you, and the second, in keeping with my new book (Spirituality Through a Highly Sensitive Lens:  An Objective Look at Meditation Methods and Enlightenment),  about something “spiritual.”  To see the second part, just scroll down.

Part I: Recent Interesting Research

Identifying Types of HSPs

Huang, Y., & Pluess, M. (2025). Different flavours of sensitivity: investigating types of environmental sensitivity. Personality and Individual Differences, 242, 113213.

In this research, happily using the new HSP-R scale, Huang and Pluess have developed the idea of types of sensitivity, five of them.  This is not too new, as they begin with low, medium, and high general sensitivity. Among the high, besides general sensitivity they identified two other types, vigilant sensitivity, seen as more susceptible to adversity, and vantage sensitivity, seen as more susceptible to beneficial influences. Those with general high sensitivity were seen as susceptible to both. Low, medium, high general, high vigilant, and high vantage—five types in all.

The vigilant and vantage categories were created by looking at how individuals scored on two of the six factors of the HSP-R—overstimulation (the factor most negative in its effects) and sensitivity to positive experiences (the factor most positive in its effects). Those scoring highest on the first factor were labeled vigilant; those scoring higher on the second factor were labeled vantage. Those scoring equally high on both were put in the high general sensitivity group.

The authors used two independent samples (N1 of 1000, N2 of 600). As for the percentages of the five types in the two samples, the general medium sensitivity type was 15.40 % and 18.33, the percentage of the vigilant sensitivity type was13.10 % and 16.17 %; the vantage sensitivity type, 19.30 % and 19.50 %; and a general high sensitivity type, 21.30 % and 17.83 %, and the remainder being the low sensitivity type.

Next they validated their categorization by examining the personality and well-being profile of the different groups. Looking at scores on the Big Five Personality Test, individuals of the high general sensitivity type scored higher on agreeableness, extraversion, openness and neuroticism than those with a low sensitivity type. Similarly, vantage sensitive types scored higher on agreeableness, extraversion, and openness but not on neuroticism. Vigilant sensitive types scored higher on neuroticism than those with a low, medium or vantage sensitive type.

Regarding well-being, including depression, anxiety, and stress, general highly sensitive types and vigilant sensitive types scored higher on depression, anxiety and stress and lower on well-being than vantage and low sensitive types. Perhaps surprisingly, vantage types scored lower on well-being than low sensitive types, although maybe that is not a surprise given these tests are always based on the general population, so that HSPs of any type will seem more anxious and depressed because of their greater awareness of what is going on around them.

Bottom Line: This article emphasizes types of people as they are at the time of taking the HSP-R.  It does not emphasize how they came to be these types. The third study here does that. Because of differential susceptibility, HSPs with more difficult childhoods are in adulthood usually more “vigilant” and alert to threat (anxious, stressed) or feeling hopeless in the face of threat (depressed), while others, with easier childhoods or who have repaired the effects of a negative past, evidence more vantage sensitivity and are unusually competent and happy.  If you think you are the vigilant type, however, do not despair.  Remember, HSPs are also more susceptible than others to interventions such as therapy to help with these things.

Types of Sensitivity Affect How HSPs Cope

Huang, Y., Liu, J., & Pluess, M. (2026). The relationship between different sensitivity types and coping behaviour: A cross-cultural study. Journal of Research in Personality, 104722.

Building on the work discussed above, this study explored whether individuals with different types of environmental sensitivity use distinct coping strategies, and how these patterns vary across individualistic (UK) and collectivistic (China) cultures. Participants included 259 UK and 369 Chinese undergraduates, categorized into the five sensitivity types, and the researchers looked at how they used problem-focused (considered best), emotion-focused, and avoidant (usually worst) coping strategies. Not surprisingly, HSPs regardless of culture used all strategies more frequently, apparently needing to cope more. Vigilant types favored avoidant coping and vantage types leaned toward problem-focused coping. In the cross-cultural comparison, emotion-focused coping was higher in vigilant sensitive types in China, whereas in the UK emotion-focused coping was higher in both vigilant and vantage sensitivity types.  The authors admit to many problems with the study, especially the cross-cultural part, but it is a good beginning in an important area, as coping methods do reflect how people fare generally.

Bottom Line: You might think about how you as an HSP cope with problems and try to use problem-focused approaches as much as possible—facing the issue and working on it.  Emotion-focused solutions, such as venting to yourself or others about how the problem makes you feel, may work when there is not much else you can do.  Avoiding the whole thing, tempting as it may be for an HSP, is not the best strategy!

More on Why There Are Vigilant and Vantage Types—Differential Susceptibility

Torrecilla, P., Lavín, V., Arias-Magnasco, A., Lin, B. D., Menne-Lothmann, C., Decoster, J., … & Barrantes-Vidal, N. (2026). Genetic sensitivity to the environment moderates the impact of positive and negative childhood experiences on psychological adjustment “for good and for bad”. European Psychiatry, 69(1), e41.

This is another study looking for differential susceptibility rather than simple vulnerability in HSPs. It is nice that it arrived at the same time as the above studies on types. Differential susceptibility, just to review, means that with a good childhood environment those with the genes typical of HSPs do better than those without the trait and with a poor childhood environment they do worse.  The sample consisted of 638 adolescents who were twins (how genetics studies are usually done—identical and fraternal twins are compared), and information was collected on their genes, of course, plus the adversity, bullying, and positive experiences they had had in childhood.  Plus, they were assessed during semi-structured interviews for signs of schizotypic thinking and behavior (sort of like mild psychosis) and effects such as depression and anxiety, social functioning, and positive mental health.

Differential susceptibility was found to be true for those with HSP-type genes and both positive and negative environmental exposures on schizotypic traits, eccentricity, and social functioning. That is, adolescents with high genetic sensitivity were rated by interviewers as more eccentric and less functional under childhood adversity but were rated as less eccentric, better adjusted, and with superior social coping under favorable childhood conditions as compared to adolescents with low genetic sensitivity.

Bottom Line: Once again differential susceptibility proved true for HSPs, using genes this time rather than self-reported HS, and a variety of measures, including interviews, as well as self-report. From this we see how the vigilant versus vantage types of sensitivity emerge.

Highly Sensitive Children—More Often Feeling Connected with Nature, and if They are, They Are More Pro-Environment

Elisa Galli, Antonio Dellagiulia, Alessandra Sperati, Mirco Fasolo, Maria Spinelli, Annalisa Setti & Francesca Lionetti (16 Apr 2026): Highly sensitive children and proenvironmental behaviours: the mediating role of connectedness to nature, European Journal of Developmental Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/17405629.2026.2659024

This study looked at how being highly sensitive and feeling connected with nature leads to more pro-environmental behaviors–that is, actions aimed at reducing negative environmental impacts, such as recycling, reducing energy consumption and supporting biodiversity.  The goal was to look for these behaviors and for connectedness to nature specifically in young children, at the age when they are developing their attitudes and behaviors. The sample included 282 children, in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. They filled out questionnaires about their sensitivity, their connectedness to nature, and their attitude about and behaviors regarding the environment.  As expected, sensitive children felt more connected with the environment, and how much they felt connected to nature was in turn the best predictor of their pro-environment behaviors.

Bottom Line: Not surprisingly, HSCs usually feel very connected to nature and as a result are probably going to grow up to be good protectors of the environment.  Hurray.

Again, this is the part of the blog more on “spiritual topics.”

Part II. On the Subject of Surrender

I chose this topic because the word kept coming up in my life and I wondered if it is there in yours too, obvious or hidden. I looked the word up, of course. To surrender means to yield power, control, or possession of something, typically under pressure or demand. That can be a military or physical surrender; a legal or formal one, as in surrendering your rights; emotional or “personal” surrender, as when you surrender to a feeling; and spiritual surrender, as when they talk in Alcoholics Anonymous about “surrendering to a higher power.” But now you can forget all that if you want.

How has it come up for me? I can admit that I generally do not like to surrender, to give up control of my life, but that is coming up more and more for me, which is helping me to see when to keep fighting and when surrendering is smarter, more graceful, and sometimes the best way to get what you really want.

When Things Just Want to Stick

Let’s begin with frying pans. I always use nonstick frying pans but pay attention to the problems with their coating. This time I decided to try one that has a ceramic surface, given its superb reviews. I expect food in nonstick pans to start to stick when their finish starts to go, usually in a year or two, maybe more. That’s when you have to send it on its way. This one started to stick after three months. I wrote a complaint to the company but got no answer. So, for some weird reason, I gave that one away and bought another of the same kind. This time I was going to treat it really well.

Same story, after about three months it started to stick when I was frying eggs or tofu, the very things I want a nonstick pan for.  I had to ask myself, could I still use it, but more carefully?  I tried using a little more oil, keeping the heat lower, and keeping the contents moving, sliding around. This is working. I feel like I kind of surrendered to the pan’s needs and it is giving back what I want.

When Parts of Me Want to Get Old

I am realizing that aging is also about trying to figure out when to fight, when to surrender. The doctors are certainly not into surrendering.  But I do seem to spend more time with them discussing how to fight this or that, and sometimes we get quite active in the fight. I do all I can to stay healthy and fit, but as I get older, I seem to have less energy, more problems. The increasing amount of time I spend on health stuff is suggesting that I am going to lose in the long run. Is that called death?  I think so.

No, nothing is looking like death yet, but for example, during the last few years, only at night, I have had pain on my right side, low down, near my spine. MRIs say my lower spine has degenerated. Common. Usually due to aging.  To reduce the pain, I only sleep on my left side, but the pain often arrives anyway every few hours, when I get up and do things that stop it for another few hours.  My spine doctor has tried various shots and nerve ablations. Not much is helping in a permanent way, but he is persistent. Since long hikes and swims are how I stay fit, but they cause more pain at night, the issue is when to surrender what. I am thinking more about “just living with it the rest of my life.” I think that is called surrender.

When Something Wants to Pound in my Head

A slightly trickier issue.  I have developed for the third time what is called pulsatile tinnitus. You hear your pulse, or the pounding of your blood vessels, in your ear. It only bothers me when I meditate, but that is a major “only” for me.  The first time I got it was during my 2016 “pilgrimage to nowhere,” which I talked about in Spirituality through a Highly Sensitive Lens.  For six months we travelled around North America and Europe, staying in each place for one month at a time and one week of that was spent in extra hours of meditation.  In the second month, walking in Sweden in a national park, I got both toes under a root and fell hard, face down, knocking my two front teeth in. During the process of getting that fixed, a Swiss dentist put a gadget in my mouth for a long time, so he could work on my front teeth, but that later set off the pulsatile tinnitus. Given the importance of meditation to this trip, this loud constant pounding in my head really upset me. Transcending into silence seemed impossible. Every meditation was a struggle instead of being effortless. But good things happened.  In France a few months later I found an osteopath who cured it.

Maybe five years later, I’m lying on the floor in our living room on my back, raising my head a little, and it starts again.  Grr.  This time it happens that in San Francisco there is a clinic that tries to treat this. First, they needed to know the cause, so they did MRIs. On the Friday night before Memorial Day Weekend I was informed by the radiologist reading my MRIs that I have a “dissected carotid artery” and should go immediately to the emergency room.

Well, do not follow my example, but I did not go. I know what emergency rooms are like–it would mean being up most of the night–and I knew there was nothing immediately wrong with me. Indeed, over the years they keep imaging that carotid artery and it just gets decreasingly “dissected,” which in my case only meant there was a flap raised up on the inside of the artery, but now blood is not even flowing into or around it anymore. That MRI, however, ended the treatment plan, as they assumed the dissection was the cause of the pulsatile tinnitus and that could not be easily treated.

So, I had to surrender. I got better at dealing with the sound, using white noise to drown it out, and much later—I do not even know when—it stopped. Surrendering worked, I guess.

This third time, I have contacted that clinic again and am starting in on the MRIs. They say these days that it is important to find out the cause, as some causes can be serious. So, we will look again. Although, I have little faith that they can treat it.  It’s on the other side, the first side I had it on, and I hear it most mornings in meditation, but usually not in the afternoon meditation. Weird. But this third time I am totally surrendering to it, because of this next way that surrendering has entered my life.

When You Learn You Are Not Really Your Body/Mind

I am always interested in new ways of looking at awakening or enlightenment, even though my just-finished book on the topic is now published and it cannot be updated. The latest view about it that I have given attention to (if you are curious, check out awakeningworld.net) is that “witnessing,” which is always involved in awakening, can arise in two stages. The first is your mind witnessing all activity, including its own thinking, and the second has to do with the unbounded awareness you experience in meditation and then, with time, behind everything in daily life.  You can eventually identify with this infinite silent awareness as your real Self, so that this Self is witnessing your mind, body, and everything else.  This unbounded awareness is one with everything. The mind thinks it is a separate individual. But this deeper awakening means realizing that you are that unbounded awareness, not just your individual mind or body. In a way, the small self or ego surrenders to the unbounded Self. As it is said, “I am That, thou art That, all this is That.”  Pulsatile tinnitus is also that. This perspective—witnessing from that unbounded Self–really does make it possible to surrender to that pounding inside the head. (Although I will still let the doctors try to figure out the cause and treat it.)

Both stages of awakening create the same deep, unbounded, totally stable core. And in the second stage you still have an ego to do things, but the perspective is from that of unboundedness, watching everything but uninvolved. It is a perfect reason to surrender.

When Do You Surrender?

So consider where you might need to surrender or even want to surrender. It is part of living, I think, but especially can rise on a spiritual path. Just be careful not to surrender to anyone, to a spiritual teacher or group. Surrender to the highest goal and trust you will arrive with the help of the highest helper.