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If You Can Manage It, Be Sure to Do What You Want

February 16, 2021 By Elaine 64 Comments

As some of you know, I took off three months from my usual tasks (mostly answering emails, doing interviews, speaking, etc.) to focus more on writing and research. I was surprised by how happy it made me. Almost ecstatic! I realize that I thrive on being creative, as do most HSPs, and I have not […]

Filed Under: Emotions, General, Health, News, Research Tagged With: elaine aron, highly sensitive, highly sensitive person, HSP

Why Can’t I Just be Normal?

May 14, 2020 By Elaine 153 Comments

By John Hughes Why can’t I just be normal? That question resonated with me. Deeply. It came from one of the men attending the first highly sensitive men’s conference this past March in Scotts Valley, California. I wrote it down. And I’ve thought about it since then. A lot. It truly describes how I feel […]

Filed Under: Emotions, General Tagged With: high sensitivity, highly sensitive men, highly sensitive person, HSP

Big Picture Living During a Time of Global Crisis

March 17, 2020 By Elaine 50 Comments

Lately, I have been speaking about one way to reduce anxiety (a normal feeling for HSPs):  Look at the big picture. I advise it now more than ever: Maintain the big picture. How? Ask yourself, what are your real risks?  (Don’t minimize, but don’t catastrophize either.) What will things be like a year from now? Even two […]

Filed Under: Emotions, General, Health, News, Relationships, Spirituality Tagged With: coronavirus, highly sensitive people, highly sensitive person, HSP, HSPs

Why Differential Susceptibility is so Important for You

December 3, 2019 By Elaine 28 Comments

I am not sure that I have written enough about differential susceptibility, which is a key to understanding HSPs and for HSPs to understand themselves. Differential susceptibility is the well-researched idea that HSPs are deeply affected by their environments, “for better and for worse.”  With poor childhoods they are more likely than others to be […]

Filed Under: Emotions, General, Health Tagged With: Differential Susceptibility, highly sensitive people, highly sensitive person, relationships

Graceful Boundaries – Part I

January 22, 2019 By Elaine 15 Comments

While working on the movie Sensitive and in Love, I was looking at the book Highly Sensitive People in Love and noticed I never discussed boundaries directly, although the subject was there often.  Many people now are writing about HSPs and boundaries, so I think I will chime in, first with the basics, then something […]

Filed Under: Emotions, General, Relationships Tagged With: boundaries, highly sensitive people, highly sensitive person, HSP

Introversion, Extroversion and the Highly Sensitive Person

April 24, 2018 By Elaine 123 Comments

Guest Blog By: Jacquelyn Strickland, LPC According to the documentary Sensitive: The Untold Story, there are 1.4 billion highly sensitive people (HSPs) in the world (15-20% of the population). As Elaine Aron’s research has shown, 30% of that 15-20% of the HSP population are sensitive extroverts – or approximately 420 million HSPs.  Unfortunately, due in great part […]

Filed Under: Emotions, General, Relationships Tagged With: elaine aron, highly sensitive extrovert, highly sensitive person

What about a pilgrimage?

July 3, 2017 By Elaine 52 Comments

Summer is vacation time, so whether you can travel this summer or not, let’s talk about real HSP travel. As some of you know, last summer my husband and I embarked on a six-month “sabbatical,” as he called it. For me it was a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is defined as an “intentional journey, possibly a […]

Filed Under: Spirituality Tagged With: high sensitivity, highly sensitive person, HSP, journey, pilgrimage, spirituality, travel

Recent Posts

  • Research from 2022 on High Sensitivity
  • Research: High Sensitivity Wrongly Identified with Narcissism, Plus Studies on Parenting Applied to Managing and Caregiving
  • More HSP Research
  • More Research, from 2018 and 2019

Posts by Category

Announcing our newest book
The Highly Sensitive Parent

HSP Parent

New 25th Anniversary Edition
The Highly Sensitive Person

HSP 25th Anniversary Edition

Announcing the release of our documentary Sensitive Lovers: A Deeper Look into their Relationships

In this documentary, Art Aron (well-known love researcher) and Elaine Aron provide the science and advice behind the film Sensitive and in Love. Learn more about Sensitive Lovers here.

Sensitive and In Love

A feature film, focuses on what perhaps matters most: how high sensitivity affects your relationships with loved ones. Learn more and purchase the Sensitive and In Love here.

Sensitive: The Untold Story

Rent or purchase Sensitive: The Untold Story here.

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About this Blog

The quarterly Comfort Zone ended in 2014, partly to give Elaine more time to write, but also because a blog seemed more up-to-date and flexible, allowing her to write new posts based on the interests of readers. If you've signed up for her list, you will be notified when she has posted anything new. Comments: While she will not answer every comment, she will read them all and, again, may be inspired by some comments to write another blog post. You will also receive emails of any important announcement rather than these showing up only in the quarterly issue. Old Comfort Zones: The many emailed Comfort Zones are still very timely. To make full use of the extensive Comfort Zone archives, the Comfort Zone section has a Google search that will find old Comfort Zone issues as well as topics in the blog posts.

The Original Book

The Highly Sensitive Person book cover

A general introduction and covers every aspect of an HSP's life. Worldwide bestseller. Translated into 32 languages. With an Author's Note summarizing the latest research.

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