Remember the old crossing-guard command, “Stop, Look, Listen”? Sensitive people have our own version of this traffic safety awareness mantra. It’s called “pause to check”, and if you are an HSP, you’ve certainly done it: “pause to check” is a key hallmark of the HSP trait: it describes the way we engage with new situations.
Elaine Aron describes this “pause to check” stance in her book Psychotherapy and the Highly Sensitive Person, saying that HSPs prefer “to be on the sidelines in a situation for a while before entering it….generally exploring a situation more by observing and reflecting than by moving about within it.”
To be clear, observing from the sidelines in this reflective way does not mean we are timid or faint of heart. One HSP friend of mine has climbed a 19,000 foot peak in the Andes. But before doing that, she planned meticulously and trained extensively. And she made a tough but prudent decision to turn back just short of the summit, knowing she could not go further and still come down safely.
Because I’m an HSP myself, Elaine’s description of observing from the sidelines sounds logical, rational, and, well, right. It probably sounds right to you too. But if you think back on your life, I’m guessing you can remember times when people around you—parents, coaches, teachers, even friends—misread your “pause to check” behavior.
Jill, a 
My colleague Mary wrote to me about recent bout with the ‘flu, complete with strained intercostal muscles from coughing and a doctor’s check for pleurisy and pneumonia. Here’s what she asked:
I came down with a bug last week. I felt queasy and I ached all over. But please don’t say, “Oh, poor thing,” before you’ve heard my guilty secret: I was happy to be sick. Thrilled, even.
I feel the poignant sadness that arises at this time each year as the weather gets cooler and my flowers die away. I’ve found myself out in the garden taking picture after picture.
I’m embarking on a crazy scheme tomorrow, involving one U-Haul truck, two boats, four border crossings, a futon set…and eleven hours on the road. 
Like many HSP’s I fall hard when I fall in love. It was like that from the start. My teen romances felt like the Queen hit, 
This spectacular snow monster (spotted near here last month) looks like I feel when I don’t set good boundaries. Long story short, I turn into a massive lump of frigid crankiness.
Why would I say I’m going to do something—something I really want to do— then not do it?
I haven’t met a cat who could resist catnip. And I haven’t met a fellow HSP who could resist a deep, meaningful connection with another person. We crave it because it helps us connect to our spiritual selves.
My friend Kaitlyn sends me her beautiful photos to use in the Listening Post. Last month she sent me this photo along with a note that said,
On New Year’s Eve day we hiked near Lake Ontario at Durand Eastman Park, winding between frozen ponds dusted with snow. One pond after another was crisscrossed by fox tracks, and I took this as a kind reminder going in to the New Year: the fox is my old friend and highly-valued HSP guru.
I can’t deny I’m a perfectionist. But that word fails to evoke the painful lived experience: a nagging feeling that I should have known better, done better, done more.
There are times when I feel like this clam: clamped shut, closed for business, knee-deep in a field of tidal muck that stretches to the horizon.
When I first laid eyes on this dress—one of forty haute couture ensembles from the 1960’s to the 2000’s, featured in the 
As a kid, I felt like the Ugly Duckling—chronically awkward and self-conscious. If you had asked me why, I’d have been puzzled how to answer. Aside from not being popular or athletic, I was reasonably “successful” by the cultural standards I knew: I got good grades, I was reliable, I was musical, and and by sheer genetic luck I was slender, so I was spared that source of teasing. But I still felt “not quite right.”
I’ve always loved the Christmas season. Though I think of myself more as a Buddhist now, I grew up attending the Episcopal church, and the ritual, the carols, and the stories touch a deep place in me. I’ve performed Handel’s Messiah at least three dozen times and never got tired of it.
I find this sunset extraordinarily vivid.