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Understanding yourself as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) can bring meaning, depth, and strength to your identity and sense of self. Some do not recognize or come across the data about the HSP trait until later in life. Others may have learned about their sensitivity trait while growing up or working with a counselor. Whenever you began learning about the HSP trait, it is likely that you came across HSP books that explained or unpacked what sensitivity is and how you can better understand yourself through the research around the Highly Sensitive Person.
The HSP books I share below are by authors and mental health professionals who understand sensitivity and wrote books to help their readers with overwork, overwhelm, and strength.
Here are three HSP books to calm, inspire, and strengthen:
#1 – Overwhelmed: How to Quiet the Chaos and Restore Your Sanity
The title of this book perfectly speaks to HSPs because we often feel overwhelmed when exposed to too many stimuli. Overwhelmed: How to Quiet the Chaos and Restore Your Sanity (Harvest House Publishers, 2017) by Kathi Lipp and Cheri Gregory is a guide written by sensitive women for sensitive women. The book aims to help you unpack issues with control, list overwhelm, who to accept feedback from, and replace fear with peace by accepting that overwhelm can be dealt with when we face it head-on. There are Christian elements within this book including a prayer at the end of each chapter to help focus your heart on God to allay fear and deal with overwhelm in this HSP book. The book opens with a quiz to go through areas of your life where you feel overwhelmed, then gives you results to contemplate and work on as you move through the book. In chapter two, the authors share about personality styles and give great information about the HSP trait in connection with the challenge of overwhelm. HSPJourney.com highly recommends this book.
#2 – Sensitive & Strong: A Guide for Highly Sensitive Persons and Those Who Love Them
This HSP Book, by Denise J. Hughes and Cheri Gregory, Sensitive and Strong: A Guide for Highly Sensitive Persons and Those Who Love Them (Harvest House Publishers, 2019), is an excellent faith-based guide to navigate your sensitivity trait in light of accepting that God made you sensitive for a reason. Some of the points the book shares is that you were made sensitive in a good way, not a negative way. You can understand the way you’re wired and take care of yourself in a way that will help you thrive. The authors share tips on how to harness your strengths and serve others carefully. Overall, the book aims to help you work through your negative inputs and flip them into positives that can assist you in thriving as an HSP.
#3 – Give Yourself a Break: Turning Your Inner Critic Into a Compassionate Friend
Written by licensed marriage and family therapist, Kim Fredrickson, Give Yourself a Break: Turning Your Inner Critic Into a Compassionate Friend is an excellent HSP book that speaks to a huge issue: treating ourselves poorly on the inside. No one can hear the way you speak to yourself or treat yourself. We sensitives have the uncanny ability to take care of others (sometimes co-dependently) more than we take care of ourselves. HSPs can learn unhealthy patterns of internalizing the negative things people say about us and allowing our inner critic to use and abuse us. In her book, Frederickson addresses how we should befriend ourselves and love ourselves because God loves us and would never want us to treat ourselves poorly. From a Christian perspective, Give Yourself a Break breathes a breath of fresh air into the topic of self-care. We can and should love ourselves so that we can better love others. This book is a game-changing must-read.
So there you have three excellent HSP books to help you better care for yourself as a Highly Sensitive Person. Reading books for HSPs is a wonderful way to care for your sensitive self. Take time today to listen, be calm, and approach yourself with love and support.
Be sensitive, be free
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