Driving around the winding roads near my home in East Anglia recently, I was startled when I was beeped by a fellow driver.

Presumably I’d annoyed them in some way.  

While this is the kind of routine occurrence that most people can shrug off, as someone who is hyper sensitive, it cast a shadow over my entire day.

I couldn’t concentrate on my work and when I went to pick my children up from school, I felt nervous being back behind the wheel.

That night, I continued to go over and over the incident in my head, obsessively worrying about what I did wrong and whether I even deserved to have a driving license at all. 

All in all it took me well over 24 hours to process this one tiny exchange with a stranger.

I wish I could say this is the first time a small negative reaction has had such a stark impact on me – but the reality is, it wasn’t even the first time that week.

Highly sensitive people (HSP) are theorised to respond excessively to external stimuli, be that emotional, sensory (like sights or sounds) or even physically. For me, my hypersensitivity started from childhood.

Around the age of four I had to perform my first ballet show to a crowd at a small theatre in Stroud. As a very shy child, this was my worst nightmare.

I remember looking out at the audience and finding it overwhelming to see such a mass of people staring at me out of the darkness. I couldn’t cope and wound up turning my back on the crowd, performing my little dance in my pink tutu to the wall.

At the age of five, my headmaster slapped me across the face in the bathroom and, after that I became too embarrassed to ask to go to the toilet at school, so much so that one time I ended up doing it in my satchel instead.

While my teachers never found out, my mum knew immediately. Thankfully, she was very gracious and understanding, and sensibly moved me to another school shortly afterwards. 

Any suffering I witnessed – be that adverts of dogs being mistreated on TV or reading particularly upsetting news articles – would make me feel distraught. I’d cry and feel like I had to do something about it.

It’s why I’d signed up as a sponsor to all sorts of animal charities by the age of nine. By adulthood, I was quite bad at saying no to any fundraising initiatives.

At this point in my life, a therapist I’d seen purely to get to the bottom of my seemingly heightened emotions suggested that I was most likely hyper sensitive.

I didn’t take this too seriously or even think of it as a ‘diagnosis’, but it did explain why I reacted so severely to certain situations compared to others.

To this day (and I’m 44 now) if someone tells me a particularly harrowing story about something awful that has happened to them – such as losing all their money in a scam or discovering their partner has been cheating on them – I still immediately want to help.  

I’ve been known to offer to look after children for the summer holidays, even if I don’t know them that well. As for friends, I’ve invited them to move into my house until they’re back on their feet, regardless of how impractical an idea it actually is. And, quite often, people take me up on my offers.

There’s a more physical side to hypersensitivity too, one that makes me far more attuned (for better and worse) to sights, sounds, and even smells.  

The other day when looking round a house I might buy I was completely put off as the fridge was giving off an awful odour when I opened the door.

My son, husband and estate agent thought I was being ridiculous – it was just one, easily replaced item of furniture after all. But it coloured my entire perception of that potential new home and, as a result, we discounted it.

If that’s not hard enough to combat, I even worry that it’s somehow arrogant that I seem to consider my problems bigger than others’, and just can’t get over minor issues like most people. I often worry that I’ve bored people endlessly with my worries – though fortunately, it’s never seemed to cost me any friendships.

But it’s not all bad.

It has taught me not to jump to conclusions, to accept defeat and admit fault, to say sorry (even if I often do it when I shouldn’t), to be a good friend and to look out for others in a way others maybe wouldn’t.

I’ll always be the first to check in with someone or send a follow-up text and I try to help as much as I can. However, I also recognise when it’s best to take a step back and be respectful of boundaries.

One of the other advantages of being a highly sensitive person is that it is easy to put yourself into someone else’s shoes which I’d like to think has made me a better journalist as I am able to better empathise with people and tell their stories more honestly.

You can’t manufacture real emotions or how stories affect you – at least I certainly can’t.

Basically, being a highly sensitive person is both a blessing and a curse.

My daughter even says I have a gift of prophecy as I can usually pick up on a bad atmosphere in a place or if a marriage is on the rocks before anyone else. 

Sometimes I wish I could just switch it off and go about my life like a ‘normal’ person. But this is who I am and even if it keeps me up at night, I’ll always be grateful I’m not like most people.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing James.Besanvalle@metro.co.uk. 

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