HIGHLY SENSITIVE: IS IT THE SAME AS BEING SHY OR INTROVERTED?

Recently, several celebrities have announced that they are 'highly sensitive people'. What does this term mean, and how can you spot the signs?

- CHRISTIAN JARRETT

Last year the singer Lorde became the latest celebrity to identify as a "highly sensitive person", telling Vogue that her personality profile means that she just "isn't built for pop star life" and that she needs long stretches of time to be by herself to recover from the demands of her work.

Lorde joins other superstars, such as Kanye West and Nicole Kidman, who have also labelled themselves in this way, apparently finding that it helps them make sense of their own experiences.

WHEN DID THE TERM 'HIGHLY SENSITIVE PERSON' ARISE?

These celebs did not invent the term 'highly sensitive person'. It originated in an obscure 1996 counselling paper by the US psychologist Elaine Aron and then gained traction in a much-cited 1997 research paper that she co-authored with her husband Arthur Aron, in which the pair claimed the highly sensitive personality profile was related to, but different from, being shy or introverted. Moreover, a key feature of being a highly sensitive person, they observed, is having "sensory processing sensitivity".

WHAT IS SENSORY PROCESSING SENSITIVITY?

Based on interviews that the two Arons conducted with dozens of sensitive students, they concluded that having sensory processing sensitivity manifests in various ways, including being more sensitive than usual to "subtleties, the arts, caffeine, hunger, pain, change, overstimulation, strong sensory input, others' moods, violence in the media, and being observed".

Overall, highly sensitive people - which the Arons estimated accounts for between 15 to 20 per cent of us are more affected by the external world than average, they reflect on and process things more deeply, and they are more empathic.