From the perspective of.. A ‘Highly Sensitive Person’
By Sargam Sundrani
A highly Sensitive Person or HSP, a term coined by Psychologist Elaine Aron, describes a person with a higher emotional and sensory sensitivity who tends to get easily overwhelmed by noise, lights, crowds, emotions, etc.
I recently learned that I am a highly sensitive person, which means that I have an increased responsiveness to negative and positive influences than the average person. According to ‘Psychology Today’, it has been concluded that HSPs make up about 15-20% of the world’s human population and high sensitivity traits have also been observed in many other species. Unfortunately, this rapidly developing world and its systems are not designed for sensitive people.
As an HSP, few things are a bigger nightmare for me than loud noises. Although everyone experiences the effect of noise pollution on some level, my personal struggles with it have propelled me to talk about it more.
To describe it briefly, loud anthropogenic noises often feel unbelievably unfair, intolerable and invasive to me. When there is loud construction, firecrackers, traffic or other kinds of noises around me, I tend to feel completely out of control, panicky and helpless. As a result, I chronically experience the world as being too loud. And it is.
Anthropogenic activities rarely cater to sensitive ears, be it for humans, pets or wildlife. In fact, with scaling urbanization and industrialization in countries like India, noise is only bound to increase to higher and more “insensitive” levels.
Being a highly sensitive person also means that I feel the pain of others more intensely. So while I struggle due to the constant unbearable noise of firecrackers every Diwali, I also feel enormously for every pet, stray animal, bird and other being who is even more choice less. Every time I find myself stuck in traffic, trying to breathe my way through the discomfort of loud incessant honking, it makes me think about how it must affect wildlife to a different extent.
Of all the noise, the most deafening sound is indisputably that of ignorance. Sadly, people rarely talk about how noise pollution is disturbing both humans and wildlife in intricate and humongous ways. Just take the case of how birds are being negatively affected by noise pollution. Some bird species that can adapt to urban environments are able to stay in urban areas but many species are continuously disappearing from urban spaces as they are unable to adapt to the excessive noise. Such changes have massive ecological and evolutionary implications and yet, most people are not aware of these impacts.
I deeply hope that we don’t just sit back and accept the relentless noise being made by urban and industrial activities, but we demand a better, more sensitive and peaceful world that we all have a right to.
Further Reading:
Scott, E., PhD. (2023, June 13). What is a highly sensitive person (HSP)? Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/highly-sensitive-persons-traits-that-create-more-stress-4126393
Highly Sensitive Person. (2019). Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/highly-sensitive-person#:~:text=Overall%2C%20about%2015%20to%2020,things%20are%20likely%20to%20occur.
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