Many years ago I came across the book The Highly Sensitive Person by Elain Aron. At the time, it was a huge relief to see my experiences with sensory and emotional overwhelm explained. Finally, a word for the many challenges and strengths I had noticed in myself over the years! I was an HSP: extremely sensitive to stimuli and emotions, a deep processor, and prone to look for a long time before I leap.
As I worked through the book, and with the therapist I found through it, I did experience progress. I learned to identify when I was becoming overstimulated. I understood my emotions better. But I continued to have issues that were not fully captured by the HSP framework.
Things started to shift when I saw the comments flowing in on Mayim Bialik’s discussions about being HSP. Many of these comments boiled down to, “If you identify with HSP, you might be autistic.” As more evidence of my autism became apparent over the years, this moment came back to me vividly. In retrospect, it was the first time I’d heard autism mentioned in connection to anything I’d experienced. I began to wonder: Am I a highly sensitive person, or autistic? And that diagnosis brought together so many loose ends for me.
You’ll find all kinds of takes on the HSP concept out there. Here’s mine: I’m concerned that the HSP concept could unintentionally isolate undiagnosed, and often high-masking, autistic folks from more focused support, as it did for me. It could also contribute to ableism by inadvertently singling out lower support needs autistic folks and labeling us as something else.
Let’s explore some of the potential issues I have encountered in the conversation around the HSP concept, and why that label ultimately didn’t work for me.
HSPs, Autism, and Disability
Aron seems careful to avoid characterizing HSPs as disabled. Her website currently states, “Your trait is normal. It is found in 20% to 30% of the population–too many to be a disorder, but not enough to be well understood by the majority of those around you” (https://hsperson.com/).
I have some concerns with this. One, it seems to set up a hierarchy between “normal” people and those with a disorder, and places HSPs firmly in the former group. Two, the idea that a “disorder” can only be characterized as such if it is rare stands out to me. It reminds me of some concepts in social Darwinism, as if natural selection confers “normalcy” on only the most common traits. I’m not suggesting this is the author’s intent, but it raises concerns for me about how we’re discussing disorder and normalcy.
Finally, I do experience autism as a disability, and that’s not a “bad” word to me. It goes beyond feeling misunderstood. For example, I lose access to my skills and strengths in certain environments where others don’t. I have co-occurring conditions like migraine that tend to appear more frequently in autistic people. And I have pushed myself to burnout trying to mask social and communication differences in order to fit in.
These are not experiences that I found validation for in my HSP focused explorations. It was only when I received my autism diagnosis that I was able to understand and accommodate myself. Unfortunately, the HSP concept did not meet me where I was at when I had that realization. As of 7/11/25, Aron’s website states that she doesn’t keep current on autism research. So those of us who moved from identifying as HSP to autistic must look elsewhere for the next stage of the journey.
Masking
I did gain some understanding of my social burnout from the HSP framework. For example, I had not understood that sensory input, such as lights and sounds, were causing additional overwhelm in certain kinds of social events. Reducing sensory input could then help me re-engage with others. I started carrying earplugs everywhere and outright avoided loud, unstructured events when possible.
At the same time, I was not aware how much I was masking, or how draining it was. I’ve discussed elsewhere what this looked like. Basically, I was performing emotions in order to fit in, while downplaying both meltdowns and autistic glimmers. The HSP framework certainly addressed feeling different, or “too much,” but the level of distress I felt behind the mask was only understandable to me through the lens of autism. I felt like an actor playing a carefully scripted version of myself.
Not only was I hiding my sensitivity. I was camouflaging my neurodiversity. In fact, I camouflaged so well that I went undiagnosed for years. And this is one of the potential issues with the HSP framework. In the face of a high-masking individual who may not fit past stereotypes about autism, HSP might become a placeholder explanation. One that ultimately, for me, delayed more focused support and understanding.
Monotropism and Bottom-Up Thinking
According to monotropism.org, “Monotropic minds tend to have their attention pulled more strongly towards a smaller number of interests at any given time, leaving fewer resources for other processes.” I feel this intensity both in my special interests, and in the way that I process information. I tend to latch onto specific topics, and look at individual words in conversation before understanding the bigger picture. This last tendency is called “bottom-up thinking,” or using details to work towards a bigger understanding, rather than the other way around.
The closest thing I found to this in the HSP framework is an emphasis on deep processing. I do tend to think for a long time before I act, for example. But in my relationships, I also notice communication differences that go beyond processing depth or speed. Because of the bottom-up style in which I analyze things, I sometimes miss sarcasm, answer questions in an unexpected way, or become confused by a word that’s being used differently than I’ve ever heard before.
These differences amount to a totally distinct cognitive style, one that I wouldn’t come to understand fully until my diagnosis. And having close relationships with folks who understand this about me has eased the strain and shame I felt at missing the joke sometimes. I now see not a failure, but a unique style of communicating that also comes with some advantages.
Conclusions: Highly Sensitive Person or Autistic?
I will never tell anyone how to identify. I can only speak from experience. While high sensitivity helped me understand certain parts of myself, the label ultimately fell short. I assumed that once I worked through the books and addressed some mental health issues, I’d feel somehow complete. But in reality, I had many challenges left to navigate.
That’s why I wish there was at least more engagement between advocates and researchers of the high sensitivity concept and the autistic community. I suspect many neurodivergent people have found that label, and used it as a stepping stone towards diagnosis. And if the books I was reading had even briefly acknowledged that connection, I’m sure I would have reached my diagnosis much sooner.
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Are you a highly sensitive person, and/or autistic? Leave me a comment below with your thoughts!
