Jenn Granneman - Sensitive: The Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person in a Loud, Fast, Too-Much World

It starts with a boy and a girl. Theyve never met, but their stories begin the same. Theyre from the Midwest, with blue-collar parents and not enough money. Neither of their families knows what to make of them. Theyre different from other kids, you see, and its starting to show.

Sometimes the boy seems normal enough. He follows the rules in kindergarten. Hes polite to his teachers, and kind to the other kids, but when recess rolls around, he shrinks. Something about the playground is too much for him. Instead of joining for kickball, or tag, or king of the jungle gym, he runs away. He flees from the screaming and laughing and hides in the only place he can find: an old storm sewer pipe.

At first, the teachers dont even notice, because he always slinks back at the end-of-recess bell. But one day he takes a kickball with him so he wont be alone. It might be cute under different circumstances, but there are never enough balls to go around, and the other kids complain when they see him run off with it. Thats when the teachers find him, and the concern starts. His parents dont understand: Why do you hide in a sewer pipe? What do you do in there? His answerthat its quietdoesnt help. Hell need to learn to play with the other kids, they tell him, no matter how loud or overstimulating it is.

The girl, on the other hand, doesnt run away. In fact, she seems to have a knack for reading people. She becomes the ringleader of her group of friends, sensing easily what each kid wants or what will make them happy. Soon, she organizes them to pull off neighborhood events: a family carnival, complete with games and prizes, or a particularly elaborate haunted house for Halloween. These events take weeks of effort, and shes perfectly at home refining every detail. Yet when the big day comes, shes not out in the middle of the action, howling at the puppet show or running from game to game. Instead, she stays on the edges. There are just too many people, too many emotions, too much laughing and shouting and winning and losing. Her own carnival overwhelms her.

Its not the only time she gets overstimulated. She has to modify her clothes, cutting off straps so the fabric doesnt rub her skin (when she was a baby, her mom recalls, they had to cut the feet off her footed sleepers, too). In the summer, shes excited to go to a week-long camp, but her mom has to drive her home early; she cant sleep in a crowded bunk, let alone one crackling with the feelings and intrigues of a dozen little girls. These reactions surprise and disappoint people, and their reactions in turn surprise and disappoint the girl. For her parents, her behavior is a cause of worry: what if she cant handle the real world? Still, her mom does her best to encourage her, and her dad reminds her she has to say things out loud rather than just thinking them in her head. But she has a lot of thoughtslibraries of themand people rarely understand them. She is called many things, sometimes even sensitive, but its not always a good thing. Its something to be fixed.

No one calls the boy sensitive. They do call him gifted when he reads and writes above his grade level, and he eventually gets permission to spend lunch hours in the school libraryit frees him from the roar of the lunchroom, and its less alarming than a drainpipe. His peers have other words for him. They call him weird. Or that worst-of-all word, wuss. It doesnt help that he can never hide his big feelings, that he sometimes cries at school, and that he breaks down when he sees bullyingeven if hes not the victim.

But as he grows older, he increasingly is. The other boys have little respect for the dreamy kid who prefers a walk in a forest over a football game, who writes novels instead of coming to parties. And he has no interest in vying for their approval. It costs him: He gets shoved in hallways and mocked at lunch, and gym class may as well be a firing squad. He is seen as so soft, so weak that an older girl becomes his biggest bully, laughing as she writes obscenities on his shirt with a marker. He cannot admit any of this to his parents, least of all his dad, who told him the way to handle a bully is to punch the person in the face. The boy has never punched anyone.

Both the girl and the boy, in their separate lives, start to feel as if there is no one else like them in the world. And both seek a way out. For the girl, the solution is to withdraw. By high school, each day overwhelms her, and she comes home so fatigued that she hides in her room from her friends. She often stays home sick, and though her parents are nice about it, she wonders if they worry about her. For the boy, the way out is to learn to act tough. Its to say he doesnt care about anyoneas if he could take them all on. The attitude fits him about as well as a grown-ups army helmet. Nor does it have the intended effect: Rather than coming to respect him, the other kids avoid him completely.

Soon the boy is skipping school and hanging out with a clique of stoner artistspeople who feel as deeply as he does, who dont judge his way of seeing the world. The girl finds acceptance in an abusive church. The church members dont think shes weird, they assure her. They think she has miracle powers, even a special purpose, as long as she does everything they say.

What no one says is, Youre perfectly normal. Youre sensitive. And if you learn how to use this gift, you can do incredible things.