I Am The Mother of an HSP Son | Highly Sensitive Introvert

I have a 16 year old HSP son.

He has always struggled with his emotions. Right from the beginning, as a very young child, his feelings were extreme. Tears came easily, more easily than most other children. He reacted strongly to what seemed like little hurts or stresses.

In school, he stuck out. His class has been one where the rest of the boys operate as stereotypical males: wrestling and interacting in the rough and tumble ways that boys often do. Not that it’s a bad thing in and of itself, but it is bad when you’re the only male who doesn’t operate in the same way.

It’s even worse when the other boys are unwilling to befriend you because you’re not like them. He was too ‘different’ to be accepted in his class. His difficulty regulating his emotions was one issue, and his interests were another.

My HSP son did not want to roughhouse or play with trucks. He wanted to imagine.

He began reading at age 3, and began making comic books shortly after. As he grew and got older, those comic book creations matured into real, serious writing. Novels, short stories.

On a personal level, he was different in what he wanted out of friendship too. He didn’t want a whole bunch of “buddies”. When he was a young child he was content when he had even one person who wanted to be his friend.

As he entered into his teenage years, he craved deep, connected, one-on-one friendship. He didn’t crave the excitement of the crowd as so many adolescent boys do at that age.

But unfortunately, he rarely found any friendship.

His raising has had some bumps along the road, some of them were difficulties which would not have been there apart from his sensitive nature. The message he got for much of his upbringing, from home and from school, was the same one that I got: That being sensitive means you are broken.

That there was something wrong with him. That he needed to stop it somehow. That he needed to toughen up.

The message that he needed to toughen up was increased ten-fold because of his gender. Boys don’t cry. Boys don’t have emotions.

And if they do have an emotion, anger is the only acceptable, “tough” emotion.

Due to my lack of understanding and acceptance towards my own highly sensitive nature, I inadvertently passed along the same message to him that I had heard my entire life: sensitivity makes you weak and different.

There was no accepting it. It was a flaw. And we needed to change it, or at the very least – hide it. I am not proud of passing this message along, but it was all I knew at the time.

Looking at things now, I can clearly see that there is an extra layer to being sensitive for my son. The simple fact that he is male doubled the pressure on him to be “tough”. It is what is expected. It is what is “normal”.

While my sensitivity led me to feel broken, and that there was something wrong with me, his sensitivity led him to come to the conclusion that his very existence was a mistake.

Those messages he took in had the same long term effect on him as they did on me. He hated himself. He tried to change and be different.

But he couldn’t change his sensitive nature, no more than he could change the colour of his eyes. So, because he couldn’t change, he learned to despise who he was, and he sunk into a deep depression.

All the while, I watched. I did not know what to do. My own vision was still so cloudy at that time. As a mother, I felt helpless, and my heart bled for him.

About a year and a half ago, I was at a very low, confusing point in my life. On a whim, I did a quiz to find out my Myers Briggs personality type. After testing as INFP/J, I did a search on Google to discover what these letters meant.

One click led to another, and to another, and I stumbled across the wide and often convoluted world of Facebook groups. It was in these groups where I first heard the term Highly Sensitive Person. I thought it was silly at first. I thought it was make believe.

It went against what I had been trying to do my whole life. I had tried to eradicate my sensitivity because it was “bad”, and to become tough, because that was “normal”. Over the course of the next 6 months or so, however, I grew accustomed to what being a Highly Sensitive Person meant. I accepted that, yes, it fit, that it was ME.

This acceptance has changed my life. For the first time ever, in the simple, quiet act of accepting myself as HSP, I have found the freedom to just be me, and to grow and learn who that “me” really is. (If you haven’t already, you can read more about this in another article of mine called “Own your HSP”.)

When I accepted my own highly sensitive nature and began learning how to give myself permission to be the real me, I knew right away that my son needed the same.

He did not need to be told (directly or indirectly) to toughen up. He needed to grab hold of the freedom in accepting himself as being a highly sensitive male.

He needed to learn how to manage the difficult side of being so sensitive and how to highlight the good. And he needed to experience being proud of who he is rather than always feeling as though he had to hide that person away.

I started talking to him about my experience. About being HSP, and what that meant. About learning to be mindful in his thinking so his emotions don’t spin out of control so badly. I wanted to help him learn to change his focus from trying to stop the emotions themselves.

We talked lots about how it’s ok to be different from those around you. That it is ok, and is beneficial to be sensitive. That it’s ok to laugh at yourself and your faults and failings, too.

That it’s ok to cry, and be soft hearted, and to crave deep conversations rather than parties, even when you’re a teenage boy.

That he should embrace who he is, the real him, and learn to be the best him he can be, cause who really cares about “normal” anyways? “Normal” is only a word. And really, we can give it whatever definition we want.

I have watched these new found acceptances have an effect on him. Life is not perfect, but there is a shift inside. I recognize it, because I had the same shift happen to me. That empowering shift, when acceptance for your own self starts to click in.

“Click”, and he begins to form a foundation upon which to build the beginnings of a newly found confidence.

I am midway down the road of my life. Accepting that I am a highly sensitive person has drastically changed my outlook, my reactions, my feelings towards myself.

My life is not perfect, but the changes and growth I see inside of me since having accepted my sensitivity a year or so ago, make my head spin when I think about them.

So much positive, in so little time.

I don’t fool myself into thinking that my son’s life will now be bump-free, or somehow easy. There will always be bumps along the road of life, and some will still come because of his highly sensitive nature.

What I do think, though, is that those bumps along the road of life will rattle him less, now that his feet are more firmly planted in the acceptance of his sensitivity. His energy can be put into handling the difficulties in life as himself.

He can now work with his sensitive nature, not against it.

My HSP son no longer has to handle those difficulties while wasting energy on changing who he is on the inside, too.

And I can’t help but feel thankful that his journey has started so much earlier in life than mine, closer to the beginning. With his life stretched out before him, being able to start into his adult life walking more confidently in who he as a highly sensitive introverted male.

Learning to grow and use those traits for the “superpower” that they are will only prove to benefit him, and enrich the lives of the people with whom he shares himself.

Image Credit: Joe Hayhurst

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Leila Elizabeth

Always a lover of words, I began reading them at a young age, and began creating with them shortly thereafter.

A bend in the road led me to embrace my introversion, and to discover my identity as a highly sensitive person. As I have moved along the path in learning more about who I am, how to take care of myself as an introvert, and how to handle the challenges of life as an HSP - my love of writing has been rekindled and embraced once again. It intertwines with the journey I am on, and is reflected in what I write.