The Power of Male Sensitivity

During my postgraduate training in psychotherapy and my first years in practice, I kept coming across a specific type of client that I experienced as particularly sensitive, thoughtful, intuitive, conscientious, often introverted, and sometimes shy. These clients came to therapy for varied reasons: depression, anxiety, or relationship problems. But they all shared one underlying characteristic: They were very sensitive, and because of this, experienced their internal and external worlds in a very subtle and perceptive way.

After a while, I realized that I particularly enjoyed working with this group of clients, precisely because of the way that they perceived and dealt with the world. But it also became increasingly clear to me that it was my male, rather than my female clients, who had the greatest problems with the sensitivity that they had described. Again and again, I saw the huge psychological suffering caused by the discrepancy between how these men were and how they thought a man should be.

During my sessions, I constantly heard male clients saying that they wished they were tougher, more physically and mentally resilient and that they could learn to be more extroverted in social situations. They usually thought that it was this that would make them more successful in their jobs and more attractive to potential partners. And often these men wanted to have less conflicted relationships with their own fathers and with other men.

Essentially, though, it always came back to the same basic idea: They wanted to be more like what they saw as a “typical man.” And this “typical man” was not particularly sensitive.

At that time, I hadn’t yet come across the concept of high sensitivity as an innate temperamental trait and wasn’t aware of the extensive research by the clinical psychologist Dr. Elaine Aron and her colleagues on the “highly sensitive person” (HSP). Elaine Aron has been researching this concept since the early 1990s, when she began to look into the concept of “innate sensitivity” in certain people. Aron describes four indicators that we can use to judge whether we are highly sensitive, which she refers to using the acronym DOES:

1. Depth of processing

2. Overstimulation

3. Emotional reactivity (including empathy)

4. Sensitivity to subtle stimuli.

Depth of processing is the key characteristic of high sensitivity, from which the other three indicators all stem. On a practical level, this means, for example, that highly sensitive people exhaustively observe things in great detail and think longer and more deeply before they take action. They generally react more emotionally to positive as well as negative occurrences in their surroundings, they feel empathy strongly, they tend to notice subtle stimuli in their surroundings quickly, and they have a tendency to feel quicker overstimulated.

I had the feeling that I had come across a groundbreaking psychological concept that was going to have a huge impact on my work as a therapist. The idea that people are born with different sensitivities that affected the way that they react to the world around them seemed to explain so many things I had seen in my practice. So over the next few years, I immersed myself in all of the available material on high sensitivity and began a dialogue with Elaine Aron, who gave me an in-depth personal insight into her research and her therapeutic work with highly sensitive patients.

It is important to me to write and talk about the long-neglected issue of empowerment for highly sensitive men because I believe that their role in the world is very important and that it comes with many challenges and opportunities. I consider the high sensitivity of many men to be a completely essential part of masculine identity and something that can enrich the lives of these men and the lives of those they encounter. Sensitivity is in no way a shameful “unmanly” flaw that one has to get over.

To see the opportunities that their sensitivity offers, however, highly sensitive men have to learn to deal well and responsibly with it. They have to accept it, learn to value it, and to use it positively in their relationships with other people. When this happens, I believe that a highly sensitive disposition can make men particularly good fathers, husbands, partners, son, brothers, and friends.

At the same time, I think it’s important to say that high sensitivity should not be used as an excuse to avoid doing things that you actually just don’t want to do. I also believe that it is not something that should be worn as a badge of honor—“I’m special, because I’m so sensitive.” High sensitivity is a neutral disposition, an innate temperamental trait. Having a highly sensitive disposition is not automatically a good thing or a bad thing. It is of course an important part of your personality, but at the end of the day it is exactly that—one part, one aspect of your complex personal make-up.

Highly Sensitive Person Essential Reads

How Sensitive People Can End Violence Without Getting Hurt

Do People Signal High Sensitivity to Get What They Want?

In my work with highly sensitive clients, I often compare a highly sensitive disposition to being born with very fair skin. You can complain that you weren’t born with darker skin and you might be envious of friends who are able to sun themselves on the beach, in the garden, or in the park and not worry about burning. But at the end of the day you have to accept that your skin is different. It’s not better, not worse, just different.

People with very fair skin can also go sunbathing if they want, they just can’t stay in the sun for as long as other people. They also have to take different precautions, like using high SPF sunscreen, finding somewhere shady to sit, wearing a hat or light clothing. In fact, people with pale skin can enjoy the “sunny” moments in life just as much anyone else, they just have to learn how to do it in their own and sometimes slightly different way. And that’s the crux of the matter: To accept the situation as it actually is and, ultimately, to find your own individual and authentic way of learning to live with it well.

Tom Falkenstein’s book “The Highly Sensitive Man” is out now.