Highly Sensitive Person or Introvert? The Surprising Differences Most People Don’t Understand

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover why your sensitivity may not be introversion at all.

Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People. A podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. I’m your host, Todd Smith, a facilitator of the work of Byron Katie. A way to question and reduce stressful thoughts, and you guessed it. I’m a highly sensitive person myself.

In this episode, you’ll discover the surprising differences between introversion and high sensitivity that most people completely miss. Why you may be confusing. Social exhaustion with sensory or emotional overload. Three types of sensitivity profiles and how knowing which one you are can transform your self-care.

Welcome to this edition of Self-Compassion Wednesdays, where we dive deeper into understanding ourselves as highly sensitive people by exploring the unique traits that shape our experience. Many people assume that sensitivity is the same thing as introversion. It’s a very common confusion and it’s something I wanna look at in more detail in this session.

Introversion is about managing social energy. People who are introverted are concerned with a limited amount of energy. It feels like a limited amount of energy for social interaction, and they recharge by being alone. They can handle a certain amount of social interaction, but when that becomes too much, then they become overwhelmed.

And so being alone gives them a chance to recoup and they may even if it’s enjoyable social interaction, it’s the social interaction itself that can drain someone who is introverted. The nervous system isn’t necessarily overreacting to sensory input. It’s the social exchange itself that is causing the discomfort or the attacks.

And so someone who is introverted may dislike parties or group activities because there’s too much people time and that too much people, time leads them feeling depleted. So again, introverts manage their social energy tank, their social energy tank goes down quickly. And so they’re constantly paying attention to that and wanting to get back to alone time to recharge that on a regular basis.

Now, if you compare that to high sensitivity, HSP, the highly sensitive person trait, or we can say sensory processing sensitivities, all the same thing. If you compare introversion where people are managing their social energy tank. A highly sensitive person is managing the n nervous system sensory and emotional input tank.

So what I mean by that is that there’s a limitation to how much processing a highly sensitive person can do, and it’s not just limited to social introversion. Has, is related to social, highly sensitive, is not necessarily related to social. Highly sensitive people process things deeply and they process emotions deeply.

They process all sensory input deeply. They process the subtleties of information deeply. And so overstimulation comes from too much sensory input. It can be bright lights or loud sounds, or background noise, or smells or sudden changes. Anything that is adding more input into this person. Then that can cause a highly sensitive person to go over into overwhelm.

Now granted, social situations can bring a lot of input and bring a lot of things for someone to have to process if they’re highly sensitive. But it’s that extra processing that’s causing the overwhelm as opposed to someone who’s introverted, where it’s the social interaction that’s causing the overwhelm.

The other thing with HSPs is that we feel emotions intensely and we tend to feel, be empathetic and tune into other people’s emotions and can react and can process the experience that we’re seeing secondhand as well. And so this is another thing for highly sensitive people to process.

But it’s different from the social interaction itself, which can be overwhelming for introverts. The highly sensitive person is actually quite often enjoys social interaction and especially deep connection. But the emotions may cause a certain amount of intensity, and there may be a certain point where it becomes too much.

The other thing is that highly sensitive people pick up on subtleties that many people miss. For example, shifts in tone or mood or facial expressions or atmosphere. And these are also processed. So as you can see, sensory processing sensitivity, the HSP trait has a lot to do with processing. And so we get a lot of information, we process a lot of information, and that’s what fills up our bucket and makes us get flooded.

Compare that to introversion. It’s the social connection itself, the social exchange itself that introverts find challenging and can overwhelm them. So the confusion comes because many HSPs also happen to be introverts. In fact, 70% of highly sensitive people also happen to be introverts. I fall into that category and it’s so you’re getting both things at once.

You’re getting overstimulated by the social. Interaction itself, and you’re wanting to recharge to be alone for that, and you’re getting overwhelmed by all of the things that you’re processing, all of the subtle changes in tone as well as the room distractions and noises and smells and all of that.

So the, that’s the confusion is that there’s a huge overlap between HSP and inversion, but. Some HSPs are actually extroverted, and they are they enjoy people. They are not drained by too much social interaction, but they still get overstimulated by all the sensory and emotional intensity. And so they still have a need for quiet, a need for alone time, but it’s coming from a different place.

And likewise there are introverts that are not highly sensitive. And so these people just get socially tired, but don’t have the sensory or emotional kind of challenge of overwhelm that HSPs have. They’re not processing things in the same way that highly sensitive people process things. Which leads to an overtaxing of the system as it’s processing all of these details.

So a simple metaphor is that introverts are drained by the number of social interactions, whereas HSPs are drained by the intensity of all incoming information, social, sensory, and emotional. And if you want to test yourself, you can ask yourself. If I were alone with no social interaction, but sitting in a loud, bright, chaotic room, would I still feel overwhelmed?

If yes, this points towards the HSP sensitivity. If no, then this is more pointing towards introversion, and so this is why many people mislabel themselves. They may think, I hate loud parties, so I must be introverted. But for some, it’s not the people, it’s the stimulation. And for many of us it’s both.

So I wanna look just quickly at the three different types of places here where these interact. It’s if you’re gonna look at a Venn diagram, we’re gonna look at HSP and not being an introvert. And then we’ll look at. Being not an HSP, but being an introvert and then being an HSP and an introvert.

Look at all the combinations and just see the difference. To help illustrate this, so if you’re an HSP, but you’re not an introvert, which is about 30% of all HSPs, then these people are highly sensitive and they’re also energized by social interaction, so they get. They get energy from being in a social situation.

The core experience is loving to be around people, especially meaningful, one-on-one, one-on-one, or small group connections. They can be very outgoing, socially expressive. They can be just gregarious in that way, and yet still get easily overwhelmed by sensory inputs such as noise, lights, crowds, or a fast pace.

They can also experience and get overwhelmed by emotional absorption, which means picking up on others’ feelings, processing that, and and that affects them and can also get overwhelmed by rapid schedule changes or overstimulation of any kind. And the tricky part is that people who are HSP, but not introvert, in other words, they’re extrovert.

They may crave social engagement, but still need intentional recovery time to manage sensory emotional overload, not because people tire them out, but because the stimulation does. An example of this is they may feel excited going to a party, but come home later feeling emotionally and physically overstimulated even if they had fun.

Now, let’s look at if you’re an introvert, but not an HSP. These people are socially reserved but not highly sensitive to sensory or emotional input, and so the experience is they need solitude to recharge after socializing because the socializing itself is draining. They don’t process sensory or emotional subtleties as deeply as highly sensitive people.

And so they’re not getting as much overwhelmed from that. They’re less bothered by noisy or chaotic environments as long as they’re not required to interact too much with a, with actual, with people, and they’re less likely to get emotionally flooded by other people’s feelings. So an example of this is this kind of person who was a introvert but not a highly sensitive person, could actually sit in a busy cafe or airport reading a book comfortably.

I. As long as no one talks to them. The social interaction itself is what drains them, not the environment or the emotional content. Whereas a highly sensitive person in that same situation would probably not even be able to read because of all the noises and different things going on around them. So finally, let’s look at where these two overlap, where you’re an, if you’re an HSP and an VER and an introvert, which is the most common.

70% of all HSPs, and these people experience both social energy depletion and sensory emotional overload. So the experience is they crave solitude, both for social recovery because of the introversion and to be able to decompress after sensory overload. So they come to solitude for two different reasons.

They’re doubly interested in solitude. And they can be overwhelmed by both too much social interaction and too much sensory, emotional input, noise, chaos, intensity, changes like that. So people who are HSP and introvert can often feel drained in every direction. It can get drained from people, get drained from environment get drained from emotions.

All these things can come into play. An example of this would be like a long day at work with lots of meetings, deadlines, bright lights, emotional coworkers, and constant emails can leave them feeling completely wiped out even if nothing bad happened. So for me, just understanding this distinction between introversion and high sensitivity gives me more clarity about what causes my overwhelm.

Each us is different, and if we understand a little bit these subtle differences, it can make a difference in terms of what you choose to interact with and where you find that your overwhelm comes from so that you can prevent it in some way. In this episode, we looked at the surprising differences between introversion and high sensitivity that most people completely miss, and the main difference is with this, se sensitivity being sensitive to all kinds of stimulation, whereas introversion is it’s the social interaction that’s causing the draining of energy or the stress. We also looked at why you may be confusing, social inter exhaustion and sensory or emotional overload. It’s because both of these things need downtime.

We need alone time. And so it looks the same. Okay, yeah, I’m gonna go be by myself. But the introvert is doing that because they need to recover the just the draining of being around people which is exhausting for them. Whereas the highly sensitive person is getting recovery from all the stimulation that is causing so much processing and causing overload in that direction.

And then finally we looked at three types of sensitivity profiles, and we saw it’s like the HSP, but not an introvert introvert, but not HSP or HSP and introvert, which is the most common. And we also were pointing in the direction of understanding that if you know these differences, if you know who you are, then you can help.

Find a way to take care of yourself in a better way. For example, an introvert needs social pacing. It needs downtime from people, and it needs solitude to recharge. An HSP needs sensory regulation, like not too many, too much sensory overload, emotional processing and processing. The emotions have, finding ways of dealing with that nervous system, calming and.

Control over stimulation, and if you have both, then you may need both. So thanks for listening. It’s great to explore this with you. This podcast comes out three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Join me next time for Strategy Fridays where we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress as a highly sensitive person.