photo credit: LeTiger One study, for example, found that the brains of creative people appear to be more open to incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment.

(“Decreased Latent Inhibition Is Associated With Increased Creative Achievement in High-Functioning Individuals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, September 2003 – see PDF)

Another article quotes one of the authors, Shelley Carson, a Harvard psychologist: “Scientists have wondered for a long time why madness and creativity seem linked, particularly in artists, musicians, and writers.

“Our research results indicate that low levels of latent inhibition and exceptional flexibility in thought predispose people to mental illness under some conditions and to creative accomplishments under others.”

[From Creativity tied to mental illness,  By William J. Cromie, Harvard University Gazette.]

A University of Toronto press release on the study explained, “Other people’s brains might shut out this same information through a process called ‘latent inhibition’ – defined as an animal’s unconscious capacity to ignore stimuli that experience has shown are irrelevant to its needs.

“Through psychological testing, the researchers showed that creative individuals are much more likely to have low levels of latent inhibition.

“This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra information constantly streaming in from the environment,” says co-author and University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson.

From article Creative people more open to stimuli from environment.

The Eide Neurolearning Blog post titled The Biology of Creativity – Right Hemispheric Thinking, Problem Solving by Insight, and Diffuse Attention refers to studies on attentional style and creativity, including a Northwestern University study that references the above “Decreased Latent Inhibition…” paper and notes, “…psychometric measures of creativity and measures of real-world creative achievement are associated with a habitual tendency toward diffuse rather than focused attention, which results in ineffective filtering of distracting or irrelevant environmental stimuli.”

Elizabeth Mika (director of Gifted Resources in Northern Illinois) has commented that this study and other research in clinical psychology and psychiatry support psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski’s conclusions on the relationship between creativity and overexcitability (not called that in the studies). See her article Theory of Positive Disintegration as a Model of Personality Development For Exceptional Individuals.

Overwhelm and overload

But overexcitability and the related phenomenon of decreased neural inhibition can result in overload and even disorder.

In his recent Psychology Today blog Beautiful Minds, in the post Schizophrenic Thought: Madness or Potential for Genius?, Scott Barry Kaufman comments on this dark side of high sensitivity.

“Throughout our daily lives we experience an influx of emotions, sensations, and sounds,” he writes. “If we had to consciously decide at all times what to ignore and what to pay attention to, we would quickly become overstimulated.

“This ability to screen things out of awareness that were previously tagged as irrelevant is called latent inhibition. Latent inhibition has a strong biological basis and operates automatically to filter out information.

“Those high in latent inhibition are very good at this inhibition. Those with a reduced latent inhibition have a difficult time with this form of inhibition. Reduced latent inhibition has been associated with schizophrenia as well as a predisposition to psychosis.”

Creativity

But, he adds, “Recently researchers have wondered whether a reduced latent inhibition can actually be beneficial for creativity.

“After all, decreased LI may make an individual more likely to see connections that others may not notice. Prominent psychologists such as Hans Eysenck and Colin Martindale have argued for the importance of disinhibition for creative thought.

“Indeed, research conducted by fellow PT blogger Shelley Carson and her colleagues have found among a sample of Harvard students that those with a high IQ and decreased LI tended to report increased creative achievement.”
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The lower image is from an edition of The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley.

Related post: Genes and the startle response.

Related book by the authors of The Eide Neurolearning Blog: The Mislabeled Child: How Understanding Your Child’s Unique Learning Style Can Open the Door to Success, by Drs. Brock Eide and Fernette Eide.

highly sensitive people, emotional intensity, overexcitability, gifted and talented

She says, “The idea of acting versus reacting is so important for highly sensitive people, because we do take in so much from our environment. I like to use the idea of mindfulness…

“Be aware of ways in which we can be overstimulated.. it’s not that overstimulation is a consistently bad thing; it’s like, what is that optimal level of arousal? If we’re understimulated, we’re bored; if we’re overstimulated, we get too much cortisol in our system…”

She also talks about Dabrowski and excitabilities versus high sensitivity, and how HSPs can empower themselves, including connecting with others, such as at the HSP gatherings co-created by Jacquelyn Strickland with Dr. Elaine Aron.
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Jacquelyn Strickland, high sensitivity personality, overxcitability, overstimulation and sensitivity

Like a number of other dynamic and creative musicians and actors, Gwen Stefani admits being highly sensitive: “I’m really emotional. I don’t fight with people – like, I can barely fight with my husband because I’ll just start crying instead. I’ve learnt not to do that.” [imdb.com]

A musicomh.com interview article says about creating one of her albums “Love. Angel. Music. Baby.” that her insecurities are depicted in the exuberant video What You Waiting For, “where Gwen plays Alice chasing around the rabbit, symbolizing inspiration, in Wonderland.

“Stefani was working for the first time with former 4 Non-Blondes leader Linda Perry, the woman behind hit songs by Pink and Christina Aguilera: ‘I’d never worked with the woman before. I went in the studio the first day and cried. Linda was so magic, driven, inspiring and beautiful. She was saying: ‘What you waiting for, Gwen? C’mon! I know you got it in you!’”

Her video Wind It Up is a kind of homage to her favorite film The Sound of Music
One of her latest CDs is The Sweet Escape
Photo: as Jean Harlow in The Aviator (2004)

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HSPs intense relationships

Stefani’s relationship with her husband may be a very stable and happy one, but as Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D. comments on the site for her book The Highly Sensitive Person In Love, “on the average HSPs’ relationships in general are less happy.. at least for the HSP.

“Why? HSPs have nervous systems that pick up more on subtleties in the world and reflect on them deeply. That means, for starters, that they will tend to demand more depth in their relationships in order to be satisfied; see more threatening consequences in their partners’ flaws or behaviors; reflect more and, if the signs indicate it, worry about how things are going.

“Because HSPs are picking up on so much, they are also more prone to overstimulation, quicker to feel stress – including the stimulation and stress that can arise in any intense, intimate interactions. They need more down time, which can cause a partner to feel left out. They find different things enjoyable compared to others.”
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Gwen Stefani, highly sensitive books, feeling emotionally overwhelmed, highly sensitive relationships

Musician Keith Urban recently checked himself into a rehab center for alcohol abuse, with support from his wife, actor Nicole Kidman.

A number of other stars have sought treatment for drug or alcohol problems, including Haley Joel Osment (star of The Sixth Sense), Mel Gibson, Robin Williams, Robert Downey Jr., and soprano Andrea Gruber, who sang with the Metropolitan Opera.

Many talented actors and performers can be identified as unusually sensitive, and sometimes use drugs or alcohol to dampen that sensitivity.

Awareness can be overwhelming

Psychologist Elaine Aron identifies The Highly Sensitive Person [the title of one of her books] as someone having an uncommonly sensitive nervous system, and says it is a normal occurrence for about 15 to 20 percent of the population.

“It means you are aware of subtleties in your surroundings, a great advantage in many situations,” she notes. “It also means you are more easily overwhelmed when you have been out in a highly stimulating environment for too long, bombarded by sights and sounds until you are exhausted.”

A strategy gone awry

Johnny Depp has blamed his previous alcohol addiction in his early movie career on his needing to block his discomfort. “I’d go to functions and back in those days I literally had to be drunk to be able to speak and get through it,” he said in a magazine interview. “I guess I was trying not to feel anything. My drug of choice back then was alcohol more than anything.”

Beverly Hills addiction psychologist Marc F. Kern, Ph.D., notes that altering one’s state of consciousness is normal and that a destructive habit or addiction is “mostly an unconscious strategy” and “simply an adaptation that has gone awry.”

The alternatives

In their article A Bioanthropological Overview of Addiction, Doris F. Jonas, Ph.D. and A. David Jonas, M.D. write people sensitive to perceiving the minutest changes in their environment can become overwhelmed.

Those with less sensitive nervous systems are, they write, “better adapted to our more crowded living conditions. The more sensitive can only attempt to ease their discomfort by blunting their perceptions with alcohol or depressive drugs or, alternatively, by using consciousness-altering drugs to transport their senses from the dysphoric world in which they live to private worlds of their own.”

Fortunately, many gifted and talented actors, musicians and others have been able to stay healthy and use their high sensitivity to give us the pleasure of their outstanding performances.

Photo from new Keith Urban album Love, Pain & the whole crazy thing

Related articles:

Growing Up Gifted Is Not Easy by Elaine Aron, PhD

Gifted, Talented, Addicted by Douglas Eby
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high sensitivity personality, sensitivity and drugs, highly sensitive books, feeling emotionally overwhelmed

We cry in response to many different kinds of experiences, not just painful ones.

Keith Beasley described Emotional Quotient, or ‘Sensitivity’ in Mensa Magazine (United Kingdom Edition) in 1987: “The person with a high EQ is one who is easily ‘moved’ and who needs to openly express his or her feelings. At one level it is Bob Geldof being so affected by starving orphans that he organizes a whole crusade for them. At the ‘day-to-day’ level it’s crying at The Sound of Music… To those sensitive members of society, expressing their feelings is as important as using their brains is to Mensans.” [Keith Beasley site]

Actors who cry

Robin Tunney [above] says about her role as the fiance of original TV Superman George Reeves in the new film “Hollywoodland” that she was “dying to play her. [When I got the part] I couldn’t stop crying.” [Life mag., Sep 1, 2006]

Actor and musician Mandy Moore also confesses, “I’ll cry at anything, even a tissue commercial. I’m overly sensitive. It’s so easy to hurt my feelings. I can cry at the drop of a hat.. all the time. I cry when I’m happy too.” [absolutely.net]

Also an actor and musician, Milla Jovovich inspired her director for “The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc” Luc Besson to say, “She has the same kind of passion and excess [as Joan] and, you know, she can laugh and she can cry two seconds afterwards. She can cry for an ant on the street. She has, like, no skin. She feels everything. Even the wind can make her cry.” [LA Times, Nov.11.99]

Too much sensory input?

In her article What Everyone Needs to Know About Highly Sensitive People, Sarah Dolliver says that “sensitive” does not refer to emotions: “All too often, HSPs are thought to be emotionally sensitive. That’s a mistake. The nature of the sensitivity is not around emotions. Emotions can become part of the equation, though. When an HSP is overstimulated by their sensory experiences, it is quite easy to get to an emotional edge where breakdowns or outbursts occur. However, it’s not the emotions that are the cause, yet simply an effect of too much sensory input.”

That may be more accurate: high sensitivity can be seen as a greater responsiveness to the multitude of external and internal signals we are getting all the time.
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high sensitivity personality, overstimulation and sensitivity, feeling emotionally overwhelmed