The maths in being an HSP

Maths was never my favourite subject at school.  I hadn’t thought about it for decades until an HSP counselling client told me that maths was all around us in nature.

Her joy about it stayed with me. I even asked for a book explaining ‘the golden ratio‘ my client described as a birthday present.  It had photos of the ratio in nature, architecture and fashion.

Strangely, I find myself thinking in maths terms about being highly sensitive …

Living, breathing maths equations.  That’s how I see us HSPs.  Constantly processing information – analysing, weighing up, trying to understand, searching for answers.

With data always being received, the equation is always bubbling away.  Any new piece of information can change the balance – and the more significant the new factor, the bigger the change.

All this affects an HSP’s thinking, feelings and mood.   And all can change again with the next piece of data.  Challenging for us, challenging for those around us!

‘Showing your working’.  Do you remember being told you’d get credit in maths tests for showing what you’d done and how you’d got there, even if you didn’t know or reach the answer?

In my experience, HSPs do like to ‘show their working’ – what they think, how they got there and how it all adds up.

I think it’s part natural process, part sharing, part HSPs hoping they might be understood at least a little, and part justifying a perspective that may not be welcome.

Then there’s an equation I used with counselling clients: ‘If X plus Y then Z will follow’.

In this equation, X is always ‘if you are an HSP’.

For example, if you are an HSP (X) and you put a lot of effort into everything (Y), then of course you’ll regularly get exhausted (Z).

Or if you are an HSP (X) and you don’t know that 30% of HSPs are extroverts (Y), then no wonder you and others will struggle to make sense of the combination (Z).

I’ll end with a quotation from writer Charles Caleb Colton – “The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.”

I’m not saying HSPs are magnificent.  I just love minuteness, magnificence … and the sound of the journey!