INFJs, INFPs, and Sensory Processing Issues

Information about being a Highly Sensitive Person has been readily available for years now, with the term “HSP” entering mainstream language, and most people understanding what this means.

I’ve talked to so many INFJs and INFPs who have told me, “When I found out I was a Highly Sensitive Person, it changed my life.” However, the body of work around what it means to be an HSP is still limited in some ways, and it is these limits that INFJs and INFPs continue to push against, because for us, being an HSP isn’t the whole story.

What’s emerging more and more now, is that INFJs and INFPs are neurodivergent people. And as neurodivergent people, we frequently have sensory processing issues.

This takes us out of the realm of, “Well, I’m just highly sensitive to smells and sounds and textures. It’s something that affects me and it’s something to have awareness about as I live my life.”

Instead, it puts us squarely in the realm of, “My nervous system actually becomes dysregulated when I’m overwhelmed by sensory stimuli, and for me, ‘overwhelmed’ might mean that I have a severe reaction to sensory stimuli that isn’t even a blip on the radar for other people.”

So, it’s not just that we are more sensitive, or that we are highly sensitive. It’s that we have an entirely different kind of nervous system that needs to be treated in an entirely different kind of way.

This is where I think a lot of INFJs and INFPs part ways with mainstream advice for HSPs.

Because the mainstream advice for HSPs urges us to make small tweaks to our lives to work with our high sensitivity.

When we can acknowledge that we actually have sensory processing issues, that’s when we start changing our entire lifestyle altogether.

Instead of taking short breaks while we’re at the office to give ourselves a few minutes to decompress, we realize that working in any kind of office is not for us.

Instead of ducking into the bathroom at the party to be alone for a short while, we stop going to parties.

Instead of opening all the windows after our friend who wears the strong perfume visits our home, we tell that same friend she can’t come over anymore if she’s going to wear perfume.

We move from adjusting ourselves to situations that are hard for us, to eliminating those situations altogether.

We move from “tweaking” different things in our life, to completely redesigning our whole lifestyle.

The shift from thinking of yourself as an HSP to understanding that you are neurodivergent and have sensory processing issues requires you to reset how you think about yourself, and what you want out of life.

It also requires you to work with boundaries, at a deep level.

Boundary work comes up with sensory processing issues because it’s necessary that we speak up for ourselves. It’s necessary that we tell other people that certain situations won’t work for us, and that we need to request things that may not make sense to them.

Boundary work also comes up because we need to recognize our own inner boundaries, and not push past them. We can no longer let ourselves overwork, override our limits, or make ourselves “get over it” in situations because we don’t want to call attention to ourselves or stand out from the crowd.

Because it’s no longer an issue of “I’m basically just like an average person, I’m just more sensitive.” It’s an issue of, “I’m not at all like an average person. My brain and my nervous system work very differently, and if I don’t work with my boundaries, my physical and mental health will immediately begin to suffer.”

So, the stakes are raised.

But this is a good thing. Because something that most neurodivergent people struggle with is talking about their experience, speaking their truth, expressing their needs, and giving themselves permission to take action to meet those needs.

Here are just a few ways you can start to do all of this:

Drop the “employee mindset.”

You don’t need to work 40 hours a week, work full-time, work Monday through Friday, go into a physical office, or always be working every second that you’re on the clock, in order to be a contributing member of society. Give yourself permission to work remotely, work at lower-paying, lower-status jobs that help you pay the bills but don’t stress you to the max, and work part-time, or not at all during certain periods.

Drop your friends who always push your boundaries, and always drain you.

The friend who always expects you to come to her large, loud birthday party out at the bar. The friend who wants to have coffee every week, and will feel upset if you don’t want to do that. The friend who only talks and never listens. The friend who constantly nags at you to be more extroverted in your advocacy activities. If you want to actually keep some of these people, then make an attempt to state your needs to them to see if they can get onboard. But if they can’t or they don’t want to, they need to go.

Drop your need to be seen in a certain way by other people.

When you stop accommodating everyone else and you start focusing on what you need to thrive, you will lose the image you’ve cultivated of being the “good friend,” the “good coworker,” the “good son” or the “good daughter.” There will be pushback from the people around you. Let it happen and move on. The priority needs to be your own health over the expectations of others.

When we start making changes like these, we start changing our whole experience of life. Suddenly, we’re not overwhelmed anymore. We’re not so anxious, so scattered, so confused, so depressed, and we don’t have so many periods of paralysis and meltdown. But we have to start with recognizing what it to be neurodivergent, usually within in a life we’ve built to mask that fact from everyone else.

We have to start with change, and that change has to come from us.

I talk about these kinds of topics for INFJs and INFPs every week in my email newsletter, and if you have a question about personality type, personal growth, or any other kind of wondering about life in general, you can send it my way and I’ll add it to my list of questions to be answered. You can sign up for my email newsletter here, and you can send your questions to lauren@laurensapala.com.