 Is this person more aware than others of the sound of a ticking clock or dripping water or subtle tastes and smells? Does this person notice what needs to be changed in an environment to make others more comfortable? For me per- The last one maybe not so much for everybody. Who's autistic? What man? Like I'm not speaking to Bethany just in general. I feel like this is just a deviant, like a different way of describing an autistic person as a HSP. But just with the components of what people are considered to be an empath, which autistic people can be, as far as people can define what that is in terms of not diving into the spiritual aspect of it or the religious aspect of it. It's hard to distinguish this from autism, to be honest. Do you guys feel the same? My interpretation of this is that this is autism, but also a high interest in people and feelings and a high degree of ability to recognise that, which autistic people can develop. It's kind of HSP. It just kind of feels like diet autism, like autism, which is a bit more palatable to the mainstream population without saying autism. Do you consider yourself to be a highly sensitive person? You might find that particular social situations might be quite difficult for you. Maybe sensory things that people really don't react to as much as you do just seem to bother you, like in your brain, yourself. Could you be a HSP, a highly sensitive person? Or could you be autistic? Yes, I know. Very large assumption. You could be a well. There is a lot of stigma behind it and hopefully we will be able to understand more of it. Let's have a look at Stephanie Bethany's video on highly sensitive person autism. What is the difference? How can you tell? Is it the same thing? I don't know. We shall see. Hi, my name is Stephanie and today I want to talk to you about highly sensitive person, HSP, otherwise known as Sensory Processing Sensitivity, or SPS. I've had some of you ask me about HSP and some of you even suggested that I'm not autistic, but a highly sensitive person instead. Some people are confused about whether HSP or SPS is a thing, whether it's the same as or separate from autism or what's even going on here. This is because of an overlap in descriptors used for HSP and autism, especially when going through plain language checklists for autism gathered from personal experiences. To get started, let's go over what HSP slash SPS is. One paper focusing on the counseling perspective makes the following definition. SPS unrelated to sensory processing disorder is a temperament through which individuals process information at lower thresholds, that is, they notice more subtle variations in information. This normal variation among temperaments is further described as experiencing greater sensitivity to stimuli, greater depth of processing of stimuli, and subsequent increased emotional response. Highly sensitive. Right. So my my assumption is that of HSP initially by looking at it was this person is sensitive to everything, like emotions, like other people, sensory input. But it's also called SPS. Is that different to SPD? Cessering processing disorder? I mean, it kind of sounds like it, doesn't it? I don't know enough about HSP to say yes or no. I know a lot about autism, but HSP is a new thing for me. Highly sensitive person or sensory processing sensitivity also builds from work behind similar things under different names, such as a psychobiological reactivity, biological sensitivity to context, low sensory threshold, hyperactive emotional syndrome, and neurasthenia. The main researchers behind work on SPS and developers of the HSPS, which is a scale that assesses for SPS, reportedly were interested in studying more about it from coming across individuals seeking psychotherapy due to their belief that they had a disorder even when they did not while practicing. Many people want- HSP, SPS, H, HP. That's all I heard. I was like, there's a lot of HHS, SPS. Brain is boggled. People wonder if SPS is a diagnosable condition. It is not. It is not a diagnosis nor disorder, but rather as previously stated, a temperament. Other sources refer to it as a personality trait. However, there is distinction in one paper regarding its status as temperament and the concept of personality versus temperament. Temperament. Yeah, I mean, I don't particularly understand how that can be like a personal thing. It doesn't make any sense to me that it's not some neuro-related thing. It's not just you are more sensitive to things, rather than a personal sort of emotional thing that you have to experiencing sensory things in the world. It's very confusing. Temperament is described as inborn, having a neurobehavioral and neuroaffective foundation and distinct from personality, since personality has a broader range of differences that also include later periods of development. Personality builds on temperament and can be altered and developed throughout development, unlike the inborn temperament. Sensory processing sensitivity has often been found to lead to negative effects in people's lives. Some of these include social phobia, avoidant personality disorder, anxiety, depression, perceived stress and ill health, and agoraphobic avoidance. HSP has been found to have this sound a lot like related to autism. I'm sorry, but it just feels like a roundabout way of saying that someone has autistic traits. It's very strange. I do stand by my initial characterization of it being a more palatable version of saying that someone's autistic, maybe. Although, last video, I think people made the distinctions on special interests. Did they just not have the over-aspects of autism and they just have the sensitivity? Because that sounds like sensory processing disorder, which is sensory processing differences. I don't know what would be the difference. I'm going to have some correlation with alexithymia, which is of interest because it has been found that autistic people who are considered higher functioning tend to have higher rates of alexithymia as well. Alexithymia has been associated with higher cortisol levels, as has sensitivity in sensory processing. However, people can have difficulty recognizing emotions regardless of their cortisol level, which means that cortisol may not be a significant thing to point out for any correlation. I mean, I definitely experience a lot of cortisol or have experienced a lot in childhood. It's also, alexithymia can be pretty related to things like ZPTSD and PTSD. Amongst other things, I think there's some other ones that have some connection to alexithymia. Kind of like a threshold condition. Some things, if they don't get to a high enough emotional intensity, it can be hard to identify them or pick apart different aspects of emotions, something that a lot of autistic people experience, which is interesting, like the cross-safe, like, okay, alexthymia. Very common for autistic people. Very common for people with PTSD. Autistic people experience a lot of negative things in life. It's like, there's just some kind of triangle going on here. There are also some thoughts on how childhood trauma may have a link to SPS and alexithymia, although there are significant relationships between sensory processing sensitivity and alexithymia, regardless of trauma. The Highly Sensitive Person Scale, or HSPS, was developed to determine if someone is considered a highly sensitive person, and although it was said to measure one dimension, others have found it to measure two factors, negative emotionality and orienting sensitivity, three factors, ease of excitation, aesthetic sensitivity and low sensitivity threshold, or four factors, general sensitivity slash overstimulation, adverse reactions to strong sensitivity, psychological fine discrimination, and controlled harm avoidance. There isn't a complete consensus on how many factors the test actually measures that I'm aware of. However, they all basically relate to different traits of HSP. Some of the items or questions on the scale may be highly relatable to many autistic people, such as, are you easily overwhelmed by sensory input, or do changes in your life shake you up, as these are common issues experienced by autistic people? It is possible that autistic individuals have skewed the results because of how some of the traits overlap. Additionally, some characteristics that have been noted as common to HSPs include avoiding violent movies or TV shows because they feel too intense and leave you feeling unsettled, being overwhelmed by sensory stimuli like noisy crowds, bright lights or uncomfortable clothing, feeling a need for downtime, not just a preference, especially when you have hectic days, needing to retreat to a dark quiet room, and having a rich and complex inner life complete with deep thoughts and strong feelings that go with it. So let me just move back a little bit. Let's go through these. Avoiding violent movies or TV shows, not me. I wouldn't say that, that's me. Deeply moved by beauty, 100%. Being overwhelmed by sensory stimuli, of course, needing downtime, yep. Needing it, 100%, especially after like difficult or complex social situations, hectic days, yeah. Having a rich and complex inner life, 100%, I pretty much live within my own brain. Deep thoughts, strong feelings, yep. I guess I would score pretty highly on this scale. Interesting. I mean, I assume that Stephanie's gonna go into some of the deviations. Well, I hope so. Because they still don't necessarily like, no particularly like, hmm. I mean, if it's measured by different criteria, I suppose that you can't really make an argument that they're not different, to a certain extent. Because it is dictated by what we measure things by. But is it needed? I don't know. I mean, it might be. I'm not saying that it's not. I don't know enough about it. And it's just my own kind of personal sort of thoughts about it. Thoughts and strong feelings that go with it. Sensory overload, needing downtime, having deep thoughts and strong feelings are all things many autistic people experience. With such overlap, it's not hard to see why many people are confused. Despite one part of the HSP site that appears to be associated with the researcher that spearheaded this concept, refusing to answer how does sensitivity differ from autistic spectrum disorders, the website makes it clear in another area that it is distinct, which is in line with statements from the papers I've looked at. To distinguish, they point to something called DOES, which is a list of four things that all HSPs have in common. More depth would be available from reading Elaine Aaron's book. However, there is a section provided on the site that is meant to help explain these traits. D, depth of processing. Does this person reflect more than others about the way the world is going, the meaning of life, or their line of work? Is this person slow at making decisions, preferring to have a little more time, but often makes very good decisions? Is this Does this person reflect more than others about the way the world is going? I think maybe autistic people might be more inclined to try and dissect the logical reason behind things. And perhaps find very complex things quite interesting, maybe. Does this person start making decisions? Yeah, it sounds like processing differences, but also intense focusing, divergent thinking, making interesting, well-informed decisions, maybe. Is this person known for their good ideas? Does this person exhibit personal insight and have a sense of long-term consequences, perhaps leading to unusual conscientiousness? Oh. Mm-hmm. It does sound a little bit orty. I mean, a lot orty. Overstimulation. Does this person experience overstimulation and burnout due to the sheer amount of incoming information, experiencing a sense of not being able to handle any more? And when in a gentle environment, do they effectively process and integrate stimuli? Do others think something is wrong with them because they cannot handle as much as others seem to? This may be because HSPs often decline activities even if enjoyable in order to take care of themselves. Does this person need more sleep and downtime than their family and friends? E. Emotional responsiveness and empathy. Is this person more easily and appropriately moved to tears of joy, gratitude, or relief, and equally moved to laughter, whether by sheer silliness or subtle irony? Does this person react more to the emotions of others and often know what you are feeling far more than others do? Does this person become more distressed by violent TV shows or movies, unfairness, bullying, social injustice, or other disturbing events? Sensitive to subtlety. I think that there is a possibility that there is some differences with this bit, maybe. I know a lot of people who don't find difficult sort of watching difficult things or seeing difficult things particularly distressing. It definitely does move me to want to change stuff, perhaps, give me a bit more oomph to be like, okay, this stuff needs to be rectified, but it doesn't upset me to that degree, maybe. Sometimes it might be moved by a particular film. Does this person react to more emotions than others and often know what they're feeling far more than others do? I don't know, because this is a very subjective thing. How can you personally attest to the accuracy of how well you understand how people feel? I think that's one of the difficulties that I have with this idea of empath. How do you know that people are feeling that way? Unless you ask them, you can't necessarily know. You can get some indications to how people are feeling, but I feel like a lot of people do. Personally, for me, if I feel a certain emotion from someone, I tend to inquire about it. That's more than other people would, maybe. But then again, even when it comes to the autism criteria, you don't need to fill in every single bit. It does seem to be very autism-geared. It sounds familiar. Exactly, that's what I mean. Bullying social injustice or other disturbing events. Sensitive to subtleties. Does this person notice small changes others miss, such as someone looking tired, the decor of a room they have only been in briefly, or small flowers or animals or even animal tracks? Is this person more aware than others of the sound of a ticking clock or dripping water or subtle tastes and smells? Does this person notice what needs to be changed in an environment to make others more comfortable? For me- The last one maybe not so much for everybody. Who's autistic? Well, man, I'm not speaking to Bethany, just in general. I feel like this is just a deviate, a different way of describing an autistic person as an HSP. But just with the components of what people are considered to be an empath, which autistic people can be, as far as people can define what that is in terms of not diving into the spiritual aspect of it or the religious aspect of it. It's hard to distinguish this from autism, to be honest. Do you guys feel the same? My interpretation of this is that this is autism, but also a high interest in people and feelings and a high degree of ability to recognize that, which autistic people can develop. It's kind of HSP. It just kind of feels like diet autism. Autism, which is a bit more palatable to the mainstream population, without saying autism. Still trying to wrap my head about it. There just seems to be no difference. Willing to be proved wrong. Definitely some repetitive sounds are very annoying for me. Yeah, me too. It's a very common thing, like picking up on like irritating sensory information from your environment. Me personally, I can really relate to the depth of processing, although I wouldn't say that my insight is the best when it comes to the long term consequences of things, just probably better than some. Due to the way that autistic people tend to think, which makes making decisions difficult, this tracks pretty closely. Over-stimulation is fairly... Making decisions difficult. Hmm. Decisions, making decisions based on emotions might be difficult, due to Alex Fiamia. I don't think decision making in general is hampered. Fairly relatable as well, although I wouldn't say for me that being in a gentle environment is all that it's going to take for me to be able to effectively process and integrate stimuli, even if it's a calm environment. I still often have difficulties with that. I believe this is an attempt to help people understand the difference between SPS and SPD. So sensory processing disorder clearly wouldn't be able to just process things normally or maybe the way everyone else seems to just because the environment is calm, basically. But a person with SPS would be. I definitely need more sleep. I don't know. I don't know if I can make that distinction between the two. It doesn't feel like it makes sense to me. Maybe I'm missing something. SPS versus SPD. I mean, one is is inherently like more pathologized, I would say. Just a bit basis of like the words that are used. Hmm. For sleep and downtime, then my friends and family often much to their annoyance. Under emotional responsiveness and empathy, I have basically like felt the emotions of others, but it's not really consistently reliable. I do tend to avoid violent TV shows and movies for the most part. And I do get very distressed by people yelling out in anger in real life. I'm not sure that I'm necessarily more easily and appropriately moved though. I find things funny that other people might not quite often. And I think that's different in sort of sense of humor. And I feel like there is like particular brand of autistic human that comes across usually to do like repetition or indirect communication that we find particularly funny. What was that other thing that she said? I can't remember. Or they, I don't know what the pronouns are. Avoid violent TV shows and movies for the most part. And I do get very distractiveness and empathy. I have environment is calm basically, but a person with SPS would be. I definitely need more sleep and downtime than my friends and family often much to their annoyance. Under emotional responsiveness and empathy, I have basically like felt the emotions of others, but it's not really. There we go. That's one thing I want to talk about. Common thing that psychologists do is they mirror like the body language and the overall sort of demeanor of people that they are interacting with in order to build rapport. We know that under sort of the umbrella of social camouflage, there is an aspect to that, you know, masking being a part of that social camouflage, where some people mirror people. Psychologists often need to have their own psychotherapy to deal with that, because it can be sometimes quite intrusive to them emotionally as well to process that stuff and sort of take it on board. It's a whole idea of emotions, impacts your outside expression, your expression impacts your emotions inside. So it's a two-way street and if you mirror people, you will somewhat absorb, I guess. I mean, absorb is a very like absorbing their emotional energy, but you mirror it and it does impact you emotionally and it kind of gives you a bit of a empathic kind of insight into what they may be thinking, feeling perhaps. I feel like that's a pretty large part of why we can sometimes come across as being like an emotional sponge to some degree, especially for like high masking. It's just a theory that I have yet to find something that's in favour of it or against it perhaps. Really consistently reliable. I do tend to avoid violent TV shows and movies for the most part and I do get very distressed by people yelling out in anger in real life. I'm not sure that I'm necessarily more easily and appropriately moved though. I find things funny that other people might not quite often and I think I laugh pretty easily and I don't think necessarily everyone finds it to be appropriate. I also go through times of not really being that sensitive to being like moved to emotions and then being maybe more susceptible to it. It's kind of weird. It's definitely not consistent for me. So I don't think that would apply because I feel like someone who is, you know, they have that temperament that's going to probably be consistent for them. And again, appropriate where I might not always display what's appropriate. For example. Yeah, maybe. I think that that is something related to alexifamia though. You know, 100% like you may be actually feeling things related to that, but you just don't know. Then you can't like verbalize it because you can't identify it. Maybe there's a difference there alexifamia maybe. I'd worry about having too many boxes to put people in, in that someone autistic could be giving a HSP label and not being giving the help they may need. Exactly what I'm thinking, Martin. Exactly what I'm thinking. But again, it might be filling some sort of gap in terms of, you know, because there is a heavy stigma attached to autism. Maybe not so much with HSP. It might be a bit more relatable to some people which may have prompted sort of further research into what this HSP personality profile is like. That's what I'm thinking. For example, I tend to make a big deal out of small things and not much of a deal out of very big things. So a lot of times I might react rather inappropriately to things whereas someone with HSP might react more appropriately to that, I guess. The sensitive to subtleties is what helped me the most in differentiation. This is because I might be more aware of like the sounds in a room than another person or might be more affected by the environment. But I don't know what needs to be changed. Oftentimes even to make myself more comfortable because... There you go. There you go. There you go. I think there's a lot to do with, maybe to do with Alexofamia, possibly. That might be the differentiating thing here. Perhaps not people identifying with the difficulties that cognitive empathy that autistic people may have. As often I'm feeling things when it comes to like sensory things or just like an agitation or something like that. And I can't always place it. It takes a minute of problem solving sometimes or sometimes it doesn't get solved. And so I don't always know even how to change the environment for myself, let alone for other people. I've noticed that I kind of seem to be really inconsiderate in that way. I don't think about other people's need for food or drink or like how comfortable they are unless if it's about like a social situation where I'm sitting and someone else is standing. Because then... There's a thing. I assume that people ask for things. And I make it very clear to people in my life that, you know, if you want something from me, please ask. I don't necessarily assume what people like. And yeah, like if I have a guest or something, like... I mean sometimes I might remember to offer them a drink or something, but it's the time my friends, like if they want a drink or say, oh, Tom, could I have a drink, please? I'm like, sure. Go get it, kind of thing, you know. I first came across the term HSP by trying to call Patrick Tehan. It made me think that it was potentially HSP, but then I believed it was... But then I believed that it was before the autism died. Yeah. I like the term die autism, though, lol. Because I'm not sure if it is or not, but it's still funny regardless. That's why I said it. Like, I don't know. It doesn't really make much sense, to be honest, but I think it's more palatable to the general population. Good comments, guys. Good suggestions. I mean, I'm committed it from your perspective. You know, people want to know what the difference is. I don't know. Like, I don't know much about HSP in that sense. So I'm kind of learning at the same time to express in my own thoughts on what I'm thinking about it. Because then I'm like, oh my gosh, am I being rude? But literally other than that, I'm really terrible at picking that stuff up. And while I may pick up things that other people don't about details in the room, for example, it's often after the fact or because I've been staring at something that isn't correct in a pattern. So like, if there's a pattern going on and something was shifted out of it, I might be staring at it and noticing and sometimes I stare at things and I'm not fully comprehending why I'm looking at it for so long until asked. And then I'm like, wait, why am I like, oh, it's because it's it's not it's not right. It's not right. And that's about it. You can say goodbye to everything else. In fact, my husband is very irritated by my lack of awareness of the things around me because that worries him. Interesting person out there. Very interesting. Very relatable. So it's probably why they've whether they've got so many subs very relatable. It's him for me by being by myself. And I can try if I see that you're uncomfortable, like I can try to make things better for you or or I can want to make things better for you. But I don't know how I eat. Yeah, I definitely notice emotional shifts in people and try to like help them or rectify something that's causing them to feel uncomfortable. I try 100%. I mean, by this, you know, I fit both the HSP and autism profile apart from the being able to watch like gory stuff, you know, action and fighting and stuff. I literally sometimes I will literally flail about because I don't know how to help you. I want to help you. I don't know how to help you. And a lot of times that's specifically for people I'm paying special attention to. Sometimes I get fixated on different people, whether I'm concerned about them, whether they have recently impacted my life, whether I don't know, sometimes I just get fixated on random people. And during that time, I might be concerned about those things. But if you happen to be literally anyone else in the room, I'm sorry. So I miss kind of that clarity of information and being able to actually recall and comprehend and know what to do with all of this, as well as that intuitive social understanding that an HSP likely has, of course, assuming that HSP is not autistic and considering that I highly doubt that they're not autistic. I'm not convinced, guys. We've watched two videos on it already. I don't see much of a differentiation. That HSP or SPS is considered a temperament, it would then technically be possible for an autistic person to also be an HSP. And it's also possible that there are a higher number of HSPs in the autistic population, which can often maybe possibly skew how some of these checklists are written. I've also personally been bothered by the intertwining of what is personality and what is autism. And apparently it has been suggested that autistic traits represent a personality dimension that is independent of the Big Five. So with all of that said, despite the overlap, HSP or SPS is separate from autism. In addition to the previously noted differences. I mean, logically, you know, something that is characterized by different measures is going to be different. Whether it's an important distinction that requires a different profile, I'm not too sure. Perhaps there might be, if they characterized it differently, that didn't include a really significant amount of autistic traits, then maybe it might be like an apt thing to do, you know, says a temperament such as SPS can now account for the repetitive behavior of ASD, echolalia, peculiar interest and types of play, etc. It is definitely possible that autistic people might have this HSP temperament and maybe they are more prone to having this temperament. But that doesn't mean that HSP equals autism. Thank you so much for watching this video. If you enjoyed it or found it informative or useful, go ahead and hit that like button. I sincerely thought I already recorded this video edited and uploaded it, and I saw it on my list of things and I searched my my channel and was like, oh, apparently I did it. So I apologize. I intended to release this video quite a while ago. Either way, I'm interested in your thoughts on this. Have you ever heard of HSP or SPS? Because what do you think about this whole conversation? Do you think it's a separate thing even though they've determined it is? Some people still argue it's not. So what do you think about that? And do you think that it's possible that some people might think they're autistic, but they're actually a highly sensitive person instead of being autistic because of the social aspect? And maybe they don't have repetitive things, etc. Let me know all of that in the comments below. If you're interested in autism related topics from me, you can go ahead and hit that subscribe button. I attempt to upload every Thursday at 4pm at central standard time, no promises, but I'll do my best. Thank you to everyone who supports me here on YouTube as YouTube channel members, through Kofi, and as patrons on Patreon. And a special thank you to my spinny, stimmy tier patron, Jack Barney. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you're having a wonderful day and I'll see you in my next video. Bye. Yeah, you can have more than one diagnosed at the same time. I don't know, it just, to me, if I'm being completely honest, it feels, I mean, it's the I'm not even gonna say it feels, I mean, it's like a large, large majority of things that are seen as like pointers towards HSB just seem to be intertwined with autism to such a high degree that it's almost inseparable apart from perhaps things around cognitive empathy and, you know, things like that, which I think could be, you know, there's a lot of autistic people who have good cognitive empathy, cognitive empathy being the ability to recognize someone's emotional state, not like empathy as we as we would describe it, the component of it, perhaps in a social context. Autistic people can be good at that as well. And I'd argue that probably a lot of high maskers, you know, tend to be very good at that. And this is what I mean, but it seems like a more palatable version of autism, you know, free of the kind of the stigma that's associated it, for most people might be a bit more palatable to them, accepting that they're an HSB rather than autistic. That's what I think. That's my opinion. I'd love to know what you guys think, because I'm still boggled to what the difference really is and how SPS is different to SPD doesn't really make much of a distinguish between the two for me enough to know exactly what the difference is. I mean, I can see it from the way that they described it, but to call it a different thing, it just doesn't make much sense. Let me know down in the comments what you guys think. We will try and find another video, which perhaps may illuminate a little bit more about this. Perhaps we can I can try and find an interview of someone who would consider themselves to be HSB. Maybe can kind of see if they display any particular autistic traits that I would do the jumps out at me, maybe masking, perhaps. Very interesting. I mean, it's good for food for thought, probably keep me up at night. You can see the watch, but you probably watched that the videos look at my face, see the cogs turning in my brain. What is this? How can I distinguish between the two? Help. Safety. My lord.