Episode 15 – A Fresh Look at Sensitivity – Andre Sólo

Clare Kumar: You're listening to episode 15 of the Happy Space Podcast. We're taking a fresh look at sensitivity today with co-author of the book “Sensitive: the Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person in a Loud, Fast, Too-Much World”, with Andre Sólo.

Welcome to the Happy Space Podcast, where we talk about designing inclusive performance through the lens of a highly sensitive productivity catalyst. that's me! Executive coach, speaker, and brand collaborator, Clare Kumar. Join conversations with authors, culture shapers, space designers, and creators of products, services, and customer experience.

As we highlight astonishing contributions, tempting a more tender world. We know that diversity leads to richer results, so let's accept that productivity is personal and commit to designing with respect for humanity. I aim to leave you with ideas to better support your family, colleagues, customers, community, and not least of all, yourself.

For everyone, including you, deserves a Happy Space. Thanks so much for joining me for episode 15 of the Happy Space Podcast. Today I'm really excited to have Andre Sólo joining. I first learned about Andre through Highly Sensitive Refuge. It's an online website for sensitive people, and I was notified that he and his co-author Jenn Granneman were working on a new book around sensitivity.

And I was privileged enough to get an early copy, and I'm really thrilled to bring a conversation to you with Andre where we dig into reexamining sensitivity in the lens of, you know, what is, what are we noticing now that it's 2023? What's happening in the conversation in the world about sensitivity?

What do we know from new research? How do Jenn and Andre look at the trait from their perspective, both strengths and challenges? So much good information here and good perspectives. I could have hung out with Andre for a lot longer. I, so I want to thank him so much for joining, and I know that you'll find a lot of insights in this conversation.

I do want to apologize because Theo and Elliot, I believe now that two in the afternoon is not the ideal podcasting time, or, sorry, three, it was three PM when we recorded this eastern. And it apparently is the time to play with mice. And then come sit on my desk and purr, so if you do hear some background noise, I'll let you know that I take full responsibility for that and I will try and schedule a podcast at a time when they might be napping or maybe even just having dinner.

So please enjoy this episode. As always, I invite you to reach out on social media or leave a review, even better. Find us on your podcast player of choice and let us know what you thought. I know that Andre and I both would love to hear from you, hear what you learned, what you're taking away, and if you have any questions. We're out there to engage and, learn together in this space so please enjoy and, take good care of yourselves. Until next time. 

Today's episode of the Happy Space Podcast is sponsored by clarekumar.com With sensitivity, curiosity, and courage, I serve three groups asking the tough questions that lead to meaningful answers. Number one, I coach ambitious leaders to design for well-being and achieve next-level work-life integration.

Number two, I mic drop thought bombs. That's bombs as in BALMS in keynotes and workshops, helping organizations achieve the business imperative that is inclusivity. And three, I collaborate with brands concerned with respect for well-being on product design, marketing, and PR. If any of this piqued your interest, come find me at clarekumar.com. I'd love to speak with you. Designing inclusive performance together will lead to the richest results.

So, Andre, thank you so much for joining me. I loved reading sensitive, I'm thankful to have an advanced copy sent to me so I could dive into this. And the first thing that jumped out to me actually was the statistic around. 

You saying that it's 30% of the population that sensitivity applies to and I hope it's okay if we start talking numbers off the top because I think it's so important to understand the trait and I’d love for you to paint a picture for our listeners. How did you get to 30%?

Andre Sólo: That's a terrific question, right, so I think most of your listeners are going to be very familiar with a lot of the workouts on highly sensitive people already, and we've all heard this number. It's 15 to 20% of the population. That's the number we hear everywhere, and that comes from some of the earlier research.

So Elaine Aron did that research. I think your listeners will all know her, but she's the person who coined the term highly sensitive person in the first place, and you know, throughout her early research, she found that roughly 15 to 20% of the population was highly sensitive. However, if we look at the whole body of research that's been done, including a lot of much more recent research, it tends to be higher than that.

It tends to be anywhere between 25 to in the mid-30s percent, just depending on the study there's a little bit of variance. and if we want to get really technical, I know that there's some discussion among different that, you know, well maybe we should, you know, do this statistical regression and maybe we shouldn't to make it a little more accurate throughout some things so that can bump it higher toward 35 or farther down toward 20. But generally speaking, it looks to be around 30% of people are highly sensitive. 

Clare Kumar: And so it's always interesting to me because I look back at Elaine, Dr. Aron's test and invitation to figure out if you're highly sensitive, and I base mine rather loosely on four different elements I think are important.

We don't have a scientific diagnosis, if you will, to get to this high sensitivity, so I'm wondering in that, you know, in the percentage of people and forgive listeners and forgive me, Andre, you can probably hear Theo meowing protesting for food if that's cutting through. I apologize listeners. I thought he was okay, but he needs some loving. Anyway, I will get to that later. Just forgive that intrusion. 

But it, just on that thought of determining sensitivity versus high sensitivity, I tend to look at it a bit like ADHD and our ability for focus and executive attention, our our nervous system ability. How far are we along in understanding the degree of sensitivity and maybe at 35% that's everybody's got some kind of sensitivity and maybe the high is actually this lower number.

Andre Sólo: Right, yeah. So it definitely appears to be a continuum. I mean, everybody is sensitive to some degree. The most gruff and unsympathetic person in the world is still sensitive to their environment. They have to be just in order to exist as a living being, but it does, kind of come across as a continuum.

And so the numbers that I see kind of most commonly, is that roughly, how does it work out? Roughly 40% or maybe a little more of people are average. So kind of in the middle group of sensitivity. That 30% roughly are in the high end, and then the remaining percentage, which depending on, you know, which what I've seen, 25 to 30% would be at the, I think I did that math correctly, would be at the low end.

Clare Kumar: Yeah, you’re getting to 95 to a hundred, so yes, yes. Absolutely. And it's almost, there's a lot of bell curves that kind of work like that. There's a big clump in the middle. 

Andre Sólo: And that's kind of reassuring cause it does match more or less the kind of spread that we would see for other personality traits, whether that's introversion or, you know, conscientiousness or things like that, so it seems to fit.

Clare Kumar: Yeah, it does. It's exciting because I think it shines a light on something we can't ignore. And what I'm really happy about is with your book coming out, that more people are going to become aware of the value of sensitivity and we're aligned in our thinking that sensitivity needs a bit of a rebrand.

Even Dr. Aron says she would've it called something else if she thought about it. But now with the, you know, I'm all for embracing the value of sensitivity and you talk about it beautifully in outlining strengths and challenges as well. Could you just a little, a little bit of your personal perspective on how the strengths have shown up for you in your life?

Andre Sólo: Oh my gosh, that's, I love this question. So I'm going to start by saying that for most of my life, I did not understand or accept that I am a sensitive person. so I certainly, you know, absolutely have always been highly sensitive and it was just the classic archetype of a sensitive kid. And I can remember being in kindergarten and you know, just find in class right where there's some order being imposed and a certain amount of calm, at least some of the time.

Once we came to recess, and getting outside where everyone's running, everyone's screaming, there's balls flying everywhere, people are fighting, people are laughing, everything's going on. It was just too much. It was just to get overstimulated. I didn't know what that was, but I couldn't surely just run away and hide.

And I started eventually hiding in this like storm sewer pipe, which was fine until people figured out where I was going. Cause I would come back at the end of recess. Right. So it's like that issue until it was an issue, so to speak. And that had a lot of questions and discussions with my parents, like, why is he doing this?

Because I was overstimulated. And so as a kid, I, I just sort of felt like, okay, I don't fit in and there's something different about me, and I really kind of thought that there was something wrong with me I had to fix. And of course, there wasn't. It turns out I'm just a normal, highly sensitive.

So as an adult, I was starting to kind of embrace that, start to accept that I have started to really see the strengths come through. And it's, you know, it's different for everyone, but there's sort of five main gifts that my co-author Jenn Granneman and I talk about, for sensitive people. There's creativity, empathy, what we call sensory intelligence, which includes that perception of tiny, subtle things in your environment, which includes noticing the hints of oak in a Chardonnay, but it also includes sort of situational awareness of your surroundings. And depth of thought. I know you've talked a lot about how HSPs really can connect the dots that other people miss. That's a huge thing for us. We are deep synchronous, we're wired to be that way.

And then the last one is depth of emotion, which just powers so many human strengths and allows us to connect and inspire each other and, and have passion and things like that. So those are the five strengths in general. For me, the one I've always identified the most with has always been creativity. I knew from a young age I wanted to be a writer.

And Jenn is artist, we're very much alike. We're both highly sensitive people, and so that's a big part of it, but also that depths of thought. I'm really drawn to deep conversation and if I'm at a gathering of friends, and maybe it's people who don't know each other as well, or whatever it might be, and the conversation is shallow, I'm looking for that way without making it awkward that I can pull people toward, how do we get into something interesting?

How do we connect a little more than what do you do? And you know, yeah, my son doing and that kind, that's nice too. But let's get into the nitty-gritty. Let's get deep. That fascinates me. So that's probably the way I come at it. And you know, the last thing I would say too is that there are different kind of styles of sensitivity and some sensitive people are much more in kind of like what you might call the empath camp of just really being tuned to people's feelings. Some people much more, you know, sensitive to the subtle sensations in their environment, and other people more aesthetically attuned and that's probably me.

I have a very hard time working or focusing somewhere that isn't pretty or attractive. And there's nothing that like, just heals my soul more than just going for a walk in a park or a forest or a pretty neighborhood or something. Just night and day difference for me. 

Clare Kumar: Which totally makes your opening comment to me, not surprising at all, right?

Because you commented on the background here and I commented on yours, so definite estates in the house. I was going to ask you about that, right? Because you talk about these three kinds of the super sensor, super feeler, and aesthete. I'm like, tick, tick, tick. 

Andre Sólo: Yeah. You can be all three. You can be two outta three. Absolutely.

Clare Kumar: Right? Do you have any research or do you know if there's any that breaks it down into percentages of people with each of these different kinds of, these different sensitivities?

Andre Sólo: We could pull that up. I'm like a little embarrassed. I should have that number.

Clare Kumar: Well, I don't know if we do.

Andre Sólo: Well, so I can say this. So, I mean, I think the way that researchers talk about it is that these are essentially subscales of the highly sensitive person scale. So any given person who checks, you know, more than a certain number of boxes on the highly sensitive person scale, the test that Elaine Aron devised to assess if you're highly sensitive or not.

If you check enough boxes, you're going to score as a highly sensitive person. But there's different patterns to which boxes people tend to check. And that's really what we mean. I call them styles to kind of make it all… but I think they call them subscales, but these three kinds of, ways of being sensitive.

So you might check all the ones that are about, you know, aesthetic things and maybe not that many about feeling other people's feelings. Or viceversa. And you can still score as a highly sensitive person, but just have these different styles. I'm sure that data's out there and I want to pull it out and see what's the breakdown.

Clare Kumar: I'm curious. Right. I've noticed coming from the organizing and productivity world, and I had no idea that in my presentations to them, I would see sensitivity overrepresented in those groups and coaches as well. And then designers, I've spoken to interior designers, architects, and so on, and the estates are alive and well in that camp.

And so I'm sensing, depending on the audience there are different potentially hooks to, to have them go, “that's my strength”, right? 

Andre Sólo: Exactly. Exactly. 

Clare Kumar: It's an interesting one to explore as we connect the dots and invite more people to be proud of the trait if you will. I'm sensing you have something that I think I share, which is, a drive to have language be part of what makes an idea more compelling.

Right? So I've talked about sensitivity needs to be sexy. It needs like the superpower, sexy part of it needs to be applauded. But even your use there of the word style instead of subscale. It just made something… Hello, this is for all of our watchers on YouTube.

You're seeing that Elliot just joined us and I thought this would happen. So Elliot, meet Andre, Andre, meet Elliot. And Theo is chilling now he's attacked his mouse. And now I think we're good.

Andre Sólo: Elliot is a beautiful cat! 

Clare Kumar: Thank you. They're brothers. I think they've got some Turkish Angora in them, which if you like shedding fur, the brand for you!

Andre Sólo: A lot of vacuuming, a lot of brushing, the furniture, etcetera. 

Clare Kumar: Yes. A lot of that. But they are the most cuddly. They saved me in Covid, actually. I adopt them at the beginning of the pandemic because as, and I wanted to ask you this question.

This is all going to make sense. I am an extroverted highly sensitive person, so out of the, if we were to say 20%, it would be 6% of people in the world are highly sensitive extroverts, a small subset of the population. I'm curious if where you are on the introvert, I know Jenn is Introvert Dear, her blog and which you contribute to as well.

I know she's introverted. Are you on the extrovert side? Is that why I'm speaking to you for these interviews?

Andre Sólo: You know, I'm actually also an introvert. But I think I am what maybe we would call a social introvert, right? I'm probably closer to the middle of the line, like a little closer to the line.

Whereas Jenn, is you know, very much maybe farther into the introversion camp, but definitely introverted. I love doing things with people in small. I love doing things with people for short periods of time, and I enjoy having great conversations like this. And then I'm just going to, you know, get off this call and just be done for the day.

Just like, okay, I'm out of people time, basically. 

Clare Kumar: But I think that's the high sensitivity. It's interesting looking into this and looking into the beautiful literature by, you know, Susan Cain and her book “Quiet” and then looking at sensitivity, and I don't know if you know Jenn Turnham, she's out of Australia.

So she's specializing in HSPE, so this extrovert camp. And we had an interesting discussion. I interviewed her on the podcast as well. She says there are no ambiverts. And I'm like, “wait a minute, I thought I was in the middle” And she's like, “no, you're extroverted but highly sensitive.”

So it's like, oh, I think she's onto something there because. I do, my daughter would tell me when we would go for walks in the neighborhood, “mom, are we going for a walk or are we going for a talk?” Because I would stop and walk to all the neighbors and in an elevator, I'll get in and I'll make some conversation.

You got 45 good seconds to use. You might meet somebody riveting, right? So, yeah, I was curious. There with your knowing that there's a split between introversion and extroversion and sensitivity, where are you stacked up there? 

Andre Sólo: Yeah, definitely on the introvert side. Just very, people friendly, I guess I would say. I actually, so little true story about me. So I used to be extremely, both of course always been introverted, but also used to be extremely socially awkward, and very much, kind of allergic to doing any kind of people type of stuff, especially with people I didn't know. Yeah. And I was younger.

I just finally made a decision that I was like, “you know, I think this is something I'm always going to be an introvert and always be proud of that and happy with that, but in terms of my social skills and my comfort level being social, I can do something about that”. And I just started this weekly challenge that I gave little rules for myself, I said,”okay, every week I'm going to talk to five complete strangers.”

And there were rules, right? It's like it can't be like a waiter or somebody who is kind of paid to be nice to me. It has to be like a random person, nd it has to be, like at least more than just like quick perfunctory exchange, right? It has to be like a little mini conversation, at least, even if it's just small talk at the bus stop, which I don't love small talk, but like as a practice, I would do it.

And I quickly learned how to read who would just not want that. So I'd be bothering them and just not do it to them the same way I love it when extroverts don't do that to me, but I could make myself do it to people who seem receptive, and it was awful. The first week I was just like, I remember being in an art museum and seeing somebody who was looking at the same painting

I had looked at before, so I walked up next to him. I said, “it's just a beautiful piece, isn't it?” And they said, “yeah, it is”. And then I just turned and ran. Like that's all it can handle right now.

Clare Kumar: Well, and it's interesting because as a highly sensitive person, you like these deep conversations, so we have to get to them somehow.

So I love that you were dancing in your discomfort there and you know, finding a way to grow through it to have those deeper conversations. Amazing. back to your proficiency with language, am I right in thinking you took vantage sensitivity and said, hell no, we're going to call this the “Boost Effect”.

Andre Sólo: You know, that's actually one that I really like because vantage sensitivity, I mean, there's a lot of like science terms that just sound like a real technical mouthful, vantage sensitivity that's got a good ring. It sounds like it's an advantage and that's what it means technically. But yeah, we found that when, okay, so actually the researcher who came up with ve vantage sensitivity, that's actually two of them.

Michael Pluess is sort of the main one who has been working on it, but then his mentor also helped and actually came up with the idea in the first place. But I was speaking with Michael Pluess, who's one of the top sensitivity researchers in the world. Just a fascinating guy, and not a highly sensitive person.

He came to this by a completely winding route, just working with, developmental stuff with children and getting interested in this topic. In any case, he had this problem that he and his mentor were grappling with, that it's not just that so much of the research about sensitivity focuses on the negatives, that's true.

But in trying to change that, what is it we're supposed to focus on? Because one of the easiest things to explain if you're a researcher is “Oh, yeah. People who score higher for environmental sensitivity will struggle more in stressful circumstances.” And if they don't have a way of managing that or, the right kind of support, they might even end up with worse outcomes than somebody else in the same stressful circumstance.

Now that's great for science, right? Because it's easy to explain. You can test for it, and it's the kind of topic that like people care about. Because like people come to you when there's something wrong with their kid. It's like, my, “my kid's got a question, what's going on?” But the opposite's much harder to talk about because the boost effect, the sensitive boost effect. is that just as highly sensitive people will struggle more in stressful circumstances, we also get more of a benefit from positive circumstances. 

And meaning, right? So that if you have like, any kind of positive form of support or maybe intervention in your life, that could be going to therapy, that could be having a mentor, that could be getting tutoring outside of classes, that could be doing career development program, all kinds of things.

If a highly sensitive person has access to that resource, they're going to get more benefits out of it. They're going to springboard farther from it than a less sensitive person with the same resource, and that's everything from having a really supportive, loving environment as a child, that helps any child. It rockets highly sensitive children to higher academic performance, higher outcomes later in life, etcetera, all the way up to stuff as adults.

Clare Kumar: Well, they saw this with the monkeys too, the macaque monkeys, right? They macaques that were nurtured became the leaders. 

Andre Sólo: Exactly. 

Clare Kumar: I love that there's something like that to celebrate

Andre Sólo: Yeah, exactly. But Pluess had this problem where he actually, his mentor ended up asking colleagues in other countries who speak like eight different languages.

They're like, “does anyone have a word in any language for getting more of a benefit out of something that everyone gets the benefit from?” There's plenty of words to the opposite, oh, you're cursed, you're that kind of stuff, right? But what's the opposite of that? And finally, the only thing they could come up with was, you're lucky.

So highly sensitive people are lucky. But the idea that it gives you more of a boost, I think that's very simple and easy to understand. So it's like, yep, sensitive people get more of a boost from the same things that boost anybody. They boost it back. 

Clare Kumar: Yeah, I like that. It's something that we can share easily, goes a long way.

You also talk about the sensitive way as a way of talking about how to live better with sensitivity and some strategies. What do you count on in your life as part of your sensitive way?

Andre Sólo: Oh my gosh, that's such a great question. So, I've put a lot of effort into curating my environment.

It's not as easy now that I have a toddler. He is just about to turn two in a couple of weeks. 

Clare Kumar: Exciting. Exciting. Lots of independence is starting to be required

Andre Sólo: Yes! But, so for me, I work in certain ways. I've found that things that don't seem like they would maybe directly impact your workday are a huge factor for me. So I like to say I meditate every morning. I don't. I meditate many mornings, you know? And I do a short little meditation, mindfulness, and at the end of that, I take a minute to focus myself on my purpose, and which of course in anything related to career is to make writing that matters. And anything related to my personal life is to do what's best for my son. It's like, okay, those two things that can lead me for the day. So that kind of thing helps a lot. And then my actual workspace, I have to have natural light around me.

That's big for me. I've got these clothes… for podcast listeners, there's like, curtains that are closed behind me. That's just so I'm not like a silhouette right now, but normally it's all light in here.

Clare Kumar: Yeah, because my eyes would be going bonkers if you had those drapes open.

I'm the kind of person at a restaurant who will be like, “do you mind if I sit there because I need to focus on a face so badly that it's like continual aggravation or we need to find a sideway seat where we're both side lit and then I'm okay”. But yeah, I would just name that. Thank you. Thank you.

For listeners, check out the YouTube, to see Andre's background. Just to paint the picture though, you've got two pieces of furniture angled behind you. One looks to be of wood. I'm not sure if the other one is metal or what. I think 

Andre Sólo: Actually the metal one used to be a welding machinist’s stand from some kind of factory. 

Clare Kumar: It's really interesting. And on the top of that, I'm counting about six plants, maybe more. So some natural vegetation around, some life. It's very pleasing and calm. The color tone is very soothing. There's a pop of turquoise.

There's, you know, it's a thought-through curated background, which is a gift for you and your viewers. So curating your environment, how about, noise? You talked about light, having enough light. What about noise in your world? What's happening there?

Andre Sólo: So I think every highly sensitive person knows about, you know, noise-canceling headphones. I don't generally listen to music while I work. I can't focus well if I do that. I can do two things. I can either just have those headphones in with just nothing on and it just dampens sound.

And I love that actually. Or I often use an app, that is a Binaural Beats app. So Binaural tones, many of our listeners have heard of. It's basically a way of having two different frequencies of sounds, slightly at the two ears. What you hear just sounds like white noise. That doesn't sound like music.

It just sounds like a relaxing white noise, but there's a tiny difference in the frequencies and that has some effect on the brain, and there's different frequency gaps that can, in the research at least, show that you can more relaxed or more creative or more energetic. So I use the relaxation one or the calm one while I work.

So that's a big thing for me. But also I would say, I think this is big, and I think it's undersung for a lot of highly sensitive people: controlling your environment once you're in it, it's a losing battle on its own, right? Because there's always going to be something that derails it. And, you know, one day or another, and you need to come into a kind of like hole, in and of yourself, right?

Just self-contained as like, I have some level of peace that I've built into my life. So those things make a huge difference. Sleep is massive for highly sensitive people, it's important for everybody. But the difference in our, I mean, being wired to process information deeply and knowing that you're going to throw more mental resources at every single thing in your day than any other person would.

Coming in with a mind that's well-rested is just a game changer. So that's big. I'm really careful with my use of alcohol. I've never been a heavy, excessive drink or anything like that. Maybe accepted a few special occasions. But I'm just very careful about, okay, let's be mindful of what's happening the next morning.

Let's have little or none most, most nights, that kind of thing. That's been something I've learned, and, I'm very careful about my, I don't have a good morning routine in terms of, like, some people do journaling and all kinds of things like that, but my, what I eat, what I drink in the morning, so always healthy granola with like really healthy yogurt.

I always try to have some fresh fruit if I can and I drink coffee that is almost entirely decaf. I'm just very sensitive to caffeine and I'll get, you know, not in a good state if I'm drinking cup after cup. 

Clare Kumar: We need to know. And I always talk about, tuning in before we lean in.

Figuring out what works for our bodies and minds and, and it's different, right? So caffeine sensitivity is very personal. I can't have any caffeine after noon. If I do, I'll be looking to see who's up at 2:00 AM and planning to join me. It's terrible. So I've had it by mistake a couple times. I'm like, “oh, I forgot.”

Yeah. Something I'm really curious about as someone who's highly sensitive and ended up leaving the corporate world before I had any language about sensitivity, I was just exhausted by the construct of having to drop my kids off in daycare, you know, 20 minutes west and get downtown an hour east.

With the subway and the commute and the dark and the climate on top of it, all of this stuff, it just didn't add up for me and I didn't have the language. And I'm wondering where you think sensitivity is in the discussion of accommodations and neurodivergence because we don't have a disorder.

And if we're up to a third-ish of people, how are we going to invite the care and the respect and the more tender world I'm liking to inspire, how are we going to be effective in your view? 

Andre Sólo: Yeah. I mean, that's such an interesting conversation that's unfolding right now. But I think you're right.

I mean, being highly sensitive is not a disorder. It's not a diagnosis. It's a perfectly healthy, normal, personality trait. But with that said, it is different. And I think that despite what the DSM might say, despite what a lot of psychiatrists might say, I think that there's a growing movement that autistic people also don't have a disorder.

And that this is a different way of thinking and engaging with the world. 

Clare Kumar: Yeah. ADHD same thing, right? 

Andre Sólo: Exactly. So, I mean, it's tough to say. I don't want to speak on behalf of all sensitive people there, nor out there, nor do I want to, presume, you know, to speak on behalf of maybe the differently-abled community.

But I would say that we're in this sort of unusual situation where sensitivity is technically a healthy, normal, you know, personality trait that everyone has to some degree, and whether you're low, average, or high, you’re typical. So we could call ourselves neurotypical in that sense, but it's also not the majority.

And it's certainly not how the world is designed. I think the world is very much designed with the needs of average or low-sensitive people in mind. The story we open with in the book, in 1903, there was this lecture in the city of Dresden. Dresden was, you know, trying to bring itself into the modern age.

And all these cities in Europe were adding all kinds of, you know, we have a street car, we have this, we have that, you know, phonographs were available per purchase for the first time. There were picture houses you could go to. Everything was about progress. And so Dresden held this big kind of conference or expo to celebrate progress and kind of bring some new ideas in.

And they held a series of lectures. And one of the lecturers who was invited was the early, sociologist, Georg Simmel, and they had asked Simmel to come and talk about the sort of how modernity affects our intellectual life and our inner life in this like glorious, like looking to the future sense.

And he just threw that topic out entirely and he just gets on the stage and starts talking about, the exact opposite about how we're in a crisis of the human soul, so to speak. Simmel pointed out that, as we've had all these wonderful modern marvels come into our lives, things have become faster.

Right? You are now not walking or even taking a force anywhere. You are taking a street. Things have become more crowded and packed. You're packed in the streetcar with lots of other people. It's noisy. There's clanging bells. There's the sound of the engine or motor. There's all the people around. And because we can move around faster, there's more time pressure, you know, you have to get to work and do this and do that.

People are putting more obligations into a given day than they used to. And especially in the cities which were already very densely populated in Europe and getting even more packed every year, it was becoming really overstimulating. And so Simmel said that, you know, there's a part of us, sort of our goal-oriented, achievement-oriented self that can handle that, they can just kind of suck it up and push through and, and keep doing it. 

But there's another part of ourselves, that's, what I would say is, is sensitive. That our sort of mental self, our spiritual self, you might say, it has limits, right? And he said that all this stimulation takes up mental energy and only have so much to give.

And we now know that that's roughly more or less true, and, that was, you know, so he was saying this back in 1903 that was before, you know, the internet, before you had a mobile device that's just chirping one notification after another, before endless scrolling, before the doom scrolling through bad news on your phone, right?

And now we can be always on it. It's not even a matter of catching the street car to get there on time. It's a matter of, “oh, I got a text from the boss at 11:00 PM, I probably should answer.”.

Clare Kumar: The cultural expectation for responsiveness is an incredible pressure, and it's a form of noise.

This constant pressure. Right? So we are, we are in difficult times. I, I interviewed very recently, the authors of the book “Golden”, I don't know if you've come across it yet. “The Power of Silence in a World Full of Noise”. Yes, you'll love it and you'll love both of them as well.

So episode 11, you can hear about it anyway, but I thought it was a beautiful gift. And they touch on what you talk about too, which is you've gotta have an inner access to peace, which you want to bring with you. Really hard, not going to lie for me last year, when I lived through 19 weeks of intermittent construction below me.

And so I was channeling, trying to find it, trying to find really hard. So I have actually a book, they talk about Jarvis Jay Masters, who has been on death row for a long time in San Quentin prison. And he's written a book and I have it now to read because when you, I thought I really need to understand this perspective of being in a place where I won't have control.

How will I find peace in a place where there isn't any? I just thought it might be curious to you because you talked about that, so that sensibility is, yeah, you do what you can to set yourself up for success, but there are times when you're not going to be able to and what can you draw on in that moment?

Andre Sólo: Well, and you know, it's powerful too because for me, the moral of what Simmel talked about. t’not just that the world is, you know, is overwhelming and burning us all out. That is true in a sense, right? But it also means that highly sensitive people have something special to offer the world because yeah, those conditions, that Simmel described that's going to burn out anybody sooner or later.

But highly sensitive people, we see it coming sooner. Yeah, we feel it keenly. And you know, frankly, if we're embracing our sensitivity, we won't put up with it. Right? We will opt out of that, and the rest of humanity benefits when we start to design our world, our society, our spaces, our expectations in a more sensitive way.

I mean, yeah, it's for us, right? We don't get overstimulated so often, but these are just anyone else, and we're not the only ones getting burned out, even if maybe it hits us harder sometimes. So I think the more we can start to focus on not just like, oh, “it's okay to be sensitive, but like, no, it's actually good.”

The world needs more of what sensitive people have to offer and maybe we could all follow the sensitive way. It's going to benefit everyone. 

Clare Kumar: Exactly. And that's actually how I'm expanding what I'm doing now because I have a design sensibility having worked with product beforehand. You know, styling spaces, organizing spaces, setting them up for success, like stepping into this conversation of how do we design inclusive performance, right?

That's the thing that I want to be talking about. And sensitivity is deeply embedded in the noticing, hence the designing of that for the inclusion of all. I mean, my big belief is that if we are able to keep contributing, then we all earn fulfilling lives but if we stop this reciprocity, if we stop our ability to give through having to burn out or opt-out, it's absolutely unfair. And, despite the unjustness for the individual, it’s a disadvantage for the entire population because we're denying all those benefits that come out of that mindset. 

Andre Sólo: Yeah. It's a big factor at workplaces too. I know there's, there's some evidence that suggests that highly sensitive people are, if they rate their own workplace stress, they rate themselves as being more stressed out at work than other people at the same job do. But they're also the same people who are rated as the highest performers by the managers. 

Clare Kumar: Right. I saw that study, that's a while back. I would be interested and if you find more along those lines. I'm looking to see some more robust explorations of that.

Andre Sólo: Hundred percent. There needs to be more, I don't think there's been a lot of exploration of high sensitivity at the workplace yet in an academic sense, and that's what we need more of. Because that is true. If that research bears out and is reproducible, that means it's a lose-lose for both people. Right. Because highly sensitive people want to be able to have meaningful careers and not burn out and quit, but also it means, for employers, well, your highest performers are burning up and quitting because you're stressing them out. Right? How can you just make little tiny changes to the workplace?

Can we allow people to schedule a couple hours, blocks of focus time without distractions? Or can we, you know, think about how we do deadlines and, and work balance and that kind of thing? Small adjustments that can allow your highest achievers, which, you know, highly sensitive people are creative, they're conscientious, they're good employees.

These are people you want working for you. Stop throwing them out the door essentially because, oh, no, no working from home. 

Clare Kumar: I've been talking a lot on LinkedIn. If we're not connected there, we should be. Just talking about autonomy is for adults. Flexibility is inclusivity.

And productivity is personal. So most of my work is as a productivity coach, you know, helping people really, develop that sustainable performance. And I figure if I can be at this intersection of inclusivity and productivity, maybe we'll get some leaders to listen and say, “oh, actually I'm sabotaging the output here.”

Wait a second. What could I do differently to invite that rich contribution? And I think understanding this trait and this strength, which you've eloquently, summarized. I have one last question for you. As you categorize it, there are five strengths and you dive deeper into empathy more than the other strengths, and I wanted to know why that is. 

Andre Sólo: You know, I think there are, honestly, I think that all five of them are equally important. but I think it's easy for people to understand why creativity is a strength or a gift. Right? Or why deep thinking is a strength or a gift.

When it comes to empathy, this is something that we sort of have this love-hate relationship with empathy, right? It's sort of like good in theory. We want everybody to be kind, care about people. Like that's the message we get, and in reality, empathy is not just what allows us to be good to each other.

It is also a key ingredient in progress and innovation. It's really what made our species survive and become as advanced as it has. There's no such thing as forward progress if people are not able to understand each other, look past the differences and collaborate on things.

And we can see that in some of the most surprising places, right? So, if you just look at academic studies, the ones that have the most diverse co-author teams, people from different countries or backgrounds working together. And who have an intersection of different specialties, right?

There's maybe one engineer in one mathematician or whatever it might be. Those more diverse groups that use more diverse types of sources, on average produce more prestigious papers to get into better journals and get a lot more other studies citing them. So there's a very direct relation to it, you can understand people who are different than you.

If you can work with people who are different than you, you're combining perspectives and that's where brilliance comes from and that's what we want to see more of. So it's morally good, it's good for human progress, and it's just what we need as a species. It's what made our species so strong.

Clare Kumar: Well said, well said. And a perfect point to end on celebrating those strengths and inviting more of a sense of voices to be heard in leadership and at the workplace and all around the world and what we do. So kudos to you and Jenn, say a big hello to her from me as well.

Yeah. And hugs to your little one. Very excited. I'm excited for that adventure for you. I have highly sensitive kids. and of course, the sensitivity shows up differently. But, and you wrote about it in the book too, which I love that, we think about sensitivity and relationships at work with our partner, with our family.

The more we can understand the people we love and care about, the better. So thank you for this fabulous invitation. If you haven't, listeners, if you haven't grabbed a copy yet, please do: “Sensitive: The Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person In a Loud, Fast, Too-Much World”. What would Georg Simmel think now?

I mean, holy moly. Thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure to meet you. Take good care of yourself. Thanks so much. 

Andre Sólo: You too.

Clare Kumar: Thank you so much for listening. You can find all of the Happy Space Podcast episodes over at happyspacepod.com. That is also where you'll find a link to our online community. Please leave a review over at Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you tune in, and if you liked what you heard, please share. After all, doesn't everyone deserve a Happy Space?