Max Littman, LCSW
April 23, 2025
The language of “Highly Sensitive Persons” (HSP), coined and researched by Dr. Elaine Aron, has offered for many long-overdue visibility and clarity: a way to understand why they might process the world more deeply, feel things more intensely, or struggle with environments that seem to roll off others’ backs. But what happens when we look at high sensitivity not as a singular identity, but as something that might live within particular parts of a system?
What happens when we stop asking, “Are you an HSP?”, and start asking,“Do you have any parts who are highly sensitive?”
What Is a Highly Sensitive Person?
The term “Highly Sensitive Person” comes from the work of psychologist Dr. Elaine Aron, who introduced the concept in the 1990s to describe a trait found in roughly 15–20% of the population. HSPs are characterized by heightened responsiveness to external stimuli, deep processing, emotional intensity, and an increased risk of overstimulation. Aron’s work helped many people make sense of experiences they’d long internalized as personal deficits. Instead of being “too much,” they were simply wired to take in more.
In IFS, we can take this one step further. We don’t have to limit sensitivity to the level of identity. Many people who wouldn’t describe themselves as HSPs still have parts that are incredibly sensitive and perhaps always have been. These parts might be attuned to sound, light, texture, or emotional undercurrents. They may have arrived in the system with a naturally porous quality: one that allows them to absorb meaning, nuance, and subtlety more readily than other parts or other systems. This porousness can be a gift, but it also means they may be more vulnerable to accumulating burdens.
A Porous Mind Leading to Increased Sensitivity
The idea of a porous mind, a term drawn from Robert Falconer’s framework in The Others Within Us, refers to a natural permeability in all of us that causes us to absorb energies, emotions, and burdens from others, often without realizing it. Falconer’s articulation of psychic permeability can be a helpful lens for understanding why certain parts are especially sensitive. From an IFS perspective, we might say that all parts and systems are borne into being with different degrees of porousness. They’re not sensitive because something happened to them. They’re sensitive because that’s how they came into the world. But this same openness can leave some parts and systems more vulnerable to burdening, whether from their own experiences or from the emotional residue of others. What contributes to someone’s degree of porosity, I believe, includes a mix of genetics, epigenetics, ancestral histories, and the internal and external environments surrounding conception, gestation, and birth, along with influences we may never fully understand.
In systems where there wasn’t enough safety, attunement, or containment, these sensitive parts may have absorbed shame, fear, or unprocessed emotions from caregivers or the environment. Sometimes these burdens are their own. Other times, they’re what Dick Schwartz calls unattached burdens: energies or beliefs absorbed from others or the collective. Falconer refers to these energies more compassionately as others within us. The porousness of these parts can allow in beauty, wisdom, and attunement, but also trauma, chaos, and despair.
It’s important to clarify here that I’m not saying protective parts or exiles become HSPs. Rather, some parts are born with a high level of sensitivity, and depending on the context they grow up in, both within the internal system and the external world, they may accumulate burdens related to that sensitivity. They are also likely more vulnerable to burdening in general, simply because their boundaries tend to be more permeable.
The Echo of Exile
When someone has grown up in an environment where sensitivity was dismissed or punished, receiving messages like “you’re too much,” “don’t be so dramatic,” and “toughen up”, parts that hold tenderness and deep responsiveness often become exiled. These parts may have once reached for connection with unguarded openness, only to be met with rejection or ridicule. In order to protect them, other parts may take over, creating distance, numbness, or hyperfunctioning strategies.
When clients say things like “I feel everything too much”, “I’m too much”, or “I get overwhelmed and shut down,” it is a sign and possibly an entry point. Not an entry point into pathologizing or trying to fix their sensitivity, but into listening for which parts carry the burden of having once felt what they felt, and the degree to which they felt it, in a world that couldn’t hold them and their feelings. These parts may long to be understood, not regulated out of existence.
When Managers Wear Sensitivity as Armor
In some systems, sensitivity becomes a protective strategy. Certain manager parts learn to read a room with impeccable attunement, not because they’re wired that way, but because they’ve had to be. For these parts, hyper-awareness is a survival tool. They anticipate others’ emotions, avoid conflict, and smooth over tension, all in the name of safety. The sensitivity is real, but it’s also bound up with the fear of what might happen if they miss something.
I’ve worked with clients whose sensitive manager parts appear empathic and connected, but beneath that surface is an exhaustion from constant vigilance. These parts often didn’t start out this way. They learned to become sensitive in order to protect more vulnerable exiles who were devastated by previous relational harm.
My Sensitive Parts
As an IFS therapist, I find that the concept of high sensitivity often maps onto internal systems in complex and revealing ways, and not just in my clients. My own system includes parts who are exquisitely sensitive: attuned to tone, easily overstimulated, profoundly impacted by music, animals, and subtle shifts in energy. These parts seem to have come into the world with this sensitivity. But I also have other parts whose job it is to help manage that sensitivity, parts that dissociate, distract, numb, or filter out the noise so the system can function. They’re not in conflict with the sensitive ones; they’re trying to balance things out. Which is to say: I don’t identify as a Highly Sensitive Person, but I know what it means to carry that trait in certain parts, and what it takes, internally and externally, to live alongside it.
Reclaiming the Gift, Honoring the Cost
IFS allows us to welcome our sensitivity. When parts feel safe, and burdens are witnessed and released, that sensitivity often remains, but without the urgency, the overwhelm, or the tight grip of fear. It becomes integrated, available to the system as a gift rather than a liability.
I’ve seen clients who once described themselves as “too sensitive” come to appreciate their perceptiveness as a gift. And I’ve seen sensitive parts, once exiled or burdened, begin to trust again. Trust that the system can hold them. That their sensitivity doesn’t have to mean exposure. That they can feel, deeply, and still be safe.
Sensitivity as a Compass
To be clear, this isn’t an argument that all HSPs are carrying trauma, or that every overwhelmed part is an HSP. It’s an invitation to get curious. Sensitivity, whether global to an internal system or part-specific, can be a compass. It can direct us to needs that may not have been met, burdens that may have accumulated, and gifts that may have gone unrecognized.
In IFS, we don’t reduce people or parts to labels. We know that parts are not their burdens or their jobs, even gentle ones that resonate with “HSP.” Sometimes, simply holding that awareness can begin the shift from burden to gift.
For feedback and comments, I can be reached at max@maxlittman.com.
I provide private practice mentorship, consultation, and therapist/practitioner part intensives.
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References
Aron, E. N. (1996). The highly sensitive person: How to thrive when the world overwhelms you. Broadway Books.
Falconer, R. (2023). The others within us: Internal family systems, porosity, and transpersonal parts. Trailhead Publications.
Schwartz, R. C., & Sweezy, M. (2020). Internal family systems therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
