Millions of passive media viewers: could they come to believe they have an innate “Highly Sensitive Person” deficit through an unnamed professor’s repetitive online broadcasts (of course, not every day, but some videos have received over a million views across social media)? Could the widespread societal embrace of the “Highly Sensitive Person” (HSP) archetype function primarily as an advanced, late-stage elaboration of David Elkind’s Personal Fable (Ryan & Kuczkowski, 1994)?

Beneath these videos, the chorus practically writes itself: “That is me.” “I have that too.” “I am much more sensitive than other people.” Millions of viewers, each discovering how unlike everyone else they are. Are we gaining understanding, or being handed one flattering explanation for every uncomfortable experience?

Then comes the Superman imagery: deeper feelings, greater pleasure, perceptions unavailable to ordinary mortals. Apparently, exceptional sensitivity also requires extensive photographic documentation. At what point does explaining an experience become auditioning for a superhero franchise?

More men are now “coming out” as HSP, too. According to the research cited by its proponents, one in five people shares this supposedly exceptional sensitivity. Quite a crowd of uniquely gifted individuals.

And, of course, the books. Two, three, four, five books on the same subject. HSP, ADHD, autism and now coercive control joins the publishing circuit. “I barely escaped.” Fortunately, the manuscript for book number seven made it out too.

A researcher in the Netherlands has reportedly spent ten years studying HSP, observing that people often “discover” it during burnout. A curious transformation: you are exhausted, overwhelmed, and struggling with light and sound. experiences with many possible causes and suddenly the origin story arrives.

Congratulations: your distress has been rebranded as a gift. After a decade of research, could we at least establish whether we are measuring a lasting trait, a temporary state, or the appeal of the explanation?

When an uncalibrated organism faces chronic environmental threat, the primitive ego may split reality into rigid absolutes to survive. In adulthood, that defensive logic can persist: instead of confronting the internalized shame and somatic stress of an unsafe environment, the individual retreats into a fantasy of absolute uniqueness. What once protected against threat now protects against self-examination.

The somatic overstimulation is real driven by a perpetually overactivated nervous system but its clinical interpretation is completely hijacked. By relabeling this trauma-driven hypervigilance and sensory flooding as an innate, elite cognitive trait (“I am wired differently, unique, and deeply special”), the actor can constructs an unassailable position of moral superiority.

The (HSP) label is actively drawn from the digital validation marketplace to function as a defensive shield: it enables the identity-diffuse organism to demand absolute external accommodation while remaining entirely immune to interpersonal responsibility, thereby effectively transforming a raw survival reflex into a premium commercial brand.

When a message repeatedly tells us who we are, do we recognise ourselves or learn to recognise ourselves in it? And if we question the conditioning of the public audience, why not question how early we learned to live before an imagined one?