Thrill: Sensitive Sensation Seekers & Everyday Creativity
September 10, 2026 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Dr. Tracy Cooper, Ph.D. one of the leading authorities and researchers on Highly Sensitive People and High Sensation Seekers known as Sensitive Sensation Seekers, https://drtracycooper.org/ has brought us more gems of ground-breaking research in his second edition of Thrill as an addition to his first edition of Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person. The 2nd edition is filled with even more recent intelligence on Sensitive Sensation Seekers. His latest books Thrill (2nd Edition): Embracing the Paradox of Sensitivity and Sensation Seeking is a completely different book than the first edition – not just a rewrite. This 2nd edition takes the reader to new levels of understanding based on his and other recent research into the paradox of living with both traits of being a Highly Sensitive Person and a High Sensation Seeker.
He simultaneously wrote a companion book to the 2nd edition covering 25 Sensitive Sensation Seekers from around the world at all life stages and ages with in-depth interviews of how these Sensitive Sensation Seekers have created their lives to embrace their paradoxical traits, even if they didn’t know they had them or even know what it meant to be a Highly Sensitive Person or a High Sensation Seeker. The companion book is called Thrill: Everyday Creators.
If you want to take a deeper dive into the why, what, and how others have embraced their perplexing complexity of traits to strategically manage their lives and create a life of design and not default, then you need both of these books. The 2nd Edition of Thrill gives you the research, the WHAT and the WHY. The companion book on Everyday Creators lets you take a peek behind the curtain of HOW others with these traits have survived, fallen, thrived, flailed, and succeeded by trial and error in their iterative process to learn how to live with the duality of depth and daring, security and seeking, with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake.
These are not How-To books, because the how is very personalized depending upon the individual, their specific trait properties, context, interests, lifestyles and choices. Each individual must forge their own way forward, testing the waters of overstimulation and under-stimulation/boredom to test their own personal tolerances for keeping themselves in balance and in the flow state unique to them. These books are imperative reading for those who think or know they have the paradoxical traits of being a Highly Sensitive Person and a High Sensation Seeker in order to better understand yourself and how you move through the world and how to adapt everything in your life at every level so you can maintain your equilibrium and avoid overwhelm as well as boredom.
I am humbled and honored to be one of those 25 people interviewed for the companion book on how I managed to creatively design my life around traits I didn’t know existed until I was 60 – totally living by intuition and trusting what my body told me for many decades. My hope is that you find these books and Dr. Cooper’s research in your younger years so you can understand yourself and your needs and how to create a life that will support your special traits where you need both meaningful stimulation and time to recover. These traits are your super power. The very act of designing a life and a career in an artful way to best support your gifts/talents/skills is the very act of being a creative.
Review of the 2nd edition of Thrill: Embracing the Paradox of Sensitivity and Sensation Seeking. Thanks to Dr. Cooper’s research, insight, and guidance, the act of designing your life can be distilled to the art and science of creating your individual flow between overstimulation and boredom based on your personal tolerances. His book gives you a structure on which to overlay your personal traits to create optimal life experiences. It’s your secret decoder ring for any Sensitive Sensation Seeker who wants to solve your individual puzzle to create a supportive structure as the architect of your life. This book gives you the sides and corner pieces of the puzzle and it’s up to you to fill in your own picture of how you want your life to look.
In this new edition of Thrill, Dr. Cooper’s brilliant, ground-breaking research breaks down how Highly Sensitive People and High Sensation Seekers use the tension between the paradox of living in the flow between over-stimulation and overwhelm on one side and boredom/under-stimulation on the other side. They often cross over the line into overwhelm or boredom for that is the nature of the beast – trying to learn where your personal boundaries are for each of the states. For some Sensitive Sensation Seekers with a lower volume of intensity or perhaps only one or two of the four characteristics of a High Sensation Seeker and a low volume of High Sensitivity or Sensory Processing Sensitivity, their path between overwhelm and boredom may be a wide walking path.
For Sensitive Sensation Seekers with a high volume in all four categories of the Sensation Seeking trait, there is a thin tightrope of flow between the states of overwhelm and underwhelm. Those with high scores in both the Highly Sensitive inventory and the High Sensation Seeking inventory often bump up against and cross over into these other states, as their tolerance is much more narrow in order to remain balanced in the flow state.
Sensitive Sensation Seekers are driven to feel that inner aliveness and creative processing tension between how we take in the world through our sensitivities and how we express to the world through our sensation seeking. The need for novelty, challenge, experimentation, surprise and excitement needs to be balanced with regrouping, rest, processing time, and recovery time to protect the sensitivities. It is through this balancing act we find the tension that enables creativity. It’s the dissonance that creates energy and emotional energy that can get stuck in the body without proper expression.
It’s a constant iterative recalibration to test tolerances and what works to both protect and project your energy in nearly all circumstances. We need to discharge those emotions and feelings and transfer them outside of our body to avoid the stuck energy, which can lead to more stress, strokes, depression, heart attacks, disease (dis-ease), agitation, irritability, etc. The higher the emotion and intensity of the tension between your paradox of sensitivities and sensation seeking tendencies, the more cognitive load you have to discharge to dissipate the overload/over-stimulation and regulate back to your equilibrium.
If there is more tension, (from far too much stimulation or if you have a high volume of Sensation Seeker and Sensitivity traits) you may first need bigger energy releases and exertion such as heavy weightlifting, running, biking, soccer, dancing or other types of movement to lower the tension and intensity of dissonance. If there is less dissonance and less intense tension between your paradoxes, then you may need calmer methods of discharging the creative energy that has built up by doing art projects, napping, reading, cooking, creative writing, petting an animal, playing with your pet or organizing your closet as a way to dissipate the tension and get back in balance and into the flow state.
What can be good for you can also be bad for you if you overdue it. You may find weightlifting is your go-to move, but too much of it can lead to injury or you may find yourself bored with the same routine. The methods of movement you choose to bring yourself out of boredom or out of overwhelm is highly individualized and highly contextual for the same person. It’s something that has to be felt and experienced by each person and in each circumstance and you learn more as you go through life and learn what works best for you to keep you in the flow state of equilibrium and balance.
To maintain creative capacity, Sensitive Sensation Seekers need to offload the cognitive load and discharge the intensity of the excess energy and restlessness of overwhelm, which can be done through various creative processes, rhythm and movement to move from restlessness to calm, from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex for executive functioning. Knowing that what feeds you can also wear you out is a game changer for keeping you in the flow state of emotional regulation through creative expression to bring your system back into balance and back into flow, particularly for those with the highest paradox intensity, it is essential. Read this book and your Sensitive Sensation Seeking life will never be the same.
Review of Thrill: Everyday Creators. This companion book to the 2nd edition of Thrill: Embracing the Paradox of Sensitivity and Sensation Seeking offers real-life situations from in-depth interviews with 25 Highly Sensitive, High Sensation Seekers from around the world in various life stages and ages to present the reader with real-life examples and experiences of those who are living with the complex and perplexing paradox of being both Highly Sensitive and High Sensation Seeking. This companion book gives you examples of the HOW of living with both of these traits affects all aspects of your life and shows how others are living with discernment about knowing what excites them and what it costs afterwards and there is always a cost. It shows how others live in the stretch zone and what it looks like to visit the panic zone and how they recovered from it.
It’s a delicate balance between immersion in the excitement/challenge/novelty/intensity and the type and amount of recovery that is needed afterwards to keep Sensitive Sensation Seekers in the flow and learning what has to be included to attune to each person’s specific frequency of paradox intensity to avoid overstimulation or boredom. This book shows you how others have done it, have done it wrong, are doing it right and share their stumbling blocks so you can use them as your stepping stones to remain in the creative flow of all areas of life. I highly recommend reading the research-based book first, then the companion book for examples of how others have lived their experiences often without having any knowledge of sensitivities. Use their experience as your guard rails and use Dr. Cooper’s ground-breaking research as your guide. Your life will not be the same after gaining insights from his two latest books.
Books by Dr. Tracy M. Cooper, Ph.D. – one of the leading authorities and researchers on Highly Sensitive People and High Sensation Seekers. https://drtracycooper.org/
Thrill – Everyday Creators companion book
Thrill (2nd Edition): Embracing the Paradox of Sensitivity and Sensation Seeking
What is a High Sensation Seeking Person?
September 8, 2026 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Following the trail of learning all I could about Highly Sensitive People, (remember depth of processing is a trait for a Highly Sensitive Person), I found it wasn’t the whole story and not completely true of me and my experiences and my traits. I realized that I also had very high scores in Dr. Elaine Aaron’s quiz on High Sensation Seekers. It turns out that I’m at the tippy top of both traits – meaning all six of my senses are on overdrive and wide open at all times and I need novelty, thrills, challenging experiences and I also need quiet time, rest, and to cautiously approach the challenges. That is where Dr. Tracy Cooper’s book Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person comes in.
Books and Docuseries by Dr. Tracy M. Cooper, Ph.D. – one of the leading authorities and researchers on Highly Sensitive People and High Sensation Seekers. https://drtracycooper.org/
Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career
Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person
Consulting-Producer of Sensitive Men Rising-The Documentary Series: https://sensitivemenrising.org/
Thrill is the first book of its kind to really explain what it means to be a High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person. And it does so brilliantly to put into perspective what it means to live with such traits and how to strategically create and manage your life to avoid overwhelm and avoid boredom. Looking back at my life, it explains so much of why I did and felt and experienced what I did and it helped me reframe all of those experiences.
High Sensation Seekers can have all four characteristics and in differing doses of each characteristic, or they can have a variety of mixtures of any or all of the four. I happen to have a very high volume of all four characteristics of the trait of a High Sensation Seeker. No wonder I chose the type of career, jobs, hobbies, sports, relationships, and living conditions that I did – it all made sense after reading his book.
The four characteristics can be remembered by the mnemonic BAND
Boredom susceptibility: is an inner state of mind where optimal stimulation, arousal, and intrigue are lacking. Boredom easily creeps in to High Sensation Seeker’s lives in even the most modest amounts/volume. Boredom and an inability to tolerate repetitive our routine experiences can cause irritability, agitated states, restlessness, or even depression. Those with this trait find themselves seeking an escape from the monotony of routine and dull existences and tend to shake things up in travel, living conditions, jobs, relationships or hobbies/sports to regain the feeling of variety and intensity and learn something new again. They are curious and continuous learners.
Adventure and thrill/risk seeking: is one way to avoid the boredom susceptibility by taking the leap, taking on the challenge, and sometimes discounting the risk in order to experience the thrill of the activity/decision. The excited feeling of being truly alive and in the rapture of the moment caused by adrenaline to induce an optimal state of arousal. It has been described as a genetically influenced tendency to seek physical challenges such as rock climbing, skiing, SCUBA diving, sky diving and other similar pursuits that are intrinsically rewarding to the brain. It’s not necessarily reckless, it is challenge by choice intersected with unknown and potential outcomes with a cautious approach.
New experiences and novelty seeking: is the third characteristic and it does not necessarily have to be thrill seeking, just something new. Those with this trait are very curious about the world, how things work, researching, reading, experiencing, tasting, feeling, listening and seeing new things around them or traveling to go experience them. Foodies are new experience seekers – the tastes, the textures, the ambiance, the smells, how it looks on the plate and the community of eating together – all new and novel experiences. Creatives usually have this trait – seeking new ways to create something, do creative problem solving, comedians thinking of new ways of looking at the world, creating art as a way to make new things, sewing, cooking, painting, spiritual journeys. They have a strong desire for personal growth and exploration within and all around them.
Disinhibition: shows up in ways that may buck the social norms or expectations of family/friends/society/colleagues. Those with this trait can demonstrate impulsivity, follow their dreams no matter what, test driving new ways of being/living/dressing/exercise/financial investments/drugs/sexuality or bending the rules to experience more stimulation and reject the boredom of the mundane for excitement and surprise and feeling alive. It can show up as boldness and YOLO (you only live once) and they can be the leaders to instigate the bold actions/experiences just to see how it feels. They take calculated (and sometimes not so calculated risks) just to get the sensation of the outcome.
So there lies the paradox if you are a Highly Sensitive Person, that trait generally is risk avoidant while the High Sensation Seeker gets a rush out of novelty, thrill seeking, adventure, and seeks out challenges that may be risky to feel the sensation with depth and purpose. Therein lies the foundation of living with both traits, with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake as the Sensitive Sensation Seeker moves through the world trying to honor both traits. Particularly if you have high volumes – all characteristics of both traits more than those with a sprinkling of one or two characteristics of a trait. It’s all about nuance. Similar to a music equalizer – varying amounts of treble, bass, mid tones – a wide variety of volumes of each characteristic in both the Highly Sensitive and High Sensation Seekers. You’ve got eight different characteristics and a wide range of how they fit together.
To learn more about the paradox of Thrill – pick up Dr. Tracy Cooper’s books on the topic and watch the 3-part docu-series of Sensitive Men Rising. It will open your eyes to what you or a loved one may be experiencing and help you reframe it.
More to come on Sensitive Sensation Seekers – AKA – Wild Sensitives.
What is a Highly Sensitive Person? Resources for You to Find Out.
March 14, 2026 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
After watching the Prime Video Documentary Sensitive: The Untold Story, intuitively I knew I had to learn more about this thing called a Highly Sensitive Person and I dove in headfirst into everything I could find on the topic. How could it be that I’d been in the self-help, professional development, personal enrichment, coaching field for decades as a certified facilitator of several personality trait instruments, and I’d never heard of such a thing.
It was Dr. Elaine Aron who started researching the topic of High Sensitivity, officially known as Sensory Processing Sensitivity as a trait in 1991 and it further rolled out in the later 1990s and has been growing in understanding ever since. HSP is not a disorder nor a disability. It is a trait that some would call a superpower that 20-30% of the population exhibits with further breakdowns in percentages as you combine High Sensation Seeking and a lower percentage of Extroverts vs. Introverts with this trait. It can be explained using the acronym DOES. Here is a brief example representing each of the letters with an expanded explanation on Dr. Aron’s site HSPerson. Be sure and read her books and workbooks as well to give you a jump-start into your journey – found on her site.
- Depth of Processing: Do you reflect more than others about the way the world is going or any other topic, need a little more time to make decisions, known for good ideas and thoughtful internal dialog?
- Over Stimulation: Do you experience overstimulation and burn out due to sheer amount of incoming information, need a quieter/calmer environment to think and process, need more sleep or downtime to recoup?
- Empathy & Emotional Responsiveness: Are you more easily moved to tears of joy, gratitude, relief or equally moved to laughter, do you tend to react with emotions similar to others – you catch their emotions and feel similarly, are more distressed by violence, horror, bullying in TV shows/movies, or are disturbed more than others by social injustice, unfairness, arguing?
- Sensitive to Subtleties: Do you notice details other normally miss, or sense how somebody may feel, if things are out of sorts or if décor is moved around, more aware of small environmental or house noises and temperatures, susceptible to humidity and temperature changes, textures, tastes, light and sounds?
You can read more about her research, find resources, take the self-tests to see if you are a Highly Sensitive Person or a High Sensation Seeker on her website HSPerson.com. She also has a link to the first-ever documentary film series covering the topic of Highly Sensitive Men called Sensitive Men Rising that was just released in the past couple years – so this is a new and burgeoning area of study. The resource page on HSPerson has many other books and articles: HSPerson. Here’s a link to the Sensitive Men Rising site.
I found a guide who was also a High Sensation Seeking, Highly Sensitive Person who could customize my learning curve specifically tailored to my life. Having her was an invaluable resource in shortening the time it took me to get up to speed and understand how knowing of these traits and how they fit together and fit into every single area of my life was essential to moving forward making the right decisions for me to live more attuned, content, and awakened to what I need in my life to fully support who I am and who I am becoming. It was also an amazing experience to reframe so many experiences in my former years, why they affected me in such a manner, and how not to become dysregulated and burned out in the future.
Another favorite resource I read regularly is the Highly Sensitive Refuge blog. They offer oodles of articles on all topics concerning Highly Sensitive People and I find it extremely helpful. I always have it pulled up on my phone to read while in waiting rooms for one thing or another. It’s positive and has impactful tips that you can implement immediately.
More Than Decluttering & House Hushing – It’s Space & Mind Hushing
March 4, 2026 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Good ideas and styles stick around and are recycled by another name when the latest people to learn about it tack on another moniker and call it a new idea. That’s exactly what happened with getting rid of extra stuff and living more minimally and organically – something I covered in my first book Hit Any Key to Energize 30 years ago. Getting rid of stuff became decluttering, then Marie Kondo’ing if it didn’t spark joy out it went and now I’m seeing headlines that house hushing is all the rage with a bit of a different flavor. There really isn’t a need to move everything out of a room — who’s got time for that and who has the extra space.
Our environment we create represents the environment going on in our minds. It’s the outward expression of the clutter we have between our ears. If you’re working on quieting the noise on the inside and doing “the Work” with a capital W, then you need to take a look at your environment and what you’re surrounding yourself with. I’m guessing there’s more visual pollution than you’d like. A good place to start is to stop your unfettered consumerism, stop the ads coming into all of your mailboxes and dare I say it – stop scrolling to see what you absolutely must have, because odds are you can likely survive without it. Try creating the Scandinavian vibe of Hygge – cozy, comfortable, comforting, smells good, not too much stuff, streamlined to suit your needs without the tchotchkes to dust around.
Get ruthless in your pursuit of not buying stuff – ensure that whatever comes into your space has purpose (if not several purposes) and meaning. Dig deep into how you feel when you’re in your space. Is it supporting who you are now and who you are becoming or just who you were back in the day. Our space needs to change as we grow and change. I can’t tell you how many color phases I’ve been through during my lifetime and I cringe at some of them now. For me, at one point about 10 years ago, I had an enormous craving for bright colors in my wall hangings, so I combed through all of my travel photos and found ones that had more colors that made me very happy. Bonus is that they brought back such good memories that I now only have my travel photos and art on my walls to remind me of good times in over 100 counties.
When I moved to the California coast, I ditched my European antiques which worked so well overseas and in colonial Virginia but looked out of place at the beach. I ended up with very whimsical, artsy furnishings that were a perfect fit back then. Years later, the amount of many colors felt too brash, so I painted all of my furniture in a similar color and I painted all of my frames in a pewter wash to give my brain a rest from all of the color stimulus. I also have color-drenched some rooms so that the walls and ceiling are more soothing.
You see, I was working on intuition back then and what I now know is that it was my sensory processing sensitivity at work. My brain was on overload – overstimulated by too much color and variations of shapes and stuff and the lines of the furniture. My brain was working too hard to process all the shapes, colors, and stuff. Because us Highly Sensitive People are deep processors, our brains get tired if there is too much stimulation in our environment to process.
Even my books started to bug me. I tried arranging them by size, color, stacking them – nothing worked. What I found is that I need them behind a cabinet door – out of site so my brain gets a rest. This goes for sounds as well. I once lived in Florida on the water and the sound that carried across the water drove me nuts. I could hear every sound that came from the homes across the water and especially the mowers and blowers at all hours of the day every single day. It was like having jet engines revving up all day outside your window. Insanity for me. I now live where they do our lawns all at one time and I hear the mowers and blowers for about one hour 2-4 times per month in season and nothing but birds in the off-season.
Living in the Washington DC area was very toxic for me and my mental and physical health. Necessary for the work I was doing, but damaging my soul. The constant buzz of activity, helicopters, traffic, density of living, too many people crammed into small spaces, constant commotion and too much cement. Not to mention the toxic political stench that forever hangs in the air. Once Covid hit, I moved out to a smaller town to work remotely and retire/rewire in a bucolic, laid-back, slower-paced environment that is much more supportive of a stress-free daily lifestyle.
Listen to your body and get a gut feel for what bugs you in your space. Be militant about what you allow into your home and create a calming, quiet, supportive space that doesn’t hold bad memories from past lives. Yes, Marie Kondo did have a good idea about things sparing joy – but be honest with yourself about what ACTUALLY gives you joy. And for goodness sake, don’t spend money on a storage unit – just get rid of that extra stuff and stop worrying about it and paying for it. More is not necessarily what you need to be happy, healthy, peaceful, and calm. With all the hectic stuff going on in the world, your home needs to be your sanctuary – what can you do to make it so? Don’t forget pleasant music in the background to help soothe your mind. I haven’t listened to radio in over a decade. The noise of the announcers, traffic reports, and advertisements were assaulting on my ears. Choose your noise wisely so it doesn’t harsh your mellow as we used to say back in the day.
Back to Blogging…Transformed & With a Twist
March 1, 2026 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
It’s been a hot minute since we last came together and I’m a little embarrassed and, a lot grateful to the Universe for the interesting twist that came to be that I’m able to connect with you once again in this space.
About a decade ago I had the tech upgraded on this blog and since then, I was unable to get back in to make edits. It just wasn’t happening after I tried every which way including sideways, then I just let it go and focused on my speaking and training career. As it turns out, I was feeling more and more of an obligation to come up with content, and I was getting burnt out juggling so many things that this one just had to drop. I felt it was Divine intervention telling me to put down blogging for a while and concentrate on other things – it was not the time. I let it go and understood that when the time presented itself once again, that it would be unlocked for me to once again share my resources, my lessons, and help others connect to their capacity through blogging.
Enter the Universe and its infinite wisdom. Having retired from full-time corporate work teaching and training international clientele several years ago and transforming my life and lifestyle after learning I was an Empath and an Extroverted, High-Sensation-Seeking, Highly-Sensitive Person in 2020, the doors opened and the code was cracked to once again allow me entry past the firewall and into the blog. Thanks to a dear friend who had a friend who had a husband who was willing to crack the case wide open. It was once again time to start sharing content after all I had learned that had profoundly changed my life in every way and every day, and what has made clear all that was happening to me/for me in my life up to that point.
I’m now intent on sharing the work and words of wisdom of the many from whom I’ve studied. I’m thrilled to share their brain/mind/body/health/environmental/strategic planning work that was instrumental in reframing past life events, managing time/space/self in present day events, and how to strategically plan for future events/space/ways of being and moving through the world that is more in alignment with my natural brain and body connection.
I’m putting a twist on how I work and who I work with – moving away from corporations and organizations to individuals and one-on-one coaching and advising versus keynotes and corporate training and teambuilding events. I’m intent on helping women in particular who are Highly Sensitive and/or High Sensation Seeking Sensitives because it’s such a complex connection, a guide is most helpful to figure out how to move through the world in the best possible way while honoring your very specific set of traits. Much more on this later, but just knowing these traits exist is the first step in how to get the most out of your life and create a lifestyle by design and not default to be your best self.
