What is a Wild Sensitive?
September 13, 2026 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
As I’ve been writing about Highly Sensitive People and High Sensation Seekers, a Wild Sensitive is a term coined by authors Randy Grasser and Annet van Duinen to describe what is otherwise known as a Sensitive Sensation Seeker. The community understands it is a mouthful to always say the entire descriptor of our unique traits that have paradoxically blended together to form our life’s foundation, hence the term Wild Sensitive. Those with this trait have a need for deep reflection and a craving for new experiences. Recent research has shown even more evidence of differences in the brain of Sensitive Sensation Seekers/Wild Sensitives.
If you’re not already familiar with these terms – first read the last few blog posts describing the four characteristics each of Highly Sensitives and High Sensation Seekers, then this will make much more sense. Sensitivity is not the problem, misunderstanding it or even knowing it exists is the issue and society’s interpretation of it is a problem. Though there does come some struggle along with the strengths it provides. Some struggles may include burnout and overwhelm, boundary setting, heightened emotional reactivity, social exhaustion and over-stimulation. The book covers strategies to handle these struggles as well as how to foster the strengths of deep empathy and emotional insight, creativity and rich imagination, detail-oriented perception and intuition, and strength of ethical awareness and social conscientiousness. If these traits sound familiar to you – YOU NEED THIS BOOK.
To quote their book The Wild Sensitive, “Sensitivity is not a weakness. Craving life is not a flaw. You were never meant to simply fit in. You were meant to awaken, to feel deeply, to grow wisely, and to live wildly: This is where your journey begins. This is where you become a Wild Sensitive”. The book’s intro goes on. “It is not a contradiction, but a potent combination. When these traits are seen, understood, and embraces, they become the foundation for real, embodied, transformation.”
Their Wild Sensitive book describes the science behind sensitivity and sensation seeking. It is a guidebook for learning about the Sensitive Sensation Seeking trait with many tools for using when you are feeling overwhelmed, along with explanations of why/how this happens, understanding your emotional blueprint, and strategies for coping with dysregulation. It covers the Six Zones of Life, The Adventure Triskelion, relationships and leadership of the Wild Sensitive and how you can make your way through the world armed with better knowledge of how your traits work together to form your superpower and not your downfall.
The Wild Sensitive: Unlocking the Power of the Highly Sensitive Sensation Seeker
by Randy Grasser (Author), Annet van Duinen (Author), Tracy Cooper Ph.D (Foreword)
Written by Randy Grasser and Annet van Duinen, pioneering authors specializing in the Highly Sensitive Sensation Seeker (HSP-HSS), this guide explores the powerful combination of Sensory Processing Sensitivity and High Sensation Seeking, creators of The Wild Sensitive. Drawing on lived experience, research, and practical insight, it offers a new understanding of what it means to feel deeply and live boldly.
I cannot begin to explain what insights this book has brought to my life. I usually dog-ear the top corner of the pages of a book that speak to me, then I dog-ear the bottom corner if it REALLY speaks to me and then I may highlight a sentence. Well…. I stopped dogearing all the pages after the first several pages because it was nearly every single page, AND I was not only highlighting sentences and paragraphs, I started putting highlighted stars and exclamation points and multiple stars and exclamation points on specific paragraphs. I felt like Annet and Randy were in my brain and in my life and had the incredibly insightful, professional, therapeutic terms, explanations, diagnostic tools and prescriptions for dealing with this quite perplexing complexity of being a Highly Sensitive Person as well as a High Sensation Seeking Extroverted Empath. There just wasn’t anything on the market out there perfectly describing my lifestyle, my inherent traits and how to cope, manage, and organize my life to support my internal and external self.
Yes, they use the word WILD, but that doesn’t mean reckless or that you need to be sky diving and bungee jumping – though that is what I’ve been drawn to, it can mean your sense of boldness and expression – writing a book, singing, being a public speaker, traveling to foreign countries, learning a new language. If you or anybody you know is Highly Sensitive, but seem larger than just being sensitive, they do things that make them feel ALIVE and they get bored easily or are more disinhibited than others, then tell them about this book. AND send them to the websites the authors have initiated to create a community of fellow Wild Sensitives where we can learn and discuss in a safe space. Here are their sites: https://wildsensitive.com/ and the village community site: https://village.wildsensitive.com/
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-assessments 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.
