High sensitivity · Zen Books
HIGHLY SENSITIVE PEOPLEFeeling a lot isn’t a manufacturing defect
A trait shared by roughly one person in five, studied for thirty years and still poorly explained. Here are the books I wrote to explain it with rigour and without overpromising.
And what it isn’t
What high sensitivity is
It isn’t a diagnosis, it isn’t an illness and it isn’t shyness. It is a temperament trait that the psychologist Elaine Aron described in the nineties and that has since been studied with instruments of its own. People with this trait process the information that reaches them more deeply, and that brings a cost and an advantage at the same time.
Research sums it up in four markers. They are easier to recognise together than apart: whoever has the trait has all four.
The new book in English
THE SCIENCE OF THE HIGHLY SENSITIVE PERSONWired to Feel More
What is happening in your nervous system when the world feels too loud, and what actually helps. Written by a molecular biologist who is highly sensitive himself, with every claim tied to its source.
Inside the book
The research, drawn so you can see it
Every chapter has a figure built from published data, with the source printed underneath. Six of them:
Three groups, not two: about 3 in every 10 people you know.
About half of it is inherited; the rest is your own story.
Where the sensitive brain works harder, area by area.
Everyone has a curve. Yours peaks sooner.
Worse in bad times, better in good ones.
Feeling with, or feeling for: the difference that protects you.
Small samples and theoretical models are labelled as such in the book. A guide, not a diagnosis.
Free for readers of the book
The companion workbook
The book explains why. The workbook is for the how.
- The 40-question sensitivity self-assessment
- Five tools to map and lower your overload
- Four guided meditations recorded in English
- Ten colouring pages for a sensitive nervous system
Three books · English editions · adults, teens and children
Colouring books in English
Colouring slows the pace without asking anything in return. These books have detailed designs to fill in at your own speed: wild animals with a curious fact on every page, cosy companions for quiet evenings, and an animal kingdom for children from 8 to 12.
For a highly sensitive mind, half an hour of colouring is one of the easiest ways to come down after a noisy day.
In English
Books on high sensitivity
Wired to Feel MoreThe science of the highly sensitive person
COMING SOON
A Journal for Highly Sensitive PeopleThe companion to Wired
COMING SOON
Sensitive Kids from the StartThe complete guide
COMING SOON
Sensitive Kids Aren’t FragileAges 4 to 12Spanish editions, the core book also in German
Personas Altamente Sensibles
Niños Altamente Sensibles
Corazones Valientes
Diario para PASFree download
Forty colouring sheets
Plants and animals in line drawings, as a print-ready PDF. Colouring keeps the hands busy and turns down the noise inside, which is exactly what is needed at the end of a heavy day. I’ll send it to your inbox and let you know when I publish something new.
FREE · 40 SHEETS · PRINT-READY PDF
About me
Christian Duarte
Molecular biologist · Writer and science communicator
Christian Duarte, PhD, is a molecular biologist with postgraduate training in biomedicine, clinical genetics, biotechnology and advanced cell and gene therapies, and a master’s degree in educational mentoring. He taught and did research at university level until 2023, when he turned to writing full time, with the standards he was trained in: every claim with a source. He is also a highly sensitive person who spent most of that career overloaded without knowing it. That combination of laboratory and lived experience is the point of view of these books. Born in Córdoba, Argentina, he lives in Spain.
My author website brings together the rest of my books.