You don’t need me to tell you we live in divided times. This is especially true regarding beliefs, ideas, and opinions about how things should be. Grappling with these personal differences and tensions can be exhausting. It can also be incredibly challenging for highly sensitive people (HSPs), for whom collaboration, co-regulation, and meaningful connection are deeply wired survival instincts.

Konrad Benjamin, who formerly hosted Ideas Digest, knows this tension well. In his podcast, he explored finding common ground amid significant differences. He brings these ideas into Australian political and social discourse with Punters Politics, highlighting corporate and governmental hypocrisy and injustice. We spoke in late 2022, and I was struck by how he doesn’t just challenge what he disagrees with. He embodies a better way of connecting through humility and curiosity despite personal differences. Especially when relationships and meaningful change are on the line.

Why Bother Engaging With Disagreement?

Truthfully, you don’t have to engage in these tensions if they feel unnecessary or depleting. But avoiding specific conversations doesn’t make the ideas disappear; often, these avoided topics fester, resurfacing with even greater intensity.

In The Haven, we explore how highly sensitive people can cultivate serenity. We see serenity as an inside-out state of calm, acknowledging how the way we think, feel, and connect with the world impacts our experience of how things are. In other words, the world reflects what we believe about it, sometimes literally (e.g. self-fulfilling prophecies) and sometimes as a matter of perception (e.g. confirmation bias). Either way, we are active participants in creating the world in which we live.

On the one hand, our thoughts dictate our actions, but more profoundly, the noise we give space to influences the concrete beliefs we hold about how things, people, and the future are. Serenity is a sense of flow that welcomes the uncertainty and flexibility of these elements, holding them with good faith and gentle expectancy in the knowledge that things change. So rather than engaging with the world as a competition or fight to be won, serenity accepts what can’t be affected, brings a creative spirit to what can, and lets go of the need to be unyieldingly arrogant about any of it.

Real connection is possible when we reframe our approach from “I’m right, and you’re biased” to “We both see different aspects of the same reality.” Moving beyond the need to “win” frees us to understand and expand our perspectives rather than feeling pressured to defend them. We can engage with openness rather than judgment, listening for the needs beneath opposing views and the commonalities that might make authentic dialogue possible.

Coping With Conflict as a Highly Sensitive Person

Conflict around values and beliefs can be painful for highly sensitive people. Our nervous systems are finely tuned to pick up on subtle emotional shifts, and we can be easily flooded when a conversation escalates. For us, conflict often feels personal—it’s not just about a difference in views but a threat to the safety of our relationships, which are fundamental sources of support and survival. Relationships grounded in empathy and mutual understanding help regulate our nervous systems, reducing stress and fostering a sense of belonging.

But modern culture often treats relationships as arenas for proving who’s right, and “winning” the debate is more valued than working toward a shared vision of the future. This doesn’t seem to be productive for any of us. However, for highly sensitive people, this competitive approach can be derailing. We’re wired to seek connection over contention, valuing peace and cooperation. Yet, this doesn’t mean we shy away from conflict altogether. Instead, we can approach it as a chance to understand another person’s humanity, working collaboratively to build bridges rather than deepening divides.

How to Approach Personal Differences with Serenity

We can start by revisiting and refining our foundational assumptions to engage with differences more peacefully.

People are doing the best they can. Rather than seeing disagreement as a sign of malice or ignorance, try to assume others act from their own experiences and context. This can soften our instinct to judge and help us engage with empathy.

Minds don’t easily change – Recognising that people rarely change beliefs under pressure frees us from trying to “win” arguments. Instead, it allows us to explore connection and shared humanity, respecting that differing views don’t necessarily require a resolution.

It’s not about us. Aiming for understanding rather than “rightness” helps us resist the urge to moral grandstand or entrench ourselves in ideological positions. This approach lowers the stakes, focusing on discovery rather than defensiveness.

Developing “Tensile Strength” of Mind

As Konrad shows, how we think influences how we hold our beliefs. A rigid mind is fragile, threatened by anything that doesn’t confirm its worldview. This brittleness leads to binary thinking—seeing things and people in black and white, and rejecting conflicting ideas outright. However, we can cultivate tensile strength and mental resilience to hold multiple perspectives without feeling defensive.

Developing this flexibility is like exercising a mental muscle that strengthens our ability to listen, reflect, and let go of the urge to be correct. With time, what initially felt threatening can become an invitation to grow and adapt. As Adam Grant notes, “If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.”

Gentleness is a Firm Back and Soft Front

As highly sensitive people, we have a unique opportunity to lead by example, creating spaces where diverse perspectives can coexist. It starts by recognising our emotional responses to differences, practising firm-back, soft-front gentleness, and cultivating curiosity instead of reactivity. We may still feel discomfort in contentious conversations, but we can engage without getting lost in defensiveness with practice. We can listen without taking others’ views as a personal threat, valuing the connection over the need to be understood or agreed with.

When we allow this space for nuance, we contribute to a culture of peace and creativity, where ideas can be explored collaboratively rather than wielded as weapons. For highly sensitive people, this mindset shift is a doorway to freedom and autonomy and vital to fostering a world that values harmony, empathy, and the possibility of change.