Advice needed on how to communicate my needs as a HSP
So the start of this school year for me is when I realized how sensitive I am to noise (I knew I was before but it got super bad this year), especially from conversations or TV noise. I live with my parents because I'm a high schooler and they don't really wear headphones and they listen to music/podcasts and watch TV and work from home a lot, and I've been struggling to work something out with them so I can have the quiet I need and they can have what they need.
I have a lot of work this school year and I have homework almost every day and it takes a lot of brain power that I don't always have because of this noise and I'm honestly surprised I even made it 5 months with it. The noise honestly stresses me out and makes my heart speed up even if I'm not doing work. I've brought it up that their online meetings/TV bothers me a couple times, and I can tell my mom to lower the TV volume but she lowers it a little bit and that's kind of that. I don't think she fully understands how much it affects me and I can't ask her to literally mute the TV, so I just kind've deal with that. And I haven't been able to ask her to use headphones for her meetings bcs I js can't deal with that confrontation right now, and confrontation with my dad is like 3x worse. He watches more TV (given its usually quieter) than my mom and its at night and I just watch youtube until its over and I don't think this lifestyle is healthy for me anymore.
I've honestly just adapted a mindset of dealing with it now and waiting until college to get the peace I need, but I realized that it might never come considering dorm rooms are probably equally as loud, and I really just need to confront my parents.
I don't know if it's because I'm highly sensitive or just because of the relationship I have with my parents, but it feels so hard for me to actually work something out/deal with confrontation. Any advice is appreciated <3
Posted Feb 26, 2026, 3:24 AM UTC