William Allen is a first-time author
in his mid-sixties with a writer’s heart and researcher’s mind. After getting a
degree in Psychology with an eye on doing psychology research, he recalibrated
for a career in Information Technology. He found himself in a thirty-year
career as an Information Technology manager at Wells Fargo who enjoyed managing
highly intelligent, often difficult staff, many of whom were highly sensitive.
He was awarded a prestigious Corporate Management Excellence award from Wells
Fargo for his empathetic management style. He retired early from his corporate
job to found his Hypno-coaching and neurofeedback brain training business,
BrainPilots, in Bend, Oregon. While in Bend, he co-organized the area’s first
Introvert/Highly Sensitive Person discussion group. In late 2016, he began his
blog, The
Sensitive Man, about his experiences, as a highly sensitive man.
The blog became the genesis of his book, Confessions of a Sensitive Man.
Allen grew up in the Southern United
States as a highly sensitive male. He was presented with stark contrasts
between his sensitivity and the prevailing ideas of the time on masculinity. He
was forced to navigate between being an HSP and a traditional male without a
roadmap or even a definition of what high sensitivity entailed. He believes he
is uniquely qualified to write this book because it is written from the
viewpoint of a newly enlightened layman, steadied in the knowledge of recent
research yet still appreciative of how new the study of this personality trait is
and still needs to be further studied.
He has been researching the topic for twenty years since he first read Elaine
Aron’s book, The Highly Sensitive Person. The research has been
amplified since the inception of the blog and the book.
Not only is Allen an HSP, but the
son of HSP parents, father of HSP children and grandfather of HSP
grandchildren. He feels that there is a need for a different take on
sensitivity in men framed in a greater cultural and societal context. Because
Allen is not a psychologist or psychology researcher, he is less constrained by
convention in pushing new ideas and topics in HSP thinking. Allen feels that
HSP males need to take their keen insights and intuition and make them public.
This book is a step in that direction. There is a great need to teach HSM men
and especially boys to embrace their highly sensing natures. There are just a
few real experts in this area of high sensitivity in males, but as Susan Cain
did with her book on introverts, Allen would like to shed more light on highly
sensitive males and the much-needed role they need to take in our society.
