Written and verified by the psychologist GetPersonalGrowth.
Last update: 15 November 2021
"You are too sensitive, you take things too personal". This is undoubtedly one of the most common phrases that many people hear every day. Being told that you are too sensitive, far from being perceived as something harmless, is understood as an annoying and even cutting message and some even go so far as to doubt themselves, wondering if they are really exaggerating.
Words can sometimes hurt more than any weapon, we know this well. To all this is added another no less important factor: the way we interpret certain messages. Suddenly, someone lets slip a sentence that we do not expect, a series of words that catch us off guard and that we do not know how to process and digest.
“You are too sensitive. Nothing can be said to you. You make things too big ”. As curious as it seems to us, this message is one of the most repeated in many of our relationships and, in turn, one of those that most affect us.
The reason this concatenation of adverb, verb and adjective has a negative impact on our mind is due to a very simple fact: it represses our emotions. A block of this caliber affects even our thoughts, to the point of wondering if we really have a problem.
We need to understand what this phrase hides, what those who address it really think and what to behave in these situations.
"You are too sensitive": how many times have you heard this phrase?
Anna has just returned from having a coffee with her colleagues. In the middle of the conversation, just when she was explaining that in recent months she hasn't felt much harmony with her boss and it costs her a lot to reach the goals he proposes to her, one of her colleagues told her the following phrase "come on, if you are the his favorite! It's just that you are too sensitive and you exaggerate things too much ".
After hearing this, Anna remained silent. So, once she leaves the bar with her head down and thoughtful, she tries hard to process this comment, more calmly. She knows she was upset and that she didn't like this message for a very specific reason: her relationship with her boss is very tense, they don't have the same vision of things and her work requires more and more effort. This comment hurt her because her colleague was unable to be receptive to one real concern.
This example is familiar to most of us. However, one more thing that it can happen is to come to doubt ourselves. Could it be true that we don't have very broad shoulders and that we see certain things where they aren't? What if we're really losing control? Before reaching this conclusion, let us reflect on the following ideas.
What does it mean to be "too sensitive"?
First of all, an important fact needs to be clarified: "Being too sensitive" does not imply being "highly sensitive". The two things can be very different from each other.
- We consider "sensitive" people who interact with others and with what involves them from an emotional point of view. They usually take the quality of relationships and every little nuance of human interactions into consideration. They talk frankly about their moods and usually value sincerity and respect for others. When this does not or does not happen, they suffer or feel contracted.
- According to Tomkins's theory of affect, each person has their own pattern of how to understand and relate to emotions. Therefore, it is common that there are those who, far from understanding the inner states of the rest of the people, react by considering them excessive.
- Similarly, we cannot overlook the idea that there are people who, far from feeling empathy for our emotional realities, look at them with embarrassment.
For this reason, there are those who believe that completely normal emotional patterns are exaggerated. What happens is that this emotionality or this personality it is not understood by our interlocutors.
Don't let them hurt your feelings
Each person reacts differently to the same event, everyone has a particular way of understanding and perceiving the world and even, of course, of experiencing it. Someone telling us that we are too strong, too cheerful, too sensitive or too emotional is a way to cast a shadow over our own. personality, to invalidate our way of being.
The word "too much" here has a negative connotation and, therefore, it would be more prudent to use other terms and articulate the discourse in another way. Instead of using the said and repeated phrase “you are too sensitive”, it would be more appropriate to choose another more useful and above all more productive one: “I think this is conditioning you, how are you going to deal with it? How can I help you?".
Since this last message is not heard as much as we would like, it is necessary to make a simple personal observation when someone labels us as "hypersensitive". Be sensitiveseeing the world with an emotional approach is neither negative nor punishable. It is who we are, what we have always been and this is how we breathe, this is how we feel the emotions ...
Let us not allow ourselves to be influenced too much by an inappropriate phrase of someone who simply is not able to understand how we really are.
