Being a sensitive person, I have had my fair share of people not understanding why I take everything to heart and not understanding why I let everything get to me.
What they don’t realize is that telling me not to do those things is only going to make it worse. Here are some things that sensitive people want you to understand.
We take everything to heart because we care.
We never want to make people unhappy. This does not, by any means, mean that all of us are people-pleasers.
We know how much it sucks to get our feelings hurt, so we don’t want to make other people feel that way. We care so much about the people around us that we hyper-focus on making sure they are okay.
When someone we care about it upset with us, it kills us inside. We hate knowing that we did something to make another person unhappy.
We don’t cry at everything.
Just because we are sensitive doesn’t mean that everything upsets us. Like everyone else, there are things that we don’t get upset about and there are things that hit close to home.
Unlike everyone else, what hits close to home hits us really, really hard. We can usually keep our cool in most situations, but there are some topics that set us off. It takes a lot for me to cry at a movie, but talk about my past and I’m bawling like a baby. How upset we get in situations depends on our connection to the topic.
It’s hard for us to get over things.
It’s hard for most people to get over certain things that happen whether it’s a breakup or a fight with a friend. Sensitive people take even longer to get over these situations. It doesn’t mean that we won’t get over it; it just means that we need more time to process what went on so that we can figure out how to move on from it.
We overanalyze everything.
Seriously. We can’t help it. It can be something as small as the way we perceive a text message. We can sit around for hours ripping the text apart to see what the underlying meaning is.
Even if there isn’t one, we still manage to make one up and stew over it. We overanalyze everything because we always feel like we are going to mess things up. We pick up on subtle changes of tone when you talk to us and freak out trying to figure out what it means.
We want everything to be the way we see it in our heads, no matter what. When something doesn’t meet our expectations, we get upset. We wonder why things didn’t go the way we thought they would.
We hate it when you tell us not to take things personally.
Stop. Please just stop telling us that. If we could stop taking things personally, we would. The thing you have to realize, though, is that we take some things personally because they were meant to be taken that way. If someone throws a personal dig at us, we are going to take that personally. Anyone would.
We are also not very good at taking criticism. We can’t help but feel like people not liking our ideas means that they don’t like the way we think. If people don’t like the way we think, they most likely won’t like us as a whole person.
We can’t help thinking that way. We know it may not be true, but we can’t always control it. Don’t tell us we shouldn’t be doing something just because it’s not how you would handle it. We don’t care how you’d handle it. We handle situations differently than you do, and that is okay.
We will always be there for you.
Because we care so much about people and we have a hard time letting people go, we are always going to be there for people who may not be the best people for us.
Even if we know someone isn’t having a positive influence on our lives, we still feel the need to respond whenever they try to contact us because we don’t want to be mean and simply not respond.
We know what it’s like to feel like no one is there for you. Because we know how bad that feels, we want to make sure we aren’t the cause of it. We will be there for you whenever you need us.
We care about you so much that we would drop everything we’re doing just to make sure that you’re going to be okay, including sit up with you all night. We want to be there for you when you need to vent and when you want to share exciting news.
Sensitive people are always portrayed as only being sensitive, but there are many other aspects to us that we want people to see. Just because we are sensitive doesn’t mean that we fit every stereotype of what a sensitive person is shown to be.
We love and care about everyone around us. We want you to understand that we like who we are. We don’t want to feel like we need to change just because other people don’t like how we may handle certain things.
We are in your life for a reason. You like having us around as much as we like having you around. You like us because of our quirks and our sensitivity because it makes us who we are. We’re okay with that.
If you’re a sensitive person and can relate to any of these points, or have some more to add, then please share your ideas in the comments section below!
Add Comment