I have recently met some friends who have described to me what overly sensitive people are like. It happened on my recent trip to England that there was someone who had upset someone else and she thought that they were being overly sensitive. I was friends with both, so I got to hear the perspectives of two people, which were both fairly accurate which was nice, not a he said she said.
But it began me to think if I was overly sensitive. Because I accurately fit that description. I do think I tend to over think things and take things personally and am a sensitive person.
If I think someone’s angry at me I can’t sleep, it takes me a couple days to process things and some moments where I felt I had maybe insulted someone haunt me days after. I think why would I have done that.
And I do get upset about a lot of things, things matter to me. It matters to me to have the house clean, or to be accepted, understood. And things mean more to me, a comment can mean different things and point to other thoughts that weren’t voiced.
So I definitely agree that I am a sensitive person. But overly?
My friend and I were talking and she thinks that there is no overly sensitive, only degrees of sensitivity and people need to be conscious of that.
I agree, because it’s pretty hard to quantify or define overly sensitive, it’s pretty subjective. And so, for that reason, I don’t know if anyone is overly sensitive. There is sensitive and fluidity of that category, but I don’t think there is a hard or fast line that says when someone is overly, or too much.
I think we also live in a culture that discourages types of sensitivity, although this is a tangent (somewhat). It’s a culture that bombards us with images and really makes us less sensitive, to images of war, violence. People lose their sensitivity. They don’t become heartless monsters, but they become hardened to it. And maybe some people never get over it.
I am also very aware of the different ramifications my sensitivity has for my gender, how I need to act to be respected and get my point across, only for it to be misunderstood again. Even when arguing, because all my emotions can come out at once, I need time to process, to figure out how I feel and decide how to act, if I want to act, at all on them. But more on that later.
Bottom line, I agree. I do think there isn’t overly sensitive, there is just varying degrees that other people need to be aware of.
It doesn’t make sense for someone to arbitrarily draw a line in the sand and say after this point, it’s excessive and shouldn’t be treated seriously. It’s certainly not something to be shamed. And it’s something that can’t really be defined at all. It’s not so crazy of a concept, there’s just varying degrees of things, personality traits, ethnicity, preferences, etc.
Having dealt with that person who was labeled as such, I don’t think they were overly sensitive. And to be clear, this isn’t about sensitive people, it’s about the label, ‘over sensitive’.
Everyone obviously is entitled to their own opinion, but I don’t think I am overly sensitive, definitely sensitive. And to be fair, no one has called me overly sensitive. It’s just something that’s been in my mind since England.
It’s like a spectrum of the rainbow, to everyone the line between red and orange could be different. It’s just a line that is hard to draw, for anyone, and it’s a very personal line/distinction.