Why Sensitivity Just Makes Sense

The term sensitive can oftentimes be used as an assignment of weakness rather than a statement of power. As I was growing up, “to be sensitive” was a negative. Those who openly expressed emotional reactions to situations were labelled as “cry babies” or told, for a lot of boys, to “man up”. It almost seemed like a label of incapability and negative vulnerability. It was not something children wanted to be seen as or associate with. For me, I decided (whether subconsciously or otherwise), to not align with this term. To do the opposite.

What this taught me throughout childhood and teenage years was to outwardly appear unbothered. Although I may have felt a copious amount of feeling on the inside, it was not something to share on the out. Practice makes perfect in this sense, but also leads to a movement towards not only appearing to not feel and react, but to avoid feeling any of it in the first place. Enter the internal bottle where all feelings both positive and negative would be housed for a long time.

In this avoidance, you appear cold. Distant. Frequently hearing lines such as “I can never tell what you’re really thinking” and “I never know where I stand with you” and to view this as a position of power. A position of “when I have you at arm's length, I am in control”. This also makes you then judge others' expressions of emotion and vulnerability and their own weakness. You feel uncomfortable around it. You actively avoid it and shut it down quickly.

This is not a position of power. If anything this is a horrific disservice you are doing to yourself, speaking from experience. In trying to combat this and allow yourself to feel all that you have so harshly avoided, to try to communicate about it openly and allow yourself that grace to do so, can and will be uncomfortable. These conversations you have to fight with yourself to start as they feel physically unpleasant, are some of the most important ones you will ever have. How many potentially life changing things have gone unsaid, relationships have fallen apart and opportunities have been lost as a result of this avoidance? Countless.

Looping back to my initial statement, if you look up the term sensitive in the dictionary, you are met with a couple of definitions such as…

To be quick to detect or respond to slight changes, signals, or influences.

Having or displaying a quick and delicate appreciation of others' feelings.

When did this become such a bad thing?

I feel we have internalised such negative connotations of this word. It feels synonymous to weak and vulnerable. Feminine only. Not strong. Not powerful. Not able to take on the trials and tribulations that the big bad world throws at us. I still have a lot of subconscious trouble with this word, and although I am working to make my associations with it to be more positive, my instinct when associated with it is to be defensive, because of said internalisations. How unfortunate. To be sensitive is to notice, to express, to be brave and to be bold enough to do so.

In not only accepting but embracing the notion of vulnerability and sensitivity, you must get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I can confirm it is the most uncomfortable I have ever been. To think, to talk, to sit with it and let it simmer, to challenge, to laugh, cry, scream, shout, to allow the full impact of the human experience consume you. It is not comfy, that’s for sure.

My experience in working to align with this has been a lot of making myself do the things that I really do not want to do. Finding a way to almost force myself to talk about the things I don’t want to talk about. Finding safe spaces and safe people to start with, but also working to allow others to enter that space as time goes on. I ask my trusted circle who I’ve started with to help me with this, to call me out, to challenge me, to have the uncomfortable conversations they want to have with me too. To hope we can sit in this uncomfortable space, both feeling uncomfortable as hell, to come out the other side a little lighter.

We need to feel. To feel the anger and hurt and resentment and pain and fear and love and joy and excitement and nervousness. To feel the good and the bad and everything in between. I once read a quote that said something along the lines of “it is both the plight and the joy of the human experience to feel it, and feel it all”. I hope we try to do more of this. Less of the numbing and avoiding and hiding. More of the feeling and the expressing and the working through it to come out the other side. Tapping into this sensitivity and allowing yourself to succumb to it and get through it and not assigning it to weakness and incapability - it just makes sense.