I’ve Been Told I’m “Too Sensitive” My Whole Life

I’ve always felt things really deeply.

I can tell when someone’s tone changes. I can get one weird text and wonder for hours if I did something wrong. I’ve replayed conversations in my head at 2 a.m. that I’m pretty sure the other person stopped thinking about five minutes after they happened.

And for most of my life, I thought I needed to fix that about myself.

I’ve been told I’m too sensitive. That I overthink things. That I take things too personally. That I need to let things go.

So I tried.

I learned how to look confident even when I was questioning myself. I overprepared. I rehearsed difficult conversations before I had them. I tried to read the room before the room had a chance to read me.

And the interesting thing is, a lot of that served me really well.

When you’re the person who anticipates everything, remembers everything and never wants to disappoint anyone, people tend to think you have it incredibly together.

They don’t see what happens afterward.

The replaying. The second-guessing. The Was she upset with me? Did I say something wrong? Should I have handled that differently?

And I think a lot of women know exactly what I’m talking about.

We’ve gotten really good at functioning while there’s an entirely different conversation happening inside our heads.

For years, I assumed the answer was to toughen up. Care less. Stop taking things personally.

But I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been asking the wrong thing of myself.

I don’t actually want to become less sensitive.

Feeling deeply is also why I care deeply. It’s why I connect with people. It’s why I notice when someone else isn’t okay. There are parts of my sensitivity I genuinely like about myself.

What I want is to stop letting one moment hijack the next 24 hours.

To be able to notice that someone’s tone changed without immediately deciding it was because of me.

To feel rejection without turning it into a verdict on who I am.

And to recognize when my brain is filling in blanks before I treat those thoughts like facts.

That’s why the title of Dr. Sasha Hamdani’s book, Too Sensitive, grabbed me before I even opened it.

Our conversation made me think differently about rejection sensitivity, ADHD, and the way some of us experience emotions in the first place.

If you’ve spent your life being told you’re “too sensitive,” this week’s episode of The Tamsen Show is for you.

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