Dealing with Extremely Sensitive People

Please, don’t say “sensitive” it like it’s a bad thing.

I have always been extremely sensitive. My feelings get hurt easily. I take things personally. I cry at commercials. Hell, I cry at everything. I am the target audience for This Is Us. Those bastards have my number on speed dial.

I know a lot of other extremely sensitive people. Why? Because they are my jam. Sensitives are good people. We may be solely responsible for owning all the Joni Mitchell records in the world.

We’re not fragile. We’re not hokey. We’re not out of touch. We’re not enablers. We just have all the feels. All of them.

A good number of my friends are creatives. Writers and musicians. Such a feeling group. If you ask most people why they write — be it essays, novels, songs or poems — they’ll tell you because all the feelings need to go somewhere. If my friends are not creatives, they enjoy the company of those who are for a myriad of reasons I’ll get into in a moment.

Still, sensitives get a bad rap. If I had a dollar for every time someone told me to stop being so sensitive, I could buy all kinds of self help books so that I can spend even more time thinking about my feelings.