Emotional sensitivity

 When you’re emotionally sensitive, you experience emotions more intensely than others. Your feelings of love, joy, happiness, anger, sorrow, and fear are stronger than average. If you aren’t able to manage your emotions, you struggle every day to cope. You sometimes don’t trust yourself because you can’t predict how you’ll react in different situations. Too often, your emotions get the best of you, and you act on them in ways that aren’t helpful in making your life better—sometimes adding more anguish and trouble to your life.

Emotionally sensitive people have a deeply sensitive perspective of the world, such as being connected to animals and nature more than most. They are generally attuned to the emotions of others and can exhibit both excessive tolerance and intolerance. Most have rejection sensitivity and can easily perceive rejection in everyday situations, such as an email or text that isn't returned. They’re intuitive thinkers and often can’t verbalize how they know what they know. They have difficulty making decisions, a strong sense of justice, and a fluid sense of identity.

Positive and negative aspects of being emotionally sensitive. 

Emotionally sensitive people often love that they’re able to sense how others feel, experience intense joy, and are passionate and compassionate. Passionate people can make changes happen in the world. At the same time, managing sadness, anger, fear, envy, and jealousy can be a struggle. Being different from others in the intensity of your feelings can lead to a negative view of yourself which creates additional issues such as hiding who you are, loneliness, and self-hatred.

Common ways that emotional sensitivity can get in the way of life, relationships, or even a person’s career

Emotionally sensitive people react to the emotion they’re feeling in the moment. In many work situations in particular, repeatedly showing emotions is not acceptable, and people who do are judged as being weak and incompetent—when this isn’t the case. Additionally, emotionally sensitive people can sometimes make both work and personal decisions based on their emotion. In that emotion-filled moment, they have difficulty seeing the consequences of their actions in the long run and aren’t able to consider the big picture. Their reactions are emotion-based and not tempered by logic. For example, if they are angry in the moment, they may tell off their boss or end a friendship without considering that this one situation is not reflective of the overall relationship. Reacting on emotions can frequently result in chaotic relationships—both professional and personal.

Decision making as a difficult task for emotionally sensitive people

For emotionally sensitive people, just the thought of making a decision may create anxiety that interferes with thinking clearly. To cope with the unpleasantness, emotionally sensitive people often develop different styles of decision making that are not effective in developing optimal solutions. The short-term benefit is that emotionally sensitive people can avoid the discomfort of the decision-making process, but the long-term costs are often significant. In addition to not making a well-thought-out decision, they often see themselves as unable to make good decisions, which only increases their anxiety and makes the problem worse.

Being emotionally sensitive can be a gift. It can also be very painful and more difficult than most can understand. If I could communicate one idea, it would be to accept your sensitivity rather than reject it or hate it, and learn to manage your emotions so you can find joy and peace. You may learn to cherish your emotional sensitivity—it can be done.

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