Why Am I So Sensitive? Your Nervous System Is Remembering

Photo by Liana S on Unsplash

You’re probably so sensitive because your nervous system is remembering. When something small today rhymes with old hurts that never got finished, your body feels the old ones too, so a comment that should sting a little lands like a blow. Some people are also simply wired to take in more of everything. Either way, sensitivity isn’t the problem. Being alone with it is.

Someone says “you’re too sensitive” and you feel it in your whole body before you can answer. A short text ruins your afternoon. You notice everyone’s mood the second you walk into a room, and you’re exhausted from pretending you’re fine.

If the person saying it is your partner, I wrote about what to do when my boyfriend says I’m too sensitive.

And then the voice right after it. Why am I like this?

I grew up in an Ireland where cruelty hid inside humour, and nobody called it cruelty. When I was a tween I heard a story about our cricket team, and an official who’d thanked the groundskeepers with a racist phrase. The people telling it thought it was harmless. They said the other team had overreacted. The room laughed at how sensitive “they” were.

My body didn’t laugh. I felt the wrongness in my stomach before I had any words for it. Something in me noticed what everyone else in that room did not want to feel. For years I thought that made me the odd one.

What’s really going on

If something in you relaxed at that sentence, notice it. If something argued, notice that too. The arguing part has probably spent years making you smaller so you’d fit.

Here’s how I understand most of what people call being too sensitive. Imagine two coins in your pocket. One carries abandonment on one side and rejection on the other. The second carries too much on one side and not enough on the other. When someone pulls away, you touch the first coin, and before you can think, you feel its twin. I’m too much for people. Or, I’m not enough for them.

Then shame floods in on top. Silvan Tomkins showed that shame begins as a tiny interruption, a little circuit breaker when good feeling gets cut off. Donald Nathanson, building on his work, showed what happens next. Your nervous system runs back through every past moment that felt the same. So today’s moment carries two units of pain, but you have two hundred stored from before, and suddenly you feel four hundred. That’s why a small comment can feel like the end of the world.

It’s not because you’re dramatic or fragile or overreacting. Your nervous system is remembering.

I think of it as open entries in a ledger. Some hard experiences got completed: someone held you, named what happened, and the feeling moved all the way through. Others didn’t. They stay open, and the body keeps broadcasting them every time something rhymes. That isn’t malfunction. It’s an honest record keeper doing its job.

And yes, some people are also built to take in more. Temperament is real. But even the most finely tuned person suffers less when their open entries start to close.

So you make sense. Your sensitivity isn’t a defect. It’s information, arriving with interest.

Why you might be more sensitive right now

You’re running on empty. Stress, poor sleep and burnout lower everyone’s threshold.

Something has ended. A move, a loss, a breakup. Grief often comes out sideways, as irritation or tears.

An old hurt has been touched. Criticism, being left out, being ignored. These are the classic rhymes for open entries.

You’re around people who call your feelings the problem. Sometimes “you’re too sensitive” is true. Sometimes it’s what a room says when it doesn’t want to feel what you’re feeling.

Your body is going through something. Hormonal changes, illness and pain all change how much you can hold. If your sensitivity comes with physical symptoms, see a doctor.

The loop, on your situation

The practice underneath all of this is one I learned from Aftab Omer, reflexive participation: what am I noticing now, how am I affected, and what creative action is being called for? Run it on the last moment that got under your skin.

Get ground in your body first

Feet on the floor. One breath out, slower than the in. Name three things you can see. Nothing is on fire.

What happened

One sentence, present tense. “My sister says ‘calm down’ in front of everyone, and my face goes hot.”

Where it lands in the body

Heat in the face? A tight throat? Stay with it for one breath. And now what do you notice?

Who’s driving

Listen for the part that takes over. Omer called the inner critic the Gatekeeper, the voice built in childhood to keep you safe. I call these protector parts. Notice which coin it’s holding, too much or not enough. And notice which way you run. Nathanson called the four directions the Compass of Shame: attack yourself, attack the other person, withdraw, or avoid. Sensitive people often run to attack self.

Trace it

Only as far as today needs. When did you first learn that your feelings were too much for the people around you? Who laughed, or went quiet?

Feel it and tell someone

There are two boys inside me. One is the boy who got genuinely frightened when he was small. The other comes in right after and panics about the fear. Is something wrong with me? What does this mean? The second boy is louder, so he gets all the airtime, and the first one never gets held.

What I try to do now is be with the first one. It’s okay to be scared. I got you. The way I’d hold my daughter Grace when she’s terrified before a blood test. Do the same with your sensitive one. Let the feeling be here without the trial afterwards. Then tell one person: “That hurt more than it probably should have.”

One creative action

Respect your sensitivity’s limits instead of overriding them. I learned this out on the ocean. I was racing, driving myself to get better, taking a single canoe out on my own into conditions too far past the reef. Too far past what the sensitive one inside me could hold. I wasn’t kind to him. Any bodybuilder will tell you to increase the weight by a couple of percent, and only once you’re comfortable. Pick one place this week where you go a couple of percent, not fifty.

How to be less sensitive without going numb

You don’t want to stop feeling. You want the old hurts to stop riding in on every new one. That happens through new experience, not willpower. We don’t have to change the past to heal, only a present moment. When the thing you needed then arrives now, a person who doesn’t look away, a feeling that gets to finish, it changes the meaning of the old one. Your sensitivity comes down. You become harder to trigger and easier to be.

So ask how much of this is today before you trust the four hundred units. Find one or two people who can stay steady with you. Name feelings out loud while they’re small.

One thing to do tonight

Write down the last three times you felt “too sensitive.” Next to each one, write two numbers: how much it hurt, and how much of that you think belonged to today. Don’t judge the gap. The gap is the old ledger, and seeing it is the first step to closing it.

Would therapy help with this?

Coaching is how we go from where you are now to where you want to go, and we only address the past when it emerges in the present. For everyday sensitivity that’s making life harder than it needs to be, that’s the right size.

But if your sensitivity comes with low mood most days, panic, crying you can’t stop, or memories of things that were done to you, please talk to a licensed therapist where you live.

The path

What I’ve just walked you through is the Empathi Method. For an individual, it’s built on my Proof of Work of Being Human protocol: building sovereign ground inside yourself. On the Self ground, that means feeling things fully without putting yourself on trial for it.

There are two ways to keep going. You can start now with Figlet, an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, on the Self ground, and it’ll help you catch the second boy mid-panic and get back to the first one. Or you can get on the list for the book and the live program with me, where we do this work together.

I’m still sensitive. I still feel a room before I’ve taken my coat off. I just don’t hate myself for it anymore, most days. When I slip back into “what’s wrong with me,” that’s not failure. I begin again.

I go deeper into this in my book, Proof of Work (Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027).

Common questions

Is being too sensitive a mental illness?

No. Sensitivity is part of temperament and history, not a diagnosis. It can sit alongside anxiety or depression, so if it comes with low mood or panic most days, it’s worth talking to a licensed therapist where you live.

Can you stop being so sensitive?

You can stop being run by it. You won’t stop feeling, and you wouldn’t want to. But as old hurts get met in the present, the amplification drops.

Why am I so sensitive to criticism?

Because criticism touches the “not enough” coin faster than almost anything. Your body hears today’s comment plus every old one like it. If the criticism comes mostly from a partner, read how to deal with a critical partner.

If you’re thinking about hurting yourself, call or text 988.

Reflexive participation and the Gatekeeper come from the teaching of Aftab Omer at the Institute of Imaginal Studies, where I trained.