I love to defend personality traits that are often viewed as less-than-desirable. My personal fav is sensitivity. Maybe it was growing up as the youngest in a big family, maybe it was watching too much TV and developing an overly dramatic personality — who knows? I just have always been sensitive. In my youth, this plagued me. The thought of being seen as a crybaby by my older siblings or any of my friends was unbearable. Yet, I still found myself completely unable to control the fact that certain things just really got to me. And yes, that’s often not ideal. However, I am no longer a child. And I think that as I’ve grown, I’ve learned to understand myself better, discovered an emotionally communicative vocabulary, and worked on the healthy processing of my big feelings. For these reasons, I have come to view my sensitivity as a kind of superpower. It’s something that I’m proud of, because it allows me to not only be empathetic towards my loved ones, but also to have ample practice in emotional regulation and healthy conflict resolution.
However! This article is not my usual defense of sensitivity; it is a reflection — and reflection often calls for self-criticism. This past Queen’s year all of my housemates lived together, while I moved back home to work an internship. This was a choice that I made, and I am so happy that I did. I really like my job, I have a more solid idea of life after university now, and I have been having a lot of fun and staying really busy. That being said, based on some past experiences, I have developed some serious sensitivity when it comes to friend groups and housemates. So, even though I have been having a great internship year, trying not to feel excluded by my university friends living their own lives was pretty difficult for me.
I gave myself a lot of grace because I think that FOMO is one of the most universally understood college experiences. This is totally normal, and so is comparing my year to other university students. The issue here was that I found myself taking a lot of things that my friends did this year very personally even though they had nothing to do with me. Sensitivity is one thing, but I found myself having to work really hard to not be upset with my friends, which, if left unchecked, could have been very damaging to my relationships. Sometimes I would see pictures of my friends at a party, or hear inside jokes made this year while I was out of the house, and think: “Do they even care that I’m not there?” But the fact of the matter is, in most cases, with people who you love and who love you, things that can feel like personal attacks are not at all meant to be. Events and memories that took place without me exist in the lives of my friends, and that can be a hard pill to swallow, sure, but it really is not my business.
If I find myself taking other people just living their own lives personally, I should take care to identify and associate that with FOMO and not with an issue in my friendships. It’s all about making sure that your feelings are directed in the appropriate place. I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you feel left out because you are in a different city than your friends, maybe think about blaming the “different city” rather than the “friends”.
Being sensitive cannot often be helped. For so much of my life I was trying so hard to push away my sensitivity, to appear tougher than I actually was. If you think someone is acting overly emotional or dramatic, it may be easy to wish they were less sensitive. However, it is no help for anyone to condemn sensitivity as being silly and assume that these feelings are a bad thing. If we are crying, who among us will feel better, and be able to work towards conflict resolution, if another person tells us our tears are dramatic and silly? So, though being sensitive can definitely have its flaws, I overall would say that with self-reflections, just like this article was for me, it can definitely still be a superpower!