Okay readers, be honest, when was the last time you told a friend, partner, family member, or colleague that you were fine and that wasn’t honest? No judgements from me, we’ve all been known to use this when we’re trying to brush something off and move past it. And if you’re anything like me, you’ve just kind of used this as a templated response because you don’t have the time or energy to get into why you’re actually not fine.

I for one am glad that we’ve moved into an age where we are more empowered and encouraged to talk about our feelings, instead of just sweeping everything under the rug, or giving a false impression of being unbothered. This was something that I personally really struggled with in my adolescence and into my young adult years, because I am what you’d call a sensitive person, and whenever I felt an emotion, I felt it intensely. This wasn’t always easy to process in a family where the ‘good’ emotions were acceptable, and the ‘bad’ emotions weren’t suitable for public witness, so it was off to my room until I could calm down. For the most part, I wasn’t calmer or at peace because it wasn’t discussed, so I would pretend to be ‘back to normal’ in order to rejoin the group. Outside of family dynamics, the social messaging for adults in the 80s through the early 2000’s was that it was uncool to talk about the unpleasant feelings or if something bothered you, because you’d then be labeled an sensitive or overly emotional – social suicide, basically. The problems with this – aside from the fact that emotions aren’t good or bad, they’re feelings that eventually pass once you let yourself feel them, is that you end up with a lot of young adults who don’t know how to verbalize when something upset them in a healthy, reasonable manner.

What I have found, in my personal journey of life, is that these sensitive people need to feel safe enough to talk about what is bothering them, to be heard, and then coming to a resolution or enacting a boundary to make sure things don’t carry on the way they have been. And look, that’s not to say that we (speaking on behalf of the sensitive people) demand to never be angry or scared or sad, because that’s not how life works, but it’s to show a mutual respect and understanding between parties. There has to be enough compassion on the other end to want to work together, and agree to some changed behavior, out of respect for the relationship. Can you imagine having a relationship with someone who you’ve asked to stop yelling and projecting during conversations, for example, and who does not acknowledge or apologize for this behavior? No one deserves to be treated this way. And, because we have no control over what happens to us, just how we respond, I hope that you will be brave, reader, and share how you feel. Or if someone comes to you with an incident that upset them, listen, because they want to fix this and keep you in their life.