The gift of an Empath in a world obsessed with Metrics and Productivity
There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from spending your whole life being told you're "too much." Too sensitive. Too emotional. You think too much. You care too much. You feel too much.
Growing up, I heard these words so often they became a steady hum in the background of my life. From friends at school who couldn't understand why certain things affected me so deeply. From family members who were too busy, too stressed, too overwhelmed themselves to hold space for my feelings. The message was clear: my emotions weren't just inconvenient—they were wrong. Unproductive. A flaw that needed fixing.
So I learned what many of us learn. That feelings are useless. That being sensitive is a weakness. That the goal is to push through, speed up, and definitely not slow down long enough to actually feel anything.
If this resonates with you, I want you to know: there is nothing wrong with you.
The Gift We're Losing
We live in a world that worships speed, productivity, and efficiency. A world that values doing over being, thinking over feeling, control over flow. We're rewarded for overworking and overpromising. We're taught that the ability to suppress difficult emotions and keep moving is strength.
But here's what nobody tells you: your sensitivity isn't a flaw. It's information.
When you feel the weight of global events unfolding, when you absorb the pain you see in the world, when you're mindful of how your actions ripple out to affect others and the environment—that's not weakness. That's deep attunement. That's care in action. That's you staying connected to something precious that our society is rapidly losing: the ability to feel the interconnectedness of all things.
And when you "think too much"—when you analyze situations from every angle, when you're cautious about others' reactions, when you stay vigilant to the emotional undercurrents in a room—there's usually a good reason. Somewhere in your story, being highly aware kept you safe. It helped you navigate an environment where you needed to be careful, where you learned to read the room before you could relax in it.
That wasn't overthinking. That was survival intelligence. And it's still serving you, even if the world keeps telling you to "just relax" or "stop being so sensitive."
The Truth About "Being Too Much"
Here's what I've learned after years of trying to shrink myself, numb myself, and speed myself up to match everyone else's pace: when I finally sat with my emotions instead of running from them, they had so much to teach me.
My feelings weren't useless—they were full of information about people, about situations, about where I needed to grow and what I needed to change in life. My sensitivity wasn't a burden—it was a compass pointing me toward what mattered most. My careful analysis wasn't paranoia—it was pattern recognition that helped me make sense of complexity.
You are not too much. You are thoughtful when the world is reactionary. You are caring when the world is growing more self-absorbed. You are feeling when the world is numbing out.
This is not a flaw. This is a gift.
Coming Home to Yourself
I know you're exhausted. Exhausted from being told how you should feel, how you should operate, how you should show up—when all of it feels misaligned with who you actually are. Exhausted from trying to fit into a pace and productivity culture that leaves no room for reflection, for processing, for being human.
But what if you stopped trying to fix yourself and started embracing your uniqueness instead?
What if your ability to feel deeply and think carefully isn't something that needs to be managed or medicated or minimized—but rather something that needs to be honored, understood, and integrated?
You don't need to become less sensitive. You need a world that has more space for sensitivity. And that starts with you giving yourself permission to take up that space.
Additional journal prompts:
Take a moment with these questions. Write freely and without judgment:
Where in your life have you been suppressing your sensitivity to make others more comfortable? What would it look like to honor that part of yourself instead?
What has your sensitivity been trying to tell you that you haven't wanted to hear? What information might be waiting for you in the feelings you've been pushing away?
You are not broken. You are not too much. You are deeply attuned to a world that has forgotten how to feel, and that attunement is exactly what we need more of.
P.S. If you're ready to explore the deeper patterns that have kept you disconnected from your authentic self—the childhood experiences that taught you to suppress your sensitivity just to fit in—I'd love to support you through a personalized 1:1 session of Rapid Transformational Therapy. This is where we dive into your subconscious to understand what's really been running the show, so you can finally come home to who you truly are. Find out more about RTT here.
