I’m “Too Sensitive”
By: Gavriella Tjandra
Tags: Emotional Intelligence, Feelings, Sensitive, Eq

“I am too sensitive.”

This is what my family has been telling me for the longest time.

My mother, whom I extremely admire for her emotional strength, constantly inquired on; “Why can’t you become more like your sister?” For those who had little ideas, this is a normal question in a Chinese family; where the eldest is made to be the most responsible, and the eldest is always the rock of the other siblings.

I mean, my sister, whom I would always make time for and I love very much, is an amazing person. However, she is also an experienced salesperson, who is 200% genuinely sweet to me, but generally sweet to just about anyone. Having said this, she won’t entertain your bullshit, and will automatically turn deaf for something that is not suitable to her perspective. She doesn’t have a single bad bone in her, which essentially made her to not have a single bone for negative energy. I love her for who she is though, we constantly laugh together about the “unsuitable” environment she often lives in.

What is wrong about being sensitive?

I gave my sister that sweater I had just bought and really liked, because it’s that much I would give her.

Every single person in my family constantly tells me that I had been “feeling” a bit more than my sister does since I was a little girl. Though I would like to be sure they meant well, this had led me into building a wall where I should not be “feeling,” and instead, I should be like; “fuck that shit.” I did find that a bit weird, but then again, I grew up in that environment — which normalized the notion. Then when I moved for college, my college life was full of that kind of person; who would inevitably sweep their emotions and feelings under the rug, then to think of others who did as “too sensitive.”

I was wrong then, though.

Or to be exact, I did not know that I was wrong. That time, I fully comprehended happiness as how other people made you feel, instead of how I made me feel, or how I took full responsibility for my own emotions. I had a good few years living like that, and I won’t be ashamed to talk about it, as my resilience in undergoing and resolving the repercussions was rather inspiring.

My parents were married young.

They were rather traditional, my father was not much involved in my childhood and until now, he would not be the person whom I would look up to in parenthood. Moving on, my mother constantly told my sister and I that it was okay to get married with no money, as she did my father with only six-piece of dining utensils, and an old-ass Toyota Corolla. Then by saying that, when a hurricane hit my father’s finances, she open-handedly accepted the emotional (which would most likely end up in physical, but I had never really seen it) abuses she received- this is why I said that I admired her emotional strength for not fighting back, providing her background. But even then, my mother thought I should be more like her and my sister.

But I had always been an emotional child.

Other than the emotional one, I was the chubbier one — which was a big no, no for a Chinese daughter.

When we were children, my sister and I kept sticker books, which we named and kept to our own identity and interest accordingly. During the early 2000s, stickers often came with golden linings, and what I liked to do that time was to feel the wax papers on my sticker book, and the golden border of my stickers all at once. I closed my eyes, I felt the ridges on my fingertip, and I wondered what else out there felt that way. And I enjoyed it. I was around nine as I remembered, and I was that kid.

I grew up in a family who had no idea on how to overcome emotions, yet I was an emotional kid with zero emotional education. Difficult, eh?

None of my family members had ever done this; I was that kid who swept her emotions under the rug, then the rug would magically explode when the content was way too much. Like, it would not even make a hill, it would just explode. That did not end up very well, most of the time. The results were pretty much apparent in my string of failed relationships, where I abused my partners emotionally, and they abused me even more at most times. Eventually, it would depress me.

Until March to July 2020, when COVID hit and my partner gaslighted me on a daily basis, my parents stopped talking to me, and the job I sacrificed everything for abused my employee’s rights. I was indubitably in a depression.

I had no idea those things happened to me then. When I was with my parents, I was that good Chinese daughter, when I was with my partner, I was that submissive, following girlfriend, and when I was with my job, I was accommodative — to both my superior and my team. I lost myself. I thought I was an adaptive individual who could cope with whatever environment. But then, I felt, every, single, little thing.

It was difficult then.

My parents wanted me to stay back home with them, or to even visit. Otherwise, they would not speak to me even for one second. Meanwhile, leaving my partner, who flew thousands of miles away and stuck in my home country (which he and I despised — but I managed to fully tolerate after a while!), was not an option. That time, he’d tell me that staying with him was my conscious choice, and he didn’t make me stay with him. He said this in spite of my well intention, with a thought that he traveled so far to be with me, making me decide that I would not leave him for the world. I remembered that before I moved back to my home country, he told me that I had one year since July 2019 to get a remote job, or he was getting me out of here. But when everything happened, it was around May 2020 and I was not even close to one. We were dating for almost two years, and he was not even meeting my parents, and I already had. Until now, I am not even sure that he knew he was abusing me emotionally. Lastly, and the most important, I moved my whole life to my home country — which again, I really hate, for a job, which ended up as the biggest blackhole of my life. It didn’t fulfil what was promised to me in the beginning, and I was stomped upon all over by everyone in my job. I regretted my move back home so much then.

This was posted on my Instagram @gavriellat, on June 7, amidst my depression — which I knew nothing of.

What happened then?

I was emotional, but I did not know I was in a depression. What I knew was, I cried, every single, hour of the day. If there was anything, or anyone, who experienced anything that in my perspective, saddened me, I would cry. It was a deliveryman who did not get sufficient on-demand orders for their family due to COVID— I would cry. It was John Legend’s dedicated-to-Chrissy Teigen-song’s All of Me in a supermarket — I would cry. It was my partner calling me a manipulative narcissist — I would laugh in front of him, and cry alone after.

I guess that’s what happened to people who did not get enough emotional education since they were young?

Flashback to August-September 2020, when I learned of what happened and what had occurred to me, was because of people who did not know how to overcome their own emotions. They had zero emotional education, hence intelligence, though they might or might not mean well for their own values. I could not blame them, they were not being trained sufficiently throughout their essential growing years. Because, as my life coach said, hurt people hurt people.

I realized my life’s purpose then.

Dang, it took my entire 20s and a depression for me to realize my life’s purpose. I am now 28, struggling for a scholarship to redo my bachelor’s in psychology, which I would continue in both masters and doctorate right away, then right away to a teaching training — all for my life purpose.

I wish to educate people, heavily on emotional intelligence. Because those who don’t get any, will hurt people. Me, “feeling” too much, not being as how my sister is, and being emotional, help me find my life’s purpose. I want to teach people overcoming their emotions. Me, being emotional, as how my family says I shouldn’t, makes me find my life’s purpose. Me, being sensitive, helps me find the bearing of my then-purposeless life.

So now, don’t you tell me that being “too sensitive” is not a good thing. Because, being “too sensitive,” helps me contribute back to the community. Because, being “too sensitive,” gives me a foundation to build a stronger generation who are wholesome intelligent. And because, being “too sensitive” encourages me to teach communities, who knows how to handle their emotions and become a more intelligent community for the future.

Yay for EQ! Comment if you agree!