Are you Too Sensitive?

A few months, back a tearful person was very upset with me because I had written to their friend twice in the previous week, but not to them, and thus confronted me about my neglect of themselves. However when I explained that I only wrote to their friend rather than visit because I had not been too well, and explained that despite the fact that I hadn’t written to them, I had not only rang but had visited that upset person personally twice in that same time, even once when I was still not really that well, they were much happier.

As well, I explained that I felt it was the person that only got the letters that should have been upset at only getting letters and not personal visits. (Yeah well maybe a letter from me may be preferred to a personal visit!) Anyway, when it was explained properly, the upset person was happy again, realising that there was no real slight but that the perceived slight was only in their own perception and not in reality.

Recently in the papers there was a story about Paul McCartney and his wife having a spat, as she perceived that his expression of “Have a Merry Christmas” was sarcastic and aimed at her. I wasn’t there so can not say one way or the other, but I do think it dangerous to make drastic conclusions on just one or two examples and we always need to see everything in the wider context of things.

In the case of the McCartney’s going through a bitter and prolonged divorce, there may be some strong reasons to see it as sarcasm, but not necessarily. In my own case with the upset person, although they too were extremely upset, when all the facts were known was able to see the truth as it really was.

Forget the McCartneys and my upset friend for now, and look at yourself. Are you too, a little on the too sensitive side? Maybe with some good reason in the past too? But don’t let the past colour or influence the present and future. Before you judge now, even based on past experience, please check everything out according to present realities. Sometimes your first impression will be right, on other occasions wrong. On other occasions, often your initial reaction will make it happen when it otherwise wouldn’t.

My upset friend took the letters as a sign of my rejecting them, when in fact I had given her more than the two letters that her friend received in lieu of my not being able or well enough to visit them. So before you react or make judgement based on perceived slights or rejections, get all the facts, because just maybe it is not them rejecting you, but you rejecting a genuine friends genuine but clumsy attempts to reach out to you. What say you?