You Were Misunderstood – Have you spent your life hearing that you’re “too sensitive,” “too emotional,” or that you “take things too personally?”

You Were Misunderstood. Perhaps you’ve internalized these messages, believing there’s something wrong with how deeply you feel and perceive the world. What if the truth is radically different? What if your sensitivity isn’t a weakness to overcome or manage, but a valuable form of intelligence that others simply weren’t equipped to understand or validate?

This misinterpretation often begins in childhood. If you were a highly sensitive child in an environment that didn’t recognize or value this trait, your natural way of experiencing the world may have been consistently invalidated. Perhaps your emotional responses were deemed excessive rather than appropriate to your actual experience. Maybe your perceptiveness about subtle dynamics was dismissed as “overthinking” or “making things up.” Or perhaps your legitimate needs for processing time, sensory moderation, or emotional attunement were treated as inconvenient or problematic.

Your body holds both your sensitivity and the impact of its invalidation. You might notice you physically brace when expressing emotions or perceptions, anticipating the dismissal you’ve come to expect. Perhaps you experience heightened physical reactivity to environments that others seem to navigate with ease—bright lights, loud sounds, or chaotic social settings might create genuine overwhelm in your system. These bodily responses aren’t imaginary or exaggerated; they reflect the reality of a nervous system that processes sensory and emotional information with greater intensity and depth.

The most painful aspect of this experience is how it creates a fundamental alienation from your own truth. When your natural way of experiencing the world is consistently invalidated, you may begin to question your own perceptions and feelings, developing a habit of deferring to others’ interpretations rather than trusting your own experience. This disconnection from your internal reality creates a profound form of confusion that can persist into adulthood, manifesting as chronic self-doubt, difficulty making decisions, or a sense that something essential within you remains hidden or unexpressed.

Many highly sensitive people develop various adaptations to navigate this invalidation. You might have learned to mask your sensitivity—presenting a more “acceptable” version of yourself while hiding your deeper perceptions and feelings. Perhaps you developed hypervigilance about others’ responses, constantly scanning for signs of judgment or dismissal. Or maybe you’ve tried to “fix” your sensitivity through various approaches, not recognizing that what needs healing isn’t your sensitivity itself but the wounds created by its misunderstanding.

Healing Exercises to Honor and Validate Sensitivity

Healing Exercise #1: The Sensitivity Reframe Journal

1. Create a dedicated journal for exploring this reframe. Each day for a week, identify one instance where you felt “too sensitive” by conventional standards.

2. For each example, write the standard interpretation (“I was overreacting”) and then actively reframe it from a perspective that honors sensitivity as intelligence: “My system was accurately registering subtle dynamics that others missed” or “My emotional response provided important information about this situation.”

3. This practice helps counter years of internalized invalidation with conscious reinterpretation.

Healing Exercise #2: The Sensory Needs Inventory

1. Many sensitive people have learned to override their genuine sensory and emotional needs to accommodate others’ preferences or expectations.

2. Create a comprehensive inventory of your actual needs regarding:

• Sensory environment (light, sound, texture, temperature)

• Social engagement (duration, intensity, recovery time)

• Emotional processing (how you best process feelings)

• Information processing (how you optimally take in and integrate information)

3. This inventory helps you recognize and honor your legitimate needs rather than dismissing them as excessive or problematic.

Healing Exercise #3: The Embodied Validation Practice

1. Find a quiet space where you can be undisturbed.

2. Close your eyes and recall a specific time when your sensitivity was invalidated—perhaps your emotions were dismissed, your perceptions questioned, or your needs minimized.

3. Notice where you feel this memory in your body. Place a hand on this area and speak aloud the validation you needed but didn’t receive: “What you’re feeling makes perfect sense. Your perception is valuable. Your needs matter.”

4. Allow yourself to receive this validation physically and emotionally. This practice helps provide the attuned response that your system needed but didn’t receive in the original experience.

Healing the wounds of invalidated sensitivity involves recognizing sensitivity as a normal variation in human neurobiology rather than a personal defect. Research indicates that approximately 15-20% of the population has a more sensitive nervous system, processing sensory and emotional information more deeply and thoroughly than the majority. This trait appears across species and likely evolved because heightened sensitivity provides important advantages to group survival, including greater awareness of opportunity, threat, and subtle environmental changes.

Your relationships play a crucial role in this healing journey. While you can’t change past invalidation, you can gradually create a social environment that recognizes and values your sensitivity. This might involve educating important people in your life about the reality of neurodiversity, setting clearer boundaries with those who continue to invalidate your experience, and intentionally connecting with others who share or appreciate your sensitive perception. These relationship adjustments help create external validation that supports your internal healing process.

Physical practices support this transformation because sensitivity lives in your body. Many highly sensitive people have learned to disconnect from physical sensations as a way of managing overwhelming input. Practices that help you gently reconnect with your embodied experience—perhaps slow, mindful movement, conscious breathing, or sensory awareness exercises—help rebuild trust in your physical responses as sources of legitimate information rather than problems to overcome or manage.

Remember that healing invalidated sensitivity doesn’t mean eliminating boundaries or accepting environments that genuinely overwhelm your system. The goal isn’t to become less sensitive but to honor your sensitivity as valuable while developing the discernment and self-advocacy skills to navigate a world that isn’t always designed for your neurotype. As you practice this honoring, you may discover that what you once perceived as a burden to manage is actually a gift to embrace—a unique way of perceiving and responding to the world that offers depth, nuance, and connection that others might miss entirely.

Keywords: You Were Misunderstood, polyvagal theory, gestalt therapy, psychotherapy, parents, parental trauma, somatic experiencing
Contact us: Feel and Heal Therapy Office