I’m going to say this plainly because I’m tired of people gaslighting themselves and each other just to survive another news cycle:

No, you are not “too sensitive.”

You are not weak for feeling like your chest is a little tighter these days. You’re not being dramatic for needing to lie down after scrolling headlines for five minutes. And you’re damn sure not overreacting for crying at that video, or needing silence instead of small talk, or feeling completely untethered on a random Tuesday afternoon. The world is heavy right now. Full stop.

And yet, somehow, the culture machine keeps whispering that the problem is you. That if you just meditated more, or drank more water, or logged off social media, you’d miraculously become immune to the soul-deep grief that seems to hang in the air like secondhand smoke. But you’re not malfunctioning. You’re responding. To everything. And everything is a lot.

Look around: war is no longer an anomaly, it’s an ambient background noise. Gaza. Sudan. Congo. Ukraine. There is blood in the algorithms. Entire cities reduced to rubble while world leaders pass condolences like salt at a dinner table they don’t have to clean. Capitalism has become full-blown dystopia, and we’re supposed to applaud the billionaires racing to space while rent climbs and groceries feel like luxury items. The oceans are boiling, the forests are choking, and we’re told to “just vote” as if the ballot box is a flotation device in a flood we didn’t ask for.

And still, somehow you are expected to answer emails on time. Still expected to “network” and smile and “stay positive” while the planet is literally catching fire. Still expected to perform wellness rituals while the systems designed to crush you sell those same rituals back to you with a discount code and a side of shame.

No, friend. You are not too sensitive. You are awake.

It’s not you that’s broken, it’s the world that’s bruising your soul with every headline. You are expected to metabolize so much suffering with so little rest. To see horror after horror and still show up to work with your “camera on.” To keep “producing” while watching democracy shrivel, rights be stripped, and genocides livestreamed, while the rest of the world shrugs and scrolls past like it’s just another trending topic.

People are living in tents on sidewalks while buildings sit empty. Politicians stage photo ops in front of food banks instead of fixing the reasons they exist. Schools hold active shooter drills and kids are learning how to bleed less, not dream more. And still, we pretend this is normal?

No. The world is not okay. And neither are we.

But the problem isn’t our sorrow, it’s our society’s refusal to sit with it. Everything is designed to distract us from grief, to make us think that slowing down is weakness and numbness is maturity. We’ve been taught to admire the unbothered, the stoic, the “strong”, as if empathy is a defect, as if feeling deeply is a liability instead of what makes us human.

So if you’re exhausted, that makes sense. If you’re angry, that’s appropriate. If you’re feeling grief that doesn’t have a neat little box or explanation, that’s not dysfunction. That’s alignment. That’s what it means to still have a pulse in a world that’s trying to flatten everything into apathy.

Maybe the most radical thing you can do right now is not go numb.

Maybe refusing to “just get over it” is a form of resistance. Maybe being soft in a brutal world is a kind of protest. Because if we all stop feeling, if we all desensitize just to cope, then the people in power have won. Then the suffering becomes invisible. Then the headlines are just noise.

So no, I’m not going to tell you to toughen up. I’m not going to give you tips on how to “hack your serotonin” so you can trick your brain into ignoring the collapse. I’m not going to pretend that self-care alone will heal what is essentially a collective wound being cut deeper every day by systems that profit off our disconnection.

Instead, I’ll say this: Be tender. Be honest. Be wrecked, if that’s where you are.

Let your tears be evidence that you have not surrendered your humanity. Let your rage be a sign that you still believe in something better. Let your exhaustion speak to how hard you’ve been trying just to carry the weight of being a decent person in a world built to punish decency.

And please, please, stop apologizing for feeling things.

The world is heavy right now. It should be.
That doesn’t mean you’re too sensitive.
It means you’re still alive.