I did my work…

You can grow and evolve as much as you like, but there will always be things that drag you back to familiar feelings, the ones rooted deep in the places where you’ve historically been made to feel lesser. Maybe it’s a stray comment, a tone, or just the absence of care. Whatever it is, it brings with it a wave of something old and painful.

This was today’s post on my page:

There comes a point where the reflection becomes repetition, not revelation. You’ve done the inner work, dug through the grief, peeled back the layers, sat with the pain, asked the questions, tried compassion, enforced the boundaries, loosened them, reinforced them again. You know your story. You know the patterns.

And it’s exhausting to keep circling the same terrain like you’re trying to convince yourself, or worse, others, of something you’ve already earned the right to own.

Sometimes, what you need isn’t another reflection. It’s rest.

~AccidentallyShe~

There are moments, still where a small, offhand remark about my health can spark a deeper emotional ache. I don’t react like I used to. I don’t spiral or second guess myself the way I once did. But I do still feel it.

For years, I thought I was just too sensitive. Because that was how I was made to feel. But I don’t see it that way anymore. What I’ve come to understand is, that what I feel is simply a response, not an overreaction. It’s what happens when you’ve been dismissed, disbelieved, or subtly invalidated over and over again. That’s not a flaw in me, it’s an injury, one that I have adapted around.

It’s not ‘too much’ to want to be understood. It’s not unreasonable to want your reality acknowledged. The fact that my needs or limits make others uncomfortable doesn’t mean I’m asking for too much, it means I’m asking for more than they’re willing (or able) to give.

And when that happens, I do what a lot of people like me do, we withdraw, go quiet. Because when people respond to your honesty with defensiveness, discomfort, or silence, the message is clear, keep that to yourself, don’t make me feel uncomfortable.

That message lodges deep. It teaches you to second guess your truth. To armour up, to edit yourself, and eventually, to doubt your worth. Even now, after years of healing, I sometimes still walk away from conversations feeling less seen, and more alienated. Like maybe I am too much. Like maybe it is just me. A familiar feeling from the past. But I know better now.

I know that’s the slow heartbreak of being misunderstood again and again, no matter how clearly or gently you try to explain yourself.

I’ve grown around it, I’ve processed it. I do recover more quickly. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt. That’s the part people often don’t understand, you can do all the healing work in the world and still be deeply wounded by the same things. Especially when those things are tied to your humanity, your health, your history.

So yes, I continue to be sensitive.

Because I continue to do the heavy lifting. And I’ve come to realise it’s not actually a weakness on my part. It’s a reflection of the limits of others, their inability to step outside their own story. To not be able to sit with what makes them uncomfortable.

There’s a particular kind of grief that comes from realizing no one will ever fully get it, not consistently, not deeply, and certainly not without you having to explain it again and again. Which, I no longer want to do. It’s exhausting, not only to live through it, but to constantly defend it. To always have to advocate for yourself in a world that would rather you just move on from something they never even tried to understand.

So you shrink yourself. You get quiet. Because being reduced to ‘too sensitive’ hurts more than staying silent. But silence costs you something, too. It leaves you carrying the weight alone. It reinforces the story that you’re on your own in this. And that’s a super lonely place to be.

So if you know this kind of sadness, if you’ve felt this kind of dismissal. You’re not too sensitive, and your experience doesn’t need to be filtered through someone else’s comfort level to be valid. You/we deserve to be heard, to be validated and that’s not a burden. It’s not weakness, it’s not self pity and it’s not an overreaction. It’s honesty, grief and it’s your/our truth.

And maybe the greatest kindness any of us can offer each other is to simply listen. Not to fix or to argue, not to correct or invalidate, just to listen, and to believe.

Sometimes what hurts the most is having to explain it again and again to people who should already know better.

I’ve done the reflecting. I’ve sat with every layer. There’s nothing left to untangle on my end. And honestly, I don’t think it’s me who needs to keep turning things over anymore.

To those quick to judge, quick with assumptions or quiet with their discomfort, maybe take a seat with yourself for once. I’ve done my work. So if you could meet me with care instead of ignorance, with curiosity instead of critique, that would mean something.

And if you can’t do that, silence is also an option.

14th August 2025

Apparently I’m still on this bandwagon , thanks to a few recent situations that dragged it right back into focus.

Today’s page post…

When you’ve already told someone what you need and they choose not to adapt, it’s no longer a misunderstanding, it’s a disregard.

Repeating yourself over and over becomes draining. And for some people, it’s easier to frame you as ‘difficult’ than it is to simply respect your needs. Calling them out every time can start to feel like you’re doing the emotional labour for someone who’s already shown they won’t meet you halfway.

A middle path might be this:

Save your energy for new people who genuinely don’t know yet, or for moments where the harm is too great to ignore. With repeat offenders, skip the explanations and go straight to protecting yourself, avoiding certain settings, keeping contact minimal, or disengaging when the passive-aggressive behaviour starts.

Enforcing boundaries doesn’t always need a confrontation. Sometimes the clearest boundary is in your actions. It’s not about ‘calling out’ anymore, it’s about accepting who they’ve shown you they are, and adjusting your exposure so you’re not stuck being the reminder service for someone’s basic decency.