tact nr i often wonder if i'm too sensitive or if other people are too insensitive. or both. my dad sees me on my laptop and says it looks disgusting and i should clean it, or sees me eating a pizza bagel in the airport and says it looks disgusting, why didn't i ask them to heat it up? is that mean-spirited or is it just kind of harmlessly blunt? i know him well enough that i think the intention behind it is to help out ("your computer would be more pleasant to use if it was cleaner," "how's the pizza? would it taste better hot?") and the delivery is lacking tact. but it puts me on the defensive when people talk to me like this. i also came back to where the family was sitting after having gone to find the bathroom, and my dad said "is the bathroom far away, or did you just take a long time?" i replied that i just took a long time; there was a line. and then i kind of sarcastically was like "thanks for pointing out how long i took!" and my dad just responded that he was just trying to discern how far away it was because he'd eventually want to find it. okay, but could you not achieve that by just literally asking where it is? my brother then said to me "if you hadn't pointed that out, i don't think anyone would have noticed." 211011 ... nr i remember when a now-ex was looking at a picture of my drumming group playing on halloween, and we were all wearing cat ears. it was a fun picture, but all he said was "you look the most tired of anyone in the group." (i was tired, and if i recall, also kind of hungover.) i asked him what the point of saying that was, since it's not something i can now change, and it basically just made me more self-conscious about the photo. he just said he's a big proponent of being honest. 211011 ... raze there's being honest, and then there's being needlessly_shitty. for what it's worth — and as someone who's spent my whole life being told i take things too personally — i don't think you're too sensitive at all. i think a lot of other people aren't sensitive enough. 211011 ... nr thank you. logically i know that there isn't an official "too sensitive"; if someone has offended you, then you have the right to be offended. intent doesn't matter, and there's no sensitivity scale or anything. but logic is hard to access sometimes when these things and people trigger your emotions. 211011 ... tender_square i'm with j on this one. i've had similar comments said to me and i've ignored them believing that i was being too sensitive, when really, i had a right to confront people about what bothered me about what they said and how they said it. we teach people how to treat us. confrontation is difficult for me, and as a peacemaker i tend to be a duck and let it roll off my back. it's taken me a long time to change that pattern and i still struggle. (also, what is it with people saying, "you look tired"? it's like, "thanks for telling me that i look like shit.") 211012 what's it to you? who go blather from