By Heather & Jenny | Soul Sister | Women’s Wellness
Key Takeaways
She said it almost as soon as she walked into our workshop.
“I’ve been told my whole life I’m too sensitive.” She laughed a little as she said it — the way women do when they’re making peace with something that has actually hurt them for years. “I cry too easily. I take things too personally. I feel everything too much.”
Her name was Lisa. She’d driven up from just outside Toronto to spend the weekend at one of our women’s wellness retreats. She was in her late 40s, successful by every external measure, and quietly exhausted in a way she couldn’t fully explain.
By the end of the first day, something had shifted for her. Not because we’d told her how to feel less. But because we’d offered her a different story entirely.
You are not too sensitive. You are carrying too much.
“Too sensitive” is something women hear from childhood. From parents, teachers, partners, colleagues — often from people who mean well but don’t have the language for what they’re actually observing.
What they’re usually observing is a woman who feels things deeply. Who notices subtleties others miss. Who is attuned to the emotional temperature of a room. Who processes the world with more nuance and depth than the people around her are comfortable with.
And rather than recognise that as the extraordinary capacity it is, the world has a tendency to call it a problem.
So women learn to manage it. To apologise for it. To shrink it. To push it down and push through.
And they carry that label — too sensitive — for decades. Internalising it. Believing it. Using it to explain away their own needs and dismiss their own experiences.
Here’s what we want to say clearly: that label was never accurate. And it has cost you more than you know.
Sensitivity is not weakness. It is attunement.
Sensitive women are often the most empathetic, the most creative, the most perceptive people in any room. They make extraordinary friends, mothers, leaders, and healers — because they genuinely feel the world around them.
The problem was never the sensitivity. The problem is that sensitive women tend to absorb far more than their share — of other people’s emotions, expectations, needs, and pain — without adequate support or space to process it.
Over time, that absorption without release becomes overwhelm. And overwhelm that goes unnamed and unaddressed becomes the thing that looks, from the outside, like being “too much.”
It was never too much. It was too little support for too much feeling.
Let’s talk about what “carrying too much” actually looks like — because it’s rarely one dramatic thing. It’s usually dozens of small things, accumulated over years.
It’s the emotional labour of managing everyone else’s moods while quietly setting your own aside. It’s the mental load of holding every detail of every person’s life in your head. It’s the expectation — spoken or unspoken — that you will be endlessly available, endlessly patient, endlessly fine.
It’s years of saying yes when you meant no. Years of minimising your own needs so others could feel comfortable. Years of absorbing criticism, disappointment, and other people’s pain — and turning it inward rather than letting it pass through.
That is a staggering amount to carry. And most women have been carrying it for so long, they’ve forgotten it isn’t just the natural weight of being alive.
How do you know when you’ve crossed from “life is full” into “I am genuinely overwhelmed”? Here are some honest markers:
You feel responsible for how everyone around you feels. If someone is upset, your first instinct is to fix it — even if you didn’t cause it.
You replay conversations. Something was said, or not said, and you’re still thinking about it days later, wondering what you could have done differently.
Saying no feels physically uncomfortable. Not just awkward — actually anxiety-inducing. Like something bad will happen if you disappoint someone.
You feel guilty when you rest. As if your worth is tied entirely to what you produce and provide for others.
You’ve lost touch with what you actually want. Not what your family needs. Not what your job requires. What you — the actual person inside all of those roles — genuinely wants and needs.
We want to be honest: this isn’t a quick process. Years of carrying something don’t dissolve in an afternoon.
But it absolutely can begin today. And here’s how.
Start by naming what you’re carrying. Not to catastrophise it. Just to see it. Sit quietly for a few minutes and ask yourself: What am I holding right now that isn’t actually mine to hold? You might be surprised what surfaces.
Practise the pause before yes. You don’t have to say no perfectly. You just have to stop saying yes automatically. When a request comes in, try: “Let me think about that and come back to you.” That pause alone begins to create space between you and the obligation reflex.
Let other people feel their feelings. This one is hard for sensitive women — because the instinct to soothe and fix is deeply wired. But other people’s emotions are not yours to manage. Allowing someone to sit with their discomfort, without rushing in to relieve it, is one of the most important boundaries a sensitive woman can learn.
Find spaces where you are witnessed. Lisa told us, at the end of that weekend retreat, that the most healing part wasn’t any single exercise or conversation. It was simply being in a room full of women who didn’t need her to be anything other than what she was. No managing. No performing. No shrinking.
That’s what genuine community does. It gives you permission to put the weight down — even briefly — and remember what it feels like to just breathe.
Be as gentle with yourself as you are with everyone else. This might be the whole thing, really. The sensitivity you’ve been giving outward, so freely, for so long — turn some of it inward. You deserve the same care you’ve spent a lifetime giving away.
We’ve watched this happen in real time — at our female retreats, in our workshops, through our online Soul Full Woman Collective with women across Canada and the US.
When a woman stops carrying what was never hers to carry, something opens up.
She gets quieter inside. Not numb — actually quieter. More present. More connected to herself.
Her sensitivity — the thing she spent years apologising for — becomes the asset it always was. Her empathy deepens rather than depletes her. Her feeling nature becomes a source of richness rather than exhaustion.
She stops trying to feel less. She starts learning to carry less.
And that, in our experience, changes everything.
You are not too sensitive. You have never been too sensitive.
You are a woman who feels deeply, cares deeply, and has been carrying far more than your fair share — for far longer than was ever sustainable.
The answer is not to feel less. It’s to carry less. To be supported more. To stop apologising for a depth of feeling that the world genuinely needs more of.
Personal growth isn’t about becoming tougher. Sometimes it’s about becoming softer — with yourself, first and most of all. 💛
Did any part of this land for you? We’d love to hear in the comments. And if you know a woman who has spent her life being told she’s too much — share this with her. She needs to read it.
Jenny McKee and Heather DelRosario are the co-founders of Soul Full Events and passionate community builders and retreat facilitators who help women reconnect with their authentic selves beneath the noise of everyday life, with no fixing or pretending, first through their own journeys past burnout and now through the intentional wellness gatherings they create.
