Toughen Up and Stop Being Sensitive: the phrases I hate the most

You’re allowed to be sad or unhappy. And I’d rather you told me

I just blocked someone. I won’t name them, because I think it’s fairly obvious they have some social difficulties that they’ve struggled their whole life, but their response to what I’d said made my blood boil. Instead of reading about my childhood experiences of sexual harassment, homophobia, racialised abuse over my hair and colouring, and molestation, and attempting to empathise with why I’d found something very triggering, they had written “You’re overreacting, you should delete this and not be so sensitive. Trolls will see this. Enjoy your date.” I sat there and stared.

Teaching someone to be frightened of emoting is dangerous

Now I’m not asking or demanding for pity, sympathy, or engagement. I never will. I’m sharp, I’m sarcastic, I invite similar engagement. I write because I enjoy it, and if you enjoy it, great. I’ve also read people’s work on here and disagreed with it, felt they might have misunderstood the situation or been a bit silly; but here’s the difference. I’d never tell them they were overreacting, being too sensitive, tell them to toughen up, or tell them to hide what they felt in case they were trolls for expressing themselves. That’s just evil. That’s unhinged. Someone has peacefully, innocently written about something that happened to them…