“I must be too sensitive for this environment”

The problem must be meYou walk into the room, skim the tone, and almost immediately decide the issue is your sensitivity. Maybe it’s the brisk replies, the jokes that land sideways, the way your concern seems to evaporate before anyone names it. The myth is tidy: if you are the problem, then you can keep yourself smaller and avoid more friction.

Why the verdict starts sounding officialWhat makes that myth stick is repetition. When “too sensitive” has been said enough times, it stops sounding like one person’s defensive line and starts sounding like a neutral standard. Then you begin using the same standard on yourself. You weigh whether to speak by asking the person who benefits most from your silence whether your reaction counts.

A private test that doesn’t ask for a big confessionTry this with one small moment from today: write the exact situation down, then add two columns beneath it — what happened, and what you assumed it meant about you. Leave it for an hour. Later, read it as if it belonged to a coworker or friend you don’t have to protect. You are not proving the environment wrong; you are checking whether the first interpretation was the only one available.