"Too sensitive", they say
The formula is a judgement disguised as an observation. What it designates covers at least three different things, two of which are not quantities.
A comparative without a term of comparison
Too presupposes a norm, and the norm is never stated. Too compared with what, with whom, in what situation? In practice, the reference is the immediate circle of whoever is speaking, which makes the formula a measure of deviation rather than a measure of level.
That is why the same person is held to be too sensitive in one milieu and perfectly ordinary in another, without anything having changed in them.
Three distinct things
The formula covers first the intensity of what is felt, the only dimension that is actually a quantity. It covers next visibility: what is seen, independently of what is felt. It covers finally the map of exposed domains, that is, what the remark touches in that particular person.
These three elements vary independently. Someone may feel strongly and show nothing; someone may show a great deal about one precise subject and nothing at all elsewhere. The formula adds them up into a single reproach.
What makes the judgement asymmetrical
A visible reaction attracts attribution: it is explained by the person. An absence of reaction attracts nothing: it is explained by the situation, when it is explained at all. This asymmetry has long been documented in social psychology, and it works systematically against expressive people.
Added to this is a timing effect. Whoever reacts strongly to an episode is often answering a series of which the observer knows only the last term. The reaction seems disproportionate relative to what is visible and is not disproportionate relative to what is not.
What expressiveness brings in
The reverse deserves to be said with the same clarity. A person whose state can be read immediately is never suspected of calculation, and those around them know where they stand without having to guess. That legibility has a real relational value, which regulation models, centred on costs, underestimate.
Work on restraint shows, moreover, that it has its own price: higher physiological activation, poorer memory of the exchange, and measurable discomfort in the interlocutor. There is no free side on this axis.
What one can answer
There is no answer to supply, and this review prescribes nothing. One can simply observe that the formula does not describe the person targeted: it describes a deviation between them and a local norm, and it attributes that deviation to one of the two parties.
The useful shift consists in asking what exactly is at issue: the intensity, what is visible, or the subject touched. All three call for different conversations, and none begins with an adverb.
Key points
"Too" measures a deviation from a local norm, never an absolute level.
Intensity felt, visibility and exposed domains vary independently.
Legibility has a real relational value, and restraint has its own measured cost.
This article describes documented mechanisms and disagreements. It recommends no position, no party and no vote, and commits to no reading other than that of the work it cites.
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