Hello and every week I'll help you meet life's challenges with evidence-based

I'm Dr. Ellen Hendrickson and every week I'll help you meet life's challenges

with evidence-based research, a sympathetic ear, and zero

judgment.

Are you hypersensitive? Do you take things personally? Do you overreact like a high school chemistry experiment gone horribly wrong?

By request from listener Chris from Utah, this week we'll tackle how to be less sensitive and not take things personally.

We all have a soft spot, a tender underbelly of our psychie. But to the hypersensitive among us, a gentle

poke can feel more like a swack from a meat tenderizer. Comments don't slide off like

water from a duck's back.

Rather, we feel more like a sitting duck.

And why we'd want to toughen up seems obvious.

Criticism hurts more when we're sensitive or take things personally.

But aside from protecting ourselves from pain, not taking things personally pays off in other ways as well.

For example, the overly sensitive among us often react to hurtful comments with

defensiveness and anger which leads to relationship conflict and makes it harder to work

live together.

Plus, if you're in charge, being hypersensitive

can lead to an autocratic over-controlling leadership style,

which stymies your team's morale and eventually their performance.

So how can we take things less personally, both to benefit ourselves and others? How can we toughen up without becoming hard-hearted?

Well one way is to deflate the power of the other person in your own head and we'll talk

about how to do that but another is to work on ourselves and in part this is purely

...