How Sensitivity Helps Me Write Better (Even if it Ruins My Sleep) ✍️
The gift of feeling too much ✨
It's 3 AM. I can't sleep. It’s one of those nights.
My thoughts are racing so fast they might crash into each other.
I get up and start pacing the room as my wife sleeps peacefully on her side.
I have found walking to be oddly calming. Maybe the physical movement slows the chaos in my head, pulls it into a steady rhythm.
Tonight it’s what happened at tea with friends.
In the middle of the conversation, I dropped a reference from that book—why did I do that?
There was definitely a pause after that. Maybe an eye roll. Am I the guy who can't help but bring up what he's reading?
What are they thinking of me? Some show-off who just can't have a normal conversation?
That silence felt like forever. Two seconds too long? Why would everyone go quiet unless they're all thinking the same thing—that I'm showing off? Am I that guy? Oh god, I am, aren't I?
Stop. This is crazy.
Normal people don't dissect every moment of silence like it's evidence in a trial.
But that pause though…
“You're doing it again.”
I turn. My wife is awake, propped up on her elbows, watching me.
“Doing what?”
“Overthinking. What happened?”
“Nothing happened. Just can't sleep.”
She gives me that look—the one that says we both know I'm lying.
“Who’s disappointed in you tonight?”
She knows me too well.
“Just... don't read so much into everything. You'll drive yourself crazy.”
She meant it kindly. She always does.
But my brain doesn't come with an off switch. I just can’t help but overthink things.
While she drifts back to sleep, I'm still here, still walking, still replaying that moment at tea.
It’s always been like this.
At farewell dinners, when colleagues are sharing their honest thoughts, someone always says, “Don't take this the wrong way, but you sometimes take things to heart.”
Even in school, when I stumbled over my words during a speech contest, I'd replay that embarrassing moment on stage for years even though everyone had forgotten it the next day.
This sensitivity comes naturally to me.
It’s a personality trait where you’re wired to feel things more deeply, pick up on subtleties others miss, and process everything more intensely.
Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) comprise 15 to 20 percent of the population.
Despite all the overthinking and sleepless nights, high sensitivity comes with its gifts for us writers.
Two of the most beautiful gifts are deep processing and empathy—invaluable skills for any writer.
I'm working on not taking everything so personally, on building thicker skin.
But I’m also trying not to lose the part of me that feels everything so deeply. That part writes…
btw the first 2 lines are so relatable!
[thoughts so fast they might crash into each other]
i just remembered how one night I was doing free writing and I havent finished writing one thought down, and Im already starting to write the next.
Definitely felt like thoughts crashing into each other.
This captures the inner life of sensitivity so precisely. That 3am pacing, the replaying of micro-moments, the weight of a few seconds of silence — it’s a familiar landscape for many people whose systems process deeply.
What I appreciate most is that you don’t pathologize it. Sensitivity here isn’t something to fix, it’s something to hold. When there’s enough regulation and rhythm, that depth becomes empathy, insight, and powerful writing. Without it, the same sensitivity easily tips into exhaustion and sleepless nights.
It’s a delicate balance: learning how to settle the system without dulling the very part that feels, notices, and creates. This piece names that tension beautifully.