4 Simple Ways Really Sensitive People Can Stop Taking The Whole World Personally
Andrej Lišakov | Canva In the midst of troubled times, how can a sensitive person cope with the overwhelming negative energy? The world can feel loud, heavy, and emotionally overwhelming, and if you're really sensitive, you might take other people's moods personally, absorb stress that isn't yours, or feel exhausted after interactions that don't seem like a big deal to anyone else. Being emotionally sensitive can make everyday life feel like too much.
That sensitivity doesn't have to equal constant emotional overload. Learning how to set boundaries and stay grounded can help you stop taking the whole world personally. These habits are especially helpful for people who want to protect their energy without shutting themselves off from others.
Here are 4 simple ways really sensitive people can stop taking the whole world personally:
1. Create clear emotional boundaries
Imagine, picture, think, or feel as if you are encapsulated within an invisible field that you create. We’ll call this a boundary. Being an empath within this field, you have the freedom to move about and operate in your own standard manner. The walls of this field act like a bouncer at a club, only allowing certain entrances.
Those who are not allowed to enter are negative thoughts, draining people, or situations. Those allowed in are positive thoughts and experiences that bring vibrancy and lightheartedness into your life. If you’re experiencing an emotion that doesn’t feel good, the boundaries of your shield are too flimsy and need reinforcement.
It’s important to ask if the emotion is yours or someone else’s. If they are not yours, kick them out of the club. If they are, it’s time to do some inner reflection and healing to keep those boundaries strong, steady, and firm.
2. Be intentional about media consumption
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Being a really sensitive person also means being a truth seeker. The media these days isn’t always broadcast with integrity and truth. Listening, hearing, and considering information that may not even be true will only hurt and deepen the emotional pain you could be taking on someone else’s behalf.
As a sensitive human being who has so much compassion (often too much), a study of fear reactions and the mass media helped explain why it’s easy to get duped and fall into a trap of deception and lies because our heartstrings are being tugged, and we feel bad for someone else.
The media is biased towards empathy in certain directions — they are also geared and directed towards sensationalism. Coming across information that may not be true can trigger you into a spiral of emotions that aren’t even needed, therefore using up your reserved energy and depleting it when you’re putting your focus on something that isn’t even true or real.
3. Stop comparing yourself to others
It’s so easy to look at other people and see what’s missing from your life. Comparing yourself to other people or trying to keep up with the latest fads is exhausting. You drain yourself by constantly replaying the past or worrying about the future, instead of staying focused on what’s happening right now.
When you’re witnessing what you don’t have, you give your inner critic lots of fuel to start driving circles around your mind, and it becomes the stronger voice in you. You don’t have the time, money, or energy to be concerned with others who have things you want but don’t have, or who are more successful than you are. What is the compass of that anyway?
We all have different definitions of success, happiness, joy, and safety anyway, which is why life is unique to each of us in our individuality. Embracing our uniqueness and cherishing our differences instead of comparing and poking at them is the new spiritual paradigm.
"An excellent and non-traumatic way to find your uniqueness is a hobby," recommended confidence coach Natalie Maximets. "You need to specify what you would like to do. Often, a hobby develops into full-time employment. The main rule is not to make theoretical discussions, but to start. Self-love is not a one-time practice; you must practice it every day."
Each of us has a gift to offer this world, and looking outside of yourself doesn’t allow you to tap into it for others to receive. The best people, things, and situations thrive on the soul, not the ego.
4. Ground yourself through calming rituals
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Your spiritual awareness and mission are needed to be used at a higher frequency. Every time you meditate, chant, or do deep breathing, you're calming your nervous system and creating space for clearer thinking and emotional balance. That internal shift is often what leads to real change.
Prayer, grounding, or meditation can be especially natural for someone highly sensitive. It’s a way to focus your attention on compassion, hope, and concern for others without becoming emotionally overwhelmed yourself. Think of it as a quiet moment to mentally step back, reset, and reconnect with what matters.
Praying and meditating for those who need it helps reduce feelings of helplessness and fear, especially during stressful times — it helps every human to feel and be safe in the present. When sensitive people regularly use practices like this, they tend to feel steadier, calmer, and better equipped to handle what's happening around them.
Taking the whole world personally can cause physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual damage long-term.
We’re becoming a more holistic society with an understanding of empathetic traits and what being an emotionally sensitive human is about. This disrupts old, rigid thought processes and generates fixed mindsets of emotional dysregulation and instability.
This is par for the course as evolution and growth happen. There have to be breakdowns before breakthroughs. These growing pains create a lot of fatigue, fear, stress, depression, anxiety, and frustration. "Instead of seeing success and failure as a see-saw of opposites, consider them as complements," suggested life management consultant Ruth Schimel. "They can flow toward and away from one another. That flow can contain opportunities to minimize failure and optimize success. Neither stays constant in our lives."
As more people become intentional about their values and emotional awareness, many start to feel more connected to the people around them. For those who are already highly sensitive, this often means becoming even more aware of others' emotions and struggles, which can deepen empathy but also increase emotional strain.
When tragic events happen, it’s common for people to feel a shared sense of grief, concern, and compassion. That emotional weight can be especially intense for sensitive people, who tend to absorb those feelings more deeply than others.
Once the effect wears off and we feel it more personally than collectively, it can be more challenging to be mindful and aware of when we’re not healthily empathizing on behalf of others.
When no mass tragedy is in play (which, thankfully, is most of the time), let’s not forget these tips are also super helpful to maintain a healthy human lifestyle. You’ll also be more pleasant to be around.
Terrie Huberman is a psychic medium, an intuitive coach, and a healer on a mission to support highly sensitive individuals who are deep-feeling overthinkers and tend to become overwhelmed quickly.
