Emotional Exploration: Insensitive

We return once again to the series I am calling emotional exploration. In this series, we have a look at a wide variety of emotional words to understand what they mean, and when we might use them. The idea behind this series is to expand our emotional vocabulary and in turn, expand how we view our emotions, and therefore ourselves. All too often I encounter people who struggle to express themselves because they lack the words and practice of exploring beyond happy, sad, and angry. Hopefully, this series can play a part in changing that.

This time around, I would like to explore the emotional word insensitive, and in doing so also look at the word sensitive. To be sensitive, in an emotional sense, is to have an awareness and understanding of other people's feelings. This might be a sensitivity that has come from your own personal experience, or perhaps having a greater understanding than normal. Either way, those emotions that you are sensitive to are closer to the surface, and therefore when somebody else is going through something similar they are easily accessed and felt, making you sensitive to those feelings.

The counterpart to being sensitive is, therefore, to be insensitive. Insensitive would then mean not being aware of the feelings of others, and appearing to lack sympathy as a result. This might be because you have no shared experience, understanding, or simply that you do not recognize the signs of certain emotions in others. Much like its counterpart sensitive, insensitive, I feel has had its usage changed over the last few decades.

In modern usage, both of these emotional words tend to be used almost as insults. All too often, I see sensitive being used to mean somebody who is “too emotional” or easily upset, and insensitive being used to describe somebody who does not care the same way about something as another person. In general, I would say this is an ongoing trend when it comes to being emotional in general, and there are far too many factors influencing this to explore the trend today. What we can do is explore insensitive a little more so we can get a better understanding in general.

As mentioned, being insensitive is lacking an awareness, experience, or understanding of an emotional situation. There are many reasons that somebody might not pick up on the emotions of others, and therefore be considered insensitive. Autism is a great place to start when exploring incorrectly labelling people as insensitive. Autistic people often miss the emotional cues that non-autistic people display, which is why people wrongly believe that Autistic people are incapable of empathy. It is not a lack of care but an understanding of the cue, once aware of what is happening they care as much as anybody else might. Additionally, Autistic people might express their emotions in a way not easily recognized by non-autistic people, meaning that when they are showing care and compassion it might not appear so to others. This is not something that is unique to Autistic individuals and is something that I find true in many people, especially men, who were raised to not show emotions, and not to get upset. A consequence of not being exposed to emotions when growing up can be a lack of understanding of your own, and the emotions of others. This is not due to a lack of care, but experience and understanding, and it can be hard to overcome this influence. 

So how might we avoid wrongly calling people insensitive? Well, expanding our understanding of how people show that they care is a good start, as not everybody is comfortable using the words and body language that you are. Often people are unable, for whatever reason, to meet you on the same emotional level so they will find other ways to help, these might be practical ways such as getting you food or finishing a task that you were finding overwhelming. I once worked with somebody who had been told so many times to go away because they didn't care, that they learned to leave when people got upset because they thought they were making the situation worse. They were leaving because they cared and didn't want to cause harm, but people saw them as insensitive as a result, because nobody stopped and had a conversation about it. Many people, especially the keep-calm-carry-on generation, will help in practical ways, for example, if you are fighting depression they might help tidy the house a bit, or bring you some shopping because you were struggling to leave the house. People's actions are often far more important than they seem, you might need somebody to sit with you on an emotional level, but it is important to know that not everybody is comfortable doing so, and other actions, like those mentioned, are their way of saying they care, and they are there for you.