Why So Sensitive?

Prima donnas, drama queens, delicate souls, and other artists.

Creativity is an incredible gift. But it’s also a heavy burden.

Like Peter Parker, whose spidey-sense makes him alert to any danger around him, we artists feel everything.

It’s our job.

We have a deep awareness of the world around us, tuning in on every nuance. We see hidden patterns, details, emotions, sensations, and impressions that others never notice. We are deeply empathetic to other people’s feelings.

And we train ourselves to become even more sensitive. If I sit and draw a portrait, I work to notice every minute aspect of the subject, recording details they never even noticed about themselves.

It goes beyond just the visual details. We cultivate emotional depth, mining for meaning, analogy, and metaphor. We locate patterns, subtexts, and underlying structures. That’s the raw material for our work.

That perceptiveness isn’t just aimed at the outside world. It’s an inside job, too.

Being an artist means being willing to lay yourself open. To pick at scabs that others bandage with denial. To constantly probe what’s going on in our heads and our hearts. To notice how we are noticing. To dissect our feelings so we can reassemble them in the medium of our choice and share them with the world.

We need to feel how we feel to make you feel.

How often have we encountered a work of art and said, “How did you know?” That shock of recognition that makes us feel less alone, that binds us to each other, that’s one of the greatest powers of art, of music, of stand-up comedy.

But it takes a lot of understanding to bring it to life. It takes a willingness to be vulnerable, to expose what we have dug up from within, to be brave enough to put it out there, no matter the response.

Doing this work alters who we are, rewires our brains and nervous systems, thins our skin, and exposes our nerves. It takes guts.

It also makes us a pain in the ass.

Sensitive people can be a real drag to have around.

So much drama. So much neediness.

We feel emotions more intensely, to the point that we feel stressed, overwhelmed, and anxious, while others shake their heads in disbelief.

Being hyper-sensitive means we can detect hidden motives, detecting patterns before they surface for others to see.

But we’re not always right.

How often do sensitive people overreact, demanding attention, special handling, conjuring up what-if scenarios, and apocalyptic fictions around us?

Being a storyteller is a craft. Being paranoid is a curse.

We can also be obsessive. Perfectionists. Overthinkers. Indecisive. We don’t set good boundaries. We can overpromise and underdeliver.

But don’t tell us that.

Having thin skin means you can’t take criticism well.

We put ourselves out there, but then we can’t handle the response. Even well-intentioned feedback can seem like categorical rejection and betrayal. And even applause can seem suspect and double-edged, unearned, triggering imposter syndrome.

The history of art is full of supersensitives.

Van Gogh. Beethoven. Sylvia Plath. Edvard Munch. Kurt Cobain. Tennessee Williams. Anton Chekhov. Frida Kahlo. Virginia Woolf. Nick Drake. Heath Ledger. Marilyn Monroe. Robin Williams. Richard Pryor.

Many are shy, crippled with social anxiety. Many act out. Self-medicate with drugs or alcohol to dull their sensitivity. Resort to harming themselves — or worse.

Our sensitivity is an inextricable part of our wiring, a crucial component of making art. We don’t need to be ashamed or afraid of it.

I love being an artist. I’m glad I’m sensitive. It’s a gift.

And I want to be productive and happy for the rest of my years.

And less of a pain in the ass.

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. If you’d like to hang out with a lot of creative people (who I promise are fun and never annoying), join my upcoming live workshop, A Day in Paris, on May 16. We’ll spend the morning turning an imaginary trip into a gorgeous piece of art and have a blast doing it. Learn more here.